Hardy Sidhu is the Founder and CEO of Format-3, but labels have never sat comfortably with him. Designer, strategist, business builder, father, philosopher…

Hardy has moved fluidly through roles and identities since entering the industry as a teenager, driven less by titles and more by a constant need to feel, question, and stay awake to the moment he is in.

In this episode, Hardy joins Adam for a raw, expansive conversation about presence, discomfort, and what it really means to be alive inside your work. He talks about growing up working class in West London, building a career without formal qualifications, and learning early on that comfort is not where he does his best thinking. For Hardy, creativity lives in tension. In pressure. In chaos. And in the willingness to sit with both the good and the bad without trying to escape either.Hardy reflects on why every project should make you feel something, how anxiety, frustration, and uncertainty are not signs of failure but signals of engagement, and why honesty with clients and teams matters more than polished delivery. He shares the philosophy behind Format-3, from vetting clients as carefully as projects, to embracing chaos as a prerequisite for innovation, to protecting his team from burnout by choosing the right partners, not just the right budgets.This is also a deeply personal episode. Hardy opens up about therapy, self-acceptance, slowing down, and learning to stop chasing and start welcoming whatever shows up. He talks about presence as a daily practice, about listening to yourself as much as you listen to users or trends, and about why love, not ego or fear, is the only sustainable way to move through life and work.

This is a powerful, unfiltered conversation about creativity, humanity, and staying present in a world that constantly pulls you out of yourself.

In this episode, we cover:* Why every project should make you feel something, not just look successful* Understanding anxiety, frustration, and pressure as part of the creative process* Growing a career without qualifications and trusting your own path* Why Hardy actively seeks discomfort and avoids staying comfortable too long* The philosophy behind Format-3 and embracing chaos as part of innovation* How radical honesty with clients builds stronger partnerships* Vetting clients to protect team wellbeing and creative quality* Therapy, self-reflection, and learning to accept who you are* Presence as a practice and why slowing down changes everything* Listening to yourself as much as you listen to users, trends, or technology* Why love, not anger or fear, is the most powerful creative force* Letting go of approval, even from yourself

===

This is Awaiting Approval. A podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership.

Hosted by Adam Jennings - a creative leader with three decades of experience leading teams and projects for global brands including Microsoft, Salesforce, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Ancestry, Dolby, BBC and many more - this show features honest, unscripted conversations with the leaders shaping design, storytelling, and innovation today.

These are the conversations you don’t hear in keynotes. The ones about imposter syndrome, trust, failure, confidence, and finding your voice as a leader.

Whether you’re just stepping into creative leadership or you’ve been at it for years, Awaiting Approval is your place to feel seen, challenged, and encouraged.

Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.Hosted by Adam Jennings.Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner.© Cordial Fox Limited, 2025.

Ready to level up your leadership with real, honest support?

Join the next cohort of Supercharged Creative Leaders - my flagship four-week programme for creative leaders who want clarity, confidence, and a community that gets it.

✅ Small groups (just 6 per cohort)

✅ Weekly live sessions with me and your cohort

✅ Async access to me and your cohort via a private Slack community

✅ Invitation to join my alumni community once you’ve completed the programme.

Previous attendees have gone on to win major pitches, land new roles, get promoted and step into leadership with more purpose and presence.

🚀 Learn more and apply here:

https://www.growwithadamjennings.com

Angela Arnold has built her career by listening deeply. To herself, to others, and to the quiet signals that tell you when something feels right… or when it doesn’t.

As Head of Product Design at Genomics England, her work sits at the intersection of craft, care, and impact, shaping experiences that matter in some of the most sensitive and complex human contexts.

In this episode, Angela joins Adam for a thoughtful, warm, and deeply reflective conversation about creative leadership, instinct, and trust. She shares how curiosity and gut feeling have guided her decisions, from navigating uncertainty in design work to knowing when it’s time to pause, reframe, or take a leap into something new.

