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. 6d ago

    EP08 Catching Thieves Was Never the Point

    Send us Fan Mail I once took over a restaurant for a colleague who was going on maternity leave. Lunchtimes were properly busy. Tables full, buffet orders going out one after another. It looked like a place making decent money. The system didn't agree. I'd look at the tables actually being served, then look at what was logged, and the two didn't match. It took a few days of watching before the pattern showed itself. Two people, one buffet ticket, cash pocketed on the difference. Once I saw it, I started seeing it everywhere the numbers didn't quite add up. I had a decision to make. I could stand up and start naming names, which would have been straight but not fair, because I didn't actually know who yet, and some of that team were working hard for nothing. So I told them, honestly, that I knew something wasn't right, without pointing at anyone. Then I tightened the procedures. The numbers turned around within weeks. But that was never really the story. The reason I dealt with it wasn't to catch anyone, it was for the two or three people on that team who were doing the job properly and carrying the weight of everyone who wasn't. In this episode I talk about the interpretation gap, why the mismatch between what you can see and what you're being told shows up in more places than theft, and what to actually do about it once you notice one. 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.

    EP08 Catching Thieves Was Never the Point

  2. Sep 8

    EP07 Why You Rule Yourself Out Before Anyone Else Gets the Chance

    Send us Fan Mail A few years ago I was sat with a coaching client in her early twenties. She'd just moved to a new company, and she'd gone in as a supervisor. What made that odd is what she'd been doing before. Her manager had been off sick for about six months, and she'd covered the whole department in the meantime. Most of the job, most of the time. When I asked her about it she brushed it off. It needed looking after, so she did it. So I asked her why she'd applied for a supervisor's job rather than a manager's job. And she said, because I'm too young. I asked her who'd told her that. She stopped, and she properly thought about it, and then she said, well, no one. Nobody ever had. She'd looked round at every department manager she'd ever worked with, noticed they were all older than her, and quietly turned that into a rule about herself. She'd been living by it ever since, while six months of evidence sat there being ignored. I could see it that clearly because I'd done exactly the same thing. Years before, when I was unhappy in a job and looking to move, I'd read job descriptions like a checklist. Can do that, can do that, can't do that. One or two I couldn't tick and I'd close it down and tell myself I hadn't got the experience. I never applied. And my confidence wasn't there in the first place, so the job spec never caused anything. It just confirmed what I already thought. Nobody can do a hundred percent of a job they've never done. If you could already do all of it, you'd already have it. In this episode I talk about the rules we write for ourselves that nobody ever handed us, why the evidence against them tends to sit in plain sight, and a different way of reading a job spec that takes about ten seconds. 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.

    EP07 Why You Rule Yourself Out Before Anyone Else Gets the Chance

  3. Sep 1

    EP06 - When You've Stopped Trying With Your Manager

    Send us Fan Mail I used to do unannounced Sunday visits, four or five times a year, to see what things really looked like when there weren't many managers about. One Sunday I got up, got ready, drove there on autopilot, pulled into the car park and just sat there. Nothing had happened. That's the part I still find hard to explain. I just had nothing in me that wanted to get out of the car. The joy had gone. I rang my wife and told her I couldn't go in. She listened, which was all I needed. And then I went in. But the trapped feeling was never about that shop. It was three years of being managed by someone who announced in meetings that she was a glass half empty person, like it was something to be proud of. Three years of watching good work go unacknowledged, and quietly deciding there was no point saying any of it to her. So I fought her in small ways instead. Deadlines she wanted by six o'clock, I'd file at ten at night, because technically it was still the right day. Awkward about anything I disagreed with. And I told myself all of it was me standing up for my people. Years later I did an exercise that put me in her chair, looking back at myself. What I saw was someone under real pressure from above, and someone else in that room who wasn't helping. In this episode I talk about the picture you've built of the person you've stopped trying with, why you've probably never tested it, and how you can win every little battle and still lose the war. 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.

  4. Aug 25

    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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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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