A Leadership Blind Spot in the Age of AI
Was this the Fimbulwinter? Norse mythology describes a severe, long winter that precedes the breakdown of social order and Ragnarök, the final battle among the gods. The losses are enormous, and the world will never be the same again. At times this winter has felt a little like that. The last remaining snowbanks have melted. […]
Beyond Just Showing Up: The Rehearsal Practice Behind Leading on Stage
Most people have heard some version of this line, sometimes attributed to Woody Allen: “Seventy percent of life is just showing up.” That always left me a little flat, but it is undeniable that—to cite another old saying, this one about the lottery—“you can’t win if you don’t play.” Getting yourself there, wherever the next […]
AI Is a Psychological Event Before It Is Strategic
Inside a three-year AI transformation in Greater China: why the hardest obstacles had nothing to do with technology. Most AI transformations stall not because the technology fails, but because leaders treat AI as a strategic initiative when their people are experiencing it as a psychological one. A three-year leadership arc inside a specialist professional services […]
AI and Our Ludicrousness Tolerance
This past quarter, a leadership team spent the better part of a meeting working out how to tell an executive-level colleague that his strategy document had obviously been written by AI, and they didn’t want to shame him. This is hours of assembled seniority, spent on the diplomacy of an open secret. We haven’t yet […]
Rules to live by: Rule 1
It feels like I’m always on planes these days. Laptop out, shoes off, passport tucked under my jacket, under my tiny bag of liquids. Airplane coffee, airport porridge, boarding announcements in three languages. This plane, though, is taking me home, and I feel the bubbling of excitement that comes as if I’m going to a […]
Most Leaders Have Heard of Differentiation. Few Have Integrated It.
Most leadership failures under pressure aren’t failures of intelligence or effort. They’re failures of differentiation — the capacity to know what’s yours to hold and what belongs to the system around you. It’s a concept many leaders have some version of on file. They’ve heard “don’t take things personally,” “stay calm under pressure,” “know your […]
When Self-Worth Becomes Entangled with Leadership
When Self-Worth Becomes Entangled with Leadership When Self-Worth Becomes Entangled with Leadership One of the most common challenges I see in leadership is not a lack of skill, intelligence, or capability. It’s when self-worth becomes entangled with leadership itself. What Leadership Entanglement Actually Looks Like At face value, this looks like commitment. The leader who […]
Consciousness & Leadership
What level of consciousness is required to lead at the level being asked of you? It is not a question most leaders ask. Most leadership development focuses on what leaders do. How they communicate. How they influence. How they make decisions. How they manage people and performance. All important. But beneath every leadership behavior is […]
The Ceiling To Success Is Not Out There.
Most leaders, when they hit a limit, look outward. A new strategy. A better structure. A different environment. They optimize. They push harder. They bring in more support. And still, something does not move. Because the ceiling they are hitting is not external. It is internal. It is the system they built to survive, succeed, […]
Your relationship with power in leadership
Most leaders haven’t examined their relationship with power. And it shows. The leader who inflates when power increases and the leader who collapses when power increases are dealing with exactly the same problem. Most people assume they are opposites. They are struggling with their capacity to consciously hold power, visibility, authority, impact, intelligence, and aliveness […]