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Friends,
The year is in full swing.
Australia is gradually returning to work (for my friends abroad, late Jan tends to be the point by which everyone is back on deck from summer holidays) and my client work is well underway.
My goals are locked in for this year and I’m excited to start working on the things I hope will deliver on them (details about this will now feature solely over on How to Become a HR Consultant — if you’re interested).
I’m also fully committed to my exercise routine with the help of a PT and, shortly, someone who can help me avoid making poor meal choices, with some meal prep support. Wish me luck here.
But on the leisure side of things, I’m now waiting with baited breath for weekly releases of The Night Manager. If you’re into international espionage, this might be one of the best shows in the world at it. I also recently demolished the latest season of Slow Horses (another top rec from me) and All Her Fault (guaranteed to give parents nightmares). Meanwhile I’m giving myself space to let episodes of HBO’s Industry build up, in an attempt to (partially) replace the gaping hole that Succession left in my heart.
Let me know what shows and movies are on your radar, I love a good rec.
Enjoy this week’s edition ✌️
STARTUP RESOURCE
Is 2026 the Year of the Compensation Philosophy for your Organisation?
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Are pay questions taking up the majority of your time?
Is review time a source of anxiety?
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3 Steps for Building Exceptional Leadership on a ‘Zero Dollar’ L&D Budget
This edition is based on the latest podcast interview with Shelley Johnson of Boldside.
When most people think of leadership development, they envisage large corporate programs. Here’s why they shouldn’t. The trademarks of these programs often involve over baked models that create friction, and complex tiered frameworks that overwhelm already-stretched leaders.
While they might be comprehensive, in reality these programs often result in:
Capability frameworks that no one remembers,
Training programs no one has time to attend, and
Budgets that disappear the moment the business tightens.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are startups, who often promote people into leadership roles and hope they’ll “figure it out”.
But they don’t.
The good news? Building exceptional leadership doesn’t require a six-figure L&D budget. It just requires clarity, consistency, and intent.
Let’s dive into three zero-dollar steps to build leadership capability that actually sticks, even in fast-moving, resource-constrained environments.
Step 1: Use the WAGOLL Framework to Define Leadership First
You can’t build leadership capability until you’ve defined it, and asking managers to “lead better” without a shared definition is setting them up to fail.
To boot, when leadership isn’t defined, people learn it by osmosis. They copy whoever has power, not whoever is effective, and those are often not the same.
Using the WAGOLL framework (“What A Good One Looks Like”) makes leadership tangible by showing real behaviours, not abstract traits.
Here’s 5 steps you can use to put this framework in practice:
Working with your leaders, ask “What’s a Good One Look Like” to define
leadership in 3–5 observable behaviours
Focus on actions, not traits. If it can’t be seen or heard, it doesn’t count.
As a team, define real examples of “what good looks like”
Use actual behaviours from inside the organisation to make quality visible and concrete.
Name common failure patterns (safely)
Anonymised “what not to do” examples prevent leaders learning by osmosis from poor models.
Anchor everything to these examples
Hiring, feedback, performance conversations, and promotions all reference the same WAGOLL behaviours.
Clear leadership standards reduce ambiguity, defensiveness, and anxiety. Especially for first-time managers trying to “get it right”.
But defining what good looks like is only the start of the journey, now let’s talk about how you can shape leadership behaviours.
Step 2: Build a Lightweight Leadership Development Program
Leadership development doesn’t require a formal program — what it needs is a simple, repeatable rhythm that turns insight into action.
Group learning provides that rhythm by helping shift those previously defined WAGOLL behaviours from “training” to conversation.
This format enables leadership development to become a way that:
Gets managers together,
Allows them to unpack insights collectively, and
Normalises leadership challenges.
This is critical for startups where time is limited and managers are learning in real time.
Run a monthly manager forum, not training sessions
One hour is enough. Bring managers together in small groups to discuss what they learned, rather than to be taught at.
