Culture is not an abstract backdrop; it is the concrete system through which work gets done. To improve performance, stop trying to 'fix' your people and start shaping the environment they operate in. This guide outlines six practical levers, from behavioural norms to rituals, that allow leaders to intentionally build a culture of clarity and trust.
Most senior leaders do not avoid difficult conversations because they are weak. They avoid them because they are managing risk, status or energy. This article applies behavioural science to identify the 5 archetypes of avoidance and provides the specific leadership moves to handle each one.
Heads nod in meetings, yet behavior stays the same. This isn't just "lack of buy-in", it's a biological safety response. Learn why false agreement happens and how to turn polite compliance into real ownership using behavioral science.
Most leaders believe they are building empowerment and capability. Yet over time, judgement, risk, and meaning quietly route through the strongest leaders. What looks like trust becomes dependence. The real leadership question is no longer how good you are, but how necessary you have become.
Stop the cycle of repeated feedback. The CEDAR model (Context, Examples, Diagnosis, Actions, Review) helps leaders break the "illusion of agreement" and turn difficult performance conversations into genuine commitment.
Most feedback fails because of poor preparation. The BOOST model (Balanced, Observed, Objective, Specific, Timely) is your quality-control checklist to ensure every conversation builds trust rather than defensiveness.
Silence in meetings is rarely apathy; it is a safety signal. I explain the three reasons teams go quiet (fear, futility, and overload) and the specific leadership moves to restore open dialogue.
Do you feel your legitimacy is borrowed? Most leaders try to "fix" their imposter syndrome by working harder. Discover why the real solution isn't confidence, it's shifting from seeking permission to inhabiting your authority.
Leaders face a hidden threat in passive-aggressive behaviour. It erodes trust, blocks collaboration, and costs organisations billions. Learn 5 evidence-based moves to stop the spiral of incivility, protect team dignity, and resolve conflict without escalation.
Even healthy teams have a dark side. Explore the "shadows" of the Five Movements model, like when "Belonging" mutates into "Artificial Harmony" or "Aligning" becomes "Rigid Dogma." A diagnostic guide for modern leaders on how to spot and fix hidden dysfunction.
OpenSpace Beta is a radical 90-day model for transforming hierarchical organisations into decentralised, self-organising teams. This practical summary explains how invitation, Open Space Technology and peer governance replace command-and-control, enabling faster decisions, stronger engagement and real ownership in complex environments.
Organisations behave like living systems, not machines. The Complexity Leadership Library introduces twenty-five leadership capabilities for leading complex adaptive systems under uncertainty.
Most teams are told they need a vision. But many teams quietly lose trust, clarity, and meaning because of it. This article explains when vision helps, when it harms, and what teams actually need instead.
Groups rarely struggle because they lack ideas. They struggle because their conversations do not reliably become commitments. This article explores how facilitators guide groups to consensus and desired outcomes, from shaping agreement to fostering completion, so that discussion leads to decisions that hold. It offers practical insight into IAF Core Competency D3.
Why do so many well-intentioned leadership resolutions fall apart by February? This article unpacks why traditional approaches to change fail and offers a design-based alternative grounded in behavioural science.
In Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems, Adam Kahane challenges the idea that meaningful systems change comes from heroic leaders or grand transformation programmes. Instead, he offers a grounded and hopeful alternative: systems evolve through many small, everyday actions taken by people working from where they are, with what they have, inside the systems they care about. Drawing on decades of experience in complex social, organisational, and political change, Kahane introduces seven practical habits that help practitioners engage more responsibly, relate more fully, notice what is unseen, work with cracks, experiment forward, collaborate across difference, and sustain themselves over time.This summary explores Kahane’s core metaphors of carving, weaving, and sailing, his concept of radical engagement, and the discipline of working with cracks where new futures are already trying to emerge. It is written for change practitioners, leaders, facilitators, and anyone working with complexity who wants practical guidance for taking thoughtful, human-centred action without waiting for perfect conditions or complete alignment.
When leadership priorities keep changing, teams do not just struggle with execution. They struggle with meaning, trust, and motivation. This article explores what teams truly expect from leaders during constant reprioritisation, and the five leadership capabilities that help people stay engaged when change never slows down.
Groups often focus on what they are discussing rather than how they are working together. This guide explores how facilitators support group self-awareness in real time by noticing pace, surfacing information, making sense of patterns, and encouraging reflection. It offers practical insight into helping groups think more clearly, learn from their experience, and reach outcomes that are both meaningful and sustainable, aligned with IAF Core Competency D2.
