At the end of each week, leaders face a choice: carry the weight of unfinished tasks into Monday, or pause long enough to notice what truly mattered. A weekly leadership review is less about checking boxes and more about asking better questions, about wins and losses, pride and gratitude, and the priorities that will shape the week ahead
Stepping into a role leading leaders is one of the toughest transitions in management. This 60-day plan offers research-backed guidance on how to listen, build trust, create alignment, and empower your leadership team, setting a foundation for performance and culture that lasts well beyond the early weeks.
Just promoted to team leader? Your first 60 days set the tone for trust and performance. This guide offers a practical roadmap in four 15-day phases, balancing early wins with building a culture of belonging and accountability.
What do you do when one of your top performers is also the most toxic presence on your team? This article explores five leadership lenses that reveal the hidden costs, relational fractures, and cultural risks of tolerating toxicity, and offers practical moves to protect trust, balance results, and safeguard the future of your team
When a team member is often absent or quietly disengaged, leaders face a tough choice. Should they tighten policies or start with connection? This post explores how to balance compassion with accountability, using coaching stories, practical steps, and HR guidance to help leaders respond with confidence and fairness.
What should you do when a team member goes to peers first instead of you? It can feel like being bypassed, but it is also a signal worth listening to. This article explores what it really means, why people turn sideways before up, and how leaders can respond with trust rather than defensiveness.
What if a colleague’s refusal to help is not the problem, but the signal? Discover three leadership lenses: culture, structure, and systems, that turn frustration into collaboration.
Organisational climate is the “everyday weather” of work that shapes whether change efforts succeed or fail. Unlike culture, climate can shift quickly and leaders play a decisive role in creating clarity, trust, fairness, and psychological safety. This article explores six facets and five levers leaders can use to build a true climate for change.
Humour can bring people together or push them apart. When workplace jokes cross the line, leaders face a choice: ignore, enforce policy, or reframe the culture. This article explores how to move beyond compliance to create belonging, with practical questions every leader should ask.
Complaints are part of every workplace, but left unchecked, they drain energy and erode trust. This article explores why people complain, the hidden psychology behind it, and how leaders can transform negativity into ownership and engagement with simple questions and practices.
Defensiveness can derail feedback conversations. This article explores why people react defensively, what behavioural science reveals, and how leaders can respond. From practical models to self-awareness practices, discover strategies to turn defensiveness into growth, build psychological safety, and create a culture where feedback strengthens rather than divides.
Tired of one person dominating meetings? Discover practical strategies to restore balance, engage quieter voices, and design inclusive conversations so every team member feels heard and valued. Create meetings that work for everyone.
Hybrid work has changed how teams connect. Learn how to build trust, create equity, and design simple rituals that foster belonging in remote and hybrid teams.
Discover how workplace wellbeing drives sustainable organisational performance. Explore behavioural, systemic, and relational strategies to prevent burnout, boost engagement, and build resilient, human-centred workplaces.
A practical guide to reducing distraction at work by redesigning how teams focus. Through four pillars: connection, environment, system, psychology. it shows leaders how to protect attention, cut interruptions, and build shared commitment, with actionable tips, micro‑stories, and reflection questions for sustained team focus and performance.
What should a leader do when team members skip team events? Absence may not be disengagement but a signal to rethink how gatherings are designed and owned. Discover how freedom, belonging, and team-led events can transform attendance into genuine commitment.
Leaders often ask, “How do I get my team to turn their cameras on?” The answer is less about rules and more about presence, trust, and creating spaces people want to enter.
Recurring performance issues in teams can frustrate leaders and lower standards. Learn how to handle recurring problems constructively through the Five Lenses of Performance, giving feedback that builds accountability, strengthens trust, and even works when you lead without formal authority.
Leading across cultures means adapting to very different expectations about communication, feedback, leadership, and time. Drawing on Erin Meyer’s Culture Map, this article explains the eight dimensions of cultural difference and offers practical tips and reflective questions for managers of global teams. By developing cultural intelligence, leaders can turn diversity into a strength and build more effective, collaborative teams.
Many leaders struggle to say no without upsetting others. This article explores why saying no feels so hard, how culture shapes our responses, and practical strategies to set boundaries while preserving trust and respect.
Discover how to run a Future Search that gathers every key voice, explores the past, creates a shared vision, and commits to action in just three days.
Inspired by Peter Block’s Connecting for Common Good series, this blog explores the shift from leader to connector: building trust, belonging, and shared accountability through everyday habits, cultural practices, and real-world examples from around the globe.
