Leadership academic · Author · Speaker
I research how leadership actually happens: collectively, through language, and often in what goes unsaid. That means looking past the lone hero, and past the lone villain blamed for scandals from Theranos to Wirecard. I teach at the University of Exeter Business School, after building and selling two businesses.
The book · Out now
Understand leadership at work
Leadership isn’t something people with senior titles do to everyone else. It’s a collective process of influence that all of us contribute to, whatever our position. This practical guide shows how to build a leadership identity, choose the language that persuades, raise your authority in the room without needing the status, and read the culture you work in, so you can lead with confidence from wherever you sit.
Grounded in research and real workplace examples, from a partners’ meeting at a UK law firm to Microsoft, the British armed forces, Theranos and Purdue Pharma.
Ideas in the book
Not a relationship between a leader and their followers, but a shared process of influence that everyone in an organisation takes part in.
Status is your place in the hierarchy. Stance is the authority you hold in the moment, and anyone can raise it. Power isn’t a zero-sum game.
How to select and combine arguments that fit your audience and your organisation’s values, and how to respond to the arguments of others.
The unspoken side of leadership, the biases that lead us astray, and why corporate scandals are rarely the work of one bad leader.
A mandatory read for students and practitioners of leadership alike.
A truly compelling leadership handbook.
A breath of fresh air.
Published in Organization Studies, the British Journal of Management and the Journal of Business Ethics. My work examines how leadership is constructed through discourse, and what happens when it goes wrong.
Lecturer in Leadership and Management at the University of Exeter Business School, teaching on professional education, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Winner of the University's Inspirational Teaching Award (2025) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Eighteen years in business before academia: regional sales leadership in the automotive sector, then two companies founded, grown and sold — an online training platform and a lettings firm of 15 staff across three offices.
Three threads run through my work: why leadership goes wrong, how discourse does its work in organisations, and the qualitative methods used to study both.
Corporate scandals are rarely the work of one bad leader. Taking a post-villainous view, I trace how cultures, boards, auditors, analysts, regulators and the press let harmful leadership emerge and thrive, from Theranos to Enron, Purdue Pharma and Wirecard, and why we scapegoat individuals instead.
The Dark Pyramid (BJM, 2026)Try the Dark Pyramid audit toolsListen: Peter on Theranos, AM 1150How leadership is constructed through everyday talk. Drawing on a longitudinal study of collective leadership in a UK law firm, I look at how people raise their stance through language and how unspoken Discourses shape what can be said. My chapter on these discursive ghosts is forthcoming in Ghost Leadership (Emerald, 2027).
Recent talk: ILA Prague, 2025Qualitative methods for studying complex organisational phenomena. Discursive construction analysis connects micro, meso and grand levels of discourse to capture both what is said and what goes unsaid. Dispositional analysis maps the wider network of cultures, laws, media and institutions that shapes leadership, as in my study of Theranos.
Discursive construction analysis (Organization Studies, 2026)Dispositional analysis (Journal of Business Ethics, 2025)Stephenson & Bolden · Organization Studies
Stephenson, Bolden & Witzel · British Journal of Management
Stephenson & Bolden · Journal of Business Ethics
Tools · Free with your email address
Two tools that turn the Dark Pyramid into a practical exercise. Work through them online or print the paper version. Both start from the same question: what combination of conditions could allow serious organisational harm to develop, persist and escalate?
For boards and executive teams
A diagnostic for leadership teams. Score fifteen prompts across the internal, external and regulatory faces of the pyramid, discuss where you disagree, then trace one vulnerability from trigger to harm and agree an action to break the pathway.
For teaching and workshops
A 45-minute exercise in four stages for students and workshop groups. Scan an organisation you know against fifteen statements, build the failure pathway that connects them, then test it and propose one intervention.
Based on Stephenson, Bolden & Witzel (2026), The Dark Pyramid, British Journal of Management. Scores indicate areas for inquiry, not a validated probability of failure.
Speaking & media
I speak to conferences, organisations and business schools about how leadership develops in practice: as a collective process that people at every level can take part in, grow confident in and get better at. Talks draw on Lead From Where You Are, on research into how leaders use language, and on what high-profile failures teach us about building healthy cultures. Keynotes, panels, executive education, podcasts and media comment.
Enquire about speakingRadio interview
The Early Edition, AM 1150, Kelowna, Canada · October 2026
Opinion
In.Comms
Article
International Leadership Association · with Richard Bolden
International Leadership Association Conference, Prague · 2025
Bristol Leadership and Change Centre · 2025
International Studying Leadership Conference, Birmingham · 2024
Talk topics
Leadership for people without a senior title, from the book of the same name. Why leadership is a collective process, how to raise your stance without the status, and how to use language and read culture to influence what happens around you.
Status is your place in the hierarchy. Stance is the authority you hold in the moment, and anyone can raise it. A practical talk on building a leadership identity and holding authority in the room, because power isn’t a zero-sum game.
Leadership happens in everyday talk. How to choose and combine arguments that fit your audience and your organisation’s values, respond well to the arguments of others, and hear what goes unsaid.
What Enron, Purdue Pharma, Theranos and Wirecard teach us about getting leadership right. Using the Dark Pyramid, this talk turns the lessons of failure into practical steps on governance, accountability and culture, with tools your team can use straight away.