The Sacred Art of Leadership

Episode 8 "You Can Only Meet Someone As Deeply As You've Met Yourself" with Athene Parker.

Athene Parker walks into this conversation having had three hours sleep. She's been running on empty for a long while now and she tells you that in the first five minutes, without apology or performance. What follows is one of the most honest conversations we've had on this podcast. Athene is a 27-year advertising veteran, a CTI-trained coach, and the founder of the Empower Breakfast — a gathering she created for the creative industries when she realised that people were silently drowning in their private lives while the workplace looked in the opposite direction. She talks about what happened the first time she gave someone a stage to speak honestly: two companies walked out and rewrote their whole HR policy from scratch. She talks about what it means to lead from service rather than status. About why nervous system regulation isn't a wellness trend but a leadership responsibility. About energy, frequency, and why she point-blank refuses to soften the word sacred.  And she talks about what it took to get here. The years of not sleeping. The isolation. The moments of not knowing how much more she could hold and then holding more anyway. The slow, hard process of building a life that finally makes sense of everything she is. This is an episode about what purpose costs. About neurodivergence, parenting and empathy. And why the leaders who move us are almost always the ones who've been through something they didn't choose but gave them a meaning and purpose greater than their own lives.

Episode 7 "Nice Isn't Enough - The Leadership Truth Nobody Wants to Hear" with Kate Thrumble.

There is a comfortable story a lot of organisations tell themselves about people-first leadership. That if you care enough, listen enough, create the right culture, the results will follow. Kate Thrumble believes that story is only half true. And the half that's missing is where most leaders quietly fail. Kate has spent 20 years in the rooms where the real work happens, redundancies, restructures, the difficult conversations that don't make it into leadership books. She has seen what happens when empathy becomes an excuse, when kindness tips into avoidance, and when a leader who everyone likes can't be followed anywhere meaningful. Her argument is simple and a little uncomfortable: being human isn't enough. The best leaders hold both. They create the conditions for people to show up whole AND they still hold the line on what the work requires. Warmth without accountability isn't leadership. It's just being popular. But here is the harder edge of that same argument. The organisations that only reward results - that promote the highest performer without asking how they got there - are making exactly the opposite mistake. Humanity isn't soft, it is strategic. And the companies that understand that, Kate believes, are the ones that win. This episode gets into what it actually takes to lead in that balance; the courage to tell someone their numbers are great but their people don't trust them, the discipline to measure output over presence, and the reckoning Kate herself had to face when she got it wrong in one of the worst ways possible. Because being good at your job and being fit to lead people are not the same thing. And no amount of niceness changes that.

Episode 6 "Strong Enough to Break" with Barny Wright.

Barny Wright co-founded No.8 London and is seven and a half years sober. In this episode he talks about what sobriety actually revealed, what it cost him to get there and so much more about founding and operating a business from the heart. Episode Summary Barny has built award-winning businesses, run marathons, and made bold creative bets for over two decades. He's also spent the last 2,682 Days sober (accurate at the time of publishing) In this episode, Barny talks about what sobriety revealed: not triumph, but the removal of everything he'd been using to avoid himself.  The grief that cracked him open.  The emotions he'd been numbing for twenty years that suddenly had nowhere to go.  The year he describes as the hardest since he got clean.  And the slow, ongoing process of finally figuring out who he is, including the parts he's only just beginning to name and understand. There's real honesty here about leadership too. About what it costs to always be the one who grafts hardest. About the moment he had to stop controlling everything and trust the people around him. About why admitting I don't know is a skill, not a weakness. And about what he believes every leader in every industry needs to hear: that you can be strong and empathetic.  By the end, this stops feeling like a leadership conversation and starts feeling like a reminder that the most important work any of us will ever do happens on the inside and that the leaders brave enough to do it tend to change everything around them, not just themselves.

Episode 5: The raw truths from inside CEO forums, with Jane Gomez

Jane Gomez has spent 25 years in the room where it actually happens. Not on the stage — in the circle. Chairing forums, steadying founders, asking the question nobody else thought to ask. In this conversation, Jane brings something rare: a view of leadership from the inside out. Why the best leaders are often the ones who say "I don't know" — and mean it. And what happens when an entrepreneur won't get out of the way of the very team they hired to help them grow. She also turns the lens on herself. The loud voice and big personality that belies the self-doubt underneath. The three personal values that finally gave her a compass. And the quiet realisation that she gets more from helping others than almost anything else — which might be why she's so good at it. Honest, warm, and full of the kind of wisdom that only comes from being in the circle of trust for eighteen years.

Episode 4 - Q&A

Before interviewing their first guests, Dip & Del reflect on the first few episodes and answer some audience questions, including "how do you spot a poor leader", "what do you do if you're promoted before you are ready", and "what's one thing that you've never spoken about that made you the leader you are today?". They also delve into the sensitive topics of mental health in leadership, imposterism and self-love. Links: Awareness - Anthony De Mello https://www.amazon.com/Awareness-Opportunities-Reality-Anthony-Mello/dp/0385249373 [https://www.amazon.com/Awareness-Opportunities-Reality-Anthony-Mello/dp/0385249373] Clan Mothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakoyaner [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakoyaner]