Leadership: Mike Brearley

Don’t Tell Me The Score

RE-RELEASE: The art of leadership with legendary England cricket captain Mike Brearley. As this is the last episode of 2019 we’ve decided to re-release a conversation from much earlier in the DTMTS series, when Simon sat down with former England cricket captain Mike Brearley. The theme of their conversation was leadership. Mike is considered to be one of the best, if not the best, England cricket captain over the last handful of decades. What makes Mike particularly interesting though is that after he stopped playing cricket for England, he became a psychoanalyst, rising right to the top of that profession too, even becoming president of the British psychoanalytical society. Mike was famously described as ‘having a degree in people’ when he was a player- which is another way of saying he is emotionally intelligent. In this episode they discuss what emotional intelligence is, why it’s so important and how someone can look to develop it. Mike explains why it’s important to understand that different people have different motivations, and why all good leaders act on that basis, and they also talk about defence mechanisms and projection, intuition and resourcefulness… and much more besides.