Michael Smith Interview on Why Great Leaders Are Made, Not Born
Michael Smith is an executive coach and the founder of MS Consulting Solutions. After service in the Royal Engineers and more than 20 years leading major programmes at BAE Systems, Network Rail and BT Openreach, he now helps senior leaders close capability gaps and build teams that deliver. In this interview, Michael shares what leading under pressure taught him, why traditional leadership training so often fails to stick, and why he believes leadership is a skill anyone can develop.
Michael Smith, Founder of MS Consulting Solutions
What inspired you to leave corporate leadership and establish MS Consulting Solutions, and what do you hope to do differently through your coaching?
For more than 20 years, I led large programmes, first in the Royal Engineers and then at BAE Systems, Network Rail and BT Openreach. Across all of them, one thing kept proving true: the plan rarely decided the outcome. The leadership did. When leaders were clear, consistent and genuinely invested in their people, teams delivered things that looked impossible on paper. When they were not, even well-resourced programmes struggled.
When redundancy came onto the table at Openreach, I saw it as the push to do what I had been thinking about for some time. Rather than wait and see, I chose to build MS Consulting Solutions and focus full-time on the part of the job I found most rewarding: developing leaders.
What I want to do differently is keep coaching grounded in reality. I am not a theorist. I have sat in the seat, carried the targets and had the difficult conversations. My coaching is practical, direct and focused on changes a leader can apply on Monday morning, not ideas that sound good in a workshop and disappear by Friday.
Having led major infrastructure programmes, including Reach26 at BT Openreach, what did those experiences teach you about leading teams under pressure?
One of the most valuable lessons came when I took over a team that was thoroughly demotivated. The previous manager had focused almost entirely on delivery results. The numbers were all that mattered, and the people had stopped feeling seen, heard or valued. Performance was being pushed, but it was not being sustained.
My first job was not to change the plan. It was to rebuild trust. I spent time understanding the individuals, what was getting in their way and what they needed from me. I was clear that delivery still mattered, but I made it equally clear that I cared about them as people and would back them when things got tough.
That balance changed everything. Once people felt supported, they started taking ownership again, raising problems early and solving them together. Delivery improved because the team wanted it to, not because they were told to.
The lesson I took is simple. Pressure reveals whether a team trusts its leader. If you only manage the numbers, people give you compliance. If you lead the people and the delivery together, they give you commitment, and commitment is what carries a team through the hardest moments.
What challenges do you see when technically skilled professionals move into senior leadership roles, and why can that transition be so difficult?
The biggest challenge is that the skills that got someone promoted are rarely the skills they need next. A brilliant engineer or programme specialist is usually rewarded for being the person with the answers. In senior leadership, success depends far more on drawing answers out of others, building alignment and creating the conditions for people to perform.
That shift can feel deeply uncomfortable. Many new leaders keep doing the technical work because it is familiar and it feels productive. They become the bottleneck, their teams wait for direction and they end up working longer hours while having less impact.
There is also an identity shift. Someone who has always been valued for their expertise suddenly has to be valued for their judgement, their influence and how they make other people feel. Few organisations prepare people for that transition. They promote on technical merit and then hope leadership capability follows.
The leaders who make the transition well are the ones who accept that their job has changed, invest in their own development early and get honest feedback about how they are showing up, rather than assuming their technical credibility will carry them.
You've argued that organisations often have a capability problem rather than a leadership problem. How can they recognise the difference?
In my experience, when organisations say they have a leadership problem, what they often have is a capability gap that nobody has properly diagnosed. The people in leadership roles are capable and willing, but they have never been equipped with the skills the role now demands.
The difference shows in the pattern. A genuine leadership problem tends to be about intent or values: someone who does not care about their people, or who undermines the team. A capability problem looks different. The leader cares, works hard and wants to do well, but avoids difficult conversations, struggles to delegate, or defaults to command and control when the pressure rises.
A useful test is to ask what happens when you give that leader support, structure and honest feedback. If they grow quickly, it was capability. If nothing changes despite the support, you may be looking at something deeper.
Getting this right matters because the fixes are completely different. Treating a capability gap as a character flaw damages good people. Treating it as a skills gap, and investing in the right development, usually unlocks performance that was there all along.
Why do you think traditional leadership training often fails to create lasting changes in how people lead?
