…can feel demoralising for those who only like forward motion, making progress. But let’s reconsider for a moment…what if the one step backwards is actually a point of learning, consolidation and insight? Maybe you recall those times when you went a little slower to go more quickly in the end. Or when you’ve rushed on...
If, as the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child then we might consider it takes a world to raise a leader. And, in embracing the need for a better world, consciousness must become a core quality of our leadership. Starting to tap into a deeper and higher wisdom comes through deepening...
Latter day heroes conjure up very clear archetypes of dragon slaying, evil beating, world saving on a vast scale. Romantic, seemingly invincible and invariably male, these heroes were the very epitome of courage and strong values. The courage needed in leadership today is no less great, but my sense is that its nature is quite...
One of the key factors that we promote and seek to develop in high performing teams here at azzur is the ability for senior execs to work in the collective space, in which they move beyond their functional specialism and into being a ‘board’ where every member is truly functioning across all disciplines. This isn’t...
Choosing to step up and take responsibility is a powerful thing and something which, when done consciously and from a pure heart, brings forth great inner power which can also be very magnetic. If we consider the word responsibility itself, it is describing the ability to respond. At its highest level, to have the ability...
As we head into a new year we may be reading about the challenges leaders have identified as most important for the year ahead. These will often be couched as the top five/ten leadership dilemmas for 2025. Though given the climate organisations are operating in – social, environmental, economic, political – there are many more...
Frederic Laloux, author of Reinventing Organisations wrote “an organization cannot evolve beyond its leadership’s stage of development.” This is a powerful and indeed significant statement when we consider our levels of investment in leadership. Investment not just in the obvious sense of ‘training’ but, in particular, in the deeper sense of what we really mean...
Elections create change. Organisations are in constant change. Family life with its ups and downs can be destabilising. If you are a lover of change you may take all this in your stride though this tends not to be the case for most of us even if we don’t always admit it to ourselves or...
It’s a strange term isn’t it – ‘edgewalking’ and yet a very powerful concept for the role many leaders need to be undertaking in organisations in these times. If we consider the boundary line between the old and the new, the current reality and new changed state we find the line often occupied by edgewalkers....
One of the big steps in personal development and indeed leadership is our ability to access wisdom which the dictionary defines as ‘the ability to make good judgments based on what you have learned from your experience, or the knowledge and understanding that gives you this ability’. This definition though feels somewhat narrow as it...