BlueSky Lisa

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BlueSky Lisa

I am improving leadership using strategic coaching grounded in real-world leadership experience | Ex-C Suite Are you thriving?

Work takes up so much of your day, work with me if you want to ensure success and growth in your professional life.

11/09/2026

Have you ever been told you're too much, too blunt, too strong, too emotional, by someone who meant it as criticism?

One person at my Leadership Roundtable yesterday described exactly that, alongside the gap between the values their company claims and what it actually does. Another wondered aloud if it's imposter syndrome, since they don't feel they have all the tools or background for the calls they're making anyway. A third, independent now after years inside big corporates, said they just miss having anyone to think it through with.

Ninety minutes together, and by the end the whole conversation had shifted. I recorded a short recap above, walking through what came up and why.

I run these Roundtables regularly. If you'd like a seat at the next one, send me a message.

Does any of this resonate with you?

10/09/2026

What do you do when the thing you most want to get rid of is also the thing nobody else will take?

Daniel had spent years quietly owning a job nobody had ever given him. His team fed an internal market indicator into a company-wide dashboard. It started as a side task, a number nobody paid much attention to. Then finance leadership tied that number to sales targets and bonus calculations across the whole company, and overnight a task nobody wanted became a number everybody watched.

His team hadn't changed anything about what they did. The scrutiny had.

He and his manager had asked finance to take it over more than once. Every time, the answer was no.

When we talked it through, he had two options he wanted to put on the table. Keep pushing finance to take it over, which is what he actually wanted. Or scale his team back entirely and let finance run it the way they do for every other division, which he knew was a long shot.

Two options. I asked him what happens with two options.

He thought about it and said, someone wins and someone loses.

That's the whole problem. Two options is an argument. Three options is a choice.

So I asked him for a third. Something so unappealing that nobody would seriously consider it, precisely so the middle option, the one he actually wanted, would look like the reasonable compromise. He found it quickly once he had the frame.

Three options. One his team would clearly do extra work for. One nobody with any sense would choose. And one that was actually reasonable, sitting quietly in the middle, waiting to be picked.

He was no longer asking them to choose between yes and no. He was asking them to choose the direction that already looked right.

So the next time you're building a case for one specific outcome, are you walking in with two options, or three?

I'd love to hear how this resonates with you.

09/09/2026

I spent the weekend in Crans-Montana at the Omega European Masters. My husband loves to volunteer, which is four days on his feet. I love to watch, which is a couple of hours of work from the Airbnb and then the rest of the day wandering from hole to hole. It works out.

If you have never been, the course sits high above the Rhône valley with the Alps stacked up behind it, and on a clear September day it is close to absurd. Sun, thin bright air, the smell of warm pine, and players walking the fairways while the mountains do all the work in the background. I could have watched it all day, and more or less did.

Going into the final round, the man leading the field was Paul Casey, a Brit who lives over in Zug. He had said after Saturday's round that whatever happened on Sunday, all of his prize money would go to Fondation Beloved, the fund for the victims and families of the tragic fire here on New Year's Day that killed 41 people and injured another 115, most of them under the age of 20.

He said it before he knew whether he would win anything worth giving away.

He started Sunday three shots clear. Then Thriston Lawrence, six behind when the day began, went out and shot a 62.

They finished level. It took four extra holes to separate them, all played at the 18th. On three of those both men missed their birdie chances, with dozens of cameras and hundreds of spectators watching. On the fourth, Lawrence nailed it.

Lawrence has won here three times in five years now. The last man to win this one three times was Seve Ballesteros, who redesigned the course and has his name on it.

And Joel Girrbach finished tied for ninth, the best of the Swiss. In that field, on this course, quite something.

What I keep thinking about is how much the two of them seemed to be enjoying it. A title going back and forth between them, and not an ounce of edge in it anywhere. Just two very good players in the sun, going again, and again, and again. The volunteers, four days in and long past done, went with them.

And Casey came second. He paid up anyway. The whole runner-up cheque, a little over USD 400,000. Down in the village there is a wooden pavilion where people have been leaving things since January. Photographs, flowers, candles, teddy bears, paper butterflies. You walk past it on your way up to the golf.

Good on you, Joel. Good on you, Thriston. And good on you, Paul.

08/09/2026

Who do you think out loud with?

Not the person you tell the decision to once you've made it. The one you think it through with while it's still a mess.

Not your team, who are watching you for certainty. Not always your boss, because that conversation becomes a performance review in disguise. Peers are often quietly competing for the same next role. And the people who love you at home want to help, which is its own kind of pressure, and they don't know the politics of your particular corridor.

