 |
It's Not Rocket Science! Five Questions Over CoffeeTen Minute Training - helping business owners explode on their P.A.T.H. to Scale Author: The Complete Approach
The mission of Five Questions Over Coffee is to bring a new ways to #stoptheleaks for building a business to growth-hungry business leaders and owners who want to do more with less time, thereby increasing their business and influence. We deliver actionable ideas using five questions over coffee. thecompleteapproach.substack.com Language: en Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
Five Questions Over Coffee with Sharon Kennedy (ep. 150)
Thursday, 2 July, 2026
Who is Sharon?Sharon Kennedy is a business leader and consultant who specializes in helping high-achieving leadership teams reach their goals. With a systemic approach, Sharon works with successful and ambitious individuals who find themselves at a crossroads—where progress seems more difficult than it should be despite their capability and intelligence. By focusing on aligning organizational goals with effective strategies, Sharon guides her clients to greater clarity and collective achievement, emphasizing business-level solutions over individual fixes. Her work is driven by a commitment to turning challenges into opportunities for alignment and business growth.Key TakeawaysIn this insightful episode, Sharon Kennedy shares her expertise on how leaders and businesses can gain better alignment in their work, especially when navigating complexity and uncertainty. She explains why many high-achieving individuals and leadership teams feel like something is “missing,” even when they’re doing so much right—and how stepping back, gaining clarity, and focusing on systemic coherence transforms both people and organizations.Key topics include:* Identifying the Type of Client Helped: Sharon discusses the kinds of ambitious leaders and teams she works with, who often find their progress harder than it should be and benefit from a systemic, not just individual, approach.* What Clients Have Tried Before: Many have read books, taken courses, or followed common advice, but struggle to see the results because true change requires personal insight and a shift in perspective.* The Power of Lightbulb Moments: Sharon explains that breakthroughs aren’t about doing things “wrong,” but about discovering new ways of seeing challenges and embracing novel solutions.* Sharon’s Process at Engage and Prosper: From open, candid diagnostics to supporting genuine business-wide alignment, Sharon covers her approach to lasting organizational change.* Valuable Takeaways: The importance of identifying areas of repeated friction, why strategy often fails to translate into reality, and why real coherence beats great intentions every time.* Inspiration & Influence: Sharon shares her influences, including Rory Sutherland and Simon Sinek, and reflects on what human behavior teaches us about creativity, bravery, and leadership.* The Killer Question: How do you know when your organization lacks coherence—and what can you do about it?Timestamps Overview* [00:00:31–00:01:15] Introduction of Sharon Kennedy and her background in talent and neuro-inclusion* [00:01:27–00:03:22] The characteristics of Sharon’s ideal clients and her focus on business systems, not just individuals* [00:03:23–00:05:07] What clients have tried previously and why change requires personal insight and self-determination* [00:07:10–00:09:18] Sharon’s process at Engage and Prosper: diagnostics, clarity benchmarking, and identifying points of friction in the business* [00:11:10–00:11:46] Why company values and real behaviors don’t always align—and what to do about it* [00:12:45–00:16:27] Sharon’s personal journey, influences, and what really prompted her approach to leadership coaching and coherence* [00:17:12–00:19:22] The “killer question”: Signs your organization or team lacks coherence, and what key indicators (like repeated unresolved issues) to look forDon’t forget: If you want to connect, ask questions, or get notified about upcoming guests like Maria subscribe to the newsletter here. You only need your first name and email—easy as (coffee) pie!And don’t forget: keep an eye out for next guest. To submit your own questions, subscribe to our newsletter and join the conversation!P.S. Loved this episode? Hit reply and let us know what resonated most_________________________________________________________________________________________________Subscribe to our newsletter and get details of when we are doing these interviews live at www.systemise.me/subscribeFind out more about being a guest at : link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/beaguestSubscribe to the podcast at https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/podcastHelp us get this podcast in front of