Podcast Summary: Your 2025 Leadership Review + How to Set Up a No Bullsh!t 2026

Show: No Bullsh!t Leadership
Host: Martin G Moore
Date: December 16, 2025
Episode: 381

Episode Overview

Martin G Moore delivers a no-nonsense year-end review and future-planning guide for leaders. Using direct examples and reflection prompts from his experiences—including leading the "No Bullsh!t Leaders Club"—Martin walks through a candid self-assessment for 2025 and sets the framework for how to level up your leadership and impact in 2026. The focus is on tangible value delivered, real accountability, facing hard truths, and ensuring your actions line up with your ambitions.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Importance of Honest Year-End Review (03:00)

• “This is the perfect moment to look back with clarity. If you wait until January, you will have conveniently forgotten the trauma that you went through in 2025.” — Martin Moore [03:10]
• Martin emphasizes reviewing now, while the year’s challenges and wins are still fresh, not after the holiday glow.

Four Core Review Areas:

• Value Delivered
• What You Avoided
• Performance Under Pressure
• Accountability

2. Value Delivered: Distinguishing Activity from Impact (05:00)

• Leaders often confuse being busy with delivering real value.
• Prompt: Ask yourself, “Where did you materially improve results or performance in 2025?”
• “Remember, this has to be value, not just activity.” — Martin Moore [05:40]
• Examples of Real Value:
  • “I improved delivery reliability from 62% to 94% within six months.”
  • “I reduced project cycle times by 30% by implementing strong single point accountabilities.”
• You must be able to quantify or at least clearly qualify your achievements.
• Insight: Many leaders realize, upon honest review, that their year’s hard work didn’t always translate to genuine value.

3. What You Avoided: Confronting Leadership Blind Spots (12:30)

• Reflect on the difficult conversations or standards you let slide.
• “Your brain came to the rescue with a bunch of rationalizations... But if you look back now, there’s probably a couple of key moments where you didn’t have a conversation that you should have had, and now you wish you’d done it.” — Martin Moore [13:00]
• Avoidance Areas:
  • Tough conversations sidestepped.
  • Standards allowed to drift for convenience.
  • Direct reports who were not held fully accountable.
• Powerful Takeaway: Naming what you avoided empowers you to address these avoidance patterns in the future.

4. Performing Under Pressure: Grace vs. Game Face (17:00)

• Pressure is inevitable in leadership and increases with responsibility.
• “Pressure reveals character. It exposes your instinctive leadership level.” — Martin Moore [17:15]
• The goal is real grace under pressure: inner calm matching outer calm, not just a “game face” masking inner turmoil.
• “When you’re entirely calm and relaxed under pressure, people feel that as well, and it is contagious.” — Martin Moore [18:35]
• Identify resilience habits that worked or failed for you during 2025.

5. Accountability: The Bedrock of Team Performance (21:00)

• Accountability ensures standards and results; without it, you get “all care, no responsibility.”
• “If you could only do one thing to make a difference in your team, implementing strong single points of accountability would be the biggest lever you could pull to improve performance.” — Martin Moore [21:25]
• Questions for Reflection:
  • Who did you hold strongly accountable?
  • Where did standards erode due to lack of early intervention?
  • Did you mistake empowerment for abdicating responsibility?
• Standards “don’t erode in one big moment—they erode one missed conversation at a time.” [22:10]

6. Setting Up a No Bullsh!t 2026: Leadership Themes and Focus (24:00)

• Start with a leadership theme for 2026: a one-sentence north star for your intent.
• Martin shares his personal theme:
  • “Rediscovering the deep joy and immense privilege of being able to impact so many leaders.” — Martin Moore [25:10]
• Other sample themes:
  • "Operate at level, letting go of my old roles so I can really level up."
  • "Courageous conversations, no exceptions."
  • "Relentless pursuit of higher standards for my team."

7. Defining Your CV-Worthy Achievement (27:00)

• What’s the one accomplishment you want on your CV by end of 2026?
• “If you could only do one thing this year, and at the end of the year, you had to go out into the marketplace and find a new job, what’s the one thing that would make you irresistible to any potential employer?” — Martin Moore [28:30]
• Alignment between personal progression and team/company value is high.
• Tip: Don’t start the year with a vague sense of “work hard and see what happens”—define and pursue a specific, high-value goal.
• Sample achievement:
  • “This year I’m going to improve service levels on our category one response turnaround times from 2 days to under 4 hours with no additional operating expenses.” [30:00]

8. Action Planning and Lasting Change (32:00)

• The real work is in execution:
  • Get buy-in from your boss to focus on fewer, bigger-impact objectives.
  • Build a culture of clarity, high accountability, and relentless standards.
• “If nothing changes, nothing changes. So you’ve got to do something different.” — Martin Moore [33:05]
• If you feel daunted, that’s good—it means you have clarity. The “Leadership Beyond the Theory” program is mentioned as a resource for structured improvement.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you can’t quantify it, then you need to qualify it very clearly. If you can’t qualify clearly, then guess what? It probably didn’t happen.” — Martin Moore [07:05]
• “Standards don’t erode in one big moment. They erode one missed conversation at a time.” — Martin Moore [22:10]
• “Your objective shouldn’t just be to get through tough situations. It should be to develop grace under pressure.” — Martin Moore [18:10]
• “What if I keep leading the same way I did in 2025? Is this going to improve my chances of reaching the next level, or am I just kidding myself?” — Martin Moore [33:00]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:00] — Overview: Honest Review and Self-Reflection
• [05:00] — Area 1: Value Delivered
• [12:30] — Area 2: What You Avoided
• [17:00] — Area 3: Performing Under Pressure
• [21:00] — Area 4: Accountability & Team Performance
• [24:00] — Planning 2026: Choosing a Leadership Theme
• [27:00] — CV-Worthy Achievement for 2026
• [32:00] — Action: Bringing Change to Life & Building Buy-In

Flow & Tone

Throughout the episode, Martin maintains his signature tough-love, no-nonsense tone—delivering both challenge and encouragement. There’s a blend of practical prompts, relatable leadership confessions, and a strong call-to-action for leaders to break out of autopilot, get honest, and level up for 2026.

Takeaway

This episode is a practical handbook for self-aware leaders to end the year with clarity—by facing the sometimes uncomfortable truth of what was (and wasn’t) achieved, and setting a focused, high-impact agenda for the year ahead. If you want 2026 to mark genuine growth for yourself and your team, this episode lays out exactly where to start and how to hold the mirror up—No Bullsh!t.