Lead from where you stand
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There's a moment that almost every leader I work with has experienced.
You're sitting across from a search firm, a board member, or a CEO who's considering you for a role that feels like the next meaningful chapter of your career.
Maybe you've spent twenty years leading people through environments most executives couldn't imagine. Maybe you've built organisations from nothing, made life-and-death decisions under pressure, or guided teams through the kind of adversity that gets quietly left off most resumes because you assumed nobody would understand it.
And then they ask you a question about your industry experience.
And something changes in your mind.
The confidence drains a little. The voice in your head starts editing your answers in real time. Will they understand what I actually did? Will it translate? Does my story even belong in this room?
I've coached senior military officers, first responders, and operators who have led hundreds of people through conditions that would test the most experienced commercial executives. And I've watched them undersell themselves, not because their experience was insufficient, but because they had developed a false belief about the value of their stories.
Here's what I know to be true: the most transferable leadership skills in the world aren't industry-specific.
They never were.
And the leaders who make the most successful transitions, into the C-suite, into new sectors, into successor roles, are the ones who've learned to use three things: their Stories, their ability to Sell, and their capacity to show up with the right Situations mindset.
I call this the 3 S's.
The First S: Stories
Most leaders who are transitioning careers make the same mistake.
They look at the gap between where they've been and where they want to go and they assume what sits in that gap is experience they don't have. So they focus on what they're missing. The industry credentials.
The sector-specific acronyms.
The names on the resume that would signal belonging.
What they're overlooking is that they already have the most powerful currency in leadership: a set of stories that demonstrate exactly who they are when things get hard.
The reason these stories get undervalued is simple.
Leaders in uniform or in emergency services or in highly specialised operational roles often assume that commercial decision-makers won't understand the context of their world. So they don't tell the stories.
They summarise.
They minimise.
They translate their most formative professional experiences into bullet points that strip out all the texture that made them relevant in the first place.
Here's the reframe I give every leader I work with: your stories aren't about your industry. They're about your leadership. And leadership is universal.
I ask these leaders to identify five stories, one for each of these prompts:
Tell me about a time when you had to lead an organisation into an uncertain environment. Not a case study. Not a framework. A specific moment where the path wasn't clear, the stakes were real, and people were looking to you to call the direction.
Tell me about a time when you were genuinely stretched, physically, emotionally, or intellectually, and how that changed how you lead. This is the story that reveals self-awareness and growth. It's what separates leaders who have been through difficulty from leaders who have been changed by it.
Tell me about a time when you had to let someone go and it felt hard. How you handled it. What you said. What you didn't say. This story tells a hiring board more about your character than a reference check ever will.
Tell me about a time when you had to place a big bet with limited information. How did you frame the situation and the path forward so that people would accept your judgement and follow your lead? This is a story about conviction and communication under uncertainty. Every CEO faces this. The best ones have practised it enough to have a story ready.
Tell me about a time when you celebrated the success of one of your people or teams in a way they genuinely felt seen and appreciated. This one surprises leaders. But it matters enormously. It tells the room whether you're someone who notices people, who understands that recognition is a leadership act, and that building culture is part of the job.
Look at those five prompts again.
Not one of them mentions banking, supply chains, healthcare, or the military.
They're about leadership.
And the bridge between one career track and another isn't built from industry credentials. It's built from moments of genuine leadership, told with enough specificity that the person across the table can feel what you felt when you were living it.
If you're preparing for a board interview, a CEO succession process, or a transition to a new sector, find those five stories.
Write them out.
Practise telling them out loud. Not because you're crafting a performance, but because your stories deserve to be heard with the confidence they've earned.
The Second S: Sales
If there's one skill that separates leaders who successfully transition into senior commercial roles from those who stall, it's this: the ability to sell.
I explored this in depth in The $2 Skill, where I made the case that sales is the most important skill in business and the one least likely to appear in any MBA curriculum.
But the short version is this: if you're moving from the military, from emergency services, from consulting or from a core operations function into senior leadership, learning to sell isn't optional. It's the proof of concept the market needs from you.
Here's why it matters so much in a career transition context.
When a hiring committee says you need "P&L experience" to move to the next level, the deeper message inside that requirement isn't about managing costs. It's about generating income.
It's about proving you can take something to market and convince people to buy it. Look at the resume of almost any CEO and the sales experience is there. Sometimes explicit. Sometimes disguised as "led commercial strategy" or "drove revenue growth." But it's there. And it's that experience, and the objective results that came with it, that preceded their reputation.
The other reason this matters is more personal.
Most leaders resist the word.
They anchor to the worst version of it: the pushy sales guy, the person who makes you feel like a target rather than a human. And so they bury it. They replace it with softer language. They influence, they align stakeholders, they build consensus. They do exactly the same thing without the discomfort of calling it what it is.
Instead, think of it this way: the qualities that define genuinely great salespeople are curiosity, value creation, honesty, follow-through, and generosity even when there's nothing in it for you. Those aren't the qualities of a used car yard. They're the qualities of the best leaders you've ever worked with.
