Jul 6, 2026 · 39 min · 11 segments
Join Simon around the After Dinner Leadership table with Aleck Jones, CEO & Co-Founder of Kindling Bio. In this episode, Aleck reflects on the leadership…
Alec JonesGuest
Simon FaggHost
When we're in our early stages of our career, it can be very easy to look at established CEOs and think they've got it all sorted.
Real leadership isn't about reaching some magical plateau that we know everything and never feel stressed again.
Real leadership is actually about expanding comfort zones that that craziness, that chaos, that messiness is actually a little bit more comfortable.
Perhaps you could take a moment to think about the last time you felt truly uncomfortable.
Could have been a difficult conversation, a tough meeting, asked to take on extra responsibilities.
We were talking about how we can create more awe-inspiring learning experiences for our clients.
And part of the conversation turned to some of the things that I could do more effectively in the design process and also the implementation process.
I'm really glad we went there and it is a place of growth for me, but it could be easy for me to have shut that down.
But think about the kind of decisions you're making, perhaps when you didn't have all the information, maybe not enough information you'd like.
Admitting that we're wrong, telling your team that the strategy that we had in mind, we're going to need to turn maybe 180 and do something else now because of what the market's happening.
Every single one of those moments can make us feel queasy or make our stomach drop.
And as a consequence, it can be very easy to avoid them and to do something else, to play safer, to pretend that we've got it all figured out.
When we're in our early stages of our career, it can be very easy to look at established CEOs and think they've got it all sorted.
Real leadership isn't about reaching some magical plateau that we know everything and never feel stressed again.
Real leadership is actually about expanding comfort zones that that craziness, that chaos, that messiness is actually a little bit more comfortable.
Perhaps you could take a moment to think about the last time you felt truly uncomfortable.
Could have been a difficult conversation, a tough meeting, asked to take on extra responsibilities.
We were talking about how we can create more awe-inspiring learning experiences for our clients.
And part of the conversation turned to some of the things that I could do more effectively in the design process and also the implementation process.
I'm really glad we went there and it is a place of growth for me, but it could be easy for me to have shut that down.
But think about the kind of decisions you're making, perhaps when you didn't have all the information, maybe not enough information you'd like.
Admitting that we're wrong, telling your team that the strategy that we had in mind, we're going to need to turn maybe 180 and do something else now because of what the market's happening.
Every single one of those moments can make us feel queasy or make our stomach drop.
And as a consequence, it can be very easy to avoid them and to do something else, to play safer, to pretend that we've got it all figured out.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