Accountability is not about keeping score, it is about connection and choice. In this article, we explore the shift from leader-enforced rules to a culture where the team holds itself accountable. Includes the top barriers, enablers, and five self-coaching questions for leaders.
Every tough situation we face has hope, if we are capable of standing back and seeing the possibility. A short piece on finding and creating hope.
An Appreciative Inquiry Summit brings the whole system together to discover its strengths, dream of its best future, and design the path to get there. It turns large gatherings into spaces of shared vision and committed action, moving from ideas to ownership in just a few days.
Discover how to run an Open Space: a dynamic large-group facilitation method that hands the agenda to participants and sparks self-organising action. This practical guide explains the process, principles, hosting tips, and real-world examples so you can create events where energy, ownership, and collaboration thrive.
Discover how to run a World Café: a powerful large-group facilitation method that turns conversation into connection and collective insight. This step-by-step guide covers the process, hosting tips, example questions, and ways to make your World Café lead to lasting change.
Yesterday saw the fith and final session of the Connecting for the Common Good series by Peter Block and friends. Here is my summary of the session:
Explore key insights from Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting, The trusted guide for consultants seeking to build trust, solve problems, and drive sustainable client results.
Below is my fourth sketchnote (more note than sketch) on the fourth session with Peter Block on Connecting for the common good. Generative Journalism was front and centre of the session, with Peter Pula (website) explaining what it is and how WE can make it happen. There is one more in the series and that can be found here.
This is my third session attending Connecting for the Common Good with Peter Block. As always, some great conversations and ideas. There are two more in the series. See HERE to attend. Here is my sketchnote summary of the session:
Yesterday I attended the second session by Peter Block on "Connecting for the common good". A great follow on session with new people to meet and exchange ideas with. There are three more in the series. See HERE to attend. Here is my sketchnote summary of the session:
Yesterday I attended a session by Peter Block on "Connecting for the common good". As always engaging, energising and motivating. There are four more in the series. See HERE. Here is my sketchnote summary of the session:
The book in 3 sentences Peter Block challenges the dominant “business perspective”, built on scarcity, consumption, and institutional control, and offers a new story: the common good perspective, where citizens reclaim agency through trust, local action, and relational care. He argues that real change happens when neighbours gather, share power, and co-create community well-being, rather than waiting for systems to fix [...]
The full title is "The Answer to How is YES: Acting on what matters." The book in 3 sentences Peter Block argues that our obsession with asking “how?” masks a deeper avoidance of personal responsibility and purpose. Instead of chasing solutions, we should begin by saying “yes” to what truly matters and commit to it without waiting for permission or certainty. [...]
The book in three sentences Peter Block’s Stewardship redefines leadership as a choice to serve rather than control. It challenges traditional models of power, accountability, and ownership, arguing for organisations built on partnership, transparency, and shared purpose. The book is a call to abandon patriarchal governance and become stewards, that is, people who are deeply accountable without needing to dominate. Who [...]
The book in 3 sentences The core idea is that without a shift in trust, social capital, belonging, and relatedness...our capacity to solve problems, organize work effectively, or end the suffering around us is greatly diminished. Genuine transformation arises when everyone connected to the situation shows up, trusts each other and decides how to make things better...the possibilities we have. Through [...]
The book in 3 sentences The Empowered Manager is a practical guide for managers who want to lead with integrity, not control. It shows how managers can choose partnership over hierarchy, service over self-interest, and accountability over compliance. By making these personal shifts, managers can foster trust, ownership, and meaningful change, regardless of the system they work in. Who should read [...]
This is a hub of resources around mentoring. Within it you will find a range of links and recommendations that may help you on your journey to become a mentor or being an even better one. If you have any additional resources you think I should share, please let me know. A short selection of books that are worth [...]
Research around whole brain thinking and a simple coaching tool to support right brain thinking.
Joining the Drawify team - A quick look at what it is.
Blog piece on Virtual collaboration lessons learnt as an OU student
A hub of resources related to Design Thinking
Slide deck showing what is covered each week in B329
Source: Leading for Regeneration : Going Beyond Sustainability in Business Education, and Community by John Hardman
Sketchnotes from chapters 1 to 13 of Flawless Consulting
A simple sketch note on key ideas from Peter Block's Flawless Consulting "Discovery process"
A short presentation delivered to Nedja Petranovskaja's Remote Cafe Session on Face to Face versus Remote Facilitation?
This is a curation of Visual Templates I have found: either by being sent them or on my travels on the internet
My very brief thoughts on what makes a canvas