So you carry it. You look composed in the meeting, you make the call, and mostly you are right, because you are experienced. But mostly right, alone, is an exhausting way to lead, and it is not the same as thinking clearly.

On Thursday morning I'm running a BlueSky Leadership Roundtable. A small group of senior professionals, one honest conversation, real issues, nothing to buy. People tend to arrive carrying a question they have been turning over for months, and leave with it in a different shape.

It's this Thursday, 10 September, 8.30 to 10 CEST, and it's free. It's by application, because a conversation like this only works if the room is right.

If you'd like to be there, you can apply here: https://programs.blueskycourses.com/roundtable

29/08/2026

What would you call the thing that's actually stopping you from being seen?

One of my clients once thanked me for something I'm honestly not sure I did: "highlighting the Imposter Syndrome." I don't put much stock in that phrase as a diagnosis. Plenty of good research questions whether it's a real thing at all, rather than an ordinary moment of doubt with a catchy label attached.

What we actually worked on wasn't naming a syndrome. It was naming a habit: staying quiet in the room even when she had the answer, letting someone else's confidence stand in for her own competence.

That's a specific, observable thing. Not a condition. Something you do, which means it's something you can stop doing.

What's the specific thing you do, not the label for it, that's actually keeping you quiet?

Reach for the Sky,
Lisa

28/08/2026

Are you good at your job, or does it actually fit you? Most people have only ever answered the first question.

One of my clients put it this way after we finished working together: "It gave me clarity for my next steps and helped me define my career goals more clearly. I understood that while you can do many things, if they don't match your strengths and values, it will drain a lot of your energy."

You can be competent at something for years, get promoted in it, be relied on for it, and still feel the wrong fit the whole time. Competence doesn't tell you anything about fit. It just tells you that you can keep going.

So the real question isn't "am I ready." It's simpler and harder: does this still fit who you are now, not who you were when you took it on?

Reach for the Sky,
Lisa

27/08/2026

I have been quiet here for a couple of weeks.

My beautiful, kind mother died on 8 August, and between then and her funeral on the 17th, this was not somewhere I had it in me to be.

I was very lucky to be able to fly from Switzerland to Australia to be with my family, and I am deeply grateful that I could be there.

What I will say here is that grief does not run on the schedule you would prefer it to.

I am back in Switzerland now. And one of the things I am looking forward to is a small conversation I run every so often: the BlueSky Leadership Roundtable.

No pitch. No framework to sell you.

Just a small group of professionals talking honestly about what is actually going on for them: in their organisations, in their leadership, and sometimes just in themselves.

The next one is Thursday 10 September at 8:30am CEST. If that sounds like a conversation worth your time, details and application are here: https://programs.blueskycourses.com/roundtable

Reach for the Sky,
Lisa

13/08/2026

A client asked me last week: how do I know when to push back, and when to just let it go?

It's not really a tactical question. Every senior professional I work with can read a room, they know how to choose their battles on paper. What's harder is the moment itself, when something happens and you have half a second to decide whether this is worth spending your capital on.

Push back too often and you become the difficult one, the person whose objections stop landing because there are too many of them. Let too much go and you slowly disappear from the decisions that matter, quietly training the room to expect your silence.

Neither extreme is wrong on its own. What matters is whether the choice is actually yours, made on purpose, or whether it's just the pattern you've fallen into because it's easier than deciding each time.

Has push back or let go, in this exact case, actually been chosen? Or has it just become the default?

I'd love to hear how this resonates with you.

12/08/2026

How much of yourself should you adapt to fit the culture around you?

When I began working in Swiss banking, I was Australian, often one of the only women in the room, and learning to operate in an environment very different from the one I had grown up in.

So I adapted.

I became more careful and measured. I paid attention to how decisions were made, who was listened to and what leadership was expected to look like.

Some of that adaptation was valuable. It helped me understand the organisation and work effectively within it.

But over time, I also realised that adapting too far can come at a cost. When you become overly focused on fitting the culture around you, you can lose some of the qualities that make you effective in the first place.

For me, that meant reconnecting with my directness, trusting my own judgement and becoming more comfortable leading in a way that felt natural to me.

I didn't stop adapting. I became more conscious about what I adapted and what I chose to retain.

That distinction made me a better leader.

Where is the line for you between adapting to an organisation and losing too much of yourself?

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Webseite

https://www.mybluesky.ch/, https://programs.blueskycourses.com/authenticleader-personalauthority, https://programs.blues

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