Angela talks openly about losing confidence early in her career, finding her way back through learning-by-doing, and becoming a self-taught product designer through making, coding, and hands-on experimentation. She reflects on the mentors who believed in her, the environments that shaped her, and how working across agencies, finance, and not-for-profits eventually led her toward healthcare, where her work could have a more profound human impact.

This is a conversation about grace under pressure. About patience, self-care, and staying true to yourself in an industry that constantly shifts. Angela’s clarity is calm and powerful. Her leadership is rooted in empathy. And her belief in thoughtful, human-centred design comes through in every story she shares.

In this episode, we cover:

* Trusting instinct and knowing when something doesn’t work

* Losing confidence early on and rebuilding it through making and learning

* Becoming a self-taught product designer through code, prototypes, and practice

* The importance of asking “who is this really for?” in design critiques and leadership

* Why alignment on outcomes matters more than perfect solutions

* Understanding your strongest creative rhythms and working with them, not against them

* Learning when to pause, reframe, or let go of an idea that isn’t serving you

* Moving across industries and what each environment teaches you

* Why healthcare design became a calling, not just a career move

* Designing the spaces between decisions, where real change actually happens

* Self-care, simplicity, and creating a joyful life outside of work

===

This is Awaiting Approval. A podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership.

Hosted by Adam Jennings - a creative leader with three decades of experience leading teams and projects for global brands including Microsoft, Salesforce, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Ancestry, Dolby, BBC and many more - this show features honest, unscripted conversations with the leaders shaping design, storytelling, and innovation today.

These are the conversations you don’t hear in keynotes. The ones about imposter syndrome, trust, failure, confidence, and finding your voice as a leader.

Whether you’re just stepping into creative leadership or you’ve been at it for years, Awaiting Approval is your place to feel seen, challenged, and encouraged.

Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.Hosted by Adam Jennings.Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner.© Cordial Fox Limited, 2025.

Ready to level up your leadership with real, honest support?

Join the next cohort of Supercharged Creative Leaders - my flagship four-week programme for creative leaders who want clarity, confidence, and a community that gets it.

✅ Small groups (just 6 per cohort)

✅ Weekly live sessions with me and your cohort

✅ Async access to me and your cohort via a private Slack community

✅ Invitation to join my alumni community once you’ve completed the programme.

Previous attendees have gone on to win major pitches, land new roles, get promoted and step into leadership with more purpose and presence.

🚀 Learn more and apply here: https://www.growwithadamjennings.com

Joel Gill has lived several creative lives in one. Musician, engineer, global design leader, single father, mentor, and now Chief Experience and AI Officer at Experience Artisan. His story stretches from hiding in a school music room and becoming a session synth player & pianist in 1980s London, to shaping early digital at British Airways, to leading design inside megacorps like Shell, HSBC and S&P Platts—while also contributing his craft to teams across Barclays, WPP, Santander, Hyatt, Sapient, Hogarth Worldwide, Vodafone and many others. Through it all runs a single thread. Integrity. Show up. Experiment. Tell the truth. Look after people.

In this episode, Joel joins Adam for a rich, funny, emotional and very human conversation about the real work of creative leadership. He talks about discovering design through music studios, building clickable prototypes in PowerPoint before UX existed, and being part of the early BA dot com team in the days before digital design really had a name. He shares how contracting across agencies, banks and tech companies gave him the scar tissue he now teaches his teams to embrace.

Joel speaks openly about walking away when a place no longer aligns with your values, the difference between delivery and maturity, and why introducing Design Ops at scale became both a battle and a breakthrough. He also reflects on raising two boys alone while travelling the world for work, the people who shaped him, and the moment his son unknowingly reminded him what matters more than any job title.

This is an episode full of integrity, humour, scar tissue, and heart. Joel’s stories are defining. His clarity is unmistakable. And his love for people, culture and craft comes through in every minute.

