Season 1: Promoted Because You Were Good: Eradicating Bad Management with Mark Stanton

In this episode of Progress in Practice, Charlie Reading is joined by Mark Stanton, co-founder of Develop People-  a leadership and personal development practice working with manufacturers, engineers, regulated industries, and professional services firms to help technically excellent people become genuinely effective leaders.

Mark spent nearly three decades in policing, retiring at a senior level having led teams of up to 600 people, before joining the business his wife Emma had founded 14 years ago. Emma's dual motivation was deeply personal: years of experiencing the damage caused by poor management, and a late diagnosis of dyslexia at 29 that helped her recognise the coping strategies she'd quietly built were skills others didn't know they had. Together, they help organisations surface those hidden capabilities and develop leaders who can lead themselves first.

Mark and Charlie dig into DISC profiling, emotional intelligence, and the above and below the line framework that underpins Develop People's approach. They also have a genuinely interesting conversation about AI- not as a threat to leadership development, but as a tool that's only as useful as the prompts you give it, and as a future lens for real-time feedback in meetings and culture.

This is a practical, honest, and thought-provoking episode about what it really takes to build high-performing teams, and why the blocker is usually closer to home than most leaders want to admit.

Key Talking Points

•             Who Develop People serves: technical specialists and high-performers who've been promoted into leadership without ever being taught how to lead.

•             The sectors they work in: manufacturing, engineering, pharmaceuticals, regulated industries, accountancy, and legal firms.

•             Emma's founding story: leaving a series of jobs because of damaging management, and discovering her dyslexia at 29 and the hidden skill set that came with it.

•             Mark's policing career: nearly 30 years, retiring at senior level, leading teams of up to 600 people and the moment he asked himself what he could offer the outside world.

•             Why being brilliant at your job does not make you a brilliant leader, and why that gap is never explained to the people being promoted.

•             How Develop People use DISC profiling to help clients understand their communication style, their strengths, and where they create friction.

•             Emotional intelligence: self-awareness, awareness of others, and the difference between knowing how you are and taking responsibility for it.

•             The above and below the line framework: ownership, accountability, and responsibility above; blame, excuses, and denial below.

•             AI in leadership development: the echo chamber risk of self-coaching with AI, why prompts determine the quality of challenge, and the future potential of AI to give real-time feedback in meetings and on culture.

•             The blocker in Develop People's business: reaching people who don't yet know they have a problem, and why self-awareness has to come before development can begin.

•             Why Develop People no longer try to convince reluctant clients and how they focus on people who already know they need to change.

•             The challenge of selling leadership development when the person who benefits from it isn't always the one signing the contract.

•             Why high-performing teams produce better bottom-line results and how to make that case to a sceptical founder.

•             What Mark would tell his younger self: be less concerned with the opinions of others, stay true to your original purpose, and establish your values from day one.

•             Wisdom to pass on: be humble enough to remember where you've come from, and courageous enough to take the steps to where you want to go.

•             Book recommendations: The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters, Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet, and Start with Why by Simon Sinek.

•             The above and below the line framework as a daily leadership tool and why it works precisely because of its simplicity.

About the Guest

Mark Stanton is co-founder of Develop People, a leadership and personal development practice helping organisations in manufacturing, engineering, regulated industries, and professional services develop effective leaders from the inside out. Mark spent nearly three decades in policing, retiring at a senior level having led teams of up to 600 people, before joining the business his wife Emma founded 14 years ago. Develop People works with clients through DISC behavioural profiling, emotional intelligence development, and the above and below the line framework, delivered through facilitated workshops, one-to-one coaching, and small group sessions, with a focus on long-term partnership rather than one-off interventions.

Find Out More

To learn more about Mark and Develop People visit: https://develop-people.co.uk/

To connect with Mark visit: linkedin.com/in/markstantondevelopsleaders

Resources & Links Mentioned

•             The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters- recommended by Mark for understanding how the brain drives communication and emotional response.

•             Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet- Mark's long-time carry-in-the-bag leadership book, focused on intent, deliberate action, and strategic thinking.

•             Start with Why by Simon Sinek- recommended by Mark; the TED talk alone is worth watching.

•             The above and below the line framework- Develop People's core tool for assessing leadership behaviours and accountability.

•             DISC behavioural profiling- used by Develop People to surface communication styles and areas for development.

About the Podcast

Progress in Practice is brought to you by The Trusted Team- helping professional service business owners build scalable, saleable businesses while working less and enjoying more.

Find out more: www.thetrusted.team 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Progress in Practice, where we explore what it really takes to build and sustain a professional service business. The hard lessons, the smart moves, the uncomfortable truths. Because success leaves clues if you're willing to look for them. I'm Charlie Redding. Let's dive in. So, Mark, welcome to the Progress in Practice podcast. Really looking forward to chatting to you and finding about more about what you do and how you help people. So let's let's kick off on that subject. So, who do you help? How do you help them? And what makes you guys different?

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Okay, um, first of all, Charlie, thanks for having me. Great to be here. Um, so who do we help? I would probably say the best way of describing it is people who've been promoted because they're good at their job, but they've never been taught how to lead people. So we often get the best engineer, the best technician, the best scientist, the best IT analyst, and they get promoted as a team leader, and their supervision say, You're going to be great at this, and we're going to give you a team of five, team of ten, or whatever it is to look after. And then the problem that they've got is that nobody's ever told them that there's a different skill set that's required between being the best practically at the job that you're doing and being the best or becoming an effective leader of a group of people who you now need to do to get them to do the job that you are currently doing and that you're doing to a good level. So um, that's probably who we serve. If you look at it at like sectors, anywhere manufacturing, engineering, regulated industries like accountancy, legal firms, uh, chartered engineers, all that type of stuff, pharmaceuticals. Um, and probably what what sets us and what makes us different is I think is that the fact that we fix that problem of you've been promoted because you were good and you are completely unaware of how good you are, and you're completely unaware of the impact that you have on other people, and we help bring that out so that you can use those skills more effectively.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Interesting, really interesting. And I can I can really relate to this problem because you know, you see businesses, you see happening time and time again in businesses, don't you? You got the best salesperson in the team. You then take him away from sales and put and make him a manager, which it like typically a great salesperson doesn't necessarily make a great manager. So that's it's really interesting. And actually the same problem happens with businesses, doesn't it? Like you might be the best accountant in the world or the best lawyer in the world, but that doesn't make you the best business owner or entrepreneur in the world. So I think it's I think you've got a really interesting piece there. And and what is there a story behind what story best sums up why you do what you do?

SPEAKER_01 3:04

I think probably the best story comes from the fact that my my wife set up our business 14 years ago, and one of the main things and drivers from it was that so there were two drivers for it. One was that she had a self-experienced, really poor management and leadership within the businesses that she was working in, and as a you know, as a member of a team, and she kept asking herself the question: why is it that this group of people always all seem to act the same? So they were very direct, they were very brash, they were aggressive or confrontational when they were communicating. And she was of the view she left a series of jobs because of the type of managers that she'd got, and it was completely changing the atmosphere of the of the room, spoiled what the job was all about, uh, and saw that they were really ineffective. But then, coupled with that, what had happened, what is unique with her is I say is unique, lots of people have it, but she's um she's dyslexic, but she didn't know she was dyslexic until she was 29. And in that period of time, what she always recognized was I seem to have different ways of communicating, I appear to think differently to other people. I've developed a load of coping mechanisms that other people don't seem to have. Is that unique to me, or is this a skill set that's hidden from people that we don't know that we have, but we can find somebody that can bring that out of us? And that for me was the you know, is why the business was started. And then I came into it nearly six years ago now. I'd spent my career in policing. I left at a senior level. I looked after teams up to nearly 600 people. And when I sort of evaluated and was like, right, okay, what have I done then? What can I bring to the outside world? I'm now no longer a public servant. So, what is it that I can offer to the outside world? And for me, what I recognized was that I have been able over the years to get people to do things that they don't want to do in a way that they feel like that they've bought in and gone, I've got the confidence to do this, and it feels right for me to do it. So pulling the two things together, it became a natural thing for me to join into a leadership and personal development business so that we could help, you know, other people to see what it is that they're good at and what's their impact on other people. And when you can do that and you learn to lead yourself first, then you can learn to lead other people.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Brilliant. I love it. And what how what's the reality of how do you deliver this? Is it caught kind of through coaching? Is it through workshops? You know, what's the what's the practicalities of how you do this?

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Okay, so there's a combination. So we use behavioral profiling. So we use disk as the behavioral tool, which gives people the insight into who they are, what their preferred methods of communication are, um, what they what their, if you like, their strengths are, and where their areas for development uh will be. And then they can see in that profiling how their style either conflicts, contrasts, or what's the other word if it comes together, I've crop that not got the word, if the two, if the two are aligned with each other, and how to have that conversation with people. And then so we'll start with profiling, then we'll look at emotional intelligence with people and we start looking at, you know, how aware are you of yourself, how aware of other people are you and the way that they behave, the way that they communicate. Um, how do you manage your behaviors? Because it's one thing to be able to say, Oh, yeah, I'm really self-aware. And we hear a lot of people say, Oh, but that's just me, that's just the way I am. And we go, well, no, if you know that's the way you are, you have a responsibility to either play into it if it's a strength, or you have a responsibility to be accountable for saying that's not the right way of behaving or the not right way of communicating, I can change it. And then that helps people build relationships. And we do it in a combination of facilitated workshops, one-to-one sessions, small group coaching sessions, online sessions. Um, however, really the client prefers to get their people to interact with people, but we look to be a long-term partner for leadership and and people development.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

So brilliant. That's excellent. What what uh I've just been delivering a workshop all morning on AI and how you grow your business through AI. And and I can't, therefore, I can't help but look at everything through an AI lens at the moment. Okay. How does AI impact this business? Is it a threat? Is it an opportunity? Where do you see AI fitting?

SPEAKER_01 7:58

So, right, so I think that AI will always be an opportunity. You you could look at AI and you could say it could it's going to be a threat. You and I could go on to Chat GPT or any of the other tools, and you could sit there and you could type in and say, I'm having a problem with X, Y, and Z. And it will spew out for you a series of responses that would say, Well, have you thought about this, Mark? Have you thought about this? You know, but one of the things that we notice with AI at the moment is it's really placating. So what it will do is it will offer challenge, but it won't give you a critical challenge in terms of, but maybe consider thinking this way. What if you reframed your thinking to think about the situation differently? And so if we're not careful with our prompts within AI, if we're using it as a self-coach tool, we can self-coach ourselves within the echo chamber that we already exist in, because we will just put a prompt in that serves our purpose. AI wants to please us, so it will give us a response that pleases us and says, you know what, Mark, you're on track there. That's the right thing to be doing. Keep going with it. Unless you put the prompts in that say, I want some form of critical challenge, I want my thinking tested, I want you to act as a critical friend, somebody who is willing to push me out of my comfort zone. It's not necessarily going to give it. The other aspect of AI for me is, you know, I think that AI has the potential to change how leaders operate in the work environment for the future. So imagine being in a meeting that you're the chair, and as a result, we have an AI tool that records what's going on. And not only does it record the actions and it records what's being said for you in a normal structure of a meeting, but then it records the tone of voice that gets used to an individual. It looks for repeat patterns. So if I have a conflict with you, it look it listens out and looks for the tone and intonation that I use every time I speak with you. Or it listens for every time Charlie raises a point, what does Marcus the chair do? Does he shut him down? Does he give him the opportunity to speak? How does he draw other people in? And then it starts giving you feedback on this is how you're chairing this meeting, this is the relationship issue that you are developing or creating, or this is why your culture is being damaged. So, you know, and and then you could look at, and and this is so I I love this concept of AI, and I could go on, but but the other bit is, you know, we've talked a lot, uh, Emma's particularly talked a lot around, we know, for example, that people don't necessarily enjoy public speaking or group speaking. But if you were in a virtual reality world and your screen and your audience is there in front of you, you have the ability to be able to practice what you need to do. You could gauge the reaction, you could get instant feedback from it, and you could immerse yourself in that world. So I, for me, I AI seems far more intelligent than the internet did, but the internet was a progression that people would have said, is it an opportunity or is it a risk? Well, it depends how you use it.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

I I couldn't agree with you more. I think it's really exciting. It's a it's a threat and a risk if you bury your head in the sand and ignore it. Because your competitors that do embrace it, who see it as the opportunity, will accelerate and they'll deliver more value in less time for lower costs. And so it's it's a way to make things better and better, quicker and quicker, if you use it. But it's a threat if you don't use it. So I I couldn't agree with you more. I could just I was just listening to you what you were talking about and going, This is yeah, this is a business that's that either needs to embrace it or be threatened by it. So fascinating. If you could go back, and I appreciate that this business was set up by your wife, yeah, but knowing what you both know now, if you could go to back to the start of this business um and and kind of offer one piece of you know of advice to your younger selves, what would that be and why?