If you’re looking for what to cover, here’s three tips Shelley shared:
Instead of feeling the need to create the learning, curate it.
Use existing books, podcasts, and short articles. The value isn’t the content, it’s the conversation and application that follows.
Use peer walkthroughs instead of facilitators.
Have managers share real examples of where they applied (or struggled with) the behaviour. This builds credibility and normalises learning.
Anchor learning to your leadership definition
Every piece of content should map back to your WAGOLL behaviours. If it doesn’t reinforce “what good looks like here”, it’s noise.
In every discussion, follow a simple loop: insight → action. The goal is an “aha”, followed by a specific behaviour change. No action = no development.
Don’t boil the ocean: Focusing on one behaviour per month compounds faster than ten behaviours no one practices.
And lastly, make commitments visible. End each session with managers stating one action they’ll try before the next forum. Small, explicit commitments drive follow-through.
Leadership capability improves through repetition, not intensity, and a monthly rhythm beats one-off workshops every time.
Step 3: Integrate New Managers with the “Core Routines” of Leadership
Building leadership capability isn’t just about developing current managers, it’s about ensuring every new leader enters the system with the same shared expectations.
Your startup no doubt invests heavily in new starter onboarding because you understand something fundamental: context matters. Yet leadership transitions are often treated as informal, assumed, or worse, slapped on top of their full-time job as an individual contributor.
That gap creates unnecessary stress, avoidable failure, and a steady stream of downstream people issues.
Your leadership onboarding should mirror your employee onboarding.
It should be time-bound — focused on the first six months as a leader in your company — and intentional, not ad hoc.
Crucially, it should apply whether someone has managed before or not.
Prior experience doesn’t eliminate the need to understand how leadership actually works in your business, and something as important as leadership shouldn’t be defined by what ‘good leadership’ looks like at their prior company. If they even defined it at all.
That’s why it’s important to develop a set of core routines as the real job of leadership.
These aren’t abstract competencies, but the day-to-day behaviours that determine whether teams function well or fall apart, such as:
Running effective one-on-ones,
Managing performance early (not at review time),
Having regular and proactive pay conversations, and
Setting expectations clearly and consistently.
Define these in tandem with your leadership cohort, and then form them into a program you can run your new leaders through — being sure to:
Break leadership onboarding into bite-sized pieces,
Sequence learning to match what leaders actually face, and
Not dumping everything at once.
Once you’ve built a lightweight leadership development rhythm, you make it stick by embedding those routines into how new and promoted leaders are onboarded, supported, and set up to succeed from day one.
Exceptional leadership isn’t built through spend, it’s built through clarity, consistency, and deliberate practice.
If you define what good looks like, reinforce it through simple group learning, and embed it into how leaders are onboarded, you don’t just save budget, you build leadership capability that actually lasts.
This article is based on one of the many topics Shelley and I covered in our podcast episode, we also discussed other important topics, including:
How most people problems are leadership problems in disguise.
That great leadership is built through self‑awareness, which requires margin and reflection (and how to enable it).
How to tackle ‘volcano topics’ like pay conversations early, and make them normalised and predictable.
How to build confidence and influence as a HR leader by defining your lanes and owning them.
Everywhere you can find Shelley:
If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe.
That’s all from me this week.
Sure, this is technically the end of the newsletter, but we don’t have to end here! I’d love this to be a two-way chat, so let me know what you found helpful, any successes you’re seeing, or any questions you have about startup compensation.
Until next week,
When you’re ready, here’s three ways I can help you:
1. Tools & resources
Resources and tools that give you what you need to build your own startup compensation practices.
2. Comp consulting
I run FNDN, a global comp consultancy that builds compensation practices that are clear, fair and competitive for startups.
3. Startup People Summit
I run the Startup People Summit, a one day annual event focused on creating the playbook for startup people practices. Grab recordings from past events, or subscribe to the newsletter to join the next event.
