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Paul Clarke - The Leaders Coach

The gap between knowing and doing is where most leadership fails. Fine Lines is a weekly newsletter for leaders who'd rather be right than comfortable. Each Tuesday one idea from research and real experience; examined with enough rigour to be useful and enough honesty to sting slightly. If you want frameworks and inspiration, there are better newsletters. If you want your thinking challenged, you're in the right place.

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That’s great...now don’t tell anyone about it.

March 4, 2026 Hi Reader (3.5-ish minute read..what else would you be doing??) In 1975, Steven Sasson invented the digital camera. He was an engineer at Kodak; THE camera company. His bosses looked at it and said something along the lines of: "That's great…but don't tell anyone about it." Their underpinning assumption was that Kodak's profits would always come from film and printing. Digital photography was interesting but clearly irrelevant to their business model. That assumption felt safe....

February 25, 2026 Hi Reader ( 4-minute read..I promise it will be more rewarding than scrolling Insta) I’m sure you’ve been in a meeting where someone made what seemed like an obviously wrong decision? Not wrong because they lacked information but wrong because they completely missed something that felt blindingly obvious to you. Sound familiar? Carelessness likely isn’t a root cause, but Culture probably is. Not culture as in "we value innovation" posters on walls. Culture as in the...

February 18, 2026 Hi Reader ( 4-minute read..It's worth it, go grab a coffee. ☕) Ever had this happen to you? You know exactly what the right call is. You've thought it through and you're clear on the approach. Then pressure hits and you, well, freeze. Or worse, you do the opposite of what you know works. Later, sitting there reviewing what happened, the frustration's almost unbearable. Not just because it went wrong. Because you knew it would go wrong and did it anyway. I’m of an opposite...

February 11, 2026 Hi Reader ( 3-minute read..but it's worth it 😊) Have you ever been in a conversation or presentation with someone explaining their "change management strategy."? They’ll have a detailed plan, Clear phases, Communication frameworks. It’s normally all very organised. But then they’re hit with a bolt from the blue where a business suffers an unexpected drop or a sports team lose two of their best players. So that strategy is now kinda useless. Because it was designed for...

February 4, 2026 Hi Reader ( 2-minute read at most) Readwise is an really great piece of software. If you don’t know of it here’s the 10-second summary….Readwise imports the passages/lines you highlight in Kindle and then daily & weekly send you some random samples of same as a method of keeping your learnings fresh. The ones I receive prompt me to dream up these kind of posts. So today’s ‘highlights’ from Readwise were a mish-mash focused on leadership and they’ve have led me to think that...

January 27, 2026 Hi Reader ( 2-minute read at most) Let’s talk about self or personal improvement. Not the motivational poster kind. The uncomfortable kind where you realise you might be working really hard at completely the wrong thing. And have been for years As per normal, Readwise sent me a cluster of quotes this morning that have me thinking about how most of us misunderstand improvement & development. I’m not talking about a "here's the one trick" way, but in a more fundamental "we're...

January 21, 2026 Hi Reader ( 4-minute read at most...and then you can get back to Instagram!) I was sat in a meeting recently. At the head of the room a sporting director was presenting recruitment analysis. Twenty or so slides worth of data. Heat maps, passing networks, progressive carries per 90 minutes etc. It looked scientific, sounded impressive and kept my attention. Then someone asked the obvious question: "So who do we sign?" Silence and then…. "Well, the data suggests several...

January 15, 2026 Hi Reader (Only a 3-minute read) I’ll put money on that there's a conversation sitting in your calendar that you keep moving. And you keep shifting it forward not because you don't know it needs to happen but you know exactly what it'll feel like when it does. You know, that queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach that sits there like a crappy holiday cocktail. Discomfort. Tension. The risk that it goes sideways. So you push it to next week. Then the week after. Meanwhile,...

Leadership advice and pivots

January 7, 2026 Hi Reader (Only a 3-minute read) Happy New Year and all the best for 2026. I want to talk about words I keep hearing from leaders. Words to this effect: "I know what I should be doing. I've read the books. Done the courses. I understand the principles." But then the rubber hits the road and it's like they've forgotten the lot. I don’t believe these people are incompetent. But there is a massive gap between knowing leadership and doing it in ways that actually land with people....

December 29, 2025 Hi Reader (3-minute read) Ok, time to wrap up 2025 and begin to look into 2026. As challenging as 2025 was, at times, to navigate, I’ve a feeling that 2026 will be a hill with a more steep gradient. I thought that this time last year too and resolved to keep learning as much as possible from the lessons that presented and revealed themselves to me. And so, to be courteous to these important learnings, I recorded them across the year as they happened. Now, it’s time to share...