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Listen to today’s podcast double-feature episodes, check out the 200th Episode Celebration Playlist, using the player below, or click here.
A Milestone Worth Pausing For
Reaching 200 episodes of Leading with Integrity has felt a bit like finding yourself halfway up a hill you didn’t realise you were climbing. You stop, take a breath, turn around, and think: How on earth did I get here?
And also:
Wow… look at that view.
Today is a double-feature, Ep.199: 4 Years of Podcasting, The Highlights, the Reviews, and the Lessons Learned is a celebration of the journey so far, a.k.a. a clip-show with some of the moments that stuck, surprised, challenged, or entertained across four years of conversations.
Ep.200: People, Service, and Leadership from the Cold War to the Modern Day, with Stuart Vincent, is a special interview with someone who helped shape my own approach to leadership long before this podcast existed, his name is: Stu Vincent, he’s a former RAF aircraft engineer, senior leader, and one of my mentors who was there almost from the beginning of my leadership career.
Put these two episodes together and you get a picture of how leadership wisdom accumulates. Not in big dramatic moments, but in repetitions, reflections, course-corrections, the people who show up at the right time, and the lessons we didn’t know we were learning until much later.
So for this Wednesday edition of the newsletter, we’re not just unpacking two episodes we’re looking back at the 198 previous ones too, reflecting and exploring the links between them all. The look back, and the look forward. The leaders who shaped the podcast, and the leaders who shaped me for the better.
A Look Back at 4 Years of Leadership Conversations (Ep.199)
A clip show is an odd thing to record. You’re sitting alone in an “editing suite” (more accurately: the PC in my small 1-person study/office), re-watching conversations you had years ago, and reacting to your own face on a screen. It’s like having a conversation with a past version of yourself who thought he knew what he was doing… but with hindsight looks like he could do with some mentoring. And definitely investing in better recording tools, mic, and processing/sound quality!!!
But the bigger surprise was this: certain ideas came up again and again across the years, no matter the guest’s industry, role, culture, or background.
A few themes stood out:
Leaders who listen tend to lead better. It didn’t matter whether a guest was a CEO, a coach, a military officer, a social worker, or a creative professional; the lesson nearly everyone has to share is that the most grounded leaders aren’t the ones who talk the most. They’re the ones who listen with intent, ask questions without agenda, and genuinely want to understand the people in front of them.
Everyone struggles with something they think only they struggle with. Self-doubt, overwhelm, imposter feelings. Fear of getting it wrong. Leaders at every level have shared that quietly or openly, and it’s been one of the most consistent reminders that leadership is a very human occupation. We’re running organisations, yes, but we’re also running emotions, expectations, comparisons, hopes, worries.. (and late-night Google searches).
Integrity isn’t a brand, it’s a daily behaviour. Across four years, guests who talked about integrity weren’t talking about slogans. They were talking about habits:
Showing up prepared
Communicating when something can’t be delivered
Treating people well, even (or especially?) when under pressure
Accepting responsibility, dishing out credit
And doing the boring, honest thing instead of the flashy convenient thing
The other thing that became clear watching these clips is that listeners and guests alike have shaped this podcast. Every review, every piece of feedback, every story shared has changed the direction of some future episode, and occasionally corrected my assumptions about what people are actually dealing with at work and/or finding helpful on the show.
Leadership Lessons from a Mentor: Stu Vincent (Ep.200)
Moving from the recap episode into a conversation with Stu Vincent felt like the perfect transition. If Episode 199 was about the voices that shaped Leading with Integrity, Episode 200 is about the voices that shaped me, specifically my friend Stu.
He’s technically retired now, but Stu’s career spans decades. From attempting to join the Merchant Navy at the age of 16 and instead learning aircraft engineering in the Royal Air Force, to senior roles in high-pressure operational environments, and then, 38-years later, transitioning to leadership and engineering specialist consulting in the private sector. But what stands out is not just the experience it’s the mindset behind it.
Among many other attributes I’ve long admired Stu’s capacity to remain calm and matter of fact even when others around him were, to put it bluntly, losing their s%&t. It’s something I have tried to emulate, with varying degrees of success!
Leadership isn’t a performance; it’s a choice.
In our conversation, Stu describes leaders he respected in his RAF career not because they barked orders, but because they made expectations clear, set a calm tone, and modelled the behaviour they wanted others to follow. His stories show the difference between “being in charge” and “leading the team so they can do the job.” Being a leader, not a boss.
Leadership in his world was not optional. RAF aircraft engineers don’t get to say, “We’ll try again tomorrow.” There’s no averaging out errors across a quarter, and yet the principles that kept operations safe (trust, communication, accountability, competence) are the same ones that keep businesses healthy.
Pressure reveals patterns.
One of the striking threads through Stu’s stories is how people behave when things go wrong. When under pressure, some people over-function and try to control everything, some under-function and disappear into avoidance, some get louder others get quieter, some go tactical when they need to be strategic, and some get strategic when the problem is screaming out for someone to be tactical.
Good leaders spot these patterns early, in themselves and in others. They understand what pressure does to people, and they build habits that help the team hold steady when circumstances don’t.
Experience matters, but reflection matters more.
Stu has seen enough high-stakes scenarios to fill a book, but what sets him apart isn’t the volume of experiences, it’s the way he thinks about them. His biggest leadership lessons come from hindsight, from paying attention to what worked, what didn’t, and why certain people thrived in tough environments while others didn’t.
As he says: “You've gone through the process of learning, but until you meet it again… actually, did you learn? Did you genuinely, genuinely learn?”
That reflective lens is the link between Episodes 199 and 200. Looking back is not nostalgia, it’s data; and looking back with intention is a leadership skill in its own right. Ok, ok, maybe it was nostalgia too, for me at least.
The Connection Between These Two Episodes: Leadership is a Long Game
Pairing a four-year retrospective with a conversation with a long-time mentor was not my original plan for this week, but the result is -I hope- an illustration of what effective leadership actually looks like over time. A few connections jumped out:
Leadership is learned, not inherited: Across 200 episodes, and in Stu’s stories, not one guest has ever claimed leadership came 100% naturally to them. It’s developed through: repetition, mistakes, course-correction, better questions, and a willingness to be the beginner again. The myth of the “born leader” disappears quickly when you talk to people who have actually led.
The best leaders are still learning: The leaders who impressed Stu early in his career weren’t perfect. They were curious, and the guests revisited in Ep.199 weren’t presenting themselves as experts who had it all figured out, they were often sharing what they were still working on. Curiosity might be the single biggest predictor of long-term leadership effectiveness.
People don’t remember your goals, strategy decks, or KPIs; they remember how you treated them: This is a theme that came up in almost every clip from Ep.199 and in nearly every story from Stu. People will remember how you handled their mistakes. People will remember whether you listened. People will remember whether they felt safe to tell you the truth. People will remember whether they felt like a person around you, not a resource.
Reflection is a leadership habit, not a luxury: Looking back at four years of episodes reminded me that I, too, have changed as a host and leader. Speaking to Stu reminded me why reflection matters, because growth isn’t automatic. Progress requires looking at the data and deciding what to take forward.
Where To? The Next 200 Episodes Start Here
Well.. I mean… actually, they start in Episode 201 on Friday. But yeah.
Reaching 200 episodes is surreal. 4 years ago I would never have predicted this, but more than anything, it’s energising. Episodes 199 and 200 share one message: leadership is about people, and people are complex, fascinating, unpredictable, creative, frustrating, inspiring, and entirely worth investing in.
If the first 200 episodes were about exploring what leadership is, the next 200 will be about deepening the practice more conversations, more lessons, more challenges, more honesty, and hopefully, more impact.
Thank you for listening, watching, reading, reviewing, emailing, supporting, or just quietly following along, lurking in the newsletter ‘read’ stats. You’re all appreciated. And to all past and future guests: there is no Leading with Integrity without you; THANK YOU.
Here’s to what we learn next, after all: Every day’s a school day.
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I hope you enjoy this weeks bonus episodes, in celebration of hitting that 200th milestone! You can catch the audio versions in this playlist: https://podcast.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/playlist/200th-episode-week
Or if you prefer video, then here’s the YouTube links:
Ep.198 with Gary S. Chan: https://youtu.be/oT--msf1xAs
Ep.199 4-Year Review: https://youtu.be/1bqfz83cXzQ
Ep.200 with Stu Vincent: https://youtu.be/laaHAK_LeLg
Tune in again on Friday for episode 201, when I’ll be chatting pivot, psychology, and leadership with Dr. Cynthia Bentzen-Mercer, PhD.
And as always: Be a Leader Not a Boss!
- David
In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here to help new managers and first-time founders with their leadership skills, so they can become leaders not bosses, lead with integrity, and build happier, higher performing teams, more effective organisations, and, ultimately: successful businesses.
Tackle that imposter syndrome, build confidence as a leader, expand your knowledge of leadership & management, and… Become the leader you wish you’d had, come join my online leadership community. If you have a healthy love of sci-fi and want to learn more about leadership, then this is the community for you. Solopreneurs also welcome. 😉
Here’s the link: Integrity Leaders: Community membership and learning, for new leaders or first-time founders.
