Your Best Engineer Is Not Your Next Leader with Craig Bromage

Host Julia Felton welcomes Craig Bromage, Head of Infrastructure and Platforms at National Highways and creator of The Everyday Leader, to discuss teamwork and leadership.

Craig reflects on nine years in the RAF, noting promotions often tied to courses, time served, and poor management with little HR correction, and contrasts this with civilian leadership development. They explore how technical experts are frequently promoted into management without the right skills, creating bottlenecks and divided focus, and argue for rewarding technical excellence without forcing people leadership.

Craig’s leadership philosophy centres on “everyday” leadership, psychological safety, honest feedback, and being paid for outcomes not outputs, including the value of reflection and time away for clarity. They discuss AI adoption pitfalls such as sloppy, unchecked outputs, the need for human sanity checks and guardrails, and how AI may reshape jobs. The episode closes on authenticity, vulnerability, and congruence as trust builders, with insights from Julia’s horse-based leadership work.

01:26 RAF Leadership Lessons

04:19 Promotion Pitfalls

09:43 Everyday Leader Mindset

13:43 SMART Clarity Story

16:44 Outcomes Reflection

18:25 AI Adoption Risks

30:50 Remote Work Relationships

34:47 Horses Authentic Leadership

39:14 Closing Takeaways