April 29th 2025 was a day I found both very humiliating and also very fruitful. During the summer, as well as my work, I love to play lawn bowls and croquet at the local North London sports club where I am a member. In 2024, I was club singles croquet champion, so I am one…
“I don’t get any better than this.” How the Signature Leadership Work idea came to me in 2011 and led me to developing my first flagship programme If you have spent fifteen to twenty years developing insight, wisdom and experience, developing your flagship programme is one of the most powerful things you The Work We…
I don’t know about you, but I feel something is being demanded of me, or force is being used, I am immediately reluctant to give it. Increasingly I am coming to believe that the true job of leadership is to cultivate the conditions in which brilliance and people’s best is seen, valued and supported. And this starts with leaders being dedicated to their own journey to liberate their own brilliance and potential. You lead by example, not by demand.
The leader as gardener analogy is powerful. You know and trust the innate potential within the seed of an idea, and then skilfully cultivate the conditions for what can naturally happen, to actually happen. Your job as a steward leader is about care rather control, cultivating the conditions that enable both you and your team to willingly give of their best and deliver their best work in service to your clients.
Have you spent years, even decades, accumulating insight, understanding and wisdom in your area?
Do you feel a call to pass on what you have learned to help inspire and guide others so they can get to a better place?
But do you go around in circles in your head, driving yourself mad, wondering how you can cram your years of experience and insight into your book?
Do you find yourself going around in circles, getting frustrated and unable to break out, and not able to clearly see what you actually want to be saying and how to structure all you know?
Do you end up feeling lost and overwhelmed, and needing to lie down with a damp flannel or your forehead so you can calm down?
I came across this poem a couple of years ago, and I was staggered by the beautiful simplicity of these twelve words:
You have gifts.
The world needs your gifts.
You must deliver them.
So I asked Michael, “Is there one big idea that you have come to see clearly after literally thousands of patient-doctor conversations?”
He said, “There might be, but I don’t know what it is!”
“What might it be?” I asked
Its tempting to think that because we have achieved something, or had a particular experience, then we are automatically equipped to be an expert or a guide on that experience.
We need to reflect, to ponder, to ask ourselves questions or be willing to be interrogated in supportive ways.With someone else’s help, what was always there, but just outside our consciousness, can suddenly emerge and we can clearly see it.
Your best work is your place of healthy self-awareness and authentic power with people, at the top of your game, using your power for good. It is not a place of grandiosity, but is you in your grandeur. It is delivering what you are really good at and enjoy. The essence of you, who you are being, your humanity and even your unique flavour of genius shines through your best work. Your best work comes from you, and some of it comes through you. You bring the light.
Learning to reflect, skilfully, is a very powerful aspect of leadership. It is one hallmark of a growth mindset. You reflect, you learn, you build inner strength and you improve
