Matthew Payne Coaching

Matthew Payne Coaching Supporting clarity, confidence and high performance.

ILM Level 7 Executive Coach & Mentor helping leaders and business owners strengthen leadership, sharpen strategy and drive sustainable growth. 30+ years’ senior commercial experience.

A name on an organisation chart is not a succession plan. It is simply a view on who might be next. The real question is...
14/08/2026

A name on an organisation chart is not a succession plan. It is simply a view on who might be next. The real question is whether that person has been given the chance to prove they can handle the role when the stakes are higher and the answers are less obvious.

I have seen very capable people promoted because they were excellent in their existing role, only to find that leading across a business, influencing people outside their own team and making bigger decisions requires a completely different skill set.

Question to consider: If a key person left tomorrow, would you have a name for their role — or someone genuinely ready to step into it?

Succession planning requires more than naming future leaders. Learn how to develop and test successors so they’re ready for critical leadership roles.

This is a really interesting read from Forbes.One thing I learnt when leading a growing business is that culture changes...
14/08/2026

This is a really interesting read from Forbes.

One thing I learnt when leading a growing business is that culture changes whether you manage it or not. When there are only a handful of you, people pick things up directly from the owner and from each other. As you grow, that becomes much harder.

New people bring different experiences and habits. New managers interpret things in their own way. If you have not been clear about what “good” looks like, the standards you thought were obvious can quietly start to drift.

Question to consider: if you were not in the room, would your team still know how you would expect them to deal with a customer, a problem or each other?

To protect your organization’s core identity during rapid growth, HR leaders should focus on three key strategies for cultural codification.

When a team is not delivering, the instinct is often to add more meetings, more updates and more oversight.But sometimes...
12/08/2026

When a team is not delivering, the instinct is often to add more meetings, more updates and more oversight.

But sometimes that is exactly what makes things worse.

Before jumping in, it is worth asking: what is actually missing here? Is it clarity about what good looks like? Is the team overloaded or lacking confidence? Or is nobody clear about who owns the next decision?

Different problems need different leadership responses. More direction is useful when people genuinely do not know what to do. It is counterproductive when the real issue is ownership.

Question to consider: Before you react to a problem in your team, have you stopped to ask what this particular moment actually requires from you?

Imagine Nadia, a division leader overseeing sales and operations. Her cross-functional team has just missed a second milestone on an important client project. She responds the way many conscientious managers would. She increases the number of project meetings, requests daily updates and begins revie...

One of the best pieces of advice I received as an MD was to stop fretting about my to-do list.I was chasing the end of a...
11/08/2026

One of the best pieces of advice I received as an MD was to stop fretting about my to-do list.

I was chasing the end of a rainbow: convinced that, if I just worked hard enough, I would finally get to the bottom of it. Of course, when you are responsible for a large business, the list never goes away. Mine could easily have had 5,000 things on it.

My mentor taught me to take a breath, focus on what I wanted to achieve that week, choose the five most important things for each day, and accept the rest would still be there tomorrow. It was a much less stressful way to work—and a far more effective one.

Question to consider: Are you being productive, or are you simply staying busy in the hope that the list will eventually disappear?

Busyness can become an addiction when it distracts us from making choices that would make life feel meaningful, writes Rob Cross.

“Action, please.”Two words that make exactly the same request as “Action!” — but they say something very different about...
11/08/2026

“Action, please.”

Two words that make exactly the same request as “Action!” — but they say something very different about how you treat people.

This article is a good reminder that, as leaders, we are teaching all the time. People notice how we react when something goes wrong, whether we take responsibility, who gets the credit and how we behave when the pressure is on.

Most of the time, it is not the big speech or the stated company values that people remember. It is the small, everyday moments.

Question to consider: What are your team learning from the way you lead when you are not consciously trying to teach them?

LeVar Burton's observation about positive on-set behavior resonates beyond the 'Final Frontier.'

One of the simplest and most useful business ideas is your sphere of influence.There is no point spending your time worr...
10/08/2026

One of the simplest and most useful business ideas is your sphere of influence.

There is no point spending your time worrying about things you cannot change. You need to be aware of them, of course, and take sensible steps to reduce their impact—but your energy is better spent on the people, decisions and actions you can actually influence.

The question is: are you spending most of your time inside your sphere of influence, or allowing things outside it to take up far too much headspace?

Question to consider: What is one thing you are currently worrying about that you cannot change—and what could you do instead that is within your control?

Put your energy where you can actually move something.

Every business has a culture. The question is whether it is the one the leadership team thinks it has.You can put values...
10/08/2026

Every business has a culture. The question is whether it is the one the leadership team thinks it has.

You can put values on the wall, but people soon work out what really matters: how mistakes are handled, whether people are listened to, whether good work is recognised and whether leaders do what they say.

A culture that supports growth is not about motivational slogans. It is created in the everyday decisions, conversations and behaviours people see and experience.

Question to consider: If you asked your team what the culture feels like day to day, would their answer match the one you would give?

People know the difference between a culture that is lived and one that is merely branded.

It is amazing how much difference one small word can make, I'm a big fan of the science of NLP in helping people communi...
07/08/2026

It is amazing how much difference one small word can make, I'm a big fan of the science of NLP in helping people communicate effectively in all walks of life.

“Obviously” can make someone feel foolish for asking. “But” can wipe out everything positive you said before it. And “you always” or “you never” is usually the quickest way to make somebody defensive rather than receptive.

Good leadership communication is not about walking on eggshells; it is about being clear enough that people can hear the feedback, understand the issue and do something useful with it.

Question to consider: Is there a word or phrase you use without thinking that may be landing very differently for your team?

Leadership communication can motivate teams or quickly shut it down. Learn five trap words leaders should reframe to improve clarity and accountability.

We have all had that frustrating moment: you can see what needs to happen, but the people whose support you need do not ...
07/08/2026

We have all had that frustrating moment: you can see what needs to happen, but the people whose support you need do not report to you.

You cannot simply tell them what to do. And, in truth, even when you can, that is rarely the best way of getting a good result.

Real influence comes from taking the time to understand what matters to people, building trust and helping them see why the outcome matters to them too. It takes more patience than pulling rank, but it creates much stronger commitment.

Question to consider: Who do you need to bring with you at the moment — and have you spent enough time understanding their perspective?

As formal authority becomes less effective in modern organizations, leaders increasingly face the challenge of influencing outcomes without direct control. So, they must learn to exert indirect influence in five ways: identifying hidden power brokers who shape decisions; using discreet back channels...

One of the best pieces of advice I received as an MD was to stop fretting about my to-do list.Like most people running a...
06/08/2026

One of the best pieces of advice I received as an MD was to stop fretting about my to-do list.

Like most people running a busy business, I was constantly trying to get to the end of it. A mentor helped me see that I was chasing the end of a rainbow. The list was never going away, and there would always be more to do than I could possibly complete.

Instead, they taught me to take a breath, decide what I wanted to achieve that week and focus on the five most important things each day. Once I accepted that the list might contain thousands of tasks and that I would never clear it completely, it became far less stressful.

Question to consider: Are you trying to finish your to-do list, or making sure you finish the things that matter most?

Leaders today are operating in a state of “ambient urgency,” where constant change, competing priorities, and relentless demands make everything feel equally important. Traditional prioritization and time-management frameworks were designed for temporary crises and are less effective when urgenc...

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