DISRUPTER.
CORPORATE REBEL.
SHIT DISTURBER.
I have been called these things because I talk about the untalkable to re-frame outdated narratives.
The research is clear: current approaches, systems, and processes for identifying, recruiting, onboarding, and developing our leaders are not preparing our organizations to successfully navigate ongoing disruption.
This is a growing problem for organizations and it’s not being addressed.
I’m Paul Mac
And my job is to stay on top of leadership trends and help leaders be successful. I’ve been a leader myself and have been fired from four executive leadership roles over my 25-year career. Fired because I displayed the qualities that I was hired for.
And for speaking publicly about a broken leadership system.
I am not business as usual.
It’s time to wake up. I know this is difficult to hear, but if our companies are to successfully navigate ongoing disruption both now and, in the future, we will need a new approach to how our leaders and leadership teams work.
To achieve this, we'll need more leaders who can exhibit "disruptive and rebellious" leadership qualities. You'll not only keep your future leaders for longer if you recruit and train them in these "counterintuitive" qualities, but they'll also help your leadership and organizational cultures grow.
How do I work with my clients:
I’m versed in the many 'tried and tested' approaches to working with clients over my 25-year career, though what I’ve found truly works is the following 7 steps. And if you’re a leader who is considering introducing a new approach to leadership inside your company, these 7 steps can guide how you do that as well:
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If we are to truly have honest conversations then we need to be open to re-questioning how we've always done things. We need to show up by being real and asking the tough questions of ourselves and others.
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We need to have the courage to review what came before and how effective or ineffective it has been.
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From re-questioning and reviewing, we need to be open to rethinking how we might do things going forward.
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Once we can imagine how things might change going forward, we need to make a commitment to revising our current situation.
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Getting everything aligned will be key, which is why it's essential to begin repositioning mindsets, processes, structures, actions in accordance with the way things will be going forward.
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Our perspective has started to evolve and so too does our understanding of what we are changing.
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The “stickiness” of ensuring the evolved way of seeing or doing things needs to be embedded in everything we do going forward, so that “it becomes how we do things”.
I help big thinkers reframe the leadership narrative by creating the conditions for positive disruption.
I'm unapologetic about asking what people are thinking, though fearful of saying out loud. I’ve worked with thousands of leaders and leadership teams and have seen how toxic and dysfunctional environments impact them. I also appreciate firsthand what challenges keep them up at night.
I now only work with clients who are serious about wanting to create an environment for their leaders and leadership teams to have honest conversations.
Conversations that can and do make a genuine, long-lasting impact - that have resulted in higher engagement rates, reduced turnover, and greater productivity of leaders and leadership teams.
Here's what i often get asked about the work i am doing:
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The meeting before the meeting and the meeting after the meeting that certain people are invited to and others excluded from
Being invited to express your perspective on a matter to your boss either in a meeting with others present and then having your perspective or contribution sidelined, discredited, dismissed, or ignored
When a leader’s promotability is determined by how popular they are with the ‘old boys network’ rather than based on the consistent quality of their work
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Disengagement among employees and leaders each year costs more than $1 trillion in the U.S. and $7 trillion globally
The cost of toxic culture in the U.S. over the past five years has been estimated at USD $223 billion
One in three admits to not putting maximum effort into their job
91% plan to stay in their jobs less than 3 years and over 50% of staff in the U.S. are actively seeking new positions right now (a Brandon Hall Group survey)
58% of people who left their organization did so because their relationship with their immediate supervisor was toxic (research from the Society for Human Resources Management)
It is estimated that in the U.S. alone, voluntary turnover levels are 20% per year and the average cost to replace a leader is between 200-400% of their base salary. This means almost 20 million Americans leave their organizations every year. No research yet exists on the true global financial costs of involuntary turnover at the leadership level. (from The Society for Human Resource Management)
There are approximately 15 million managers in the U.S., as well as almost 11 million millennial-level managers who are new to their roles. Millennials now form almost 53 million of the total U.S. workforce and are expected to make up 75% of the workplace by 2025. In the U.S., there are 75 million millennials, with almost 2 billion worldwide. (Pew Research)
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: ) Not at all. Being fired from four executive leadership roles has been one of the best things to happen for me, my career, and my ultimate purpose.
By being fired for demonstrating the leadership qualities I was supposedly hired for, I unwittingly stumbled on the true extent of how broken our current approach to leadership is. It wasn’t my intention to pursue this path as I wanted to be the leader who ‘fitted in’. But then my eyes were opened and I started to wake up. I couldn’t stand by and experience increasing levels of political jostling, toxic interactions between leaders and their teams, especially knowing that our organizations were not preparing their leaders for the future in ways that would work. And all the while, leaders and organizations either pretended these ways of working were normal with phraseology that embeds the dysfunction, even more, deeper into their culture with phrases like ‘it’s just the way it is’ or my ultimate favorite, ‘you’ve got to choose the hill to die on’. Let's be clear - none of this is normal.
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Great question and an important one. I’ve read so many leadership books and they are all the same. The same tired formulaic approach is applied to them and I set out to write a book that is different. In my book, there are four main reasons why its different
It provides a counterintuitive and new way of thinking to discuss and address the increasing dysfunction, hypocrisy, and toxicity that characterize our current approach to leadership identification, recruitment, onboarding, and development. No one else is doing this.
It reframes the narrative to show readers how to shift the way they see their troublemakers, agitators, rebels, oddballs, and shit stirrers to recognize the leadership qualities driving those behaviors. No one else is doing this.
The increasing realization that we are firing the leaders who have the qualities we will increasingly need for how our organizations navigate ongoing disruption. No one else is doing this .
It is accompanied by a practical and extensive companion guide for how FIRED Leadership can be introduced and integrated into an organization’s existing approach to leadership identification, recruitment, onboarding, and development. No one else to my knowledge has openly given away approx $3million in consulting revenue as part of a book.
I've worked with almost 100 organizations and thousands of leaders across the world.
Here's a sample of recent organizations I've worked with:
ARE YOU READY TO HAVE A CONVERSATION THAT WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT LEADERSHIP?
I’m not for everyone and that’s okay. If you want a cookie-cutter conversation, to ‘stay in your lane’, or engage in political games, then you’re not in the right place. Thanks for visiting.
If you’re interested to learn more and begin taking steps to discover what a new approach to leadership might feel and look like, let’s have a conversation.