Most traditional leadership training is designed as an event rather than a process. People spend a day or two in a room, learn some useful models, feel energised and then return to exactly the same pressures, habits and expectations they left behind. Within a few weeks, very little has changed.
Lasting change in how someone leads is behavioural, and behaviour does not shift because someone understood a concept. It shifts through practice, reflection and accountability over time. That is the missing ingredient in most programmes.
Generic content is another issue. A course built for everyone rarely addresses the specific situations an individual leader is facing, the team they inherited, the stakeholder who drains their energy or the conversation they keep putting off.
This is why I believe so strongly in coaching alongside development. Coaching connects the learning to the leader's real world. It gives them space to try something, review what happened and adjust. It also creates accountability, which is often what turns a good intention into a new habit. Training can open the door, but sustained support is what helps leaders walk through it.
When a senior leader struggles with confidence or difficult conversations, where do you typically begin the coaching process?
I always begin by understanding what is really going on before trying to fix anything. A lack of confidence or an avoided conversation is usually a symptom. The cause could be fear of damaging a relationship, a belief that they need to have every answer, past experiences that went badly, or simply never having been shown how to handle these moments well.
So the first step is a frank and supportive conversation. What does the leader believe about themselves in that situation? What is the cost of avoiding it, for them and for the team? What would good look like?
From there we make it practical. We break the conversation down, plan the key messages, and rehearse how they will open it and respond if it becomes difficult. Often, simply having a structure takes much of the fear away.
Then they go and do it, and we review it together afterwards. Confidence is not something you think your way into. It is built by taking action, reflecting honestly and doing it again. Each conversation handled well makes the next one easier, and that momentum is where the real change happens.
How do you use Insights Discovery to help leaders recognise behaviours that may be affecting their teams without them realising it?
Insights Discovery gives leaders a simple, memorable language for understanding their own preferences and how those land with other people. That matters because most of the behaviours that frustrate teams are not intentional. They are blind spots.
A leader with a strong drive for results may see themselves as focused and efficient, while their team experiences them as abrupt or dismissive. Another leader who values harmony may believe they are being supportive, while their team feels they avoid making tough calls. Neither leader is wrong about their intent, but the impact is very different.
I use the profile as a starting point for an honest conversation rather than a label. We look at where their style serves them well, where it might be getting in the way, and how others with different preferences are likely to experience them. Where it adds value, I combine it with stakeholder feedback so the picture is grounded in reality.
The real power comes when leaders start to adapt. Small, deliberate changes in how they communicate, delegate or give feedback can transform how their team responds, without asking them to become someone they are not.
Your philosophy is that leaders are made, not born. What experiences have most strongly shaped that belief?
I believe leadership is a skill, and like any skill it can be developed. Some people find it more natural than others, but I have seen too many transformations to believe that leaders are simply born.
At Openreach, I coached someone who described herself as "not a people person". She was technically excellent but uncomfortable leading others. Through coaching, she learned to listen, to understand what motivated each member of her team and to build genuine relationships. She went on to become one of the best people leaders I have worked with.
In the Army, I worked with someone who changed completely when he was put in charge. He became aggressive and shouty because he believed that was what leadership looked like. It was almost a Jekyll and Hyde transformation, and it was damaging his team's trust. I coached him on communicating effectively and on finding the balance between being firm and being inspiring, without turning into an alter ego.
Both of them had the potential all along. They just needed the right development and someone to believe they could change. That is what has shaped my view.
What is one change you believe leaders can make today that would have the greatest impact on their team's performance?
Start every week by asking each member of your team one simple question: What is getting in your way?
It sounds small, but it changes the dynamic. It shows people that you see your role as removing obstacles rather than simply setting demands. It surfaces problems early, before they become crises. It also builds trust, because people learn that raising an issue leads to support rather than blame.
The key is what you do with the answers. If people tell you what is blocking them and nothing changes, they will stop telling you. If you act, even on small things, they will quickly realise their voice matters.
In my experience, most teams do not underperform because people lack ability or commitment. They underperform because of friction: unclear priorities, slow decisions, missing information or unresolved tension. Leaders are often the last to hear about it.
Asking that question consistently, and genuinely acting on what you hear, is one of the fastest ways I know to lift both performance and morale. It balances the people and the delivery, which is ultimately what great leadership is all about.
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