Mike Soutar on the role of a good leader—and advice for future "Apprentice" candidates

Candidates on The Apprentice have often been on the wrong end of Mike Soutar’s detective work. As the interviewer on the reality show, he’s famous for uncovering discrepancies in business plans. Who can forget Daniel back in Season 14? On his Amazon page, Daniel said he’d sold over a million units of his hangover cure. Then tried to cover his tracks by saying he didn’t know who’d written that—before reluctantly coming clean. Ouch.

In Next Gen CEO, one of the many lessons Soutar talks about is “constructive dissent.” “It’s when your team feels psychologically safe enough to push back on you, the boss, and put forward their own ideas,” he explains. “If you can encourage people to use their initiative, rather than just nod and wait for the meeting to end, then you’re on track to establish a high-performance culture. A workplace where your team feels empowered ... and you don’t have to come up with all the answers.”

As Soutar continues to question the “old leadership rulebook,” he refutes much of that received wisdom and has generously provided an essential new guide for aspiring entrepreneurs and successful founders looking towards the uncertainty of the future.


Jerry Portwood: One of your audiobook’s core lessons is to “lose more arguments” in order to become stronger. Considering how candidates on The Apprentice often fight to be “right” at all costs, what are the real-world benefits of a leader who is willing to be proven wrong?

Mike Soutar: It sounds strange, doesn’t it? The idea that you become a better leader when you’re on the losing side of a debate. But think about the alternative. If you’re always right then one of two things is happening: either nobody is challenging you properly, or you’re a genius. And I haven’t met many geniuses.

So, losing an argument, conceding that you’re not always right, is a win. It means someone has spotted something you’ve missed.

On The Apprentice, the candidates fight to be “right” because they think that’s how you survive. And in the Boardroom sometimes that works short term. The loudest voices, particularly in the early stages, tend to survive. It shows they have spirit and that’s a prerequisite for potential. (And Lord Sugar doesn’t like a wallflower.) But as the field thins, it’s the more thoughtful, composed figures who begin to stand out.

In your own management style, how do you balance the need for “Soutar-level” forensic detail with the need to maintain team trust?

Yes, I take pride in spotting inconsistencies because often they reveal a lot about the person who made the claim. But there’s a line in leadership I never cross. Because if you obsess over detail without trusting people, then you become the boss everyone tries to avoid rather than impress. When your team thinks you’re trying to catch them out, they stop taking risks. And then you’re managing a very polite, very average business.

So, my personal rule is simple: Be forensic on the work, but be fair on the person. If something doesn’t stack up then say it, objectively and without personal judgement. And make sure you’re on your game, too. Once you start to call out flaws in other peoples’ work, they’ll come back at you when you stumble, too.

You've argued for designing teams that don't require the leader in every room. Why is it so difficult for founders—and many Apprentice candidates—to relinquish that control? And what does Next Gen CEO suggest as the first step towards autonomy?

Founders in particular often find it difficult to delegate and hand over control. When you’ve built something from scratch, it’s your baby. And new parents can be very overprotective.

When I was a founder I learned how to do every job in my business. Sales, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, content—the lot. I was all over it because we were so boot-strapped and short-handed. Also, if I’m honest, because it felt good to be so central: deciding everything, fixing everything. I felt alive in a way I never had in my career before.

And it worked! The business was a runaway success.

But the problem comes when you double-down on those early behaviours. What built the business begins to choke it. The boss becomes the bottleneck. Decisions slow down, people stop thinking for themselves. They wait for you.

The only solution is to deliberately stop being the default decision-maker. Not just when it suits you, but systematically. Recognise that if your team instinctively brings everything to you for sign-off then you’ve trained them to do that.

So, now you need to retrain them. Push decisions back. Ask for recommendations. Let them feel the weight of ownership. Use these simple words: “I’m not sure. What do you think?”

With a focus on AI and “uncertain worlds,” you've emphasised “strategic courage.” Which common “old rulebook” habits do you think are most likely to expire in the next five years?

The old leadership rulebook was created in a time of more predictability and less change. It prized certainty, control, and experience. But so much of that received wisdom doesn’t stand up to scrutiny anymore.