as many people as possible. Leave a nice five-star review at apple podcasts : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/apple-podcasts and on YouTube : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/Itsnotrocketscienceatyt!Do You Need a P.A.T.H. to Scale?We help established business owners with small but growing teams:go from feeling stuck, sceptical, and tired of wasting time and money on false promises,to running a confident, purpose-driven business where their team delivers results, customers are happy, and they can finally enjoy more time with their family -with a results-based refund guarantee: if you follow the process and it doesn’t work, we refund what you paid.This is THE P.A.T.H. to scale your business.————————————————————————————————————————————-TranscriptNote, this was transcribed using transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast.SUMMARY KEYWORDSneuroinclusion, talent development, innovation, education, high-growth sectors, leadership alignment, coaching, confidence building, skill development, business coherence, systemic approach, candidate-to-company pathway, fragmentation, fresh perspectives, clarity, diagnostic tools, Clarity benchmark, employee engagement, operational systems, team behavior, AI integration, onboarding challenges, early career hires, job fit, organizational congruence, company culture, values alignment, productivity, absenteeism, staff turnover, workplace coherenceSPEAKERSharon Kennedy, Stuart WebbStuart Webb [00:00:00]:Don’t mess me about now. Now is not the time to mess me about. Hi and welcome back to It’s Not Rocket Science, 5 questions over coffee. I’m here with— this is my coffee, by the way. I’m here with, uh, Sharon, and she has got coffee as well in front of her. Sharon Kennedy is a, um, a coach, uh, helping to develop future talent. Uh, she’s, uh, works with people who are looking to develop high potential individuals in innovation, talent development, education. She’s helping people build skills, confidence, and insight necessary to move in the fast-moving, high-growth sectors, particularly interested in people with neuro-inclusion in their development.Stuart Webb [00:01:16]:So Sharon, welcome to It’s Not Rocket Science, 5 Questions Over Coffee, and thanks for being a guest.Sharon Kennedy [00:01:21]:Thanks for having me.Stuart Webb [00:01:24]:So tell me a little—Sharon Kennedy [00:01:25]:Perfect.Stuart Webb [00:01:27]:Let’s, let’s just explore a little bit. So if we’re looking at the sort of the, the person you’re trying to help, what is the, uh, what are the characteristics? What are the— what is it you, you are— you would say are the sort of, um, ideal client, ideal person you’re trying to help with this neuroinclusivity, building their confidence, uh, in this fast-paced environment of education and employment today?Sharon Kennedy [00:01:50]:Well, I suppose it’s— I suppose the first thing to say, and I understand why you’ve positioned it the way you have. But I— as much as I work on an individual level, I really come at it from a business level. That’s what we’re trying to achieve. And so, so the individual leader or individuals in this leadership team are, generally speaking, going to be quite successful and achieving lots of great things, lots of ambition, lots of intelligence, capability, and things like that. It’s more that they’re at a point where it seems harder than it should be. And they’re still pushing forward. And I think really, for me, what I try to do, and, and we as a business, is about helping them find alignment in what they’re trying to achieve and how they’re trying to achieve it. So it’s more of a systemic approach that we take to it.Sharon Kennedy [00:02:38]:So whilst all the things you described are exactly what we also do, you know, clarity, confidence, talent, uh, you know, development, and the sort of candidate-to-company pathway and making that the optimum that it can be. Ultimately, we’re about trying to make sure that we’re helping leaderships and companies be more coherent in their approach so that the consistency is there and the inner alignment is there as well. So if you ask me about the type of people, they’re going to be very intelligent, capable people, but they’re just kind of— they know something’s missing, but they can’t really work out what that is. Um, and so for us, it’s normally sort of fragmentation in their thinking, really, and trying to help them sort of stand back sometimes and then look at things with fresh eyes.Stuart Webb [00:03:23]:So, so that’s interesting. So, so tell me, um, what they’ve tried before. What is it they’ve been attempting to do before they come across somebody like you can help them with that alignment? Have they, have they done books, courses, all of the above?Sharon Kennedy [00:03:36]:All of