183. How to Lead: Balancing Task, Team, and Individual – Julia Cleverdon Returns

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In this episode of the How to Lead – 2025 Edition series, Julia Middleton revisits a Women Emerging favourite: Julia Cleverdon’s framework of task, team, and individual.

Back by popular demand after her earlier episodes (95 and 96), Julia Cleverdon returns to answer listener questions on how leaders can hold these three circles in balance. She shares insights on building strong teams without letting prima donnas dominate, sustaining energy when cynicism creeps in, and the challenges of leading virtual teams. She also reflects on when it’s right to focus heavily on a task, and when the priority must shift to nurturing individuals or repairing culture.

The conversation makes clear that the art of leading isn’t about perfect equilibrium, but about knowing when to lean into one circle more than the others without ever letting any of them drop. Listen to this episode to explore how task, team, and individual interact in real-world leadership and why the most effective leaders never lose sight of all three.

About the Guest

Julia Cleverdon

Dame Julia Cleverdon is Chair of The National Lottery Community Fund. She was previously Chief Executive of Business in the Community from 1991 to 2007 and later Special Adviser to The Prince’s Charities.

Julia co-founded Step Up To Serve (#iwill) and is Vice Patron of Teach First, having been its first chair. She served on the Careers and Enterprise Company and Fair Education Alliance boards, and was previously chair of the National Literacy Trust. She is Patron of Right to Succeed and chaired Place Matters and the National Statistician’s Committee on Inclusive Data.

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.