Routines, habits, life-acquired filters. They’re helpful in managing the day to day. On the other hand, rigidly adhered to, never examined for value, they become blinkers, or worse, blindfolds, blocking the light of higher possibility. The world shifts, its issues ever more pressing, our perspective stays stuck. We operate solo, and as organisations, on autopilot....
When the original 13 colonies merged to form a single US nation the founding fathers adopted the motto E Pluribus Unum – out of the many, one. Notwithstanding the challenges the US and all of us around the world face from division and polarisation isn’t this motto – which speaks so powerfully and inspiringly to...
For various reasons I’m being called on to surrender in my life. Not easy when you are used to taking responsibility, figuring things out, having an insight that guides. Surrender, at least for me can feel like giving up, giving in, being weak. And yet as I have sat with it more, I realise in...
On the whole when discussing the many aspects of leadership we don’t speak much about true intuition or the help that might be available to us by ‘reading the tea leaves’. Walking the cliff path in Cornwall this past week and using the time – while battling the wind and ‘enjoying’ the steep inclines and...
I’m deeply grateful that I get to not only talk about building a culture of psychological safety within leadership teams but also help them to build it. And that usually entails some exploration of vulnerability. It’s funny really because working on resilience from the perspective of ‘being strong’ feels like safer territory for many in...
Change or transformation? Big, fat words, used interchangeably, describing radically different fields of play and outcomes. Change is like moving the deckchairs. Transformation puts us into an entirely different universe. A new state. Reimagined, reinvented. Think tadpole to frog, caterpillar to butterfly. In organisations, and life, change ensures we survive the headwinds and turbulence. It’s...
Okay. That’s not actually true. But it’s heartening that we have just seen the appointment of the first female Archbishop of Canterbury. Japan has its first female Prime Minister in Sanae Takaichi. And the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the incredibly courageous leader of the opposition in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado, despite lobbying...
The world is changing – with or without you. Taking time to consider whether your leadership is part of the solution, or the status quo seems like an important question for us all to ask ourselves. The visible changes in the world seem to call for even more resilience and flexibility of mind and approach....
Too often optics drive the narrative. We’re seeing this daily from global leadership and in the micro in our own organisations and teams. Performance trumping substance, truth and trust. And trust is surely the thing here. Much of social media is eroding the ability to discern truth from fake content. The growing capability of AI...
As leaders we know it’s our job to help people develop and release their potential. When it comes to skills and tasks, we generally do okay at helping them to ‘do better’. But what about truly releasing our collective inner power by building a culture of openness, transparency and confidence by sharing more behavioural feedback...