The reality is you've been selling your whole career.
Every time you convinced a team to follow you into an uncertain environment. Every time you made the case to leadership for a resource, a direction, a decision. Every time you stood up in front of people who were scared and gave them a reason to move.
The question isn't whether you can sell. It's whether you're willing to call it that, and then go get better at it on purpose.
The Third S: Situations
There's a question I ask leaders who are building or rebuilding teams: instead of starting with the job ad, start at the other end.
How do you want your team to show up when the pressure is on?
Not in the good times when everything is working. When the situation is hard, when the plan has failed, when the environment is uncertain and the next move isn't obvious, what do you need from the people around you?
Over the years of coaching leaders across market-leading companies, military, and mission-driven organisations, I've watched this question consistently point toward three qualities.
Intellect. Not academic credential. Not raw IQ. The practical kind of intellect that lets someone understand context and consequence, plot a course of action, and create forward momentum when the path is unclear. This is the quality that helps leaders diagnose what's actually happening, separate signal from noise, and generate options worth considering.
Humility. The quality that keeps you open. Open to different perspectives. Open to the possibility that your first read was wrong. Open to preserving optionality so that when the initial version of the plan fails, and at some point it will, you can create the next play. Humility isn't weakness. In high-performing teams it's the quality that prevents the team from being trapped by its own certainty.
Humour. The world's most cost-effective circuit-breaker. It's free. It requires no budget approval. And when it's delivered well, at the right moment, in the hardest of circumstances, it does something no memo or all-hands can replicate. It galvanises people. It signals that we are going to be okay. It reinforces a culture of camaraderie at exactly the moment that culture is most at risk of fracturing.
What do these three qualities have in common?
High-performing organisations that value contribution, high standards, and readiness look for all three in every new hire.
Apple.
Lego.
Tier 1 military special forces.
The organisations renowned for sustaining elite performance across changing conditions aren't just selecting for capability. They're selecting for culture carriers. People who bring intellect to the table without ego, who hold the line without becoming rigid, and who understand that laughter in a hard moment isn't a distraction. It's leadership.
If you're preparing to step into a more senior role, either by transition or succession, these aren't just the qualities to look for in others. They're the qualities to develop in yourself.
Because every selection process for a senior role is, at some level, a cultural fit assessment. And the leaders who consistently make the cut are the ones who walk in already embodying what the best organisations are trying to build.
Putting It Together
The 3 S's aren't a checklist. They're a confidence architecture.
Stories give you the language to communicate your leadership value across any industry boundary.
Sales gives you the ability to move people to action and to prove that you can create value in any market.
And the Situations framework gives you both the self-awareness to know how you show up under pressure, and the language to articulate what you're looking for in others.
The leaders who make the most successful transitions, from uniform to the C-suite, from aspiring executive to appointed CEO are rarely the ones with the most polished resumes. They're the ones who've done the work to understand their own value, to communicate it with conviction, and to show up in every room as the kind of leader worth following.
You have more to offer than you think.
The question is whether you're willing to own it.
Agree?
Send me an email to let me know and thanks for reading, I appreciate it.
The Partnership Playbook Podcast
Here are this week’s podcast episodes for your walk, commute or workout.
LEADERSHIP MOMENTS
EP 163 - 11 min: How to build redundancy into your GTM strategy (before growth stalls). What happens when a critical part of your go-to-market engine disappears overnight? In this episode I break down why redundancy is mission critical and how GTM teams can design backup options that protect growth without creating complexity. Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
EP 165 - 9 min: How CEOs help their best leaders leave (and still win). What does it say about your leadership if your best people never outgrow their roles? In this episode I explore what it really means to lead when one of your best people is ready for their next play. Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
CEO INTERVIEW
EP 164 - 45 min: With CEO Doug Taylor (The Smith Family). What if your growth ceiling isn’t capital, talent, or strategy… but your approach to partnership? In this episode, you’ll discover how to assess whether a partnership will accelerate or dilute growth and why shared value is the key to long-term, scalable partnership success. Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
When you're ready, there are three ways I can help you:
1. CEO Coaching: For CEO’s who want to lead with clarity and grow their business without sacrificing what matters most. A tailored 12-session experience with three interconnected elements: scaling you as a leader, elevating how you lead others, and creating conditions for sustainable business growth.
2. The Partnership Lab: A 6-week experience for founders, CEOs, and GTM leaders who are done with slow growth and stalled conversations. Learn to rapidly qualify and prioritise high-value partners, Install a system that turns conversations into contracts and capture outsized returns from partnerships that scale. Apply to join the first 2026 cohort today!
3. Leadership Events: From Cochlear and Lifeblood to military leaders, I have shared inspiring stories and practical frameworks and insights that shift how leaders leverage partnerships for growth. Book me to speak at your next conference, offsite, or leadership event.
Looking for something different? Send me an email.
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