Want to Be a Great Leader in 2025? Here's The Winning Combination
Your 6-minute investment to get 1% better at life each week
Hi, I’m Jason. If you are an executive, entrepreneur or founder, I’ve created The Prime Movement for you. It’s for those of us who believe in striving to be our best - in leadership and in life.
What’s coming up:
Prime Performance: This Week’s Best News, Views & Life-Hacks
The Prime Perspective: Want to Be a Great Leader in 2025? Here's The Winning Combination
Lessons from the Arena: The Setback Effect and How To Beat It
Be a Prime Mover: 1 Quote to Spark Change
Prime Performance: this week’s news, views and life hacks
👀 WATCH 90 Seconds on The Quickest Route to Happiness
Dr Laurie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale University, known for her extensive research on the psychology of happiness and well-being, so when she speaks about what you can do about it, rest assured it’s worth listening. 🚨 Spoiler alert: you can do it immediately and it doesn’t cost anything.
📖 READ Because This Is A Secret Key To High Performance
I stumbled across this graphic by Dr Peter Tierney in my LinkedIn feed and loved how he’s broken this down in such an accessible way. BTW, it’s worth checking out his account on Intsta (@drpetertierney) as it’s packed with free performance-related nuggets.
👂 LISTEN How To Get Better At Saying No In 28 Minutes
The Harvard Business Review Ideacast series is a veritable goldmine of great leadership advice and insights, and this episode is no different - Dr Sunita Shah, a psychologist and professor at Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business, shares a research-backed framework for helping you say ‘no’ in a world that increasingly demands you say ‘yes’.
The Prime Perspective: Thoughts on Leadership and Growth
Want to Be a Great Leader in 2025? Here's The Winning Combination
Those January resolutions seem more achievable than ever with the latest wave of ‘smart’ everything to support us in our goals - promises of optimization through technology saw wearables like Oura and Whoop fly off the shelves over the festive period and the thought that every aspect of our performance seems measurable is seductive.
And let me be clear about my position on this - these are remarkable tools for understanding and improving our wellbeing and performance. The ability to track our sleep patterns, monitor our recovery and understand our daily energy fluctuations represents a genuine breakthrough in personal optimization.
But here's what can get lost in the rush to quantify everything: Leadership performance isn't just about the data, it's about the complex interplay between measurable metrics and human experience.
To understand what I mean, consider these two hypothetical scenarios:
• Scenario A: Your wearable shows you've had 8 hours of perfect sleep. All metrics suggest you're primed for peak performance and you walk into work feeling great. Then in your 10am meeting, you learn you've lost your biggest client. No matter what the data says, you'll feel like you've been punched in the stomach - your energy crashes, your focus scatters.
• Scenario B: Your wearable shows you’ve had 4 hours of poor-quality sleep. The numbers predict compromised cognitive function and you walk into work feeling sluggish and drained. But this time in that same 10am meeting, your biggest client doubles their spend with you. Suddenly, your energy levels are through the roof, your mind is sharp, and you're ready to take on anything.
You know instantly what I’m talking about - the data can only ever tell part of the story when you’re dealing with human complexities and nuances. Indeed, it’s why we talk in coaching about the importance of treating emotions as data points, as they can frequently tell us more about human behaviour than the ‘hard’ data.
This isn't to dismiss the value of data - far from it. The insights we can gain from tracking our sleep, recovery, and performance metrics are invaluable. They help us understand patterns, identify areas for improvement and make more informed decisions about our wellbeing.
But my point is that data alone isn't enough.
The risk in our increasingly quantified world is becoming what I call "data-rich but insight-poor." We can end up with mountains of numbers but little understanding of what they mean in the context of our unique circumstances, challenges and goals.
This is where the integration of technology and human guidance becomes crucial. The most effective approach to leadership performance combines:
Evidence-based data to track patterns and progress
Expertise to interpret that data
Executive coaching to provide context, guidance and actionable advice
Enlightenment to determine which path works best for you
It's about using data as a tool for insight, not a replacement for judgment. Numbers can inform our decisions, but they shouldn't dictate them. They can guide our choices, but they shouldn't override our intuition.
