Reflections
Enjoy this collection of thoughts on core, collective and change leadership.
Presencing Awe
It was in childhood that I had my first taste of a lifelong longing I have come to know well. From age seven, I lived near a honeysuckle-dappled “lonning” - the Cumbrian term for a short lane. Leaving behind the town with its ubiquitous school and factory so common to...
Re-energizing Relationship
All relationships experience a loss of energy from time to time. This is true of any relationship, whether it be with another person, a team, an organization, a community or society. It can also apply to your relationship with a project, field of work, industry, or to...
Exploring the Emotional Landscape
Can you feel the air as it moves in the space between you and me? The space between us? Are you aware of the emotional field that is co-created between you and others, moment to moment? As a team and systems coach - as a daughter, sister, lover, partner, parent,...
Supporting Collaboration with a Psychological Safety Net
Does your team climate encourage the communication and psychological safety that is so necessary to innovation, or shut it down? Is it a safe and courageous space in which people are comfortable expressing and being themselves? Or have they learned to play it safe...
Steps for Successful Team Coaching
Why team coaching? Why now? As organizational coaches, with a decade of experience in coaching systems across industries, cultures, structures and at different stages of evolution, we hear these two questions over and over. While an organization’s leadership or a...
Using Rank Responsibly
At the heart of change leadership lies a simple truth - to develop a culture that draws the best from each member, we must remain conscious of how rank, power and privilege can affect the discussion. Part of a leader’s role is to design a conversational space and the...
Reigniting After Burnout
Burnout is what happens when we ignore the soul whispering against an unhealthy job or relationship.• Dr. Dina Glouberman I was completely depleted. We’d just come out of a meeting where we’d finally aligned on a forward action. Our team had agreed on this...
Intelligent Failure
We are all failures - at least, the best of us are.• J.M. Barrie Years ago in a training course, I was asked to stick a label to myself marked ‘failure.’ I looked at our leaders in disbelief. Surely this was a joke. No one in their right mind was going to wear...
Leadership That Inspires
We're here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.• Whoopi Goldberg When you think about inspirational leaders, who sparks a flame in you? Is there someone in your life you can point to as your...
Why Change Initiatives Stall
Instead of fighting or freezing in the face of change, teams can learn to make different choices. In leading change, we lean forward into the unknown, together. Is your change initiative stuck? Instead of collaboration and motivation, do you see blame,...
Bring It On! Competition and Collaboration in Leadership
“If you’re a true warrior, competition doesn’t scare you. It makes you better.”• Andrew Whitworth Although teamwork and collaboration are at the very heart of change leadership, partnerships aren’t always simple. Leading change requires understanding your own...
Weaving Your Change Leadership Story
Great stories happen to those who can tell them.• Ira Glass Storyweaving is a collaborative act. Indeed, storytelling has taken place around communal fires and been central to societies from the beginning. What kinds of stories does your team weave, both individually...
Stillness at the Centre of Change
Halycon days of stillness are approaching. At the time of the Winter Solstice the halycon, a mythical bird, was said by the ancient writers to charm the wind and waves to calm. For thousands of years people have paused to celebrate the solstice, which literally means...
Courage on the Brink
Out on the edge, you see all kinds of things you can't see from the centre.• Kurt Vonnegut Are you ready to be uncomfortable? As change leaders, we are after all in the business of challenging the status quo. Yes to discomfort? You’re up for that? Then let’s...
Bridging Differences | Tips for Travelling to Diverse Worlds
The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.• Marcel Proust For four magical years, I lived in a mud hut in Tanzania, working with a non-governmental organization on changing roles in forest management. Surrounded by the...
Exploring Change Leadership
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.• Albert Einstein You have a brilliant idea to progress your organization, yet you hesitate to bring it forward. When you tried to manage change in...
Courage | A Magic Carpet to Change
Courage is essential to change leadership. It's a magic carpet that can carry us over the edge of change. Finding the courage to pursue your dreams by speaking them out loud takes time and practice, but it is a skill worth nurturing. I grew up in a small market town,...
Leading Innovation with the Growth Mindset
This is a time of tremendous change where, like it or not, you’re going to have periods of confusion. Like it or not, you’re going to turn into a novice over and over again. • Carol Dweck Ninety minutes into a workshop about leading change effectively, the questions...
Here Be Dragons | Revealing hidden obstacles to change
As I stand at the heart of confused and disorganized change, turbulence swirls around me and through those closest to me. From this vantage point in the eye of the storm, I see the reactivity created by controlling and compliant behaviors. A tendency toward control in...
Trusting the Tension of Creative Change
“The thing about human beings is that we are more than one thing. We are multiple selves …. You can’t be one thing without being, in some ways, the other thing. It’s about how to reconcile, how to be tolerant of all the possibilities.”• Ali Smith In her...
Change Resistance – The Watchdog of Change
Believe it or not, standing firm against change can be valuable to a change initiative. Resistance to change can come from deep within. In Michael Crummey’s novel Sweetland, a contemporary Newfoundland community explores the possibility of being resettled....
Leading Change with Core Value Stories
"At the end of the day, you just ask yourself, ‘How did our vision and values influence decisions I made today?’ If they did not, then they are pretty much BS."• Peter Senge, systems scientist Core values are vital to engaging your team and creating a culture...
Influencing the Winds of Change
“We can see the clouds move, but we cannot see the wind. We can see the tides come and go, but we do not feel the moon’s gravity that moves them.” • Arnold Mindell At any moment, multiple potential futures are possible. When you think about your personal future, you...
Power of Personas
We’ve all been there – that moment when you are ready to share a new idea or proposal. It’s an innovative product, service, or process that will unlock new value and fulfill new or existing market needs. You see it as a big opportunity for your team and organization. ...
Channeling Chaos
Emergence is an act of creativity seen in nature, the way complex systems arise out of a diversity of relatively simple interactions. It appears in the complex symmetrical patterns of snowflakes, the ripple patterns in sand dunes, and in places like the Giant’s Causeway.
When a group of people come together as an effective change network, organizational emergence is evident.
The Window of Opportunity
A window of opportunity has opened. You can see it, hear it, feel it, smell it, taste it! The possibilities for your team, your organization, your world are startling. Startlingly obvious to you, anyway.