Leadership articles cover the practice of leading people, teams and organisations, from self-leadership and leading teams to leading change and complexity. They draw on research and practical frameworks to help leaders make better decisions and build trust. Browse this category to find leadership ideas you can apply this week.

How can I spot the early signs that a change is going off track?

By |2026-11-08T22:31:17+00:00November 8, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership questions, Transformation|Tags: , , , |

How can leaders spot the early signs that an organisational change is going off track when the project dashboard still looks healthy? Milestones and performance measures rarely reveal the whole picture. This article explores how changes in everyday events, relationships, attention, workarounds and informal conversations can reveal what is emerging. Using a practical Notice, Explore and Respond approach, it shows how leaders can investigate competing explanations, identify bright spots and test small, recoverable interventions before difficulties become entrenched.

How can I get organisational change back on track?

By |2026-11-07T16:04:09+00:00November 7, 2026|Categories: Complexity & Systems thinking, Leadership, Leadership questions, Transformation|Tags: , , , , , |

What do you do when an organisational change programme is progressing on paper but not in practice? More communication, tighter controls and renewed commitment may not solve the problem. Using AIMS, a complexity-informed framework associated with Dave Snowden and The Cynefin Co., this article explores how leaders can examine the conditions influencing behaviour, change interactions, test small interventions and recognise emerging patterns. A practical approach to getting organisational change moving again without assuming the original plan must be preserved.

How can I understand what is really causing conflict in my team?

By |2026-11-06T18:33:16+00:00November 6, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership questions, Leading Teams|Tags: , |

Conflict between colleagues is not always what it appears to be. What looks like a personality clash or communication problem may reflect unclear responsibilities, competing interests, damaged trust or different values. Drawing on Christopher Moore's Circle of Conflict, Gary Furlong's six-source adaptation and Adam Grant's work on workplace disagreement, this article helps leaders diagnose what is really happening. Explore six sources of conflict, recognise when organisational structures or your own leadership may be contributing, and use five practical questions to decide what needs to change.

How can I learn from stressful experiences and build resilience? (Executive Stress)

By |2026-11-06T18:33:15+00:00November 3, 2026|Categories: Executive Coaching, Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: , , |

Can stressful experiences make you more resilient? Learn how to reflect on, test and apply the lessons from difficult events, and prepare for the pressure points ahead.

How can I stop stress from making me negative or defensive? (Executive Stress)

By |2026-11-06T18:33:14+00:00November 3, 2026|Categories: Executive Coaching, Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: , |

Does stress make you negative, impatient or defensive? Explore how anger and fear shape leadership behaviour, and practical ways to respond to pressure with more openness.

How can I eat well when my work is demanding and stressful? (Executive Stress)

By |2026-11-06T18:33:12+00:00November 2, 2026|Categories: Executive Coaching, Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: |

Does stress change how and what you eat? Discover practical ways to create dependable eating habits for busy days, travel and client dinners, without relying on willpower alone.

How can I use exercise to manage stress and sustain my performance? (Executive Stress)

By |2026-11-06T18:33:11+00:00November 1, 2026|Categories: Executive Coaching, Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: |

How can exercise help you manage executive stress? Explore a realistic, balanced approach to physical activity that you can sustain through busy periods and demanding weeks.

How can I deal with the loneliness and isolation of senior leadership? (Executive Stress)

By |2026-11-06T18:33:10+00:00October 31, 2026|Categories: Executive Coaching, Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: |

Leadership can feel isolating, especially under pressure. Learn why senior roles narrow honest conversation, and how to build confidential, practical support that fits your responsibilities.

How can I recover from sustained stress and avoid exhaustion? (Executive Stress)

By |2026-11-06T18:33:09+00:00October 30, 2026|Categories: Executive Coaching, Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: , |

Struggling to recover from sustained pressure? Discover why rest and sleep matter for leadership performance, and ten practical ways to build recovery into a demanding working week.

How can I recognise when stress is affecting my judgement? (Executive Stress)

By |2026-11-06T18:33:08+00:00October 29, 2026|Categories: Executive Coaching, Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: |

Is pressure quietly changing how you think and decide? Pressure rarely announces itself, and by the time a decision goes wrong, the warning signs have often been there for weeks. This article shows you how to spot the early signs in your judgement, urgency and relationships, then gives you ten everyday habits that build awareness over time. Use the quick self-check to see where you are starting from.

How can I help my team regain a sense of agency?