that. I, I’ve— well, and just lived on the planet, you know, and, and gained experience and done lots of things brilliantly right. And done lots of other things that they, they don’t quite know why it’s not worked. And I think, I suppose it’s sometimes it’s like, you know, we grow up hearing the adages of, like, can’t see the wood for the trees, or, you know, you’re in the trenches rather than— and working in the business than on the business, all those great phrases. But I suppose actually sometimes it’s, it’s about helping people sometimes to think differently when they don’t know how to think differently. Because it, you know, they’ll— yeah, we’ve— again, I know I’m using the clichés, but the Definition of insanity: keep doing the same thing, expect a different result. And I suppose all these phrases and words don’t always mean very much until you actually get to the point of where the penny drops. Somebody says something in a certain way, or enough things happen, and you just kind of go, I, I get it now.Sharon Kennedy [00:04:27]:It— that now makes sense to me in my way. And the problem is we all think differently. None of us think the same. None of us have got the same life experiences or talents or skills. We’re all individual mashes of lots of, you know, life and experience and personality and DNA. And, you know, we’re just unique individuals. And so what might be the penny dropping for one person is, you know, is it happens in a different way for somebody else at a different time. So it really— I know that might sound a bit ambiguous, but I think it’s a bit like— that’s what I’ve learned through doing coaching a lot of the time, is the individual has to self-determine their own insight All anybody else ever does is facilitate that being able to happen.Stuart Webb [00:05:09]:It’s interesting. So, so it is— it, it— there’s a moment, there’s a, there’s a point at which something happens, whether that be a difficult situation or a sudden realization that, that you’ve been doing it wrong all this time, which produces that clarity of thought suddenly that I need help.Sharon Kennedy [00:05:29]:Yeah, I don’t even think wrong is not— and I’m not picking— you’re not being critical, but wrong isn’t the right word because I suppose it’s just we all— everything is isn’t it? All through our life we’re trying and we’re experimenting, we’re exploring, and we’re doing things differently. I think it’s just sometimes somebody can have those, you know, whether you call them like light bulb moments or insights, whatever, you know, fat bombs, whatever you want to call them. A number of things happen, you know, whether it’s a— you read a piece of content, you have a conversation with someone, you watch something. Sometimes it’s just enough things that happen relatively that, that your brain— I mean, our brains are amazing. I’ve done a lot of stuff around neuroscience, and, you know, when we always think we have those light bulb moments, those light bulb moments are not just suddenly epiphanies. They’re, they’re our subconscious kind of going, maybe got the answer here if you want to maybe sit down for a bit, do things a bit differently, and listen to me, actually. And that’s really what I help to sort of do as well, you know. That’s what coaching is, and that’s what sort of like systems designers and systems thinking and trying to get people to sort of sometimes stand back and, and just re-look at things with new perspectives, different perspectives, because it’s really hard to do that, you know, because we take comfort and confidence in familiarity and, and knowing what we’ve always done.Sharon Kennedy [00:06:45]:And it might have always worked before, but we’re in different times, and every so often you have to stand back and reappraise and reflect on what you have now, because it’s, it’s a new world all the time, regularly, you know. We’re in another industrial revolution or whatever you want to call it. So So I think it is just having the confidence and being brave enough, really, sometimes to kind of go, is there maybe a different way to look at this?Stuart Webb [00:07:10]:So tell me, we’ve reached the sort of, uh, my third question then, and it’s, it’s about the valuable, uh, advice that you’d give. So talk to me a little bit about two things, one of which is, so what do you do? How do you bring the outcome that those people are looking for? And secondly, is there a piece of valuable advice that you’d give to our, our listeners at the moment? And yeah, I’d welcome any comments from anybody either listening in the future in the recording or as we’re listening to us live now. If you’ve got questions, let Sharon know what those questions are so that we can, we can pose them to her. But Sharon, start with that first thing. What is it you would actually do within, within