Promoting your best person doesn't automatically make them your best manager. The skills are different, the aptitude distinctive, and the motivations often completely altered.

Here's what most organisations get wrong, and what the good ones do differently.

There's a photo on my phone I keep coming back to. Me, mid-ride, somewhere in the middle of the country, two days into a 250-mile solo trip I needed more than I realised.

This is the story behind Breakaway - and why I believe the space you think in changes the quality of the thinking itself.

Feeling ready for change but not sure where to start?

In this post I share the three questions I explore with every client who finds themselves stuck at this crossroads - on purpose, energy, and the shape of what comes next.

What if your best thinking didn't happen in a meeting room? Breakaway is professional coaching delivered on a bike – for senior leaders who ride and are navigating something significant.

Feeling like you're pedalling hard but going nowhere? It might not be you. It might be the formation.

Mark Taggart reflects on working in a founder-centric business and what it taught him about sustainable leadership.

I haven't ridden my bike outdoors since December 31st.

Until I wrote this, I hadn't told anyone. This is a post about the stories we tell, the masks we wear, and why it's never too late to stop and be honest with yourself.

There's one in every room. The one who arrives late, checks their phone, and asks the question designed to derail the whole session. But buried inside that question is one of the most useful lessons I know about leadership.

Some days leadership is about survival, not sprinting. Mark Cavendish knew this - even the greatest sprinter spent most Tour days just getting through.

The question is: are you in the right team, or do you need to reframe how you're riding?

"What do you want?"

No one had asked my client that before. He was stuck playing peacekeeper when he should have been leading.

Here's why that question unlocked everything – and what it means for senior leaders trying to navigate competing demands.

A mid-week ride, an unexpected challenge, and a lesson about what happens when you stop choosing the comfortable group. Part of the Lessons from the Peloton series.

There's a particular kind of loneliness that comes with being the person everyone turns to for answers. You've built a career on competence. And yet something has shifted. The confidence that once felt like a given now feels fragile.

If this resonates, I want you to know something: losing confidence is not weakness. It's a signal.

"Thank you. I just needed to be listened to."

A reminder that sometimes the most powerful thing a leader can do is put the toolkit down.

The best thing I ever did for my team was accept it wasn't about me. I had to stop performing leadership and start actually leading. Here's what professional cycling teaches us about building teams with clear purpose, complementary skills, and genuine clarity about what matters.

"Stop the noise. I need space to think."

This came up in a client session last week. He arrived overwhelmed with ideas, concerns, problems, opportunities. When that happens, it's my job to create a Think Tank - the space where leaders can untangle what's really going on beneath the urgent.

"Yes this is me. Yes I can do all that." How a senior leader navigating career transition moved from self-doubt to authentic confidence by addressing the hidden commitments keeping her stuck

Why did Bowie and Prince resonate so much at age 12?

Because they showed me that reinvention isn't about abandoning who you are - it's about allowing yourself to evolve into who you're becoming.

The same principle applies to leadership transitions.

Over Christmas, I got a model bicycle as a table gift. I was genuinely excited until I opened it and found dozens of pieces with no instructions. What I needed wasn't coaching - it was clear instruction. But that's not always what's needed. Here's how to know the difference.

Saturday morning. Six miles into our long run with the club, one of the runners shared her frustration: "I can't get under 4:00 hours, whatever I do. I've tried everything. I'm stuck."

Two days earlier, I'd heard almost the exact same words from a Director navigating a career transition: "I keep being passed over for promotion. It's just not fair. I've tried everything. I'm stuck."

Whether I'm coaching runners or senior leaders, I hear these three lines again and again: I keep missing my goals. I've tried everything. I'm stuck.

Here's what I've learned: when someone says "I've tried everything," they usually mean "I've tried everything I can see from where I'm standing." Being stuck isn't about lack of effort - it's about lack of perspective. The answer isn't working harder. It's seeing differently.

It's a cold January morning, and I'm reflecting on my first full year focused on Taggart People.

Three simple questions from the world of cycling have me thinking about what 2025 taught me, what I'm after in 2026, and how I'll get there. What are you carrying forward into the new year?

I got a tattoo this week. Four and a half hours in the chair, and yes, it hurt. But the pain wasn't the point. The story was.

It's Mont Ventoux - the climb that nearly broke me, and the moment I understood something crucial about leadership that 25 years in corporate life never taught me.

When you're halfway up a mountain in 35-degree heat, legs screaming, lungs burning, there's no corporate theatre. Just you, the road, and a choice: keep going or quit.

If you're a senior leader right now - carrying the weight whilst everyone looks to you for clarity, navigating change you didn't ask for, expected to have answers you're still figuring out - you know exactly what that feels like.

Here's what I learned on that mountain about reading the conditions, leading from different positions, and why the strongest leaders don't climb alone. Sometimes the best leadership insights don't come from business school. They come from knowing what it takes to get to the summit.