In this episode, we cover:

* How Joel went from session musician to early digital pioneer

* As part of the early BA dot com team, he learned UX by hacking together prototypes in the days before the discipline really existed

* Contracting across agencies and banks, collecting the scar tissue that shaped his leadership

* Why he left HSBC and how he recognises when it’s time to walk away

* Building design capability at Standard & Poor’s and later at Shell

* Introducing Design Ops and why resistance taught him hard lessons

* How to observe people, question everything and tell better stories

* Why every job needs an exit strategy as much as an entry one

* Raising two boys while leading global teams and what they taught him about presence

* Visibility as accountability and why smiling is a leader’s most powerful currency

* The three helium balloons he uses to measure his own growth: experience, expertise, enthusiasm

===This is Awaiting Approval. A podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership.Hosted by Adam Jennings - a creative leader with three decades of experience leading teams and projects for global brands including Microsoft, Salesforce, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Ancestry, Dolby, BBC and many more - this show features honest, unscripted conversations with the leaders shaping design, storytelling, and innovation today.These are the conversations you don’t hear in keynotes. The ones about imposter syndrome, trust, failure, confidence, and finding your voice as a leader.Whether you’re just stepping into creative leadership or you’ve been at it for years, Awaiting Approval is your place to feel seen, challenged, and encouraged.Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.Hosted by Adam Jennings.Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner.© Cordial Fox Limited, 2026.Ready to level up your leadership with real, honest support?Join the next cohort of Supercharged Creative Leaders - my flagship four-week programme for creative leaders who want clarity, confidence, and a community that gets it.✅ Small groups (just 6 per cohort)✅ Weekly live sessions with me and your cohort✅ Async access to me and your cohort via a private Slack community✅ Invitation to join my alumni community once you’ve completed the programme.Previous attendees have gone on to win major pitches, land new roles, get promoted and step into leadership with more purpose and presence.🚀 Learn more and apply here: https://www.growwithadamjennings.com

Venessa Bennett has built a career that mirrors the evolution of digital itself. She is now Global Director of UX at Dye & Durham, but her journey began in graphic information design, moved through early digital agencies, transport consultancies, comparison sites, and eventually into design leadership, where she found her true sweet spot. Her story is one of intentional growth, constant reinvention and learning how to listen to her instinct.

In this episode, Venessa joins Adam for an honest, energetic conversation about the path from junior designer to global design leader. She shares how she first stepped into digital by accident, why she later circled back to it with clarity, and how she reshaped her skills every time the industry shifted. Along the way, she talks openly about the moment she realised she loved people leadership more than pure craft, and how her work in management has become a place of purpose, legacy and joy.

Venessa also discusses the challenges that shaped her as a leader. She reflects on the painful lesson of a mis-hire, why understanding yourself is the foundation of any good career decision, and how empathy can be both a strength and a stumbling block. She and Adam explore the unpredictability of people, the changing expectations of design in an AI-driven world, and why designers today need product sense, business awareness and sharper soft skills than ever before.

This is a wide-ranging episode full of clarity, growth and grounded wisdom. Venessa’s perspective is generous, practical and deeply human.

In this episode, we cover:

* Moving from graphic design into early digital work and rediscovering her passion for UX

* Cutting her teeth in comparison sites and fast-paced in-house product teams

* Shaping her skills around industry shifts from visual design to UX to design leadership

* Why she thrives in the nurturing side of leadership and the legacy it creates

* The difference between agency unpredictability and in-house depth

* How knowing yourself early changes the trajectory of your career

* The painful impact of a mis-hire and what she learned from it

* Advice for juniors entering the industry and for designers out of work

* The future of UX design in a leaner, AI-driven landscape

* Why end-to-end thinking, service design and ethics will matter more than ever

===

This is Awaiting Approval. A podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership.

Hosted by Adam Jennings - a creative leader with three decades of experience leading teams and projects for global brands including Microsoft, Salesforce, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Ancestry, Dolby, BBC and many more - this show features honest, unscripted conversations with the leaders shaping design, storytelling, and innovation today.

These are the conversations you don’t hear in keynotes. The ones about imposter syndrome, trust, failure, confidence, and finding your voice as a leader.

