Sarah Furness

This talk helps leaders reframe their relationship with fear and self-doubt, positioning both as navigable conditions rather than disqualifying ones.

Key takeaways:

• Why fear and imposter syndrome are structural features of visible leadership, not individual failures
• How to reframe fear as a signal rather than a stop – and what that change makes possible in practice
• Practical techniques for strengthening leadership presence precisely when self-doubt is loudest

This talk applies the uni-tasking argument to organisational performance, making the case that disciplined focus on single priorities is the defining variable between leaders who perform and those who stall.

Key takeaways:

• Why multitasking degrades performance and how organisations unwittingly build cultures that reward it
• How to identify the highest-impact priority and protect attention for it under pressure
• What focused execution looks like in practice for leaders managing competing demands

This talk gives leaders a structured approach to using setbacks as organisational data, building cultures where accountability and learning coexist rather than compete.

Key takeaways:

• Why growth and innovation are structurally dependent on risk and the willingness to fail
• The distinction between psychological safety and the courage to be genuinely accountable
• How leaders can model error ownership in ways that shift team behaviour – not just attitude

This talk addresses resilience as a live skill rather than a recovery concept, and examines the specific role leaders play in sustaining their teams through difficulty.

Key takeaways:

• Why resilience is built during pressure, not recovered afterwards, and what that means for development
• How self-care functions as operational readiness – not a soft benefit
• The leader’s role in creating conditions for trust rather than rescue

This talk addresses the shift in what credible, inclusive leadership actually requires – and what leaders who built their authority in older models need to change.

Key takeaways:

• How leadership expectations have shifted and why high-performance teams are not built from like-minded people
• What inclusive leadership looks like in practice, beyond the policy level
• How leaders can build authority through vulnerability and accountability rather than despite them

Sarah’s answer: “I’m gonna start by referring to one of my favorite writers, Brené Brown. Often to make decisions we have to rely on gut instinct, particularly when it’s time pressured, and gut instinct isn’t as magic as you think.

It’s actually your brain rapidly scanning through a library of relevant experiences, and there’s an important clue there – relevant experiences. Therefore, every single time you make a decision in a similar scenario, you are building that experience. In other words, the key to building your gut instinct is to make the decisions in the first place.

But you can also refine this gut instinct by getting into the habit of reflecting on those decisions and asking yourself, “What worked well?” Great. I’ll do that next time. “What didn’t work so well?” And “What could I try differently next time?”

And this is where I encourage you to think of every decision is actually a practice decision for the next one you’ll make because you can take that practice with you to the next time you make that decision and it’s gonna be more informed.

Which brings me onto my methodology, which is ‘Practice Scared.’

I think that every experience you have is ultimately a practice for the next time you do it. So you really can practice scared just about everywhere and the practice is important because it’s repeating these actions that makes them automatic under pressure. But also the practicing scared bit’s important as well, because often that kind of slight nugget of fear, we think it’s a red light, but often it’s a green light.

It’s your gut instinct telling you, ‘this is a little bit uncomfortable, but I know in my gut it’s right.’

So practicing scared, making decisions, it’s a brilliant example of doing this because you can do it literally every time you make a decision by trusting your gut, even though it’s a little bit scary, and then making the decision and then reflecting on it, seeing it as practiced for the next time that you do.

So, what are those daily habits that you can do to practice scared and hone your decision making? First of all, as I’ve just said, just make them literally, every time you make a decision, you can practice scared. But I also wanted to point you to a couple of mindfulness techniques that can help you do this so that you don’t have to go out and make that big decision in front of your whole team.

1. Accessing your gut instinctWe can do this by doing mindful meditation, focusing on your breathing, and every time you notice, you are distracted by what’s going on up here. That’s the noise, and that’s often the noise that gets in the way when you’re trying to make a clear decision. It’s the doubt, it’s the fear is the inner critic, isn’t it? So actually having a mindfulness practice where you focus on your breathing and if you get distracted, you let it go, and you come back to your breathing, is going to start building those tools to allow you to access your gut instinct when there’s a lot of kind of chaos.
2. Having a reflective practiceIn mindfulness, we do this through gratitude. So we look back through the day and we say what we’re grateful for. But also what we learned and having that daily practice where you have the courage to look back at your day and you remember to do it, is not only allowing you to practice it, but you’re practicing a little bit scared because often we don’t really wanna look back, do we? We just wanna kind of forge on ahead.

So those two mindfulness techniques can actually really help you to build those muscles, that help you to make decisions. And of course, every time you make a decision, you are also practicing scared, which is gonna help you make more uninformed and confident decisions next time around.

So I hope that helps. Let me know how you practice scared and how you refine that gut instinct so you can make decisions under pressure.”

Sarah’s answer: “I get asked this question a lot, so let me share with you some tips from military training. We had a phrase, ‘If it’s not raining, it’s not training.’ Now, I don’t expect you to all go and get thoroughly wet through, but there are a couple of clues.

Number one, we’re living and breathing it. We’re experiencing it. And when you experience something, you remember it and it’s much more likely for you to talk about it and for you to get lasting traction. But the second thing is it’s a little bit uncomfortable. So when you are doing your training, you want to be putting people in scenarios, work-based scenarios, where they’re actually a little bit uncomfortable, their heart is racing a little bit.

And there’s a few reasons why this is important:

1. When people are uncomfortable, they talk about it and they remember it. So the training sticks.
2. It means they can test out responses to uncomfortable workplace scenarios so that they’ve got something to fall back on the next time this happens. So they’re building competence.
3. Every time you are uncomfortable, you are actually training your brain that, ‘Oh actually, I can do uncomfortable things and I can survive them.’ So you’re building confidence which will help you the next time you encounter any kind of difficulty.

So for that reason, when you are looking for a training provider, look for ones that provide experiential learning and make sure it’s uncomfortable. That’s how you get the most out of training.

But what about in between the training when you are back in the workplace?

I recognize that you don’t all have the luxury of training the way that we did in the military, but you can still keep the training going in your workplace by practicing scared. Because every single day you turn up to work, you have an opportunity to practice. Every experience is kind of a rehearsal for the next time you’ll do it, even slightly better. And I’m not saying that you kind of do an 80% effort. Every time I stand on a stage, I’m giving a hundred percent, but ultimately I’m taking that experience with me for the next time.

So you can think of every experience as practice. And remember, the type of practice is important. It’s gotta be slightly out of your comfort zone, hence, practice scared, so you could pick something you want to get better at and everyone in your team could, for example, sharing a lesson or a mistake with a colleague or making a decision in a meeting without deferring it or turning off your notifications for an hour so you can do deep work.

The key is, is that you put the practice in so you make it small enough that you can start tomorrow. So you can do it repeatedly, but just scary enough that you know it’s stretching you and that is how you practice scared, and that is how you make the most out of training, both in and out of the office.

I hope that helps. Let me know what you think and let me know how you practice scared.”