your business, Engage and Prosper, to help them overcome that challenge?Sharon Kennedy [00:07:56]:So I suppose the first thing we do is have a proper conversation, uh, and explore really what is happening in their business, what, what frictions and areas they’re finding either repeatedly failing or frustrating or just costly, or, you know, they’ll, they’ll know. Every business will have its own version of that, and it might be a number of them, it might just be one area. So we have really open, candid chats around— structural, structured chat, but it still is a chat, it is a conversation to understand and explore that. And it does require a bit of trust and openness and it’s obviously confidential. So that’s the first thing we would do. If the next step is the right next step, we would run a Clarity benchmark, which is a diagnostic tool we use, which we’ve created around understanding the whole element of clarity in systems, people, and behavior, because it is structural, as we say. But, but the, the sort of free advice, if you like, that I would say to anybody on that call or otherwise is to to start thinking about where you’re seeing repeated friction in the business, where things are— you’re having to revisit them on a regular basis because you thought you dealt with them at that meeting, but something isn’t— it’s just not changed, or it’s not landing, or it— people don’t really know what they should be doing about what’s been agreed, um, because that’s really, again, where the coherence is not really there. It’s not— it’s not landed, or it’s not clear, or it’s not being driven in a clear way.Sharon Kennedy [00:09:19]:Um, and again, it’s, it’s quite difficult to give examples because that might be very diff— different in every business, but it might be, you know, a high turnover of staff for a particular type of role or a particular type of hire. Um, so early years, early career hires are regularly quite hard at the moment to sort of, um, engage and onboard and successfully, you know. Some of that might be because it’s the wrong person and job fit. Some of it might be the job needs to evolve and move. Um, and I think you’ve gone now, so I feel a bit worried that you may have, um, just disappeared. And if this is still live— no, you’re there.Stuart Webb [00:09:59]:I was merely focusing on you, Sharon, as you were talking about such an intense subject. I wanted people to, to focus on you rather than seeing me making gudie.Sharon Kennedy [00:10:08]:Tell me you were going to do it anyway. So, so that, so that’s really— so it could be different stages of either people coming in, or it could be different systems that you’re using. And again, with AI, oh my goodness, you know, people are overwhelmed with it. I think they don’t quite know in some organizations and businesses how much they should be using, what they should be using it for, how they should be using it and integrating it. So there, there is— there are a whole, uh, plethora of areas and issues that could be the problem or the challenge for why the organization just isn’t achieving what it knows it could and should. Um, so I think that’s really the sort of free advice that I would suggest, really. Um, And it could be operational systems, team behavior, attitudes. I mean, you know, coming from an employee engagement, um, business and, you know, background, which I did for a long, long time, a lot of— a tiny example would be about, you know, having behaviors on the wall and these great values as a company culture and saying what it’s like to work for us and we’re brilliant and we’re this and we’re that and all the great honest sincere things, but not necessarily living by those values.Sharon Kennedy [00:11:10]:And it becomes a bit rhetoric rather than reality. So I think it— that’s just one example of what I’m trying to convey, is that great intent and a great strategy written down isn’t necessarily what the reality is or what the lived experience is. And, and I think ultimately that’s, that’s really what we’re trying to do— some, you know, audits, housekeeping, whatever you want to call it— and then really move forward with a really coherent plan and also that individual congruence. So that internal alignment between the— what you want to be as a leader and as a business owner, and also what you are actually then delivering as a, as a leadership team.Stuart Webb [00:11:47]:Brilliant. I will now come back into screen so that you can see me, but I wanted people to focus on you when you were talking about that because I think it’s important. Um, Sharon, thank you. And, and just to remind people, um, you’ll see at the bottom of the screen I’ve put where we put our guests’ contact details, their offers, uh, things like landing pages where you can go and get free things from them, uh, in