The human touch

In a world that is rapidly changing, leadership is no longer only about authority. It is about empathy, emotional intelligence and mastering the art of guiding others. The journey from individual contributor to people leader can be challenging. As suddenly, success is no longer only about what you can achieve yourself. You now have to think about crafting a clear vision, building partnerships, developing relationships and creating the conditions for others to perform and grow.

You don't have to become the leader you think you are supposed to be. You can become the leader you desire to be, and that transition takes work. Sometimes you need someone outside the organisation to help you navigate it. An external thinking partner who can challenge your assumptions, help you build trust and support you as you learn how to nurture and lead your team. If this resonates with you, contact me via this link for a confidential discovery conversation.

What works for me

A few years ago Marshall Goldsmith inspired me to ask the following six questions at the end of each day.

  1. Did I do my best to set clear goals today?

  2. Did I do my best to achieve the goals I set?

  3. Did I do my best to find meaning in life today?

  4. Did I do my best to be happy today?

  5. Did I do my best to support and bring out the best in others today?

  6. Did I do my best to learn something about myself today?

Nothing comes from nothing

"My good work should speak for itself."

It's a comforting belief, I just don’t think it is realistic. If quality alone were enough, no company would need a marketing department. Even excellent work stays invisible until the right people know about it. If you're running your own business or building your career, marketing is part of your job. That does not mean you have to love it, but it does mean someone has to do it, and right now that someone is you. Waiting to be noticed is not a strategy. Visibility comes from consistent, deliberate effort: sharing your work, telling your story, and showing up where your ideal clients or employers are. The results follow the effort you put in. I work on building my own brand every week. What is one concrete step you could take this week to make your work more visible?

No expectations

The insecure man feels threatened when another man succeeds, and the secure man is inspired by it. Which one are you?

I was raised secure, and my feminine values were encouraged rather than suppressed, and they became the foundation of how I lead and coach today. I think the same principle shows up in coaching itself. When someone chooses a coach, they are rarely moved by credentials, background, or methodology on their own. They are asking one question: what will this do for me? Will it change my career, my results, my life?

Studies suggest only 15% of buying behaviour is shaped by past experience. The other 85% is driven by the future someone can see for themselves. I think security works in the same way. It draws less from what you have already proven than from who you are becoming, and from not needing anyone else to be smaller for you to feel it.

““Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.” ”
— Carl Jung

Participation in consciousness

There are plenty of ways to separate wealthy people from their money without making them feel bad about it. Status works differently as you cannot remove or reduce someone's status and leave them feeling better for it. I think the same holds true in disagreement. Diminishing someone's status will not change their mind, it only makes them defend it harder. If you want someone to think differently, you have to let them keep their standing while they do it. That's the quieter skill, in coaching, negotiation, and leadership alike: challenging the thinking without touching the person's sense of who they are. Contact me via this link if you are ready to move from grumble to gratitude.

Coconuts fall at speed

Many organisations take credit for efficiency when, in reality, they are simply outsourcing work to the customer. Increasingly, the work we do online involves verification: proving that we are who we say we are. Technology often arrives as an option and gradually becomes an obligation. What was introduced to make life easier can end up creating more work for the very people it was supposed to serve.

I think there are certain decisions that benefit from human contact. Sometimes, we need to look someone in the eyes or, at the very least, hear their voice. There is something about human interaction that allows us to establish trust, read the situation and make a more informed judgement. As the West Indian proverb goes: “Trust grows at the speed of a coconut tree and falls at the speed of a coconut.”

There is a profound asymmetry between the time it takes to build trust and the time it takes to destroy it. Trust may be difficult to quantify, yet that does not make it any less valuable. Its benefits show up in the quality of our relationships, the decisions we make, the risks we are willing to take and the confidence we place in one another. Perhaps the challenge is that we often measure what is easy to count and overlook what makes things work. Just because trust is difficult to measure does not mean it is difficult to recognise when it is missing.

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Test and validate

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I have a deep passion for challenging injustice, whether in the arts, politics or law. I have never been particularly motivated by money. For me, it has always been about people: using communication to challenge what is wrong, create understanding and help make things right. At the heart of it is a genuine desire to help others.

