When being boring happens to good leaders
Some of the teams I work with report to a boring leader, and it’s a problem. As someone who works with leadership teams, it’s easy to spot when this is happening because the clues are usually obvious. During meetings, the team is multi-tasking, they are checked out, and they’re often quiet, only offering thoughts when called upon by the leader to do so. Not surprisingly, the team retains little, to anything, that was discussed in the meeting, which often results in – you guessed it – more boring meetings and discussions on the very same topic.
Being boring isn’t just a benign idea or an interesting notion. It’s a behavior that presents serious consequences for leaders and teams because the negative impact on productivity and execution is real and here’s why: Boring leaders beget underperforming teams. When a team is led by a boring leader, it’s almost a guarantee that you see a team focused more on compliance and getting the work done, versus real engagement and energy to work together in an above-and-beyond way. That may be because boring leaders often are the last ones to see this behavior in themselves, and consequently, they don’t recognize how their behavior is doing their teams a major disservice – a boring leadership style never brings out the best in others.
What does it mean to be a boring leader? The answer may surprise you.
Most of us can be a little bit boring
It’s easy to hear the word boring and think that it applies to someone else. Personally, I hate the idea of others thinking I’m boring, but here’s the thing. The opposite of boring isn’t being charismatic, energizing, or rah-rah. That’s why it’s easy to think this concept applies to anyone besides us, because it conjures up an image of someone droning on about a dry topic in a monotone voice.
In the context of the workplace, boring leadership often takes on a different look, staring with a lack of awareness about the audience. When a leader is seen as boring, it’s often because they assume that what matters to them matters equally as much to others. We know that in practice, it just doesn’t work that way. This lack of awareness creates a dynamic where you’ll see the boring leader doing more talking than listening, asking few questions, reading slides or reporting out information, and then wondering why the audience is so quiet or unresponsive in the meeting.
The opposite of boring isn’t charisma, it’s curiosity
Here is a very cynical - and effective - place to start if you want to break the habit of being boring. Assume your audiences do not care. Even iif it is the board, your investors, your CEO, even if you’re talking about a matter of great importance. When you start from that cynical point of view, it forces you to ask yourself better questions and get deeply curious about your audiences. For example, rather than assume your board cares about how you’ve evolved your customer value proposition, you might ask yourself: If they don’t care about this, what do they care about? Is there any connection between our evolving customer value proposition and that issue? You might also wonder: Why am I assuming they would automatically see the value in this idea? Is it obvious why this is a good idea to others? You could even ask yourself: If I imagine I am one of my board members, would I remember or understand why we decided to focus on our customer value proposition in the first place? Audiences will only care once they understand the value in your ideas and how that value applies to them. When we’re boring, we simply forget to connect those dots for the audience.
If you want to stop being boring, stop talking about boring things
Several years ago, I was invited to attend a meeting run by a Chief Audit Officer on reporting and I’ll be the first to admit that I was not chomping at the bit to attend what I anticipated would be a major snoozefest. (To all my beloved Chief Audit readers, forgive my ignorance.) Imagine my surprise when this meeting turned out to be one the best I’ve ever attended. What made the discussion so energizing was the leader himself, who had called the meeting together because of legislative changes requiring a major shift in reporting across the company. It would have been easy for the leader to focus on the challenges of making these changes, how tough it would be for the team, the difficulties ahead in managing workload.
To be clear, those challenges were very real, and the leader did address them, knowing that these were valid concerns on the minds of his employees. But he also focused on the future, painting a very powerful picture of what life would feel like once this project was behind the team. He engaged them in the vision of what it could feel like in six months, when the project was completed. As he led the team in discussion, it was interesting to observe the team’s reaction. They went from panicking about the changes to seeing this effort as something that could make them better as an audit team. They began thinking about how the reporting changes would be a short-term hassle, but in the long run, it would help them finally break free from creating hundreds of low-value reports they dreaded generating in the past.
How to shift the balance
It’s easy to talk about what is difficult, tough, or challenging, but the problem is, it’s boring, it motivates absolutely nobody, and it keeps us stuck. After a while, it just gets boring to talk about the workload, the lack of resources, how busy we are, how tough our market is, the challenging quarter we just got through, and so on. What’s crazy is how often we do this inside companies, and it’s incredibly counterproductive, because in most cases, the conversation never really evolves beyond how tough things are. Start to pay attention to whether this a pattern you fall into, and simply shift the balance, so that you’re also talking about solutions, about the future, or about what we can control to influence a different outcome instead.
Being boring isn’t a personality defect; it’s something that can happen to the best of us, and the good news is that with simple behavior changes, we can improve in this area quickly. To start, ask yourself questions like: Do others really engage in my meetings? Do I find myself talking mostly about challenges and how tough things are? Do people describe me as inspiring? Do I do enough listening and asking questions? Become curious about your responses and consider where you can put a few simple changes into place. It’s worth the effort, because when we can do more to inspire and engage others, we inspire and energize ourselves, too.
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From top-down to judgment all around: The AI imperative for organizations
Each business revolution has reshaped not only how businesses operate, but how they organize themselves and empower their people. From the industrial age to the information era, and now into the age of artificial intelligence, technology has always brought with it a reconfiguration of authority, capability, and judgment.
In the 19th century, industrialization centralized work and knowledge. The factory system required hierarchical structures where strategy, information, and decision-making were concentrated at the top. Managers at the apex made tradeoffs for the greater good of the enterprise because they were the only ones with access to the full picture.