By |2026-11-06T18:33:07+00:00October 26, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: |

When people stop believing their actions make a difference, initiative and motivation can decline. Drawing on Martin Seligman's research into psychological agency, this article explores five practical ways leaders can help teams regain confidence, challenge limiting beliefs and imagine new possibilities. It introduces techniques for managing pessimistic thinking, creating meaningful progress and restoring a sense of influence. Importantly, it also examines how organisational constraints, unclear authority and conflicting priorities can undermine agency, and what leaders can do to address them.

How Do I Lead People Who Don’t Report to Me?

By |2026-11-06T18:33:06+00:00October 23, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership questions, Leading Teams|Tags: , |

How do you lead a seconded or matrix team when its members report to other managers? Drawing on six ideas from Adam Grant, this article explores how to build commitment, use different perspectives, manage disagreement, encourage candour and create accountability without relying on formal authority.

The authority myth: Do you need formal authority to lead?

By |2026-11-06T18:33:01+00:00October 13, 2026|Categories: Leadership|Tags: |

Leadership does not begin with a management title. Research shows that individual contributors can lead, leadership can be shared, and credibility can matter as much as position. Discover how leadership without formal authority works and why clear mandates and decision rights still matter in matrix organisations.

Collaborating with the enemy by Adam Kahane: a practical book summary

By |2026-11-06T18:32:59+00:00October 11, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Sketchnotes|Tags: , |

Collaborating with the Enemy challenges the comfortable idea that working together requires agreement, liking and trust. In this practical summary of the second edition, I draw out Adam Kahane’s main ideas: how enemyfying narrows our options, why collaboration is a choice among four options rather than a default, and how love, power and justice shape whether it works. I then walk through the difference between conventional and stretch collaboration, and the three stretches he suggests for working across deep difference: embracing conflict and connection, experimenting a way forward, and stepping into the game. You will also find five simple things to try this week, along with my sketchnotes of the book.

How do I protect the quality of my thinking when I’m mentally depleted?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:58+00:00October 7, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership questions, Leading Yourself|Tags: |

When you are mentally depleted, your thinking doesn't simply switch off, but it can quietly shift what you choose. Learn to spot the early signs, match tasks to your capacity and add structure to protect the quality of your judgement.

How do I give feedback to someone who thinks they are performing well?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:57+00:00October 6, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership questions, Leading Yourself|Tags: |

When someone believes they're performing well and you see evidence otherwise, you're facing a perception gap, not defensiveness. This is one of the most common feedback conversations in leadership. The person isn't wilfully ignoring reality. They're navigating by different evidence than yours. The approach that works is to diagnose first, surface your evidence with precision, invite them to make sense of it, and then decide together what needs to shift. This reframes the conversation from "you are wrong about yourself" to "here is what I am seeing, what do you make of it?"

How can I actually switch off once I’ve left work?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:56+00:00October 5, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership questions, Leading Yourself|Tags: |

Leaving the office is not the same as leaving work. Many leaders close the laptop and carry on replaying meetings, drafting replies and sorting tomorrow into priorities long after the working day has ended. This article draws on recent research on psychological detachment, unfinished tasks, rumination and boundary management to explain why it is so hard to switch off after work, and what tends to help. You will find five practical practices, from writing a specific plan for open loops and building a shutdown sequence to sorting useful thinking from replaying, giving your attention somewhere to go and making your boundaries visible, together with micro practices and reflection questions to try this week.

Mapping power in a matrix organisation: Seeing who can really make things happen

By |2026-11-06T18:32:54+00:00September 29, 2026|Categories: Complexity & Systems thinking, Leadership, Leadership tools|Tags: , |

Formal authority rarely reveals who can really make things happen. This practical guide shows leaders how to map effective power, informal influence, adaptive capacity and relationships in a matrix organisation, and use that clearer picture to identify the conversations, connections and experiments most likely to create movement.

Why does my motivation hold up on some projects and completely drop on others?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:53+00:00September 29, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leading Yourself|Tags: |

Sustained motivation depends not only on how much you want something, but on conditions you can actually design. When motivation drops halfway through a project, it's rarely because your commitment waned. It's because one or more of the four mechanisms that sustain effort has weakened: goal clarity, progress visibility, identity alignment, or the social and temporal structures around the work. Understanding these mechanisms transforms motivation from something you generate through willpower alone into something you can architect.

