Why do good people sometimes become leaders they never intended to be?

In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, I sit down with Preetie Boler, founder of Empowered by Design and creator of the Shiftcode™ methodology, to explore what really happens to our behaviour when pressure rises.

Preetie’s work focuses on the gap between intention and impact - the space between the leader we believe we are and the leader other people actually experience.

We talk about why capable leaders can become reactive or controlling under pressure, whether the accelerating pace of work is making leadership behaviour worse, and why organisations continue to promote technical excellence without paying enough attention to behavioural capability.

We also explore Behavioural Intelligence, whether it can and should be measured, the hidden commercial cost of poor leadership behaviour, and why behaviour deserves a place alongside financial, operational and governance risk in the boardroom.

And as AI and constant connectivity reshape the workplace, we ask an increasingly important question: are leaders becoming so busy responding that they are losing the space required for reflection and self-awareness?

Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether people can genuinely change. Can a leader who has behaved a certain way for decades reinvent how they lead, or does pressure simply reveal the patterns that were there all along?

This is a conversation about leadership beyond titles, frameworks and good intentions. It is about how we show up when things get hard, because ultimately, that is the leadership the people around us experience.

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