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 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?
This guide explores how to influence others without manipulating them, introducing five respectful approaches that build trust, commitment and genuine buy-in.
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 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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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 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?
When one person dominates meetings, valuable ideas are lost, engagement drops and frustration rises. This guide offers practical facilitation strategies to balance participation, engage quieter voices and create meetings that work for everyone.
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 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.
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 imagine its best future and design strengths-based change. This guide explains how to run an AI Summit and turn large gatherings into spaces of shared vision and committed action.
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
World Café is a powerful large-group facilitation method that helps organisations and communities surface collective insight and shared ownership through meaningful conversation. This step-by-step guide shows how to host a World Café, craft powerful questions and design conversations that lead to lasting change.
Flawless Consulting – Peter Block – Book Summary
Flawless Consulting by Peter Block is a foundational work on building trust-based partnerships with clients. This practical summary highlights the key ideas, mindsets and behaviours that help consultants, facilitators and leaders create sustainable results through authentic partnership.
Connecting for the common good – Session 4 – Peter Block
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.
Connecting for the common good – Session 3 – Peter Block
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:
Connecting for the common good – Session 2 – Peter Block
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:
Connecting for the common good – Session 1 – Peter Block
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:
Activating the common Good – Peter Block – Book Summary
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 answer to how is yes – Peter Block – Book summary
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. [...]
Stewardship – Peter Block – Book Summary
Stewardship by Peter Block is a foundational work on shifting leadership from control to service. This practical summary highlights the ideas that support trust-based partnership, shared accountability and long-term responsibility in organisations.
[Updated for 2026] Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block – 3rd Edition Summary
A practical summary of Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging, highlighting the key ideas that help leaders, facilitators and community builders create genuine belonging, trust and shared ownership.
The Empowered Manager – Peter Block – Book Summary
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 [...]
Article – Customer value charting
Link to article on Customer value charting
Article – The Transtheoretical Model of change
Good overview of the The Transtheoretical Model of change https://www.prochange.com/transtheoretical-model-of-behavior-change Visual from TPI
Resource: Wharton Nano tools
A series of blogs developed as tools for leaders from the Wharton Business School: https://whartonleadership.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/nano-tools-for-leaders/#more-64 Visual by Mara C one of the Drawify Team.
Drawify founding member
Joining the Drawify team - A quick look at what it is.
Link – Visual Story telling templaetes
Link to some nice visual templates on storytelling
Video – Circles of Influence map
A video on the Circles of Influence Visual from HumanSystems.co
Design Thinking hub
A hub of resources related to Design Thinking
Visual: regenerative leadership model
Source: Leading for Regeneration : Going Beyond Sustainability in Business Education, and Community by John Hardman
Visual: complexity map castellani
complexity map castellani map of complexity science, complexity theory, complexity science, complexity, brian castellani, durham sociology complexity — Read on www.art-sciencefactory.com/complexity-map_feb09.html
Video: Visual thinking for writers
youtu.be/yrP1Q_LNqis
Website: Thinking through Drawing
https://www.thinkingthroughdrawing.org/#
Document: PDF on graphic gameplan visual template
Link to a PDF on a Visual Facilitation Process “graphic gameplan"
Flawless Consulting book – Sketchnotes
Sketchnotes from chapters 1 to 13 of Flawless Consulting
Flawless Consulting Discovery – Sketchnote
A simple sketch note on key ideas from Peter Block's Flawless Consulting "Discovery process"
Article: Building Snowmobiles – All By Ourselves
An interesting article and supporting resources (documents & PDFs) on distributed decision making
Link – VISUAL POLICY ANALYSIS
A link to the work done by Michelle Buchholz on Visual Policy Analysis
Connected Papers – Visual Research
A link to Connected Papers - A great visual resources for searching research papers