In business goodwill is typically seen as an intangible asset, created over time, related to a good name/reputation. Something in the ‘bank’ of value and for use in the future. In day to day living it is something more active – the kindness, compassion, help, friendliness we extend to others. And therein lies its power....
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...
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the call of surrender and how it brings the opportunity, indeed the requirement, to let go and accept what is. In the past few weeks, I have learnt even more. It cannot be half hearted, intellectually driven or conceptual. True surrender requires everything of us. It wants us...
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...
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...
I’m wondering how different change might look and how well it might sustain if we started in a different place. Change often starts with the conviction that change is needed—generally because things aren’t going as well as desired. Missed or declining metrics (like profits) become the burning platform. And while everyone in the organisation can...
Generosity. It may seem a little old fashioned, out of kilter with the pace of our world, the attention needed to get things done. Yet it is a quality and an energy that is transformative. Being generous with our time and attention elevates not only the quality and openness of our conversations but also the...
‘If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same’ (from Rudyard Kipling’s If) When one of the world’s leading female tennis players lost a major championship recently, she very publicly attributed the loss to her poor play rather than the winner’s skill. Only on reflection did she realise...
In our interactions with others we can often assume that we are all having the same experience, viewing the situation similarly and extracting the same data. The reality is we are having entirely different experiences, picking up on very different things, seeing, and hearing, with different (literally) eyes and ears. If we imagine this in...