Nobody trains us for the way home
I went to see the new movie, The Odyssey last weekend expecting a hero’s journey. But strictly speaking, it isn’t one. The hero’s journey, as Joseph Campbell mapped it, is a three-part shape: we leave home, we are tested, we come back changed. Homer, whose epic poem the director, Christopher Nolan is adapting, mostly skips the first two […]
The Colour of a Leader
If we join companies and leave leaders, what is there to leave when the leader is AI? There is a phrase every HR executive has used, usually while nodding gravely: ‘People join companies, but they leave leaders’. We’ve all felt it. The manager who made an otherwise good job feel like slow torture, or the […]
Why date night matters
Ask any couple who has been together longer than a few years what killed the spark, and very few will cite a dramatic event. Mostly it is much quieter than that. It is the slow substitution of logistics for connection. We stop asking how the other person actually is and start asking whether they remembered […]
Resilience Is Not a Repair Plan
What we hand people when we have run out of room to fix the thing itself. Some years ago I sat in a room where a leadership team was being taught to be resilient. They had just come through yet another difficult restructure. Their colleagues were gone, their workloads were being reallocated, and the survivors […]
The Restructure That Changes Nothing
I was at a dinner recently with a group of senior leaders. The conversation moved, as it always does, to what was keeping people up at night. Within ten minutes, three of them mentioned restructures either underway or about to be announced. I asked each of them the same question: what’s the problem you’re trying […]
The Most Important Leadership Skill: Making Sense When Nothing Makes Sense
There is an ancient Greek paradox that feels increasingly relevant for our times. If a ship has every plank replaced over time, is it still the same ship? This is the Ship of Theseus. At first glance, this may sound abstract and removed from the everyday reality of quarterly targets and transformation agendas. But this […]
The Freedom of Having Nothing Left to Lose
I just finished reading the most wonderful book. A friend insisted I read The Wedding People by Alison Espach, and I’m so glad she did. Without giving too much away, the story follows Phoebe, a woman who arrives at a grand hotel having lost everything that once defined her. Her marriage, her career trajectory, her […]
The Necessary Death Before the Rise
As we head into the Easter long weekend, I’ve been reflecting on the symbolism of Easter and how it relates to leadership right now. There is a moment in most leadership stories where something has to die before something new can emerge. We may dress it up in corporate language, calling it ‘transformation’ or ‘a […]
What Would You Stand For?
I went to the theatre on the weekend. At the conclusion, someone near the front stood up, and within seconds, half the audience was on its feet. Standing ovations are one of those rituals we do without thinking, and the emotion behind them is anything but automatic. It’s that rare feeling of having witnessed something […]
The Quiet Power of Community in the Second Half of Leadership
I spent the weekend with a group of friends, some old and some new, all connected by shared career DNA at one point or another, and by a love of good food, good wine, and long walks that leave our legs aching and our mind strangely clear. Over the course of 48 hours, we talked […]