Take the idea that the leader must have all the answers. That used to be the whole job. Now it’s a liability. When AI can out-research you in seconds, pretending to be the smartest person in the room looks ridiculous.

Or the cult of long hours. Sitting in the office until 8 PM like a Victorian mill owner keeping an eye on the looms; people have worked out that presence is not the same as productivity.

Or there’s hierarchy. The comforting belief that the job title on your email footer carries weight on its own. It doesn’t anymore. People follow competence now. And they’re quite happy to ignore you if you haven’t got it.

In my audiobook, I describe what’s happening in the world around leaders as the Three Storms: the transformative power of AI; geopolitical upheaval; and a new workforce who think very differently about power, work, and reward. Individually, each one is disruptive. All together, they invite a radical review of the role of a leader. I interviewed many successful business leaders, entrepreneurs, and academics, and they all agree good leaders in the future will lead with relentless optimism, self-belief, and the courage to do hard things.

You’ll have to make decisions without perfect information. You’ll have to move before you feel ready. You’ll have to admit you don’t fully understand what’s coming next—and lead anyway. You’ll need to design great systems that devolve power. You’ll need to hold dynamic forums that encourage the healthy sort of disagreements. And you’ll need to spend time where it counts, doing the things only you, as leader, can do.

The prize for getting it right? In a globalised world, the rewards for success as a leader are almost unlimited.

You introduce the PISA framework. How does this “step-back” approach contrast with the high-pressure, immediate decision-making we see in The Apprentice boardroom?

PISA is like a secret weapon I’ve used for years. It’s my way of slowing myself down before I do something stupid.

P = Pause
I = It’s Not My Problem
S = Separate the Issues
A = Am I the Only One Who Can Solve This?

The pause can be seconds. Just enough to stop you from jumping in and wasting time solving the wrong challenge.

Reminding yourself “It’s not my problem” stops you from taking a negative issue personally. If something’s gone wrong, remember it’s not a personal criticism and this prevents you from reacting emotionally.

Separating the issues allows you to (out loud, usually) enumerate the symptoms—which is when you often find that someone is actually complaining about something different.

And “Am I the only one…” reminds you that accountability for solving a problem can and often should lie with someone else entirely.

I get why candidates on The Apprentice often miss it out: They are operating under constant time pressures to complete complex business tasks. So it’s tempting to do something, anything, even if it’s the wrong thing, and then rue it afterwards in the Boardroom.

But the PISA framework buys you time, it doesn’t waste it. The whole process can take minutes, not hours. And it’s specifically designed for those frequent moments in business where it doesn’t feel like you have any time to make a decision.

In other words: perfect for future Apprentice candidates. All they need to do is listen to my book!

You've admitted the show’s environment is highly focused and “artificial.” After listening to you narrate Next Gen CEO, and understanding the "raw mechanics" of leadership, do you think people will find you're more empathetic or more ruthless than your television persona suggests?

(God, did I say “artificial”? That sounds bad! The time constraints are artificially short, put it that way!)

What people see onscreen is an authentic version of me. I am not an actor; there is no script and no retakes. I am direct, demanding, but I hope not without compassion. Just ask Pryesh in the latest season. My job is to make sure that Lord Sugar invests in the candidate with the best potential and, with that in mind, I am utterly focused on weeding out anything that is not as it should be.

In my professional life, the thing I am ruthless about is the task in hand. You get one career, one chance to make a real difference, one opportunity to shine. So if an obstacle gets in my way of achieving the very best results, then watch out. But this single-minded determination comes from a good place: I am passionate about people and bursting with enthusiasm to support others in building great businesses, hiring fantastic teams, creating jobs and wealth, and being the best leader they can be.

In the audiobook I’m quite clear: You can be demanding of performance and still treat people properly, especially when things go wrong.

People are often thrust into leadership with little or no coaching or support. My audiobook seeks to bridge that gap with 60 short, snappy chapters, easy to listen to, refer back to, and absorb. It’s full of practical frameworks and useful advice to make leadership the exhilarating experience it should be. I hope listeners will leave with a more rounded view of me but—more importantly—with a greater confidence in their own abilities to step up and be a leader others choose to follow.