How can I spend less time in meetings and make better decisions?
Tired of endless meetings? Learn how to reclaim time by distinguishing between one way and two way door decisions, empowering people, and making meetings matter again.
How can I know which decisions to make alone and which to share?
The Waterline Principle helps leaders and teams decide when to act alone and when to consult. It offers a shared language for risk and responsibility, anchored in three questions: the upside, the downside, and whether you can truly live with the loss.
How can I make my meetings more effective?
Most meetings drain time without delivering value. Research shows up to one third are unnecessary and 35% unproductive. This article explores ten practical yet human-centred ways to make meetings meaningful, focused, and effective.
Should leaders be friends with the people they lead?
Should leaders be friends with employees? Explore the benefits, risks, and strategies to balance trust, fairness, and performance at work.
How can I build trust at work? (Three Dimensions of Trust)
Explore the three dimensions of trust; character, communication, and capability, with simple practices to strengthen collaboration and confidence at work.
How can I get my team to think differently? (DeBono Six Hats)
Teams often get stuck in the same patterns of talk. De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats offer a way to think differently, creating space for facts, feelings, risks and possibilities to emerge in turn.
Stewardship and the Time to Think practices
Discover how Nancy Kline’s Ten Components of a Thinking Environment help leaders practise stewardship, build trust, and create shared responsibility.
How can I cope better as a leader?
Discover how proactive coping helps leaders build resilience, anticipate challenges, and cope better in today’s volatile workplace.
How can I stay resilient every day and keep my emotions in check as a leader?
Resilient leaders are not born, they are built through daily practices that strengthen emotional self-regulation. From mindfulness and reflection to protecting boundaries and practising gratitude, leaders can create stability for themselves and their teams. This guide explores five proven strategies backed by research to help leaders stay composed, focused, and effective in the face of pressure.
How do I use OKRs to give my team focus?
Learn how to use OKRs to give your team focus. Discover their origins, benefits, pitfalls, and practical steps to connect daily work with purpose.
How do I rebuild trust and resilience in my team after constant change?
When a team has faced layoffs, turnover, and shifting leaders, stability becomes the true test of leadership. This guide shows how to rebuild trust and resilience after constant change by focusing on four resilience behaviours, shared identity, and strengths-based teaming. It also offers a clear sixty-day path for creating steadiness your team can believe in.
How can I influence others without manipulating them?
How can I influence others without manipulating them? I explore five doors of influence: rationalising, asserting, negotiating, inspiring and bridging, to persuade with respect.
How can I clarify decision rights to make my meetings more effective?
Unclear decision rights are one of the biggest reasons meetings stall. In this article, I explore five ways decisions can be made and offer practical invitations for leaders who want to bring more clarity, trust, and accountability into every meeting.
What should I do when an employee hates their job but won’t quit?
A team member dislikes their role but refuses to resign. As a leader, how do you respond? This article explores five research-based frameworks that explain why people stay unhappy in jobs and what you can do to re-engage them with meaning, trust, and choice.
How can I lead when I disagree with decisions from above?
When senior leaders choose a path you would not, how do you respond without losing integrity or influence? This post explores evidence-based practices for regulating your reactions, acknowledging loss, practising self-compassion, reframing the situation, and grounding in values so you can lead with steadiness through disagreement.
How can I lead people who are older and more experienced than me?
Being promoted early can feel daunting when you are asked to lead older, more experienced colleagues. This article explores four proven psychological theories, impression management, social identity, leader–member exchange, and self-determination, that help young leaders show up with steadiness, build belonging, earn trust, and empower ownership.
How can I lead with authority when I don’t have all the answers?
How can you lead with authority when you don’t have all the answers? Drawing on behavioural science and self-stewardship, this article explores impostor phenomenon, self-compassion, growth mindset, tolerance of ambiguity, and narrative identity to help leaders stay steady and trusted in uncertainty.
How can I manage conflict between strong personalities at work?
Conflict between strong personalities can drain a team or strengthen it. Leaders who steward these moments with care can turn heated clashes into progress. This guide shows six evidence-based approaches and practical tools to host conflict in ways that protect dignity, regulate tension, and anchor people in shared purpose.
What do I do if my team keeps missing deadlines despite reminders?
Teams often miss deadlines despite reminders, leaving leaders frustrated. This article explores six behavioural science insights and the principle of stewardship to redesign accountability. Learn practical ways to address optimism bias, vague promises, hidden risks, and motivation gaps so deadlines become shared commitments instead of recurring sources of stress.
How can I motivate a burned-out team?
Burnout is at record levels in 2025, with two-thirds of employees at risk. Drawing on Maslach’s burnout framework, this guide shows leaders how to motivate burned-out teams by addressing six critical mismatches in hybrid workplaces.
How do you lead when trust has been broken?
When trust is broken in leadership, clarity and control rarely repair it. This article explores the psychology of trust: ability, integrity, benevolence, fairness, and psychological safety and offers practical ways leaders can rebuild confidence through convening, fairness, and community.
Why do my town halls (and webinars) fall flat?
Town halls and webinars are efficient at spreading information but rarely build ownership. This article explores why big formats fall flat, using insights from behavioural science and group psychology. It also shows how to redesign gatherings, physical or virtual, so people co-create meaning, commit to action, and leave with a sense of shared ownership rather than passive compliance.
What questions should I ask myself in a weekly leadership review?
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
What should I do in the first 60 days of leading leaders?
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.
I have just been made a team leader — where do I start? A 60-day plan for new leaders
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.
How can I handle a toxic but talented employee at work?
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
What should leaders do when a team member is often absent or quiet quitting?
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.
How do I respond when a team member goes to peers first instead of me?
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.
How do I deal with a team member who refuses to help others?
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.
How can I create a positive climate for organisational change?
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.
How can I deal with inappropriate jokes or humour at work?
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.
How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
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.
How can I help a team member receive feedback without getting defensive?
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.
How to handle a team member who dominates meetings?
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.
How can I cultivate strong relationships in a hybrid or remote-team?
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.
How do I support mental wellbeing while maintaining performance?
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.
How do I stop my team getting distracted?
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.
How do I deal with team members who don’t want to join team events?
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.
How do I get my team to turn their cameras on?
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.
How do I handle recurring performance issues in my team?
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.
How do I lead people from different cultures?
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.
How can leaders say no without damaging relationships?
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.
How to run a Future Search: A guide to building common ground for action
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.
From Leaders to Connectors: Rethinking the centre of the room
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.
How can I make my team more accountable?
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 wall has a crack and therefore a possibility
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.
How to run an Appreciative Inquiry Summit: A guide to whole-system, strengths-based change
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.
How to run an Open Space: A guide to hosting self-organising meetings
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.
How to run a World Café: step-by-step guide to facilitating large-group dialogue
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.
Connecting for the common good – Session 5 – Peter Block
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: