For many people, the word leadership brings up resistance or even rebellion. Too often, what we see publicly is leadership driven by ego, control, narcissism, and hunger for power. Who can blame anyone for becoming disillusioned? These are the beastly models on display. But leadership is more than the person temporarily holding authority. It is...
There’s little predictable about our world right now. Conflict. Political uncertainty. Shaky business confidence. You’ll have your own examples. Predictable, stable looks like an ever more distant continent. I confess I am comfortable with predictable (it’s probably the same for you). And yet, volatile is attractive too. Great leaps forward come from volatility. The discovery...
At the start of any coaching journey the road signs probably point to insights, released potential, new and more polished skills, personal and professional development. Quite rightly, they are a useful frame for the process. Coachee and coach have already agreed they’ll make the journey together, armed with some goals for the destination. All seems...
I’m just emerging from a 48-hour leadership retreat where we blended spontaneous creative thinking, deep reflection, cultural immersion, personal reflection and growth and practical project scoping — all while strengthening a working relationship that will matter deeply in the years ahead. I call it leadership alchemy. Sound appealing? When we consciously step away from operational...
It’s been a week! Days of working to get different software systems to talk to each other and ‘conversing’ with chatbots, trying to penetrate the rigidity of their scripts, to access help. A life on repeat. Eventually a breakthrough has been made. Everything looks like it is synced (fingers crossed). As frustrating as the process...
It’s the same with love. Both are fundamental in being human. But not, it seems, in being a leader. And yet, in my experience of working with leaders both heartfulness and love are present but rarely acknowledged and certainly not openly discussed. Think of the power that exists in both. Heartful leadership holds compassion in...
Like me, you probably can’t fail to be aware of the shift in the prevailing narrative – sharper, at times brutal. Words like dictatorship, colonialism, imperialism, force, world on the brink, populism, and many others appear routinely in our media and, often, in our day-to-day talk, to describe the shifts we are living through. We...
The glue that holds the world together is relationship…between humanity and nature, between nations and peoples. The relationships in organisations, in community groups. In families. Between friends. These are such a fundamental part of human existence that perhaps we give them less attention, put in less effort than they undoubtedly deserve. Relationships have been much...
Some years ago, a good (and older than me) friend was fond of saying ‘the older I get, the less I know.’ Usually, it followed some unexpected and illogical incident or inquiry. At the time I found the statement a little puzzling. How could we know less, surely with age we know more? And yet...
I’ve been contemplating the almost science fiction nature of our reality today and how easy it would be to ‘give up’ on any sense making or acts of leadership. Craziness and dystopian realities can create a false fog in our minds…tempting us into a level of coma when, in fact, something completely different, and indeed...