Groups rarely struggle because they lack ideas. They struggle because their thinking has no clear pathway. This article explores how facilitators guide groups using clear methods and processes, from establishing context to managing group dynamics, so that discussion leads to appropriate and useful outcomes. It offers practical insight into IAF Core Competency D1.
Mental models are often presented as the key to better leadership. But neuroscience and complexity science tell a different story. This article challenges the mental model myth and explores why leadership change comes from interaction, not introspection.
The Iceberg Model is one of the most enduring frameworks in systems thinking. But its promise, that by uncovering what lies beneath, leaders can solve complex problems, creates a dangerous illusion. It turns leadership into a technical exercise and overlooks the human, adaptive, and relational nature of real change. This article challenges the leadership myth embedded in the model and explores what it means to lead from within complexity, not above it.
Many leaders assume that silence means apathy or disengagement. But what if silence is something else entirely, a signal of caution, fear, or protection? This article challenges a persistent leadership myth and explores what silence really means, and what leaders can do in response.
Creativity does not happen by chance. It grows when people feel encouraged to think differently and are offered more than one way to contribute. This guide explores how facilitators draw out diverse learning styles, build confidence for experimentation, adapt methods to the needs of the group and stimulate the collective energy required for innovation. It offers practical insight into IAF Core Competency C4.
Artificial intelligence is changing the nature of executive decision making and redefining what leaders contribute. This review highlights four leadership capabilities identified in new research that will help leaders navigate the growing presence of intelligent systems in their organisations.
Conflict is not a disruption to facilitation. It is a vital part of how groups learn, mature and make honest decisions. When managed with skill, disagreement becomes a source of insight rather than division. This guide explores how facilitators help individuals surface assumptions, provide safe spaces for tension to emerge, balance behavioural dynamics and recognise the value of conflict in group decision making, offering practical insight into IAF Core Competency C3.
When leadership moments feel personal, it’s easy to react. But what if we centred ourselves, got curious, and chose a more intentional way forward? This piece explores the CPR method as a way to lead through conflict without losing connection.
Influencing upwards is harder than it looks, especially when leaders shift position once the room fills. These evidence-based strategies show how to steady the ground before and during key meetings so your ideas have a better chance of taking hold.
Honouring diversity is more than acknowledging difference. It is the craft of creating conditions where every participant feels able to contribute with confidence. This guide explores how facilitators build trust, recognise barriers, activate diverse perspectives and cultivate cultural sensitivity, offering practical insight into IAF Core Competency C2.
IAF Core Competency C1 invites facilitators to communicate in ways that widen participation, deepen listening and strengthen group connection. This article explores the five strands of participatory and interpersonal communication, why they matter and how they shape the quality of group work. With practical reflections, examples and practice lists, it offers a grounded guide for anyone who wants to help people speak honestly, listen fully and think well together.
Tuckman’s team development model shaped leadership thinking for decades. But modern teams are more fluid, diverse and interdependent than the world it was built for. This article explores why the classic five stages no longer fit today’s work and introduces a contemporary five-movement pattern for leading teams through complexity.
The Team Dynamics Framework is a practical, research-informed model that helps teams understand how they think, work, and align. This article introduces the framework and the supporting diagnostics
Effective facilitation begins long before the conversation starts. IAF Core Competency B2 encourages facilitators to prepare time and space with intention so that people can think clearly, contribute openly and work together with confidence. This article explores how physical space, timing and atmosphere quietly shape group behaviour and offers practical reflections, examples and questions to help facilitators create environments that support healthy, meaningful dialogue.
Many leaders rely on the idea of “starting with why”, but this approach often oversimplifies how commitment forms. This article explains why purpose is not the starting point of leadership and shows how conversation, connection, and shared ownership build genuine engagement.
IAF Core Competency B1 focuses on selecting methods and processes that fit the people, the purpose and the moment. This article explores how facilitators can foster open participation across cultures and identities, support varied learning and thinking styles, and choose processes that lead to high-quality, usable outcomes. With practical reflections and guiding questions, it offers a grounded approach to designing group work that is both inclusive and effective.