The sweet spot for sustainable leadership performance lies in this balanced approach:
Use data to understand your patterns and tendencies
Learn from the metrics but don't be a slave to them
Recognize that human experience often transcends the numbers
Value both quantitative insights and qualitative wisdom
This understanding - that leadership performance requires both data-driven insights and human wisdom - is exactly why we're taking a different approach at TPM. While many traditional leadership development programs remain stuck in 1990s methodologies, we believe leaders deserve the same level of scientific insight and performance analytics that elite sports teams use with their top performers.
But - and this is crucial - we also know that data and technology alone aren't enough. Just as the world's best sports teams combine cutting-edge science with expert coaching, I believe modern leaders are the athletes of the business world and so need both objective metrics and human guidance to truly thrive.
This is why our approach is grounded in evidence-based neuroscience with a layer of expert coaching and support. Because in the end, the most powerful insights don't come from the data itself - they come from how that data is interpreted, contextualized, and applied in the real world of leadership.
It's not about choosing between technology and human insight. It's about leveraging both to help you perform at your best, in role and in life.
THE PRIME PERFORMANCE PROGRAM
Building Better Leaders. In Role. In Life.
Lessons from the Arena: Real Life Leadership Challenges
Every week, I'll share real challenges from coaching experiences, offering practical insights you can apply to your own leadership journey.
CHALLENGE:
I'm the founder of a fast-growing startup and I’ve been ‘hard charging’ since day 1 (2 years ago) as there just haven’t been enough hours in the day. However, I know it’s taking a toll, so I committed to a complete lifestyle reset for 2025 - better sleep, regular exercise, healthier eating etc. I started strong but three weeks in and it’s already proving to be a struggle - client commitments and last-minute requests are making it hard to stick to my gym schedule, I’m stressing at night so it’s messing up my sleep routine and I'm back to just grabbing whatever food is convenient, as I feel constantly short on time. I feel like I've failed before I've really started. What can I do?
MY GUIDANCE:
This scenario perfectly illustrates what behavioral scientists call the ‘setback effect’ - that critical moment when initial motivation collides with real-world complexity. I’ve been there myself and it feels like trying to change course in a storm - you know where you want to go, but every wave pushes you off track and it can feel like you're moving away from your desired destination rather than towards it.
1. Stop the ‘all or nothing’ thinking
Instead of viewing your efforts as “succeeded’ or ‘failed’, think like you’re testing product-market fit. Each setback is valuable data about what works and what doesn't in your specific context. The routine that works best for you will take time to explore and discover - this is a pathway of progression, not perfection. Understand that and you can actively embrace the fact you haven’t been able to get it completely dialled in from day 1.
2. Design based on reality, not fantasy
I’ve spoken before about the importance of environmental design - as science tells us, willpower alone isn’t enough, so you need to work out how to start adopting new habits in a way that is complementary to your existing commitments, rather than conflictual… and start small so you can operate in that ‘test and learn’ space when it comes to your mindset.
3. Create recovery protocols
Just as you have contingency plans in your business, develop clear ‘recovery protocols’ for when life inevitably disrupts your routine on occasion. For example:
If you have to miss a morning workout due to a last-minute family commitment, have a 15-minute ‘MVP’ routine you can do later in the day.
If late calls are unavoidable, establish a wind-down ritual that helps you transition to sleep.
Keep healthy snacks in your office, car, laptop bag etc, so you have ‘back-up’ for when regular meal plans get derailed.
4. Use the power of micro-progress
When you can't do everything, do something. When I look back, I’m genuinely staggered at how easily I would just give up if I got derailed - decide there was no point going for a run, for example, as I only had 20 minutes rather than the hour I’d planned. Madness when I could have easily done an interval set that would have had tangible benefits.
5. Leverage Your leadership mindset
You already know how to:
Iterate based on feedback
Adapt to changing conditions
Learn from setbacks
Build sustainable systems
So apply these same principles to your personal development.
Ready to take your leadership to the next level? Message me at jason@theprimemovement.com.
Be A Prime Mover: 1 Quote to Spark Change
“If you were driving across the country, you would not cancel the whole journey after a single wrong turn – and we should adopt the same principle with any long-term goal.”
— David Robson, author of The Laws of Connection
If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing this with a friend. We are stronger together.
Your thoughts are the fuel that keeps us moving forward, so message me at jason@theprimemovement.com.
