316. The Invisible Barriers Holding Your Team Back with Mick Spiers

Have you ever looked at a team that’s working hard and still thought, “Why are we not moving?” That gap rarely comes down to talent. I’m reflecting on the biggest leadership lessons I heard across three very different conversations this March and the pattern is blunt: what holds people back is usually interference. Fear. Hesitation. Labels that shrink what someone thinks they’re allowed to try. Assumptions nobody has challenged in years.

I connect the dots between innovation, cognitive science, and frontline firefighting leadership to show how real progress happens. We talk about why creativity isn’t reserved for “the gifted few,” how leaders can remove the friction that suppresses ideas, and why innovation is not mainly a process problem. Yes, simple structure helps, but breakthroughs often start when someone steps off autopilot and asks a better question: Are we even solving the right problem? Who is this really for? What have we normalized without noticing?

We also dig into deep listening as a performance advantage and why presence matters more than control. Listening isn’t weakness or indecision. It’s awareness, trust-building, and the skill that helps you know when to step in and when to step back. I also reframe “fail fast” into something more useful for culture and learning: learn fast, so teams stay focused on discovery instead of ego.

If you want stronger leadership, better team culture, and more innovation without piling on more process, hit play. Then subscribe, share this with one leader who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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Mick Spiers: 0:01

