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What if the secret to high-performing teams isn’t working harder, but putting happiness first?

In this episode of Get Amplified, we sit down with technology strategist and former CTO advisor Richard Munro to explore an idea that challenges a lot of conventional leadership thinking: happiness comes before performance, not after it.

This is a conversation of two halves: Storytelling in tech and happiness in work.

What struck us most is that having spent his career in some of the most technical roles in the industry, Richard’s biggest insight wasn’t about technology.

It was about people.

Because even the best technology strategy fails if the team delivering it isn’t happy, aligned, and energised.

Richard’s career spans everything from mainframes to CTO office of some of the biggest names in tech. Along the way he developed a powerful belief about leadership and strategy: context comes before everything.

That’s why he challenges the familiar “start with why” idea. Richard argues that the real starting point is “where.” Until you understand the context people are operating in, their constraints, pressures, ambitions, and environment, you can’t truly understand their motivations.

The conversation also explores how storytelling shapes strategy itself.

But the most powerful part of the discussion comes when Richard reflects on leadership. After leading teams of every size, Richard reflects that great teams are built on happy individuals.

Instead of waiting until the end of a project to celebrate success, Richard encourages us to identify the moments in a week that give people a genuine “fist pump”, those small wins that create energy, motivation, and momentum.

He also shares three leadership principles that have guided him throughout his career:

• Guard your integrity. Don't be afraid to stand up for what's right.
• Tackle the problem in front of you. Don’t wait for others to get started, just get stuck in.
• Think speed and scale and settle for good enough vs perfection.

Richard’s book recommendation, The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, reinforces the key idea from this conversation: happiness drives results, not the other way around.

If you’re interested in building high-performing teams, leading with authenticity, and translating complexity into meaningful action, this episode is packed with insight.

Listen, share with a colleague who leads through change, and if it resonates, subscribe and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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Selling complex technology isn’t about the lone genius with a quota. It’s about orchestrating people, timing and trust across a messy, customer-led journey.

We sit down with Cliff Keast - former sales leader at VMware, SAP and Business Objects, now a coach to revenue teams - to unpack how enterprise deals really get done when 20, 30 or even over 100 people touch a single opportunity.

Separating Average Performers from Reliable Closers

Cliff shares the identity shift that separates average performers from reliable closers: stop trying to be the hero and become the integrator of value. Your credibility in the C‑suite comes from your ability to marshal your company’s full expertise - pre-sales, legal, services, customer success, partners - exactly when it matters.

Focusing on Soft Skills That Make the Hard Things Work

We get practical on the soft skills that make the hard things work: establish psychological safety, show trust first, share credit publicly, handle issues privately, and keep communication ruthlessly clear.

A simple discipline, write actions clearly and start every meeting by reviewing them, turns vague updates into peer accountability without the drama.

Facing the Reality of Cross-Functional Friction

We also confront the reality of cross-functional friction. As organisations scale, process and function disaggregate. Quoting systems stall over irrelevant fields, legal arrives too late, and rules designed for efficiency create bottlenecks.

Finding the Selling Line

Cliff draws the line between customer-centric rule pushing and selfish rule breaking, and explains how top sellers earn an “unfair share” of scarce resources by qualifying well, setting purpose, and making it easy for specialists to win.

Shaping the Path

For sales leaders, the mandate is to shape the path: clear the runway with adjacent functions, coach orchestration skills, and measure the operating rhythm that keeps cross-functional teams moving.

Who This Is For

If you’re navigating enterprise sales, team performance or revenue leadership, you’ll leave with a sharper playbook for influence without authority, smarter stakeholder timing, and a renewed respect for the human side of selling.

Subscribe, share with a teammate who needs a better deal rhythm, and drop a review to tell us which function is hardest to align in your world.

We would love you to follow us on LinkedIn!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/

Send a text

We would love you to follow us on LinkedIn!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/