Whether you’re just stepping into creative leadership or you’ve been at it for years, Awaiting Approval is your place to feel seen, challenged, and encouraged.

Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.

Hosted by Adam Jennings.

Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner.

© Cordial Fox Limited, 2026.

Ready to level up your leadership with real, honest support?

Join the next cohort of Supercharged Creative Leaders - my flagship four-week programme for creative leaders who want clarity, confidence, and a community that gets it.

✅ Small groups (just 6 per cohort)

✅ Weekly live sessions with me and your cohort

✅ Async access to me and your cohort via a private Slack community

✅ Invitation to join my alumni community once you’ve completed the programme.

Previous attendees have gone on to win major pitches, land new roles, get promoted and step into leadership with more purpose and presence.

🚀 Learn more and apply here: https://www.growwithadamjennings.com

In this episode of Awaiting Approval, Adam sits down with Hema Meta for a deeply honest, heart-first conversation about what it means to keep going when life and work both feel heavy. It is a quiet, powerful episode about bravery in the very ordinary moments - telling the truth about how you feel, asking for help, and staying soft in a world that keeps hardening its edges.

Across the hour, Hema lets herself be seen. There are pauses, emotion, and a lot of reflection. It is not a polished “success story” as much as a real one. The kind you recognise in your own life.

In this episode, we talk about:

* How it feels to be asked real questions about your journey and find your mind going blank

* The courage it takes to be vulnerable in public when you are used to keeping it all together

* Why reflective conversations can hurt in the moment but heal in the long run

You’ll hear us explore:

* The gap between the story you think you will tell and the story that actually comes out

* How honesty about struggle can be more useful to others than a perfect highlight reelSmall, everyday acts of courage that quietly shape a creative career

If you are going through a tough season, or you have ever felt exposed sharing your story out loud, this one is for you.

===

This is Awaiting Approval. A podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership.

Hosted by Adam Jennings - a creative leader with three decades of experience leading teams and projects for global brands including Microsoft, Salesforce, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Ancestry, Dolby, BBC and many more - this show features honest, unscripted conversations with the leaders shaping design, storytelling, and innovation today.

These are the conversations you don’t hear in keynotes. The ones about imposter syndrome, trust, failure, confidence, and finding your voice as a leader.

Whether you’re just stepping into creative leadership or you’ve been at it for years, Awaiting Approval is your place to feel seen, challenged, and encouraged.

Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.

Hosted by Adam Jennings.

Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner.

© Cordial Fox Limited, 2025.

Ready to level up your leadership with real, honest support?

Join the next cohort of Supercharged Creative Leaders - my flagship four-week programme for creative leaders who want clarity, confidence, and a community that gets it.

✅ Small groups (just 6 per cohort)

✅ Weekly live sessions with me and your cohort

✅ Async access to me and your cohort via a private Slack community

✅ Invitation to join my alumni community once you’ve completed the programme.

Previous attendees have gone on to win major pitches, land new roles, get promoted and step into leadership with more purpose and presence.

🚀 Learn more and apply here: https://www.growwithadamjennings.com

Anjali Gajera Patel has lived multiple creative lives across India, the UK and now San Francisco, where she is Director of Product Design at Ancestry. Her story spans advertising, freelancing during a global recession, self-taught UX, major in-house roles at Clorox, GAP and Kodak, and the cross-continental journey that eventually led her to one of the most loved consumer brands in the world.

In this episode, Anjali joins Adam for a warm, honest and deeply human conversation about finding strength through shifting careers, immigration, recession, personal loss and the rapid pace of the tech industry. She shares how she moved from visual comms into product design, why she kept designing for free during the 2008 crash, and how she eventually built the experience and confidence that took her into global product teams.

Anjali talks about the joy of creating products that genuinely improve people’s lives, the responsibility designers have when navigating business needs and dark patterns, and the moment she realised she needed to stop fighting for an advertising dream that wasn’t hers anymore. She also reflects on the Ancestry Pet DNA project she and Adam delivered together, why pivoting is one of her greatest strengths, and how Lego, long walks and loved ones help her stay centred.