Then came the information economy. With it came the distribution of information and a need for more agile, team-based structures. Cross-functional collaboration and customer proximity became competitive necessities. Organizations flattened, experimented with matrix models, and pushed decision-making closer to where problems were being solved. What had once been the purview of a select few, judgment, strategic tradeoffs, and insight became expected competencies for managers and team leads across the enterprise.
Now, AI is changing the game again. But this time, it’s not just about access to data. It’s about access to intelligence.
Generative AI democratizes access not only to information, but to intelligent output. That shifts the burden for humans from producing insights to evaluating them. Judgment, which was long the domain of a few executives, must now become a baseline competency for the many across the organization.
But here’s the paradox: while AI extends our capacity for intelligence, discernment, the human ability to weigh context, values, and consequence, is still best left in the hands of human leaders. As organizations begin to automate early-career work, they may inadvertently erase the very pathways and opportunities by which judgment was built.
Why judgment matters more than ever
Deloitte’s 2023 Human Capital Trends survey found that 85% of leaders believe independent decision-making is more important than ever, but only 26% say they’re ready to support it. That shortfall threatens to neutralize the very productivity gains AI promises.
If employees can’t question, challenge, or contextualize AI’s output, then intelligent tools become dangerous shortcuts. The organization stalls, not from a lack of answers, but from a lack of sense-making.
What organizations must do
To stay competitive, organizations must shift from simply adopting AI to designing AI-aware ways of working:
- Build new learning paths for judgment development. As AI replaces easily systematized tasks, companies must replace lost learning experiences with mentorship, simulations, and intentional development planning.
- Design workflows that require human input. Treat AI as a co-pilot, not an autopilot. Embed review checkpoints and tradeoff discussions. Just as innovation processes have stage gates, so should AI analyses.
- Make judgment measurable. Assess and develop decision-making under ambiguity from entry-level roles onward. Research shows the best learning strategy for this is high-fidelity simulations.
- Start earlier. Leadership development must begin far earlier in career paths, because judgment, not just knowledge, is the new differentiator.
What’s emerging is not just a flatter hierarchy, but a more distributed sense of judgment responsibility. To thrive, organizations must prepare their people not to outthink AI, but to out-judge it.
BTS acquires Nexo to strengthen its position in Brazil and Latin America
P R E S S R E L E A S E
Stockholm, May 5, 2025
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN – BTS Group AB (publ), a leading global consultancy specializing in strategy execution, change, and people development, has agreed to acquire Nexo Pesquisa e Consultoria Ltda., Nexo, a boutique consulting firm headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil.
Nexo has been growing continuously since it was founded in 2017. With revenues of approximately 12 million Brazilian Reales (approx. 2.1 million USD) in 2024, and a highly capable team of 21 members, Nexo has built a strong reputation for delivering transformative projects in strategy, innovation, leadership, and culture.
Nexo collaborates with a great portfolio of clients across sectors such as financial services, consumer goods, and technology, assisting both local and global companies in navigating uncertainty, unlocking creativity, and activating strategy through people. Their work encompasses culture transformation, leadership development, employer value proposition, innovation culture, and vision alignment – supported by proprietary methodologies and frameworks.
BTS currently operates in Brazil servicing both local and multinational clients with a team of 13 employees. By acquiring Nexo, BTS not only increases the Group’s footprint in Brazil but also adds significant capabilities in culture and transformation services. Nexo’s client base has limited overlap with BTS, creating strong growth potential and synergy opportunities.
“Nexo is known for helping leaders and organizations tackle some of the most complex, human-centered challenges with creativity, empathy, and strategic clarity and the Nexo team is loved by their clients,” says Philios Andreou, Deputy CEO of BTS Group and President of the Other Markets Unit. “Their products and services complement and elevate our existing offerings, especially in culture transformation, and we are thrilled to welcome the Nexo team to BTS.”
“We’re excited to join BTS. We’ve long admired BTS’s approach and unique portfolio to support large organizations and leaders in connecting strategy with culture across the organization,” says Andreas Auerbach, co founder of Nexo. “Becoming part of BTS, allows us to scale our impact and bring more value to our clients while staying true to our values and culture,” adds Mariana Lage Andrade, co-founder of Nexo.
Upon completion of the transaction, Nexo’s business and organization will merge with BTS Brazil. Nexo’s founders will assume senior management roles in the joint operation.
The acquisition includes a limited initial cash consideration. Additional purchase price considerations will be paid between 2026 and 2028, provided Nexo meets specific performance targets. A limited portion of any such additional purchase price considerations will be paid in newly issued BTS shares. The transaction is effective immediately.
BTS’s acquisition strategy continues to focus on broadening our service portfolio, expanding our geographic reach, and enhancing our capabilities to support future organic growth in a fragmented market.
For more information, please contact:
Philios Andreou
Deputy CEO
BTS Group AB
philios.andreou@bts.com
Michael Wallin
Head of investor relations
BTS Group AB
michael.wallin@bts.com
+46-8-587 070 02
+46-708-78 80 19
High-performing teaming
Work today is too complex for individuals to succeed in isolation. Almost every critical decision, innovation, or transformation depends on teams working effectively together. Leaders rely on their teams to deliver results. Teams, in turn, rely on their leaders to create the conditions where performance is possible. This exchange, what leaders need from their teams, and what teams need from their leaders, sits at the heart of what we call teaming.
When teaming is strong, leaders get what they need from their teams [creativity, resilience, execution] and teams get what they need from leaders [direction, support, and the conditions to thrive]. It’s how strategy becomes action, how uncertainty becomes opportunity, and how businesses stay competitive in a fast-changing world.