What happens when a headhunter stops chasing career success and questions everything only to find even bigger success?

In this episode, I sit down with John Purkiss, author of The Power of Letting Go and Brand You, whose career has moved from investment banking and executive search into self exploration then international success as an author.

In this episode, John shares his experiences, challenges, and a kind of wisdom that he now lives by. This episode is for anyone who’s realised that performing, fixing, and striving will only take you so far.

This is a conversation about identity, honesty, and how loosening control can lead to growth as a leader.

You can find more of John’s work at johnpurkiss.com
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Camilla Dolan, co-founder of Eka Ventures, is rethinking venture capital as a force for systems change. Here’s how I’d frame it: we explore her idea of shared value — how business can serve people and planet without compromising performance. From sustainable consumption to women’s health, her work points to a simple but important shift: doing good and doing well aren’t opposites anymore. They’re starting to look like the same game.

What if leadership isn’t mainly about strategy or influence, but the quality of connection we bring to each moment — and to each other?

John Thompson spends his time helping leaders reconnect with themselves, with the people around them, and with what’s actually happening in the present. Through his work at Transformational Connection, he’s supporting a different kind of leadership: one that’s rooted in presence, emotional depth, and what he calls “relational intelligence” — the capacity to stay open, responsive, and human in the space between people.

In this episode, we explore John’s path from high-performance sport into humanitarian work, and how those experiences shaped his view of leadership as something built on awareness, trust, and real relationship.

Scarlett Allen-Horton’s story cuts against the usual odds — and shows what can happen when someone refuses the script that life hands them. She left home at 16, became a mum at 19, and grew up around other people’s expectations of what she could or couldn’t become. She didn’t buy it. She made the final of The Apprentice, built a successful executive search firm, and has become a voice for leadership that lifts others with it.

In this conversation, we go past the CV and into the real stuff — identity, adversity, and the mindset that can turn something improbable into something inevitable.

What if surrender isn’t giving up, but waking up to what’s actually happening?

In this episode, I speak with Sahasrajit Ramesh, co-creator of Satya Speaks, about what it means to live with more totality. His path runs from engineering at Oxford and MIT into deep spiritual work in Rishikesh, and he talks openly about stepping away from expectation and finding his way back to a more natural, creative way of living.

As we talk, a few themes keep showing up. There’s the subtle inner voice most of us ignore, and how easily modern routines can drain our sense of aliveness. We explore the link between creativity, intuition, and presence, and what “progress” starts to look like when you stop gripping the reins so tightly. And we come back again and again to this idea that life isn’t a series of separate events, but one continuous unfolding that we can either resist or move with.

It’s not a conversation about fixing anything. It’s more an invitation to stop managing life and start participating in it — to feel, as Sahasrajit puts it, “the juice of life,” in a way that’s simple, honest, and available right now.

What happens when power goes unchecked — and the people in charge choose not to look too closely?

In this episode of The Whole Leader Podcast, I sit down with Claire Glasgow, a solicitor and director at Fieldfisher who represents individuals harmed by powerful systems — from catastrophic injury cases to survivors of sexual assault taking on some of the UK’s most established institutions.

Claire brings a steady, unvarnished perspective shaped by years of seeing what happens when policies aren’t followed, accountability slips, and leadership stops protecting the people it’s meant to serve.

We talk about the real cost of lip-service leadership, the emotional weight of her work, and what it takes to stay self-aware inside systems that often reward the opposite. And underneath all of it is a simple question: how culture is created, and how it unravels.

If you want it a touch more direct or slightly more understated, I can tune the balance.

In this episode, I sit down with Richard Hoyle — a former British Army officer whose path has taken him from military command to global enterprise sales, and then into the deeper territory of psychological insight and reflective practice. Over the years he’s woven together influences from Jungian psychology, Buddhist thought, and decades of lived leadership.

What we explore is how leadership changes as you do. Early on it’s about task, and discipline. With time, it shifts toward trust, presence, and a clearer sense of purpose. Richard shares stories from Army mess rooms and executive boardrooms, looking at how people actually grow, what makes teams work, and how culture is shaped in those everyday, very human moments that don’t show up on a plan.

We get into how different personalities handle stress, how ego can pull a leader off-course, and why creativity often starts in the stillness — the moment when you’re just staring out of the window and letting the mind settle.

It’s a conversation about learning, listening, and leading with real attention — both the practical side and the personal side of the work.