I am Bob Judson and I spent over 34 years in the Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom as a fast-jet pilot and then eventually as a senior leader, retiring from the military in 2015 as an Air Vice-Marshal (2* General). I subsequently transitioned to the corporate world as a consultant at Deloitte, but in 2019 I stepped away from all that and co-founded Leading 4 Life.
I am passionate about helping to develop the leadership skills of individuals and teams and that is what this podcast is all about. You will hear from me, and from a wide range of special guests, many of whom have had incredible leadership journeys and risen to the most senior level of their governments, militaries and corporations. The focus won't only be on success; there is also much to be learned from the failures along the way!
It was a great privilege this week to have Professor Michael Mainelli, the 695th and current Lord Mayor of London, as my guest on Leading 4 Life "Stories". Michael has had the most fascinating career, with a host of executive and non-executive roles on his CV, as well as his journey through the ranks of the City of London Corporation as an Alderman, Sheriff and now Lord Mayor.
We had a really interesting and diverse conversation, and listeners will learn a great deal about the historic City of London Corporation, and the role of the Lord Mayor. We talk about Christ's Hospital school, where we both have a long relationship and a great deal of personal passion, and we also cover a great deal of the leadership points coming from Michael's long experience and very diverse portfolio career.
The focus of Michael's mayoralty, which runs from 10 November 2023 to 8 November 2024 is on a theme called Connect To Prosper and he and his wife Elizabeth are seeking to use the role to deliver benefits for the City, London, the UK and beyond for those with whom they connect. You can find out a great deal more detail using the links below:
The ‘Connect To Prosper’ theme, is posted with details at www.connect2prosper.net.
There are several initiatives within the programme:
Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.
Leading 4 Life "Stories" makes a return to guest interviews this episode with a fascinating session with Rob Pepper, internationally renowned artist and Principal of Art Academy London, a leading higher education art school based in the heart of the city.
Rob is the first guest I have had from the creative industry world, and we had a great conversation about a wide range of issues including the obvious personal challenge Rob faces balancing continuing to produce his own art whilst running a major institution and raising his two young children. He is quick to emphasize that he has had no formal leadership training and is very open about the areas of leadership that challenge him.
It really was a fabulous interview and I very much hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it!
This week's episode is a double first. It is the first time I have interviewed two guests at the same time, and those two guests happen to be father and son with two amazing life stories to share.
Ralph Arundell is a former British Army officer with a distinguished career in the infantry, and who is now the Director of Operations at Harrow School.
Henry Arundell is an elite level rugby player coming to the end of his third year as a professional, and who has already made an amazing start to his rugby career both at club and international level.
We cover a lot of ground in this episode and it will give you a lot of fascinating insights into the world of professional sport, as well as a wide range of leadership perspectives and experiences. I really hope you enjoy what I thought was a terrific conversation and, as ever, I would love your feedback when you have a chance.
In a slight break from normal procedure, I've recorded this episode on video whilst I was on the road with Deloitte University this week. It's shorter than many of my episodes but the content will hopefully resonate with you as it is an important topic.
Lifelong learning and taking the time to invest in yourself are incredibly important for anyone's development, especially those that are in leadership roles. Making space in your busy diary to upskill yourself, or simply to refresh your existing skills will reap dividends well in excess of the time investment required and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
I really hope you enjoy this slightly different format although I apologise in advance for the garden machinery noises that you will hear in the background throughout this episode! Please do send me feedback when you've either watched or listened. I will be extremely interested to hear what you think and, if you like it, I will potentially do more of these shorter format, on screen sessions.
You can find the video version of this episode here:
Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.
As the UK celebrates Pride month, my guest this week is Matt Lindley. Matt is a former RAF pilot who spent the majority of his military time on 32 (The Royal) Squadron at RAF Northolt near London, where he was an instructor pilot and captain on the HS125 VIP transport aircraft. In that role, he routinely flew the UK's most senior VIPs including HM The Late Queen Elizabeth II, the Prime Minister and many others from the Royal Family and the UK Government.
Matt was gay in a military where for a good part of his military service being gay was not just frowned upon, it was actually illegal. The law changed during Matt's time in the RAF but this issue was a dominant factor in his early years as an RAF pilot. Despite these challenges, Matt speaks incredibly fondly of his time in the military and of the great leadership he experienced in the period after he was unexpectedly "outed".
He subsequently transitioned to the world of commercial aviation as in now a part time pilot with a major airline. He is also the founder of his own company, Propel Performance, and a highly regarded motivational and TedX speaker. He has a huge amount to say on the topic of leadership and there is much for any current or aspiring leader to learn from this episode of the podcast.
This was a great discussion with a man who has had an incredibly challenging career journey but who is rightly incredibly positive and upbeat about what he has achieved along that journey. It is a fabulous interview and I really hope you enjoy it.
In this episode, I return to my personal RAF journey and share my experience of living in the Saudi Arabian desert whilst commanding the RAF detachment on Operation Southern Watch (to mission to police the southern Iraqi no-fly zone) in 1998.
Life in a tented encampment during the Saudi Arabian summer was extreme to say the least and I had a huge amount of very valuable experiences, some funny, some challenging, that really marked out this 5 month deployment for me as a time I have never forgotten.
There were some powerful leadership lessons in amongst everything else and I bring those out as part of this episode. I hope you enjoy it. As ever, please do subscribe and give me your feedback - it matters a lot to me.
Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.
My guest this week is Reuben Keith Green, a former US Navy surface warfare officer and the published author of "Black Officer, White Navy". As the book title suggests, Keith's life in the US Navy was a challenging one and, since leaving the Navy in 1997, he has devoted the majority of his time to trying to improve the situation that black members of the US Navy face on a routine basis.
This interview discusses Keith's personal journey at length, including the discrimination he faced throughout his time as an enlisted rank, and then subsequently as an officer. It is not a wholly negative story. As Keith makes very clear, he worked with many excellent white officers, and many of the key influencers in his life have been white. However, there are plenty of seriously challenging issues as well, and Keith does not hold back when it comes to describing the difficulties he faced and the lasting impact they have had on him.
This is a hard hitting story but one that absolutely must be told as Keith's experiences carry lessons for all leaders in the private sector as well as the military and wider public sector. Although Keith's focus is clearly within the US, the examples he quotes are regularly cited much more widely and that is why I think what Keith has to say is so important. His book was originally self-published but is now being republished in a much more mainstream way. It is already available in the US and will be available in the UK from June 2024 - I for one will certainly be reading it as, having spoken at such length with Keith, I am really interested to get to that next level of detail in his memoir.
Back in Episode 33 I started giving a full description of some of the aspects of military flying that dominated the flying part of my RAF career. As I got into the episode I realised that I had rather more to say about this than I originally thought and so I didn't get through all the things that I originally planned to cover.
This episode is consequently the next chapter of very flying specific personal stories, and I talk in some detail about aspects of the tactical employment of military aircraft, including the use of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons and air combat training.
With apologies to some, I suspect this episode will be very much marmite (i.e. you will either love it or you will hate it), so if details about flying operations are not your thing, this might not be one for you, although I'd love to convert you to being a big fan of flying stories obviously!!
All feedback welcome, especially from those who have direct experience in the RAF or other militaries.
Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.
Trigger Warning! Whilst it doesn't go into detail, this episodes touches on the death of work colleagues and family members including children.
With this, my first thematic episode in a while, I address the difficult topic of "Dealing with Adversity!"
Whether personal or professional, really challenging situations, especially those involving the injury or death of family members or work colleagues, can be extremely hard to deal with. The problem can be even more acute if you are in a leadership role and have few obvious outlets for support, advice and help.
Through the medium of some of my own experiences (and I've certainly had a few!), I offer some thoughts and advice that will hopefully help to pre-arm the listener with some coping strategies both for self-help and for providing support and help to others around them.
As ever, please let me have your feedback, and please do subscribe and review the podcast on your preferred channel.
Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.
My guest this week is Mary Walter, a TV and radio broadcast personality, and a podcast host, based in New Jersey, USA.
Mary and I have known each other for many years and I was really keen to tap into her Talk Radio experience to get some new perspectives not only on her own career and journey, but also on the US more generally. As I anticipated, this is an episode with plenty of laughs but also a wide range of serious perspectives that I certainly hope you find both useful and interesting.
In this episode we cover the following topics (starting time in brackets):
Mary's career journey (00.02.16)
Early motivations (00.13.09)
Advice to a school age Mary! (00.16.17)
Most impressive leadership behaviours (00.18.33)
Divisions in the USA - causes & remedies (00.21.56)
Risks of civil violence (00.31.48)
Shoring up democracy in the USA (00.41.25)
What might a Trump 2.0 Presidency look like? (00.53.45)
Highs and lows (01.04.16)
Most significant achievement (01.11.40)
Career low point (01.13.17)
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Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.
Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.
Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.
Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.
Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.
