Have the Conversation You’re Avoiding — with Susan Maitland

What looks like a strategy, operational or performance problem in a business is often something rather different underneath.

It may be a communication problem. An assumption. A conversation that hasn't happened. A founder struggling to let go. Or a boundary that has gradually disappeared.

In this episode of Scaling New Heights: Leadership at the Next Level, Nick Sellers talks with Susan Maitland, founder of SupportAct and a business mentor specialising in stretched founders and family business leaders.

Susan brings an unusual perspective. She spent 15 years working within her own family business before spending another 15 years leading within two other family businesses.

Together, Nick and Susan explore the human behaviour behind many familiar business challenges.

They discuss how easily assumptions replace genuine communication, particularly when people have worked or lived together for many years. A founder may know the business intimately and unconsciously expect everyone else to share the same knowledge, priorities and perspective.

They also explore what happens as a family business moves from one generation to another. Values that were instinctively lived by the founder can gradually become diluted if they have never been properly identified, discussed and communicated.

The conversation moves into succession and one of the hardest challenges for many founders: genuinely letting go. Developing a successor is one thing. Allowing them to lead differently is another.

Nick and Susan also discuss boundaries between work and home, the gradual normalisation of excessive working hours, and why consciously protecting time away from work matters for relationships, health and long-term performance.

Susan closes with two particularly powerful challenges.

First: have the conversation you're avoiding.

Second: ask whether your business can genuinely function without you.