This is an episode full of resilience, optimism and honesty. Anjali’s energy is infectious and her outlook is a reminder that careers aren’t linear, dreams can shift, and you’re allowed to build new ones at any stage of life.

In this episode, we cover:

* Moving from India to the UK to the US, and rebuilding a career in each

* Starting out in advertising during the 2008 recession and designing for free to stay sharp

* Transitioning into product design without formal UX training

* The difference between agency and in-house work, and why both shaped her career

* What she learned from delivering the Ancestry Pet DNA product

* Navigating business goals, user needs and the grey area between them

* The power of pivoting and staying agile when projects shift

* How Lego, fresh air and loved ones became essential self-care rituals

* Letting go of one dream to make space for others

* Why optimism matters, especially during a global downturn and rapid AI acceleration

===This is Awaiting Approval.

A globally charting design podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership.

Hosted by Adam Jennings - a creative leader with three decades of experience leading teams and projects for global brands including Microsoft, Salesforce, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Ancestry, Dolby, BBC and many more - this show features honest, unscripted conversations with the leaders shaping design, storytelling, and innovation today.

These are the conversations you don’t hear in keynotes. The ones about imposter syndrome, trust, failure, confidence, and finding your voice as a leader.

Whether you’re just stepping into creative leadership or you’ve been at it for years, Awaiting Approval is your place to feel seen, challenged, and encouraged.

Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.Hosted by Adam Jennings.Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner.© Cordial Fox Limited, 2025.Ready to level up your leadership with real, honest support?

Join the next cohort of Supercharged Creative Leaders - my flagship four-week programme for creative leaders who want clarity, confidence, and a community that gets it.✅ Small groups (just 6 per cohort)✅ Weekly live sessions with me and your cohort✅ Async access to me and your cohort via a private Slack community✅ Invitation to join my alumni community once you’ve completed the programme.Previous attendees have gone on to win major pitches, land new roles, get promoted and step into leadership with more purpose and presence.🚀 Learn more and apply here: https://www.growwithadamjennings.com

Grow With Adam Jennings is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Chris Nguyen has lived more creative lives than most designers ever get close to. He is the Founder of UX Playbook, former Head of Product Design at TrueMonkey, and previously UX Manager at Wizeline, where he helped grow the team from a dozen designers to more than forty.

In this episode, Chris joins Adam for a fast, honest conversation about designing a career on your own terms. He shares how he went from dropping out of computer science and working in restaurants, to stumbling into a tech company in Vietnam, getting fired, freelancing, and eventually landing his first product design role in 2015. From there, the story takes him to Seattle, Mexico, Thailand and back to Vietnam, leading teams on products with millions of monthly users.

Chris talks openly about walking away from his “dream job” with no backup plan, spending years launching many startups, and finally going all in on UX Playbook. Along the way he uncovers the pattern running through it all. He is at his best going from zero to one, helping designers turn ideas into something real, and encouraging them to build careers that actually fit who they are, not just the junior–mid–senior ladder they were handed.

Adam and Chris also dig into what it means to listen to your own signals, why encouragement matters more than yet another tutorial, and how he and his sister were able to retire their parents after decades of 16 hour days in a family restaurant. This is a generous, grounded episode for any designer who feels stuck, burnt out, or unsure what comes next.

In this episode, we cover:

• How Chris went from dropped-out student to global product designer

• Discovering design in a Vietnam tech company and getting fired into freelancing

• Growing a UX team at Wizeline from 12 to 45 designers

• Taking on a Head of Product Design role at Ascend Group and why it was not the dream job

• Quitting with no backup plan and spending years experimenting with startups

• The birth of UX Playbook and why designers are “his people”

• Zero to one as a creative superpower and the trap of chasing every idea

• Practical encouragement for designers struggling to find work in a tough market

• Why making more things, and finding the play in your craft, still matters most

===

This is Awaiting Approval. A podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership.