How do I give feedback about someone’s behaviour rather than their personality?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:52+00:00September 29, 2026|Categories: Feedback, Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: |

When feedback targets a person’s character or personality, it inevitably triggers defensiveness, inflames conflict, and shifts the conversation away from work outcomes. To drive genuine performance improvement, leaders must master the discipline of shifting from subjective inferences to objective behavioural feedback. In this article, Andi Roberts breaks down the crucial distinction between observation and inference using the Video Camera Test, showing you how to translate emotional shorthand like "bad attitude" or "unprofessional" into concrete, verifiable facts. Discover how to structure your conversations using proven leadership frameworks like AID, BOOST, and CEDAR so you can address performance gaps directly while preserving dignity, trust, and psychological safety.

How do I make a new habit survive a busy week?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:51+00:00September 28, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership questions, Leading Yourself|Tags: |

New habits often work well until the week gets busy and the context they depend on disappears. This guide explores how habits actually form, why disruption weakens them, and how to design routines that survive pressure. It covers stable cues, minimum viable versions, implementation intentions, friction, recovery after missed days and five practical exercises for building habits that work in real life, not just during ideal weeks.

How can I manage my energy, not just my diary?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:49+00:00September 21, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership questions, Leading Yourself|Tags: |

Time is fixed, but your capacity to use it well is not. Managing your diary alone rarely protects the energy you bring to it. This article explores the research on recovery, work demands and four sources of energy, then turns it into five practical exercises for leaders: a limiting source check, a recovery floor, an effort and recovery rhythm, a relational energy map and a meaning link.

Which feedback model should I use for a difficult conversation?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:48+00:00September 21, 2026|Categories: Feedback, Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: |

There is no single best feedback model for a difficult conversation. Here is how to choose between BOOST, AID, CEDAR, BIFF, COIN and RADAR based on what is making it difficult.

Building an influence map: a practical tool for leading across a matrix

By |2026-11-06T18:32:46+00:00September 19, 2026|Categories: Leadership|Tags: , |

Most leaders can draw their reporting line from memory. Far fewer can draw the map of relationships that actually gets decisions made. Here's how to build one, and use it, in a matrix.

How do I give feedback to someone I don’t manage?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:43+00:00September 16, 2026|Categories: Feedback, Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: |

You do not need managerial authority to give a colleague useful feedback. What matters is having legitimate standing, focusing on what happens where your work meets and giving the other person something specific they can examine.

The resistance to change myth: what if resistance isn’t the problem?

By |2026-09-15T12:04:48+01:00September 15, 2026|Categories: Complexity & Systems thinking, Leadership, Transformation|Tags: |

Why do people resist change, and should leaders always try to overcome it? Resistance is real, but the label can hide more than it explains. Research suggests that people's responses are shaped by the person, the change process and the organisational conditions around them. Sometimes resistance may even tell you something important about the change itself.

How do I give feedback without making someone defensive?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:41+00:00September 14, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership questions|Tags: |

You cannot guarantee that feedback will not make someone defensive. But you can reduce unnecessary defensiveness by describing what you observed, explaining why it matters, inviting the other person’s perspective and responding to disagreement with curiosity. Here are five practical ways to make difficult feedback easier to hear and act on.

How can I make better decisions when facing uncertainty?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:38+00:00September 8, 2026|Categories: Complexity & Systems thinking, Leadership, Transformation|Tags: , |

Making good decisions is harder when the situation is uncertain, the evidence is incomplete and several explanations seem plausible. The danger for leaders is often not a lack of information, but settling too quickly on one interpretation of what is happening. Drawing on Dave Snowden’s work on trialectics, this article explores nine perspectives that can help leaders examine what they notice, where their knowledge comes from and how they reason about uncertainty. It then turns those ideas into practical questions for challenging your own thinking, making sense of situations with others and deciding when to apply what you know, look for patterns or act in order to learn. The aim is not to remove uncertainty, but to see more, assume less and make better decisions within it.

How to use estuarine mapping to navigate change in complex systems

By |2026-11-06T18:32:37+00:00September 6, 2026|Categories: Complexity & Systems thinking, Leadership, Transformation|Tags: |

Estuarine mapping is Dave Snowden's evolving technique for working out what can actually change in a complex system, and what cannot, so that action starts from the present reality rather than an idealised future. It maps the people, constraints, habits and resources shaping a situation against the energy and time required to shift them, helping leaders identify where intervention is genuinely possible. Use it when a change effort keeps stalling against something nobody can quite name, when people disagree about what is really fixed, or when a strategy process has produced a vision nobody disputes and a route nobody can agree on.