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Right, okay. So I think that for me, the the advice I would give myself would be be less concerned of the opinion of others and don't be swayed by people who are giving you advice on the basis that they're jealous or want to keep you in a position, a certain place, because it becomes a threat to their friendship or or relationship with you. And um, and I think you know, uh a lot of the initial stuff is you set up a business because you have an idea and you have an aim in mind, and it will evolve and it will develop, but never lose sight of why you set that up in the first place. What was that original problem that you were trying to tackle? You know, if it is as you know, as as we had, is we want to eradicate bad managers one person at a time, it then stick with that and build the model, keep going forward true to those values. And and I would always say for any business, establish what your what your core values are going to be right from the off so that your decision making becomes a natural evolution of what those values are, because the conflict will come when you're making decisions that don't fit in line with your values.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

I I think that is brilliant advice. And also with the same principle applies to recruitment, doesn't it? If you recruit people that don't align with your values, that's where the problems lie. So I think I think that's that's great advice and great wisdom to share. Um and if you couldn't pass any money to your next generation, just a piece of wisdom or again advice or values or whatever, what would that be and why?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

So I always use this one as you know, I often get in other forums, get asked what's the key to success. And so I would pass on what my key to success is, which is to be humble enough to remember where you've come from, but courageous enough to take the steps to where you want to go. And that for me would be never lose sight, you know, every promotion I had in policing, I never lost sight of the fact that the for everybody that was there, um, I started off the same as everybody else. I drove a police car, cold and wet, walked the streets, did the hard yards doing that. And you never forget that ultimately, regardless of how many stages you go through an organization, there are still people that have got to deliver based on your decision making. So for me, it's you've got to remember where you've come from, but you know that you've got to make difficult choices and difficult decisions, and that requires a level of courage to get you to move forward, and ultimately to get you, your business and organization to move forward as well.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Brilliant. That's again like excellent advice. What's the biggest obstacle that's stopping you hitting your business goals at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Right. So I I had a really deep thought about this, I think, is that so the thing for me is I tend to think that we are one step ahead when we talk to prospective clients about where we perceive that they can be. And by that I mean that we will talk about leadership, we'll talk about self-awareness, we'll talk about culture. But there becomes an issue that if you are not self-aware, you don't need that, you don't know that there's a problem to change. If you are self-aware, you know that there's a problem, but potentially don't know how to get out of that problem. But in order for us to be able to get into clients and to be able to talk to people, we have to raise their level of self-awareness to go, okay, I hadn't perceived this as a particular problem that I've got. But you know, things like, you know, why why does every decision always land on my shoes? Is not necessarily because you've got in incompetent people, it's because you may have built a system that relies on you as the single point of everything, and therefore you're the blocker, you're the problem. And for me, our blocker is being able to get that across to people so that they understand and recognize that you don't have to be defensive about the fact that you may be part of the issue, but solving the problems that you've got, you need to recognize and be vulnerable to say this is on me as well as it is on everybody else.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Interesting. Just to dig a bit, does the person that you coach usually sign you up, or is it their boss that usually signs you up?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Great question. So it can come both ways. However, what we would say is our view would be everybody needs a coach, not everybody wants one. And we spent a lot of time trying to convince businesses in order to get business in the early days. We spent a lot of time trying to convince businesses that everybody needs this form of personal development. Everybody needs to be self-aware. If you're not able to lead yourself, you're not able to lead other people. However, we now only focus where we know that people go. We know that we need this development, but we don't know how to deliver it, we don't know how to put it into practice, we know that things have got to change. So we want to be able to put that in. So, and it's the same when somebody comes for coaching. If they don't want to go away and do the work, which means do some self-reflection, analyze a conversation that you've had, look at the response that you got given, feel the emotion that you experienced when somebody said no, when somebody challenged you, when somebody pushed back. And then that person is gonna walk away and go, Oh, yeah, I did some coaching, it wasn't very effective. The person that will will feel that it was effective will come into it going, I know that I want to change and I want to do things, but hey, what is it? And then we have that conversation.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

It's like it's like um, I often talk about this in a marketing perspective. You know, you could go out and market, like, there's lots of people out there that would benefit from your product, but if Avatar A is gonna take huge amounts of effort to push a whole load of water uphill to persuade them that they should do it, and and avatar B is gonna just like want water running down the hill, they know that they need it, they're already bought into it. Like, if you wouldn't say no to A coming to work for you, but why would you spend money marketing to A when B is gonna be far cheaper to market to? So I I think that's it's a good realization that. But I do get the challenge of like often the person that benefits from your work isn't necessarily the person that's writing the check. So that's a communication challenge, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, for some people, they will say to us, they'll say, Well, what am I tangibly going to see by employing you? And you, you know, and then you say, right, okay. So some of the biggest measures is less conflict in a team. But what do we do? Do we no business goes around and records how many conflicts they have in a team? What they look for is what's it like, what does it feel like to work here? Um, do people leave? Do they put discretionary effort in? You know, how do people progress? Do they stay in the business? Do they, you know, what what those are some of the things that become they're almost untouchable, intangible benefits. Um, and then the ending result is if you have a high performing team and they're doing well, ultimately your bottom line will grow because your clients and customers are going to be better looked after. Your team are going to be well developed, well skilled, they'll make decisions, they'll make suggestions as to how to grow the business. And ultimately, I think that's what we want: high performing teams that build and grow and lead themselves with leaders who feel confident to be vulnerable and to let them have a go and try and do it.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's incredibly valuable. And it's it's a different style of communication and a different way of reporting success to the founder as it is to the employee, isn't it? Um so what book, I always ask about books, but it doesn't have to be books, it might be some other similar resource. What book or other similar thing have you found that's helped you on your journey? And where does it show up in your business today?