systemize.me/free-stuff. And we’ll have links to Sharon’s website, Engage and Prosper. Yeah, got some downloads, got some downloads that we will be putting into our vault so that you can get hold of those and get— and hear some of the great wisdom that Sharon has on this. So, Sharon, that kind of, uh, you mentioned it once, and I presume, uh, it is from this background of, of, uh, of employing engagement, um, that you, you came to this realization. But it can’t just have been employee engagement.Stuart Webb [00:12:45]:There must have been a light bulb moment, a book, a course, a personal experience. What was it that sort of suddenly made you realize that some of this stuff is related to Well, uh, these, these moments that sort of, you know, you now can help to step in and, and to help people to understand better.Sharon Kennedy [00:13:04]:Yeah, I mean, I, I did do a research around this question of like, you know, should I come up with a really clever author and things like that?Stuart Webb [00:13:13]:Please don’t do clever, we don’t do clever.Sharon Kennedy [00:13:16]:Well, what I suppose I came down to really was the fact that, you know, I’m the, the right side of 50, if that’s the right phrase, but you know, I’m 52 now and I think, you know, I’ve had lots of chapters in my career, lots of working with lots of different, you know, great bosses, great leaders, um, and either, you know, been to events and been inspired to get inspired by people every day. And, um, I suppose what I’ve recognized through my own observations, pattern recognition, whatever you want to call it, is that when leaders are sort of inconsistent, um, and it’s hard to actually see consistency in someone if you’re not seeing enough communication, interacting enough, it takes a long time to layer knowledge and understand who somebody is or what business is and all those sort of things. So for me, it’s about when things are fragmented, you know, if leadership is fragmented, if how the business works is fragmented, how it communicates, how it does things. And it, you know, and some people might use the word chaos, and I don’t really mean chaos because I’m not suggesting any business is chaotic, but I do think we think often it’s more organized than it actually is because a lot of things are tacit knowledge, um, things just get done. We don’t always know who does what until person leaves that did it. Um, so it’s things like that really. It’s sometimes just having some order with some scope for creativity, innovation, all those sort of things. But for me, it’s not one person, it’s not one thing.Sharon Kennedy [00:14:42]:You know, there’s some brilliant names I could drop. I mean, Rory Sutherland, I think, is just fabulous. Whenever you— you know, the opposite of a great idea is another great idea. You know, I think that, like, you just go around an eternal loop on that phrase alone. You know, it just proves that there’s never one right or wrong way of doing anything. There’s many, many ways of doing it. Um, you know, Simon Sinek, you know, he had big influence on me many years ago. Um, Dan Pink, you know, um, I think— trying to think of one of the other big readers, and I can’t think of his name now, one of the authors on marketing.Sharon Kennedy [00:15:11]:Um, his name’s gone for me, but, um, it might come back in a minute. But loads of people have really inspired me with what they’ve known, what they’ve seen, what they’ve realized. And, and I think really what really inspires me is human behavior. So everybody inspires me because I get to see how they think, how they work, how they manage things, how they overcome things, and how they do things differently. Because it’s doing the different things that allow you then to do things differently, which I know might sound really obvious, but, you know, other people being brave enough to do things differently allows you to recognize that there isn’t a right or wrong. And so therefore, people can’t really judge you for your approach because it’s just how you think and what you’re prepared to try. Um, and sometimes happy accidents come out of that, and other times— I think Rory Southern gives an example of a, of a, of a about a bench, you know, that when people sadly pass and people put a memorial bench there. And I’m not going to do his talk justice, but I recommend everyone watches it.Sharon Kennedy [00:16:05]:And he talks about, you know, where you do need a bench, there’s never any— a bench, you know, nobody ever sat there for a bench to then be put there, you know, or, or things like that. But anyway, you know, I’m not— so I’m not doing him justice, but, you know, he does, uh, he thinks of some things in a very, um, creative way. And I think it’s that creativity that allows us to, to do things in a better way. Sometimes like brilliance, and