The Threshold

Episode 4: The voice in your head at 4amMost senior leaders have had a morning like this. You wake before the alarm. The voice is already running. It builds a case, sometimes a reasonable sounding one, for why you should pull back, hand something off, step away from the work you've been leading. By the time the sun is up, you've nearly made a decision that would have changed the trajectory of your career.In this episode of The Threshold, Amanda tells the story of one specific morning during her time as a senior leader at ANZ. She was leading a major piece of work and the 4am voice had been running for months. And what she learned from that morning, and the practices she developed in the months afterwards, are the ones she now draws on in her coaching work.Episode 4 includes:The story of one morning at ANZ that almost cost Amanda a project she'd been leading for six monthsThe three recurring themes the 4am voice runs on for most senior leaders (pressure, impact on people, am I doing the right thing)The neuroscience of why the voice activates in the early hours, and why its catastrophes feel so convincing at that timeThe three practices Amanda uses to work through it (naming what's happening, not acting before mid-morning, giving the brain something else to do and coming back to it later)Why vulnerability still gets read as the opposite of leadership, and what real leadership actually requiresA reflection prompt for leaders who's own 4am voice keeps returning to something specificThe Threshold is hosted by Amanda Ramplin, founder of EOS Coaching and a former senior leader at ANZ.Episodes drop fortnightly. Reflective. Honest. Unhurried.If this episode landed, the most helpful thing you can do is share it with one person you know who wakes too early with the voice running, who hasn't quite had language for what's happening. And if you have time, leave a review. Your review genuinely helps other leaders find this work.Find Amanda at eoscoaching.com.au or on LinkedIn at Amanda Ramplin.

Most senior leaders are performing some version of themselves at work. Not all the time. Not in every conversation. But often enough that it has become the way they move through their days. A leadership voice. A leadership face. A leadership way of holding themselves in a room. Most of the time, they don't even notice they're doing it. Until one day, somewhere quiet, they feel the cost of carrying a version of themselves they didn't realise they'd been carrying.In this episode, Amanda sits with the most exhausting and least talked about part of being at the threshold. The work of looking like we've got it together when we don't. Of sounding certain when we're not. Of leading from a face we've put on, rather than from a place we've actually arrived at. She names where this comes from, what it costs us, and how we might start to set it down.Episode 3 includes:The four shapes performance tends to take in senior leadership (certainty, energy, decisiveness, having it together emotionally)The distinction between presence and performance, and why only one of them is sustainableThe science of emotion regulation, and why sustained performance depletes the same capacity we need for complex decisionsWhy people can see the performance even when they can't name it, and what that costs our authenticity and our ability to connect with our teamThe four small moves that start to change our relationship with the performanceA reflection prompt for leaders carrying more performance than they realisedThe Threshold is hosted by Amanda Ramplin, founder of EOS Coaching and a former senior leader at ANZ.Episodes drop fortnightly. Reflective. Honest. Unhurried.Find Amanda at eoscoaching.com.au or on LinkedIn at Amanda Ramplin.

There's something most of us learn early. The way to handle anything is to work harder at it. It built our careers, earned us the seats we now hold, and at a certain point, it stops working. We hit something that doesn't yield. We push harder. Nothing changes. So we add more. More preparation, more hours, more effort. And we get more tired, less effective, and more stuck.In this episode, Amanda explores why working harder fails at the threshold, what we tend to do instead, and what actually shifts things. She tells the story of a senior team member sitting through another over-prepared meeting, watching her own thinking slowly stop happening. And she names the four shapes the over-doing tends to take, in ourselves and in the leaders around us.Episode 2 includes:The four shapes of over-doing (over-preparing, over-functioning, over-strategising, over-controlling)Why the trust between leader and team erodes in both directions when one of these patterns runs uncheckedThe competence curve, and why the strategies that built your career stop carrying you at a certain pointThe science of why uncertainty feels like a threat, and why we reach for familiar tools when nothing is workingWhat endurance athletes call threshold pace, and what it teaches us about leadershipA reflection prompt for leaders who suspect they might be working harder at something that isn't asking for harder workThe Threshold is hosted by Amanda Ramplin, founder of EOS Coaching and a former senior leader at ANZ.Episodes drop fortnightly. Reflective. Honest. Unhurried.If this episode landed, the most helpful thing you can do is share it with one person you know who's currently working harder than they should have to, and quietly wondering why it isn't working. And if you have time, leave a review. Your review genuinely helps other leaders find this work.Find Amanda at eoscoaching.com.au or on LinkedIn at Amanda Ramplin.

Episode 1: The doorway nobody talks aboutMost senior leaders have had a moment like this.In this first episode of The Threshold, Amanda introduces the concept that's at the heart of the show. The doorway moment. The space between who you were as a leader, and who the role is now asking you to be. She tells the story of a senior leader at her own threshold, and explores what's actually happening when capable, accomplished leaders find themselves in this particular kind of stuck.Episode 1 includes:The four scenarios that all turn out to be the same threshold moment.What happens in the brain at the threshold, and why working harder makes it worse.The four internal shifts that change what's possible at this moment.Why this experience has a particular shape for millennials in senior leadership right now.A reflection prompt for listeners standing at their own threshold.The Threshold is hosted by Amanda Ramplin, founder of EOS Coaching and a former senior leader at ANZ.Episodes drop fortnightly. Reflective. Honest. Unhurried.If this episode landed, the most helpful thing you can do is share it with one person who might recognise themselves in Lucy's story. And if you have time, leave a review. Your review genuinely helps other leaders find this work.Find Amanda at eoscoaching.com.au or on LinkedIn at Amanda Ramplin.

The Threshold is a new podcast for leaders when more is being asked. Of them. Of their team. Of their work. The space between who you were as a leader, and who the role is asking you to be.Hosted by Amanda Ramplin, founder of EOS Coaching and a former senior leader at ANZ, the show explores the inner work of leadership at the moments that matter. The conversations that don't tend to happen out loud. The work that mostly happens in private.Three episodes go live on Tuesday June 2. Follow the show now so the episodes find you on the day.Episodes drop fortnightly. Reflective. Honest. Unhurried.Find Amanda at eoscoaching.com.au or on LinkedIn at Amanda Ramplin.