What is the wayshaping framework? A new approach to behaviour change, explained for leaders and change managers

By |2026-11-06T18:32:35+00:00September 6, 2026|Categories: Complexity & Systems thinking, Leadership, Transformation|Tags: |

The wayshaping framework treats behaviour change as a negotiation between the habits, identities and narratives that make up a person, not a single act of willpower. Drawing on embodied cognitive science and complexity theory, it reframes the intention-action gap as three coordination challenges and offers scaffolds and shocks as practical levers for working with them. Here's what it means in practice for leaders and change managers navigating change in themselves and in their organisations.

Digital transformation is not a technology problem: it is an organisational design problem

By |2026-09-14T21:19:19+01:00September 5, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Transformation|Tags: |

I recently read a systematic review of 109 studies on digital transformation and organisational design. The headline finding is not encouraging: most transformations fail, and it is rarely the technology at fault. Here is what stood out, including a complexity leadership counterpoint and some questions worth putting to your own leadership team.

The Leadership wheel: Eight areas of leadership attention

By |2026-09-14T21:22:47+01:00September 4, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leadership tools, Leading Yourself|

Leadership can easily become a succession of urgent demands, leaving little time to step back and consider where your attention is actually going. The Leadership Wheel offers a simple way to look across eight areas of your leadership, notice what may have slipped to the edges, and decide where a small shift could make the biggest difference.

How do I quieten the inner critic that’s affecting how I show up as a leader?

By |2026-11-06T20:00:44+00:00August 21, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leading Yourself|Tags: |

The running commentary in your head isn't neutral, it's actively shaping your confidence and performance whether you notice it or not. Self-talk research has found something genuinely counterintuitive about how to quieten a harsh inner critic, and it has less to do with what you say to yourself than with the specific words you use to say it. This piece uses that research to build five practical ways to change how you talk to yourself under pressure.

How can I stop misreading how people are actually reacting to me?

By |2026-11-06T18:32:30+00:00August 19, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leading Yourself|Tags: |

You're probably more confident than you should be about what other people are thinking. Understanding another person's internal state accurately is a skill, not a personality trait, and it can be deliberately developed, but the research on how we usually try to do it explains why we get it wrong so often. This piece uses that research to build five practical ways to actually read people more accurately, rather than just more confidently.

Why the leadership myth that change goes through predictable stages still misleads

By |2026-09-14T21:38:31+01:00August 5, 2026|Categories: Leadership|Tags: , |

Change management leans hard on staged models: Kübler-Ross's change curve, Lewin's unfreeze-change-refreeze, Kotter's eight steps, and Prosci's ADKAR. Each promises that if you move people through the right sequence, in order, the change will land. It's a reassuring idea for leaders navigating something they don't fully control. But look closely at where these models came from, and what the research on organisational change actually shows, and the promise falls apart. This article traces each model back to its origins, explains why the sequence itself has never been shown to guarantee success, and offers practices grounded in complexity science for leading change that won't sit still long enough to be staged.

Self-awareness: why knowing yourself and being known are two different skills

By |2026-09-14T21:41:00+01:00August 2, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Leading Yourself|

Most people assume self-awareness is one thing, a general clarity about who you are. It isn't. Internal self-awareness, knowing your own values and reactions, and external self-awareness, understanding how others actually experience you, develop independently. Being strong in one tells you almost nothing about your strength in the other, and the gap between them is where most leaders get caught out. This piece breaks down the four patterns that result, from Seekers who are weak in both to the Aware pattern most consistently linked to strong leadership outcomes, and offers five research-backed exercises and five daily micro-practices for closing whichever gap is yours.

When AI moves faster than relationships: a review of Designed Learning’s new white paper

By |2026-11-06T20:00:42+00:00June 24, 2026|Categories: Leadership, Peter-Block|Tags: |

Designed Learning has published a timely white paper on collaboration in the age of AI. As an associate, I share what it gets right, where I would push the thinking further, and why senior leaders should read it.

One room at a time: the radical simplicity of local citizenship

By |2026-07-13T12:02:58+01:00May 10, 2026|Categories: Citizenship, Community, Leadership|Tags: |

We often wait for grand changes to happen elsewhere, but real transformation occurs in our immediate interactions. Exploring the wisdom of "one room at a time," we discuss how taking ownership of your current environment, whether a boardroom or a living room, is the ultimate act of citizenship.

