Urban Gym Group CEO Neil Randall talks in this month’s HCM about how being passed over for promotion taught him the resilience to power through the rest of his career.

“The rejections were a small part of my career, but taught me resilience and accountability,” Randall says. “I had two options. I could get frustrated about the company not valuing me and walk away, or keep my head down and carry on doing what I was doing. I did the latter because I enjoyed the job.”

Randall’s big break came after an intense leadership course which involved potholing and being woken in the middle of the night to carry out tasks. His ability to take responsibility and be accountable when the team did badly on a task earned him his big break. “Two weeks later I was given my first club and that was the start of my GM and senior leadership career,” he says.

From that point on, Randall climbed the ranks, getting his first CEO position at Anytime Fitness UK right before the lockdowns and then moving to Urban Gym Group in November 2022. He says he still uses the lessons learned from the early days: “Learning accountability has been really useful in my role as CEO, because you end up being accountable for everything that happens in the company.”

Read the full interview in this month’s HCM