179. Julia Middleton on How to Give a Good Speech

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In this episode of the How to Lead – 2025 Edition series, Julia speaks with Autumn Phillips, a travel writer, adventurer, and change leader, who spent two decades as a newspaper editor leading award-winning newsrooms across the United States.

Autumn shares how to run a strategy meeting that doesn’t feel like a slow march through an agenda. Drawing from her experience leading both high-pressure editorial rooms and creative retreats around the world, she explains how to create conditions where people feel safe enough to speak up and bold enough to think differently.

From setting the right physical environment to lowering the stakes so risk-taking feels possible, Autumn offers practical steps to help teams listen better, push ideas further, and leave the room with a shared sense of momentum.

Listen to this episode to learn how a well-led strategy meeting can do more than setting a plan. It can unlock creativity, trust, and collective energy.

About the Host

Julia Middleton

Julia Middleton is the host of the Women Emerging podcast and a best-selling author of “If that’s leading, I’m in” as well as two previous books: “Leading beyond Authority” and “Cultural Intelligence”. She is deeply committed to helping people from all backgrounds to find their own approach to leading.

In 2020, Julia launched Women Emerging and in 2022 she lead an expedition of 24 women to find ‘an approach to leading that resonates with women’. She now leads expeditions with women all over the world based on 4Es methodology, discovered in the first expedition.

Prior to that, Julia was founder and, for over thirty years, Chief Executive of Common Purpose, which grew to become one of the biggest leadership development organisations in the world.
Julia is also an Ambassador for the Aurora Prize based in Armenia, on the boards of Alfanar Venture Philanthropy in the Arab World and Equality Now, which operates globally, and on the Advisory Councils of Fundacao Dom Cabral in Brazil and Synapse in Pakistan.

Born in London and brought up in New York, Julia was educated at French Lycées and graduated from the London School of Economics. She is married, with five children and lots of grandchildren.