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, what is really holding your team back? Is it really a lack of talent, a lack of process, a lack of innovation, or could it be something deeper? Could it be fear? Could it be labels? Could it be assumptions that no one has challenged in years. Could it be that people are hearing but not really listening, or that they're working hard on autopilot without ever stepping back to ask whether they are solving the right problem at all? In today's episode, we're going to reflect on the amazing lessons from three fascinating conversations through the month of March, conversations with Bruce Vojak, Rich Braden and Tessa Forshaw and Mark Andrew. And while these guests came from different worlds, innovation, cognitive science and firefighting, I kept hearing the same deeper lesson again and again. What holds people back is often not capability. It is interference. It is hesitation. It is the human stuff. And if we want to become better leaders, if we want to have more innovative teams, better cultures and better decisions, we have to get much better at understanding the human dynamics that sit underneath performance. So in this solocast, I want to pull together some of the biggest threads from these three conversations and share what I think they teach us all about leadership. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. In today's episode, we're going to reflect on all of our amazing leaders that we've had on the show during the month of March, Bruce Vojak, Rich Braden and Tessa Forshaw and Mark Andrew. And we're going to be looking for the threads that connect them together. They were all very different, but there were some common ideas that came through. So let's dive into it. Let's start with this one the biggest barriers are often invisible. When we spoke with Rich Braden and Tessa foreshaw, their work really challenged something that many of us have been conditioned to believe, that creativity and innovation are gifts reserved for a special few, the artist, the genius, the entrepreneur, the person with the big personality, the visionary in the room. But their argument was different. Their point was that most people are already capable of creativity and innovation, but they are held back by what they call hesitation. And that landed with me because I myself sometimes say that, you know, I'm not creative. I look at my wife and see what an amazing artist she is. But am I creative in different ways, and what holds me back from being more creative. If you think about leadership, this shows up everywhere. People hesitate to speak up. They hesitate to challenge the status quo. They hesitate to offer an idea, they hesitate to give feedback. They hesitate to experiment. They hesitate because they fear looking silly. They hesitate because they fear rejection. They hesitate because they fear failure. They hesitate because they fear damage to their identity. And that is such an important leadership insight, because if someone in your team is quiet, cautious or reluctant. The easy assumption is to say they're not creative, or they're not innovative, or even worse, they're disengaged. But what if that's not true? What if the issue is not capability at all? What if the real issue is that fear has narrowed their behavior that they've been labeled or they've labeled themselves, or they've learned over time that it feels safer not to try. That is a very different leadership problem, because now the challenge is not to demand more creativity. The challenge is to remove the interference that is suppressing it, and that links beautifully to something else Rich and Tessa explored the idea that mindsets are not fixed identities, and that matters, because too many leaders think in labels. This person is creative, this person is analytical. This one is a safe pair of hands. This one is the innovator in the room. But people are more dynamic than that. A mindset is not a permanent identity. It's a lens, and lenses can change. That means leaders have more influence. Balance than they think. We can help people shift the lens. We can normalize experimentation. We can make it safer to try. We can celebrate learning, not just success, and we can help people see themselves differently. And once that happens, different behavior becomes possible. My next learning was that innovation is not just a process, it is a human act. I connected this through Bruce Vojak. Bruce made a point that I think is incredibly important for leaders. He said innovation is often misunderstood as a process problem or a technology problem, when in reality, it is a deeply human act, and that really matters, because what do many organizations do when they feel stuck? They build another process, they create another innovation funnel, they launch another initiative, they add another governance layer. They put in place another stage gate. Now, Bruce was not anti process. In fact, he made a very good point that simple processes can help force decision making and alignment, but his deeper message was, this process alone does not create innovation. People do and more specifically, people who are curious enough, brave enough and perceptive enough to stop and ask better questions. That was one of the most powerful threads across the month. Innovation does not always start with a better answer. Sometimes it starts with a better question. Not, how do we improve the current product, but are we even solving the right problem in the first place? Not, how do we do this process faster? But why do we do it this way at all? And it's not, how do we make the current thing incrementally better? But what if the real opportunity sits somewhere else entirely? That was the brilliance in Bruce's examples. The Innovation often came when someone stepped off autopilot and reframed the problem, and that is such a strong leadership lesson, because many teams are not short of effort, they are short of reflection, they're busy, they're diligent, and they're committed, but they are solving yesterday's version of the problem, and that is where leaders have to intervene, Not by coming in with all the answers, but by slowing the team down long enough to ask, what problem are we really trying to solve? Who is it really for? What assumptions are we making? And what have we not questioned? Because it just became normal. That's what leadership looks like the third thread for me this week was deep listening is a performance advantage, and this is one that rang strongly through all three episodes, Rich and Tessa showed that if leaders want creativity and innovation, they need to hear what is actually going On beneath the surface, the fear, the hesitation, the caution, the uncertainty, the self protection. Bruce showed that innovation often emerges when leaders and teams deeply understand the customer, the context and the real problem they're trying to solve, and then Mark Andrew brought this to life in a completely different environment, in firefighting, leadership, listening is not optional. Listening affects trust, listening affects development, listening affects safety. Listening affects where the leader actually understands what is happening on the ground. And one thing I really took from Mark's conversation was that listening is not weakness. It is not being passive. It's not indecision. It is awareness. It is presence. It is how a leader knows when to step in and when to step back that is such a powerful lesson, because many leaders still think that they need to prove themselves every day by having the answers, by directing the work or holding on to control. But what if the real leadership move is to listen well enough to understand where people are, what they need, what they see, what they fear, and what they are ready for. Listening helps you understand capability. It helps you build trust. It helps you develop people. Listening helps you to avoid micro management. To help you catch things early and helps people feel seen, heard and valued. And when people feel seen, heard and valued, they contribute differently. So the lesson here is not just be a better listener. The lesson is deeper. Deep Listening is one of the ways that leaders unlock performance, not just listening to confirm what you already believe, but truly listening with an open mind, an open heart and an open will, truly listening to understand what's really going on with you and your team. The next one was this thread of presence that presence matters more than control. Mark spoke about the difference between micro managing, delegating and then disappearing. And what he landed on was something really important, presence, not controlling every move, not abdicating responsibility, but being present, present enough to support, present enough to guide, present enough to notice, present enough to be a safety net and present enough to step in when needed and step back when appropriate. That is leadership maturity, and this links back to March's broader theme as well. Too many leadership problems live at the extremes, too much control or too much distance, too much certainty, or being too passive, too much process, or too little trust. What great leaders seem to be able to do is manage that tension. They are present without smothering. They are curious without becoming vague. They are structured without becoming rigid, and they are supportive without lowering standards. That is not easy, but that is where leadership lives. The next thread was to learn fast, not just fail fast. Another gem for Bruce was the reframing of fail fast to learn fast. I think we've all heard this these days, because fail fast is it's quite catchy, and it somehow became a slogan, if you like, but it's also a little shallow. Learn fast is more useful because that keeps the focus on Discovery. What are we learning? What are we discovering? What are we seeing that we didn't see before? What needs to change now that we know more? That same theme was alive in rich and Tessa's work too. Experiment. Make moves. Don't wait for perfect certainty. Don't stay paralyzed by hesitation and with Mark, that learning loop showed up through reflection, development, training and learning from both good and bad leaders. So again, the thread is bigger than innovation. It is about a kind of culture that leaders create. Do people have to be right, or are they allowed to learn? Do people protect themselves, or do they have the environment where they can explore? And do people stay quiet because they fear looking foolish? Or do they know that growth is expected? That's an amazing culture, if that's what you can build. The next thread was the old ideals of leadership need challenging. Another thing March reinforced for me is that the same old ideals of leadership need to be challenged, the old idea that the leader must always know, the old idea that the leader should be the smartest person in the room, the old idea that control creates performance, that pressure automatically produces results, that process is enough, that toughness means people should just deal with it, or that innovation belongs to the gifted few. All of these conversations challenge those ideals. What seems to work better? It's these things, curiosity over certainty, questions over assumptions, learning over ego, listening over posturing, presence over control, trust over fear, reflection over autopilot, human understanding over simplistic labels. That doesn't mean structure is irrelevant. Relevant. It doesn't mean standards are irrelevant. It doesn't mean leaders become more passive. It means that leadership has to become more human, not less. Because the more I do this show, the more convinced I become that human behavior is more complex than any process map or any technology we create. And yet, through these conversations, there are patterns, patterns that help us make sense of what works and what doesn't, patterns that help us challenge outdated ideals, patterns that help us create environments for people to thrive. We are building a body of work here, and that brings me to one more reflection. What I'm increasingly seeing through these conversations is that the leadership project keeps becoming more than a series of interviews. It is becoming a body of work, a body of work that helps us unpack leadership, that helps us understand the human behavior underneath performance that challenges previously held ideals, a body of work that asks over and over again, what is working, what is not working, what assumptions need to be challenged. What does better leadership actually look like in practice? And I think that matters, because leadership is not static. People are not static. Work is not static. We live in an ever changing world, so if we want to lead Well, we have to keep learning, keep listening, keep reflecting, keep synthesizing, keep updating our thinking, and that is what these conversations help us do. So as I reflect on March, here are the questions I want to leave you with. Where might fear labels or hesitation be quietly holding your team back? Where might your people need not more process, but more trust, more safety and more encouragement to think differently. Where might you be solving the obvious problem instead of the right problem? Where do you need to listen more deeply, not just for content, but for what is really going on underneath, and where might your leadership need to shift from control to presence? Because perhaps the real challenge of leadership is not to have all the answers. Perhaps the real challenge is to create the kind of environment where people can ask better questions, contribute more fully, learn faster and do their best work together. That is the work. That's the work of leadership, and that is what March reminded me of. Thank you for being part of the leadership project in this if this episode made you stop, made you reflect, made you rethink something that you've been on autopilot on, please do share it with another leader who might need to hear it until next time. Keep leading, keep learning, and keep creating the conditions where people can thrive in the next episode, we're going to be joined by visionary leader Hank miner, who's going to talk to us about personal mastery as mentor and coach. Youve been listening to The Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode, and to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible. None of this happens without them around here. We believe leadership is a practice, not a position, that people should feel seen, heard, valued and that they matter, that the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app, and if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage and care.