Many leaders still believe that a transformation programme can save an organisation, yet most large scale change efforts fail because they treat complex systems as if they can be controlled through planning. This article exposes the leadership myth at the heart of transformation, explains why organisations remain drawn to big programmes, and shows what research on complex adaptive systems reveals about how change really happens. It offers practical guidance for leaders who want to create real, sustainable transformation through learning, interaction, and shaped conditions rather than rigid roadmap
Many leaders still believe that a good plan guarantees successful change. This view, inherited from a more predictable era, persists in organisations that value control and certainty. Yet research from thinkers such as Kotter, Stacey, and Snowden shows that in complex environments, outcomes emerge through adaptation, not execution. This article explores why the myth endures, the costs of over-planning, and the practices that help leaders lead through learning rather than prediction.
Multi-session facilitation asks more of us than running a sequence of workshops. It requires holding the arc of the work, sustaining partnership with the client and designing a journey that can adapt as people learn. This article explores IAF Core Competency A3 and offers practical reflections, examples and questions to help facilitators manage long-form engagements with clarity and care.
Effective facilitation begins with a design that fits the people, the purpose and the culture. IAF Core Competency A2 Design and Customise Applications invites us to look beneath the presenting problem, understand the organisational environment and create processes that help groups work honestly and constructively. This article explores the four strands of thoughtful design, supported by practical reflections, examples and questions that help facilitators craft sessions with clarity and care.
Effective facilitation begins long before a group gathers. IAF Core Competency A1 Develop Working Partnerships, invites us to build partnerships rooted in trust, clarity, and shared responsibility. This article explores the three strands of strong working partnerships, why they matter, and what happens when they are overlooked. With reflective questions and practical guidance, it offers a steady foundation for anyone designing conversations that help people think and work well together.
Many leaders still describe culture as “soft stuff”, something intangible that sits alongside the real work of strategy, planning, and execution. Yet decades of organisational research show the opposite: culture is a powerful driver of behaviour, performance, and long term results. When leaders overlook it, they miss the hidden forces shaping how decisions are made, how people collaborate, and how strategy is interpreted. This article challenges the leadership myth that culture is soft, explores why the belief persists, and shows how culture functions as strategic infrastructure rather than atmosphere. It also offers reflective questions to help leaders bring culture back to the centre of their thinking.
The belief that people dislike change is one of leadership’s most persistent myths. In practice, people embrace change when it is meaningful, fair, and well supported. What they resist is loss, confusion, or inconsistency. This article unpacks the research, explores examples from organisations, and offers practical questions to help leaders design change that people can actually commit to.
Accountability is not something you force. It is something people choose when clarity and ownership are strong. This article introduces a simple two by two model that shows the four accountability zones and how leaders can rebuild clarity, strengthen ownership, and create a culture where people follow through because they want to.
A business case is more than a technical document. It is a moment of leadership that creates clarity, builds trust, and earns genuine commitment. This guide explores practical principles for shaping a compelling business case that people believe in and want to support.
Many leaders still inherit the idea that they must have all the answers. It is a belief shaped by the industrial age, reinforced by organisational culture, and sustained by our collective discomfort with uncertainty. Yet research from thinkers such as Heifetz, Senge, and Edmondson shows that knowing is not the work of leadership. The real task is to create the conditions where people can think, learn, and sense what the system needs next. This article explores why the myth endures, the cost of pretending to know, and the practices that help leaders move from answer giver to steward of shared insight.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” is one of the most persistent leadership myths. Often attributed to Peter Drucker, it distorts his thinking. This essay explores why measurement brings comfort but not always insight, and why true leadership begins where data ends.
“What gets measured gets managed” is one of leadership’s most quoted lines, often credited to Peter Drucker. Yet the phrase hides a deeper truth. Measurement can guide or distort, depending on intent. When leaders use data to learn rather than to control, numbers become tools for meaning. This article explores how to build a healthier relationship with metrics in complex organisations.
The phrase “people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers” feels true, but it tells only part of the story. This article unpacks the evidence behind the myth, revealing how turnover reflects not just bad bosses but broken systems, poor design, and misaligned purpose. Explore what really drives people to stay, to leave, and to lead better.
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is one of the most quoted, and misquoted, lines in business. Peter Drucker never said it, yet it endures because it feels true. This essay explores where the phrase came from, what research really shows about culture and strategy, and why effective leaders treat them not as rivals but as partners in shaping organisational success
Coaching becomes powerful when the coachee treats it as an active craft, not a passive conversation. These are the ten practices that consistently turn coaching into real change in work, behaviour, and leadership.
I have joined Patagonia Action Works (Catchafire) as a volunteer and will be offering executive coaching and leadership support to organisations working for environmental impact. This is a way of giving back through my craft, helping mission driven groups clarify thinking, strengthen decisions, and make progress on what matters.
