Your 2025 Leadership Review + How to Set Up a No Bullsh!t 2026

Episode #381 Your 2025 Leadership Review + How to Set Up a No Bullsh!t 2026

In this week’s episode, I’m going to walk you through a clear, practical process to review your leadership performance in 2025.
Warts and all, no bullsh!t!

Then we’ll use that insight to set your runway for 2026.

This episode was inspired by the level of honesty inside our No Bullsh!t Leaders Club when we ran our annual review session last week. The Club is our alumni community for leaders who’ve completed Leadership Beyond the Theory and want to keep lifting their game with me, Em, and each other.

Inside the Club, members got the full experience:

• A deep dive workbook

• Structured reflection prompts

• A guided live review session with me

In this episode, though, I’m giving you the essentials. The part that can genuinely shift your leadership trajectory heading into 2026.

So grab a pen and paper and write this stuff down.

Right now is the perfect time to reflect. If you wait until January, you’ll forget how hard 2025 actually was. A few weeks off and everything feels fine again. What you want is the honesty that comes from limping toward the finish line, tired, stretched, and done.

The 4-Part Leadership Review for 2025

1. The Value You Actually Delivered

Value sits at the centre of the No Bullsh!t Leadership model. It comes in many forms, but as a leader, it must be your primary focus. Above activity. Above busyness. Above everything else.

Ask yourself this:

Where did I genuinely deliver value in 2025?

We were all busy. We all worked hard. We all did a lot of stuff. But where did you materially improve results or performance?

Your task:

• Identify two achievements that would genuinely belong on your CV

• Focus on outcomes, not effort

• Be ruthless about what counts as value

A few important rules:

• If you can’t quantify it, you must qualify it clearly

• If you can’t do either, it probably didn’t happen

• Activity is not value

Examples of real value:

• Improved delivery reliability from 62% to 94% within 6 months

• Reduced project cycle times by 30% by implementing single point accountability

These statements are clear, measurable, time bound, and auditable.

This part can be confronting. Many leaders look back on a year of huge effort and realise they didn’t actually bank much value. That’s more common than you think.

Don’t beat yourself up. The point is learning how to aim better next year.

2. What You Avoided

Now we shift gears.

You know what you achieved. Now ask yourself:

What did I avoid?

In particular:

• Which conversations did you avoid having?

• Where did you lower the standard because it was easier?

• What did you walk past and tell yourself was “only a small thing”?

• Which direct report drifted below standard without being held accountable?

You already know the answers. These are the moments your brain rationalised away. The conversations you parked. The standards you let slide.

Avoidance is expensive, but if you get honest here, you unlock massive improvement potential for 2026.

3. How You Performed Under Pressure

As you move up in leadership, pressure increases. That’s not optional.

Pressure reveals:

• Your instinctive leadership level

• Your emotional regulation

• Your true resilience

Reflect honestly:

• What situations rattled you in 2025?

• Where did you hold your nerve and keep perspective?

• What resilience habits helped?

• What coping strategies made things worse?

• Where did you perform exceptionally well under pressure?

The goal is not just survival. The goal is grace under pressure.

Grace means:

• Your internal state matches what people see on the outside

• Calm is real, not performed

• Your steadiness becomes contagious

People can tell the difference.

4. Accountability: The Bedrock of Performance

If you could only pull one lever to improve performance in your team, this would be it.

Strong single point accountability is the number one performance multiplier.

Ask yourself:

• Who did I hold clearly accountable this year?

• Where did standards drift because I didn’t intervene early?

• Where did I confuse empowerment with abdication?

• Who got a free pass for too long?

Standards don’t collapse in one moment, they erode one missed conversation at a time.

If you want a different outcome in 2026, accountability has to be non negotiable.

Resetting for 2026

That’s your 2025 review:

• Value delivered

• Avoidance

• Performance under pressure

• Accountability

Now let’s look forward.

Step 1: Define Your 2026 Leadership Theme

Pick one sentence that captures the primary outcome you’re committing to next year. This sets your leadership altitude.

Here’s mine.

After a tough year, a major relocation, and being stretched creatively and emotionally, I was reminded recently just how privileged I am to do this work. We impact thousands of leaders globally, many of whom I’ll never meet.

My 2026 theme is:

Rediscovering the deep joy and privilege of having that impact.

Your theme might be:

• Operating at level and letting go of my old role

• Courageous conversations, no exceptions

• Relentless pursuit of higher standards

• Lifting execution speed and confidence

There’s no perfect answer. There just needs to be commitment.

Step 2: Choose the One Achievement That Matters

Now define the one outcome you want on your CV at the end of 2026.

Ask yourself:

• What single achievement would most improve my career trajectory?

• What would make me irresistible in the market?

• What outcome would create the most value for my team and organisation?

You don’t want ten priorities, you want one.

Example:

• Improve category one response times from two days to under four hours

• Do it without increasing operating costs

That’s a CV level outcome.

Design everything else around delivering that value.

Step 3: Be Honest About What Must Change

Ask yourself:

• If I lead the same way I did in 2025, will anything improve?

• Will my team perform better?

• Will I reach the next level?

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

Execution will require:

• Dropping low value work

• Aligning your boss and your team

• Enforcing standards consistently

• Relentless focus on value

If you’re listening to this thinking you’ve got work to do, that’s a good sign. It means you’ve got clarity.

And if you need the tools to close those gaps, that’s exactly what we teach in Leadership Beyond the Theory.