sometimes it’s a learning that we grow from, like in an invention, you know.Stuart Webb [00:16:34]:That’s brilliant. Um, Sharon, I, I guess, I guess I’m left with only one question, uh, and it’s the question that, that, that I often, I often ask in this, which is what is the question that I should have asked that I haven’t yet, that, that sort of killer question that brings it all together, which gives us a neat way of sort of, you know, trying to encapsulate all this. And, and I can’t think of what that question is, so I guess I have to rely upon you to think about that question. So what’s that, what’s that killer question? What’s that question I should have asked you which I haven’t yet? Um, and obviously once you’ve asked, uh, once you’ve asked the question, you better answer it for us because I don’t know the answer.Sharon Kennedy [00:17:12]:Well, I think we’ve, we’ve covered a lot of it already, really, but I suppose the question was, was You know, how do you know when an organization lacks coherence? And I suppose as a, a leader or a manager in it yourself, it’s going to be when, you know, some of what I’ve said before, you know, when that issue just keeps coming back up, it’s still not resolved, or the accountability for making it resolved and solved, it just— it doesn’t, doesn’t land. That person doesn’t own it, or that team or department or whoever it is, supplier, whatever it might be, because obviously there’s multi-parts of a business running well and growing. Um, it just could be a repetitive issue that you think has got fixed and then it’s back again. Um, and, and if people are compensating, I think that’s the real deep pit, isn’t it? Some things actually work, but not through or without a lot of effort or a lot of being pulled out of shape and, and stress. Um, a burnout, you know, or— I mean, yeah, one of the big dashboard KPIs that most businesses always look at is absenteeism. You know, sickness, uh, you know, turnover. All those— the stats are always normal ones to look at. But I suppose really it’s about tenure and productivity for me, you know.Sharon Kennedy [00:18:22]:Are people staying because you’re a good employer and it’s all working relatively well, i.e., that it’s in congruence for them as an individual working for your business? And as a, as a company, are you in coherence with how you should be and could be operating?, so that those KPIs, you know, are actually in a good balance. It’s never going to be a perfect world, but, but if you keep having to revisit the same stuff, something’s not working. And I suppose it, you know, and I’m making that sound really simple because of course all those individuals are trying to resolve it, but there’s, there’s obviously got to be a different way to attack it because maybe like with a lot of business development, when a client comes to you and says, this is our problem, it’s normally something else that’s actually the problem, not what they think it is. And that’s because often they just don’t get the time or the luxury to be able to sit back and actually look at things with fresh perspectives and, and ask different questions.Stuart Webb [00:19:22]:Yeah, uh, Sharon, uh, yeah, great perspective. Uh, thank you so much for causing us to just stop for a moment and think about some of those things. And, uh, I encourage you, uh, listening, uh, listening to the recording, uh, drop into the comments below this your questions to Sharon. She will, she will be able to get back to you and answer them because I think that’s important that you get questions like this answered. Um, and for me, I just have one tiny little ask, and that is, um, if you’ve enjoyed this, even if you haven’t, um, excuse me, uh, please go to www.systemize.me.Sharon Kennedy [00:20:04]:That’s s-y-s-t-e-m-i-s-e.me/subscribe.Stuart Webb [00:20:09]:There’s a simple form there that just gives you, uh, asks you for your name, uh, your email address, and that means you can get onto the mailing list where I send out information about who’s coming up in this week’s podcast recording. And you can get it then, and, uh, you also get the copy of the recording when it comes out. So Sharon, excuse me again. Thank you so much. Thank you for just spending a few minutes with us. Now, uh, we’ve had— we would appear the people are now leaving the live, uh, live recording, so they have had their questions answered, which is important. Thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us. I look forward to, uh, to, to seeing you answer those questions that come in on the chat below the, the podcast.Stuart Webb [00:20:53]:So thank you for spending some time with us.Sharon Kennedy [00:20:55]:Thanks for having me, Stuart. I really enjoyed it. Get full access to It's Not Rocket Science! at thecompleteapproach.substack.com/subscribe
