Stretched to Breaking Point

Welcome to Leadership, Rewritten — the podcast that begins where the old playbook ends.

I’m Richard Claydon. And this is the audio companion to the Maya Essays — a long-form exploration of what it means to lead in a world where complexity, contradiction, and quiet disillusionment are the norm.

Each episode unpacks a pair of essays from the Maya series, which themselves form the conceptual spine of the book I’m writing. But here, in this format, there’s space to go deeper.

You’ll hear the research that didn’t make the essays. The stories behind the frameworks. And the questions that still haven’t found their final form.

We start with the first pairing: Stretched to Breaking Point. It’s the moment many of us recognise — when the role no longer fits, but we keep trying to make it work.

In time, I’ll begin bringing in voices from outside — leaders, thinkers, provocateurs — people navigating their own versions of Maya’s journey.

Until then, this is the story behind the story. Welcome to the Maya podcast.

NB: The podcast is AI-generated, underpinned by the chapter content. Although the speakers may seem a little too faux-sincere, they generally represent the ideas and content fairly faithfully, although not perfectly.