Hosted by Adam Jennings - a creative leader with three decades of experience leading teams and projects for global brands including Microsoft, Salesforce, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Ancestry, Dolby, BBC and many more - this show features honest, unscripted conversations with the leaders shaping design, storytelling, and innovation today.

These are the conversations you don’t hear in keynotes. The ones about imposter syndrome, trust, failure, confidence, and finding your voice as a leader.

Whether you’re just stepping into creative leadership or you’ve been at it for years, Awaiting Approval is your place to feel seen, challenged, and encouraged.

Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.Hosted by Adam Jennings.Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner.© Cordial Fox Limited, 2025.

Ready to level up your leadership with real, honest support?

Join the next cohort of Supercharged Creative Leaders - my flagship four-week programme for creative leaders who want clarity, confidence, and a community that gets it.

✅ Small groups (just 6 per cohort)

✅ Weekly live sessions with me and your cohort

✅ Async access to me and your cohort via a private Slack community

✅ Invitation to join my alumni community once you’ve completed the programme.

Previous attendees have gone on to win major pitches, land new roles, get promoted and step into leadership with more purpose and presence.

🚀 Learn more and apply here: https://www.growwithadamjennings.com

Cat How has built one of the most talked-about branding agencies on two continents. She is Co-founder and Executive Creative Director at How&How, D&AD Jury President 2026, and has been recognised among the 100 Women to KNOW in America and 100 Most Influential Creative Leaders in 2025.

In this episode, Cat joins Adam for a relaxed, very human conversation about the reality of creative leadership. She shares how an English Literature degree led to design criticism, then to retraining as a graphic designer, moving across the world, starting multiple businesses, and finally building How&How into a global branding agency with studios in London and LA.

Cat talks candidly about the highs and lows. From selling a first business and opening a Lisbon studio that later had to be sunsetted, to the joy of rebranding Wild Things, a vegan candy, that helped fast-track a founder’s five year plan into six months. Along the way she returns to a simple mantra that runs through her life and work: go big, or go home.

Adam and Cat also dig into the tension between AI and craft, how to stay curious without losing your ethics, and why throwing great dinner parties is a legitimate leadership skill. If you care about brand, brave work and building community around what you do, this one will hit home.

In this episode, we cover:

* How Cat went from English Lit graduate to global branding ECD

* The story behind How&How and building studios across countries

* Sunsetting the Lisbon office and what it taught her about leadership

* The Wild Things project and taking a health food product into skate culture

* How AI is reshaping client expectations and creative practice

* Why “go big or go home” is more than a design school slogan

* The power of hosting and community outside workCat on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cat-how-0499b9149/ How & How: http://www.how.studio

===

This is Awaiting Approval. A podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership.

Hosted by Adam Jennings - a creative leader with three decades of experience leading teams and projects for global brands including Microsoft, Salesforce, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Ancestry, Dolby, BBC and many more - this show features honest, unscripted conversations with the leaders shaping design, storytelling, and innovation today.

These are the conversations you don’t hear in keynotes. The ones about imposter syndrome, trust, failure, confidence, and finding your voice as a leader.

Whether you’re just stepping into creative leadership or you’ve been at it for years, Awaiting Approval is your place to feel seen, challenged, and encouraged.

Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.

Hosted by Adam Jennings.

Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner.

© Cordial Fox Limited, 2025.

Ready to level up your leadership with real, honest support?

Join the next cohort of Supercharged Creative Leaders - my flagship four-week programme for creative leaders who want clarity, confidence, and a community that gets it.

✅ Small groups (just 6 per cohort)

✅ Weekly live sessions with me and your cohort

✅ Async access to me and your cohort via a private Slack community

✅ Invitation to join my alumni community once you’ve completed the programme.

Previous attendees have gone on to win major pitches, land new roles, get promoted and step into leadership with more purpose and presence.

🚀 Learn more and apply here: https://www.growwithadamjennings.com