Founder Leadership: How to Balance Confidence, Humility, and Growth | Ben Perreau | 385

Episode notes

Ben Perreau, founder and CEO of Parafoil, joins Jeff Mains to explore what he calls "leadership intelligence" — a new category using AI and cognitive science to help managers become better leaders in practice, not just in theory. Drawing on a career that spans BBC and Sky News journalism, nearly a decade advising Fortune 50 executives at SY Partners, and firsthand research with 50 early-career managers, Ben unpacks why leadership challenges are fundamentally human problems regardless of seniority. The conversation covers the rise of the "accidental manager," the cognitive overload facing today's frontline leaders, why measuring leading indicators of culture beats waiting for lagging results like revenue and retention, and how the human skills we used to call "soft skills" — judgment, empathy, discernment — are becoming the most valuable work in an AI-powered world. Key Takeaways 5:10 — **The Newsroom as a Leadership Lab** — The pressure-cooker of UK journalism in the early 2000s taught Ben to pursue the truth and to genuinely understand what people care about — skills that translated directly into building products and leading teams.