When Master Chen Ying Jun demonstrates the ‘form’, there is power in every punch. Rootedness to the floor, connection to his inner strength, full presence to his environment: Watching him reminded me of the co-active® leader’s dance between the Leader Within and our leadership in the world.
Watching great leaders in action is one of the most effective ways to enhance your own leadership. So I often ask my coach clients:
⏩ “What leader has most inspired you?”
The art of Taiji teaches us that leadership is a harmonious blend of humility, adaptability, and a mindful connection to the collective energy.
Explore how a remarkable Taiji instructor, Becky, demonstrated these leadership qualities.
In today’s change weary environment, the latest top down initiative easily triggers cynicism and fear which inform questions that all come down to this:
What’s the real agenda here?
In 1987, Alcoa’s new CEO transformed the steel company from a problem child into an innovative industry leader.
“In the past 10 years, we've created a lot of change that benefits our employees. Why then are they still complaining about the same things as 20 years ago? Our staff engagement surveys and focus groups produce valuable information, but we haven’t gotten to the bottom...
Counter to what you make think, the constant respond-ability of your team members is detrimental to productivity. To solve the many challenges of today’s workplaces, we need more creativity.
That’s why it’s so important to create uninterrupted times to focus, or to just drift, at the workplace.
To be successful in our fast paced and uncertain world, leaders can no longer apply old solutions to new problems. We need a new way of leadership to solve the problems which our old thinking has created. In other words, leaders need to help their teams and organisations to stop …
Collective intelligence trumps the combined intelligence of individuals. This has implications for leadership. Leaders need to shift from 1:1 solution finding to leading from the system. Let us show you a great resource for learning by doing how this can work for you and how you can uplevel your team’s problem solving capacity.
How do you go about when you’re looking to break the mold? When you are searching for new ideas as your team faces new challenges? Adam Grant makes the case for turning to the disruptors on your team and busts a bunch of myths that inform our thinking around the non-conformists who…
We are deep in the messiness at the cusp of innovating how we can better work together. And it turns out that if you want to understand how modern work has become alienating and exhausting, and how to fix it, you can take inspiration from an unexpected source: modern hunter-gatherers.
Time to reboot your team? Team coaching creates a container for a team to learn to solve challenges within their own organisation’s context.
In many companies innovation and agility are more than core values. They are the life blood of the business in a competitive environment. Yet while many people who work in these companies espouse those values, they suffer in toxic teams. They fear making mistakes...
Organisations and their leaders must deal with rising complexity and uncertainty which leads to overwhelm. Co-leading is a way out of that overwhelm.
In an unpredictable and complex environment, leaders and organisations often find themselves hitting a wall: an apparently insurmountable obstacle.
A conflict between two team members can turn a whole team toxic and unproductive. Empathetic listening helps to get to the root cause of the conflict and to help conflict parties to exchange perspectives and resolve the conflict together.
Whether you’re leading a team, a division, or an organisation, I’m pretty sure you think that you have to have the answers in order to be seen as a strong leader, inspire trust, feel that you deserve your position. Yet in a complex environment, that belief...
Certainty is a feeling. So rather than seeking more certainty, leaders had better choose consciously what certainties will serve their own well-being, their vision, and those they lead. When I first heard this, I couldn’t believe it. I felt certain about many things,...
When change leaders get caught up in resistance to change, they fail to shift the organisation towards the desired destination. That’s why they need to build their muscle of…
The very leaders who need to drive change in their organisations are getting weary of imposing yet another change initiative on their organisation. But as a leader, you have no choice.
Executive teams often wonder why their organisation doesn’t change the way they want. It’s fascinating to dig deeper with them at what they co-create.
What’s the secret sauce of innovation? Lots has been written to answer that question. Our take is: There is no secret sauce. That is, there’s no “one size fits all” kind of sauce out there. There’s only your own secret sauce. And its particular flavour depends on
When Michelangelo had created David, a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture, someone allegedly asked him how he had chiselled David from the marble. Instead of talking about techniques and process, it is said that Michelangelo answered:
“I saw David in the marble, and carved away everything that wasn’t him.”
Resistance to change is natural, but it doesn’t destine you to fail. Just take it as a natural part of your change initiative. And you can work with it.
Roger Bannister breaking the 4 minute mile in 1954 is testament that humans can achieve what they believe it’s possible, even if common knowledge is: “It can’t be done”.
I’ve been playing the cello for almost twelve years. I've had a few longer breaks from tuition and practice, and they amount to about two years. Other than that, I’ve been taking lessons and practised (sort of) daily ever since. Learning to play the cello has come...
It’s a common saying that it’s lonely at the top. I experienced that loneliness, though in an unexpected way, during my day out with my Co-Active Leadership tribe and Jude Jennison's five horses Callie, Tiffin, Jack, Admiral, and Mr. Blue. Co-active leaders don’t...
A group of people stand and sit with five horses.
The Co-active leadership model holds that leadership is multi-dimensional, and that you can lead from self, the front, the back, the side, and the field. Of all the leadership stances, the notion of leading from the field fascinates people the most. To lead from the...
ARTE has released a critical documentary on how positive psychology and coaching has turned happiness into an individual responsibility. Thus it is distracting attention from structural, economic and social inequality, as well as from personal trauma. For me it raised...