Five 10-minute curated insights in a private podcast to help you face CEO pressures. Then, each Wednesday, The Leadership Letter delivers one piece of clear, honest thinking from someone who has spent 20 years in the seat you're sitting in. Practical enough to use. Human enough to matter.
Two different contracts
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Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more. READ TIME: 7 MINUTES | 13 MAY, 2026 | READ ON PHILHSC.COM A month ago, during planning for a leadership session, my colleague commented, ‘They don’t seem to find joy in their work.’ I replied, ‘What if they’ve never experienced joy?’ The room went quiet as we thought about the consequence of that being true. The term joy comes up a lot in leadership. We tell people to pursue it and we write it into keynote addresses, but in that moment, one question was front of mind: Could you define what joy means to you? Not happiness. Joy. When I ask the same question to leaders, I get a pause. Then a few attempts that circle back to happiness. They talk about promotions, successful exits and maybe their child’s first steps. These are good and real things but not quite the answer. Most leaders can name what makes them happy. Almost none can define joy with any precision. And yet we’re told we should pursue it, even race to find and hold onto it. I used to think the difference between happiness and joy was minor, maybe even linear or semantic. But I’ve come to believe that they play a more crucial role in leadership than we might think and here’s where I’ve landed.
See you next Wednesday, Phil Hayes-St Clair |
The Leadership Letter with Phil Hayes-St Clair
Five 10-minute curated insights in a private podcast to help you face CEO pressures. Then, each Wednesday, The Leadership Letter delivers one piece of clear, honest thinking from someone who has spent 20 years in the seat you're sitting in. Practical enough to use. Human enough to matter.
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more. READ TIME: 8 MINUTES | 10 JUNE, 2026 | READ ON PHILHSC.COM The room had been going for forty minutes and nobody was listening anymore. I was there as an observer. The CEO ran a biotechnology company that had two therapies slated for market, and almost none of the pieces sat under one roof. Development in one place. Manufacturing in another. Distribution somewhere else again, inside a partner organisation with its own culture, its own incentives,...
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more. READ TIME: 9 MINUTES | 3 JUNE, 2026 | READ ON PHILHSC.COM It doesn’t take long to see ‘us’ and ‘them’ cultures in organisations. It shows up in militaries, emergency services, break rooms and executive team meetings, and it operates whether it’s intended or not. I felt it soon after enlisting in the Army and again in my corporate jobs. I started paying closer attention to it recently. As the worst of COVID passed and the teams I work with began...
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more. READ TIME: 6 MINUTES | 27 MAY, 2026 | READ ON PHILHSC.COM I was the newest arrival to my infantry section. A section is one of three teams in a platoon, and on my first field exercise my section commander was delivering his orders to us. Military orders are delivered in a specific format designed for clarity and depending on the exercise or operation, they can range from lengthy and intricate to relatively straightforward. In that moment I was...