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Okay, so so I think as a as a as a framework, I mean, obviously I've talked about disc and the behaviors that you get to learn from that, but we have a little tool that um it I think it's widely used, but it's it's called above and below the line. So we look at people's commitment and their level of engagement and their behaviors in a framework called you know above the line. And if you're above the line, the types of behaviors that you're going to be demonstrating as a leader is you'll take ownership of things, you'll hold yourself and others accountable, and you will you will be responsible and prepared to take on levels of responsibility. And below the line, you will offer when things are not going right, or you know, things are not the way you want them to be, you offer blame, you offer excuses, and you deny um things, you deny the situation in which you're in. And what we encourage people to do is when they are sitting there and saying, Oh, well, the reason that that's not been done is because everybody says you go, right, okay, is that above or below the line? Are you are you above or below the line? Are you offering an excuse here for why something's not been delivered? Or are you gonna take ownership and go, right, okay, I recognize that we've not delivered that package or or the X number of widgets or whatever it might be. However, what were what do we need to be accountable for here? What were the things that we could have controlled and did we control them? And if we didn't control them, why did we not control them? So as a framework that above and below the line for us works dead easy. Above ownership, accountability, responsibility, below blame, excuses, denial. And then if I if I was to go for books, for me, there's three books that I would put forward for anybody. And I would say if you're going into leadership, I would look at the chimp paradox by Steve Peters, because that will help you understand how your brain operates and why you communicate in the way that you do, and why sometimes you respond from an emotional point of view as opposed to um pragmatic, more logical, human perspective. Um, and and then I think there are two really good leadership books. I had I used to carry around with me in my bag, Turn the Ship Around, by David Marquette. And the reason for that was that he his insight into intent and deliberate action was all about recognising this above-the-line thinking. I'm I'm going to do X. And if you say I'm going to do something, then it forces you into. So what's the consequence? What will be the result? Two steps away from where we are now. What might be the actions that fall from that? So it enhances your strategic thinking. And he has this great way at the end of each chapter is a series of questions that you can apply to yourself in the business. So I loved it. And the final one would be Start with Why by Simon Sinek. You know, I think anybody who watches that TED talk won't fail to see the power of understanding why you do what you do.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Yeah, yeah. Brilliant recommendation. So I I've read the first and the last, and I couldn't agree with you more. Two brilliant, brilliant books. And Turn the Ship Around, I haven't read. So uh I'm making a that'll be going onto my reading list. Um, thank you. So, Mark, where's if for people are listening to uh you talk about um you and your wife and develop people as a business, where's the best place for people to go to find out more about you guys and what you do?

SPEAKER_01 24:11

So, two places uh LinkedIn and the website. So the website is develop hyphenpeople.co.uk. Dead easy to find us on there. But then connect with us on LinkedIn because both of us are under our own name, so Mark Ademis Stanton. And you'll find on LinkedIn a lot of testimonials, you'll find more information about how we think and how we operate because that's what we post about. So, and we're all about sort of like sharing real experiences as opposed to here's a theory on this, what do you think about it? It's more, you know, that might be the theory, but this is the practice, this is how it comes out, this is what we can do with it, and that's what we try and put across on those profiles.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Brilliant, Mark. It's been fascinating chatting to you. Loved learning more about the business, but I also think there's a huge amount of wisdom in what you've shared today. So thank you. Thank you for that. Um, and just a reminder for those of you listening at home, uh, the Progress in Practice podcast is brought to you by the Trusted Team, and the Trusted Team helps you build a saleable and scalable business. So just keep making progress. If this conversation resonated, you'll find more support, structure, and community inside the trusted team, where ambitious service-based founders come to build businesses that are scalable, scaleable, and sustainable. You can find out more at thetrusted.t. And if you're enjoying Progress in Practice, please make sure you follow the show and leave a rating review. It really helps more founders find these conversations and to bring you better and better guests. So until the next time, keep progressing.