The radical act of acknowledgement: why saying hello is a basic citizenship skill

By |2026-11-07T11:59:31+00:00May 9, 2026|Categories: Citizenship, Community, Leadership|Tags: |

Saying hello is more than just a greeting; it is a declaration of shared humanity. We explore how the simple act of acknowledging strangers on the street, especially when the cultural norm is to look away—, builds the social fabric of our neighbourhoods. By moving beyond our social hesitation and reclaiming our presence in public, we can transform the street from a space of transit into a common space of belonging.

Letting go of being right: why certainty is the enemy of citizenship

By |2026-05-10T13:12:22+01:00May 7, 2026|Categories: Citizenship, Community, Leadership|Tags: |

Being right is a barrier to being related. In day eight of our series, we explore how loosening our grip on certainty allows us to create deeper connections in our workplaces and neighbourhoods. By choosing understanding over rightness, we move from being experts to being citizens who are willing to learn from one another.

Taking ownership: moving from a culture of blame to a culture of agency

By |2026-05-10T13:12:15+01:00May 7, 2026|Categories: Citizenship, Community, Leadership|Tags: |

Blame is a declaration of powerlessness. In the final day of our first week, we explore the transformative power of taking ownership. By asking what part of a situation is ours to own, we stop being onlookers and start becoming co-creators of our workplaces and neighbourhoods.

Choosing your response: how agency transforms leadership and community

By |2026-05-10T13:12:07+01:00May 6, 2026|Categories: Citizenship, Community, Leadership|Tags: |

Choice is the primary tool of the citizen. In day six of our series, we explore how moving beyond our automatic reflexes allows us to reclaim our sovereignty in our workplaces and neighbourhoods. By intentionally choosing a thoughtful response, we stop being victims of our circumstances and start becoming architects of our collective future.

Catch the story early: how vigilance transforms community and leadership

By |2026-05-10T13:12:00+01:00May 5, 2026|Categories: Citizenship, Community, Leadership|Tags: |

Our stories have a way of becoming our reality. In day five of our series, we explore the importance of catching our internal narratives before they limit what is possible. By choosing curiosity over early conclusions, we can build more open, accountable, and resilient communities in our workplaces and neighbourhoods.

Naming what matters: the commitment behind the complaint

By |2026-05-10T13:11:55+01:00May 4, 2026|Categories: Citizenship, Community, Leadership|Tags: |

Behind every complaint is a commitment. In day four of our series, we explore how naming what truly matters allows us to move from being critics to being co-creators. By identifying the values we are protecting, we can lead with greater authenticity and build more resilient, purpose-driven communities.

The power of the pause: slowing the moment

By |2026-05-10T13:11:47+01:00May 3, 2026|Categories: Citizenship, Community, Leadership|Tags: |

Speed is often a barrier to real connection. In day three of our series, we explore how slowing the moment and creating a pause allows us to move from automatic reactions to intentional, soulful responses in our neighbourhoods and organisations.

The wisdom of the body: why noticing and naming your reaction is an act of citizenship

By |2026-05-10T13:11:39+01:00May 2, 2026|Categories: Citizenship, Community, Leadership|Tags: |

Our bodies often decide how we feel about a situation before our minds have even processed the data. In day two of our series, we explore how noticing your internal reactions can move you from being a reactive onlooker to a calm, intentional citizen in your workplace and neighbourhood.

The sovereignty of the narrative: why we must question our story

By |2026-05-10T13:11:31+01:00May 1, 2026|Categories: Citizenship, Community, Leadership|Tags: |

Our stories create our reality. In both our neighbourhoods and our workplaces, the most dangerous thing we carry is a settled narrative. Learn how to shift from being a victim of circumstances to a co-creator of the future by challenging the assumptions you hold today.

Return to social media – 365DaysofCitizenship

By |2026-05-10T13:22:24+01:00May 1, 2026|Categories: Leadership|

After a five-year break, I am returning to social media with an experiment in working out loud. As my work pivots deeper into the community space and with the launch of the eYou platform, I am committing to producing 365 posts around the theme of citizenship. Inspired by Peter Block and asset-based community development, this journey explores how we can move from being onlookers to becoming co-creators in our neighbourhoods and workplaces

Inviting leadership: how to move from command to commitment

By |2026-11-06T18:41:43+00:00April 11, 2026|Categories: Leadership|Tags: |

Inviting Leadership is a field manual for transitioning from industrial-age push management to complex-age pull leadership. Discover how human engagement is a voluntary gift that must be invited rather than commanded. This deep-dive summary features ten core takeaways on "Game Box" design, five detailed sketchnotes, and a practitioner-focused FAQ on accelerating organisational clockspeed and building genuine ownership.

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