Breaking the Circle for Leaders

Jon
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Breaking the Circle for Leaders is the podcast for frustrated middle managers who feel stuck in the same patterns, working harder but getting the same results, as stress builds.  In each episode, Jon Manning, author of Emotional Intelligence Unleashed, draws on 25 years of operational management experience at McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Greggs, among others, to explore why conversations spiral, why teams resist change, and why the pressure never seems to let up. Not theory. Not corporate training. Real stories, practical tools, and small shifts in thinking that make Monday mornings feel different.

Episodes

  1. 4d ago

    EP05 - Why Your Team Says Everything's Fine When It Isn't

    Send us Fan Mail When I was eighteen I raced a Mini on grass tracks. A mate of mine looked after the engine, and every so often he'd ask me the same question. Is it running fine? And I'd say yes. Every time. I wasn't lying to him. I genuinely couldn't hear anything wrong. He'd get in, listen for about four seconds and ask me how I couldn't hear that flatness. And I couldn't, because to me it was just noise. He'd spent years with his head under bonnets. I'd spent a few months driving one round a field. Years later I stood in front of a team and asked them if everything was okay. They told me it was. It rained that weekend, and finishing on time became mathematically impossible, and I found out afterwards they'd known things were tight and said nothing. They weren't hiding it from me. They'd answered the question I asked, honestly, from where they were standing. I'd asked the wrong question, and I'd assumed they had my experience of what wrong looks like. In this episode I talk about the Confidence Competence Gap, why "is everything okay" gets you nothing useful, and the questions to ask instead when you actually want to know. Free guide: Why Your Conversations Keep Going Sideways, and the One Shift That Fixes It  Join the conversation in The Difficult Conversations Club, a free Facebook group for corporate leaders:  The book: Emotional Intelligence Unleashed  New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you don't miss one. Jon Manning is the author of Emotional Intelligence Unleashed. Thirty years on the shop floor, not a textbook.

    EP05 - Why Your Team Says Everything's Fine When It Isn't

  2. Aug 18

    EP04 The Meeting That Changed Everything

    Send us Fan Mail I was at Greggs, managing daily fresh product into around five hundred shops across London and the South East. Hundreds of lines, thousands of decisions a week. Then the company restructured and a new operations director arrived. Every week he'd ask me detailed questions I couldn't always answer. Why didn't those ten shops get enough doughnuts yesterday. What happened to that line last Thursday. And every week I'd drive home replaying it, wishing I'd said something that made me sound more on top of it. After about six months I'd started to tell myself I might not be capable of the job. It followed me home. It sat with me at the dining table. On Sunday evenings the knot in my stomach arrived earlier and earlier, and at its worst I was going to bed late just to slow Monday down. Then I picked up a book, and it introduced me to something called the map of the world. Here's the part that still gets me. He wasn't trying to catch me out. He was new to his role too, and he needed confidence in the numbers so he could defend me in his own meetings. He was on my side the whole time. I just couldn't see it, because I was reading his map through mine. Same man, same meeting, same questions. What changed was who walked in. In this episode I talk about why two people can leave the same meeting with completely different versions of it, and the one question that opens a conversation up instead of shutting it down. Free guide: Why Your Conversations Keep Going Sideways, and the One Shift That Fixes It  Join the conversation in The Difficult Conversations Club, a free Facebook group for corporate leaders:  The book: Emotional Intelligence Unleashed  New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you don't miss one. Jon Manning is the author of Emotional Intelligence Unleashed. Thirty years on the shop floor, not a textbook.

    EP04 The Meeting That Changed Everything

  3. Aug 15

    EP03 The Label You've Been Carrying Since You Were a Kid

    Send us Fan Mail I bought a bag of wonky potatoes because they were cheaper. Got them home, cut one open, and inside it was exactly the same as any other potato. The only thing anyone had ever judged was the outside. That got me thinking about a label of my own. Growing up, my mum used to say I was very practical. My older brother was the academic one. She meant it kindly, and she meant nothing by it. But somewhere in the middle of hearing it I decided that practical meant not clever, and I carried that translation for about forty years. It affected what I went for, whether I spoke up, and whether I believed I'd be heard. Then I asked her what she'd actually meant. She told me she'd never thought I wasn't academic. It was just that I was very practical. Forty years, over one word I'd added myself. In this episode I talk about how labels get attached at work, why they stick long after the person who gave them has gone, and how the way we treat people quietly turns those labels into the truth. Free guide: Why Your Conversations Keep Going Sideways, and the One Shift That Fixes It  Join the conversation in The Difficult Conversations Club, a free Facebook group for corporate leaders:  The book: Emotional Intelligence Unleashed  New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you don't miss one. Jon Manning is the author of Emotional Intelligence Unleashed. Thirty years on the shop floor, not a textbook.

    EP03 The Label You've Been Carrying Since You Were a Kid

  4. Aug 15

    EP02 I Was Doing Three Jobs and Still Didn't Get Promoted

    Send us Fan Mail At twenty three I was running the bar at a hotel. Then the food and beverage manager left, so I picked that up. Then reception landed on me as well. I was living in, working six days a week, and holding the whole operation together. And when the promotion came around, I didn't get it. For years I told myself that was down to the new general manager, who I didn't get on with. It wasn't. The person who actually knew what I was carrying had already left the building, and the new man inherited a rota rather than a story. He couldn't see it, because nobody had told him. And I never told him either. Not once did I say out loud that I wanted the job. I thought the six day weeks were asking on my behalf. In this episode I talk about why being the one who picks everything up gets you more to pick up rather than a promotion, why your reputation doesn't transfer when your boss changes, and the thing I'd do differently now. If you've ever assumed your work speaks for itself, this one's for you. Free guide: Why Your Conversations Keep Going Sideways, and the One Shift That Fixes It  Join the conversation in The Difficult Conversations Club, a free Facebook group for corporate leaders:  The book: Emotional Intelligence Unleashed  New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you don't miss one. Jon Manning is the author of Emotional Intelligence Unleashed. Thirty years on the shop floor, not a textbook.

    EP02 I Was Doing Three Jobs and Still Didn't Get Promoted

  5. Episode 1 Trailer

    EP01 Breaking the Circle

    Send us Fan Mail Breaking the Circle is the podcast for middle managers who feel stuck in the same cycles — working hard but going round in circles. Each week Jon Manning takes a real management situation, tells a story, and draws out practical insight you can use the next day. Not theory. Real tools from someone who's been in the room. Subscribe now — episode one coming soon Free guide: Why Your Conversations Keep Going Sideways, and the One Shift That Fixes It  Join the conversation in The Difficult Conversations Club, a free Facebook group for corporate leaders:  The book: Emotional Intelligence Unleashed  New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe so you don't miss one. Jon Manning is the author of Emotional Intelligence Unleashed. Thirty years on the shop floor, not a textbook.

Trailer

About

Breaking the Circle for Leaders is the podcast for frustrated middle managers who feel stuck in the same patterns, working harder but getting the same results, as stress builds.  In each episode, Jon Manning, author of Emotional Intelligence Unleashed, draws on 25 years of operational management experience at McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Greggs, among others, to explore why conversations spiral, why teams resist change, and why the pressure never seems to let up. Not theory. Not corporate training. Real stories, practical tools, and small shifts in thinking that make Monday mornings feel different.

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