I think leadership starts with listening and understanding what people need, what matters to them and what they want to achieve. As a leader, you can use your skills and experience to guide, encourage and nurture people. However, much of leadership is about creating the conditions in which people feel motivated, supported and empowered to realise their potential.

““Madness is something rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.” ”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

Creative ideation

DFV = You start with desirability (Do consumers like it? Is it a welcome addition? Does it add value?), then filter it through feasibility (Can you actually do it?), and then the last step is viability (Can we make money on it? Is it worth doing?). The problem in business is we start with numbers, and numbers have a smaller solution space than words, thoughts and dreams do. I don’t think any of it works without trust as desirability, feasibility and viability all assume someone believes you enough to engage with the idea in the first place. So I would argue for adding trust to the front of the sequence: TDFV. Trust first, because without it, nothing downstream really matters. What do you think?

The burden of verification

Every transaction carries a hidden tax: the cost of proving it's safe to make. In a transactional relationship, that tax never goes away as every exchange has to be checked, justified, verified from scratch, because there's no history of trust to lean on. Relational capitalism on the other hand is what happens when that burden gets paid down over time, and trust becomes the discount rate.

There's transactional capitalism, where you maximise for the individual transaction, and there's relational capitalism, where you optimise for the lifetime discounted value of the relationship over time. I think shrewd companies move people from feeling transactional to feeling relational. Metaphorically, your customer is looking for a marriage, and the CFO is running an escort agency. The fundamental problem is that they look at the relationship in a much more transactional, much more short-term way.

I think lots of things that are long-term valuable in indeterminate ways, and don't lead directly to a transaction, get deemed worthless and that's the verification burden showing up again: if it can't be priced and proven in the moment, it doesn't count. What do you think?

The Quimbo Syndrome

How did a character who demonstrated courage and moral conviction become a symbol of cowardice?

Over the weekend, I came across something that challenged my understanding of Uncle Tom. After reading about the Quimbo Syndrome, I discovered that the character I had understood as a symbol of submission was, in the original novel, quite the opposite.

In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Uncle Tom is portrayed as a dignified and courageous man. When the brutal slaveholder Simon Legree demands that he reveal the whereabouts of two escaped enslaved women, Tom refuses. His defiance ultimately costs him his life. Sambo and Quimbo, two Black men who enforce Legree’s authority and participate in the brutal treatment of other enslaved people, view Tom’s refusal to comply as an act of defiance and they help carry out the violence against him.

The irony is that the original character of Uncle Tom was subsequently transformed through minstrelsy and popular culture into a stereotype of the submissive, cowardly Black man who seeks the approval of white people. That distortion has had a lasting impact and the term “Uncle Tom” became an insult, used to accuse Black men of betraying their own community through their perceived submission to white authority.

Meanwhile, the characters of Sambo and Quimbo represent a different form of complicity: participating in the oppression of others to maintain one's own position. I think this raises an uncomfortable question about the labels we use, the histories we inherit, and the assumptions we accept without examining them. Sometimes, understanding the history behind a label changes how we understand the people to whom it is applied.

Shut up or stand up

People who have traveled a lot tend to judge less. Not because they became nicer, but because they have seen too many versions of what's "normal." In one country, it's normal to eat with your hands, and in another, it's normal to stay quiet at the table. And in a third, it's normal to hug strangers. When you have seen 30 different versions of "the right way," you stop believing yours is the only one. I think travel teaches both geography and tolerance.

The what, the how and the why

Some aspects of the human animal remain fundamentally mysterious. We are constantly searching for the why behind our thoughts, emotions and behaviours, yet sometimes, the answer is elusive, and perhaps it is not always necessary to find it. Instead, we could pay more attention to the what and the how. What is happening? How is it happening? What processes, experiences or circumstances might be contributing to it?

I think the why may be the deepest question because it asks us to make sense of what we observe. However, understanding why something happens often depends on first understanding what is happening and how it comes about. Maybe we don't always need to solve the mystery of why. Sometimes, understanding what is happening and how it unfolds is enough to help us decide what to do next.

Move with clarity

Transformation starts with becoming better prepared to navigate your own life. We all have ambitions, dreams and responsibilities. The challenge is finding the space to step back from them long enough to ask ourselves what really matters.

Stop, reflect and ask yourself:
Who am I becoming?
What do I really want?
What is holding me back?
What does living a purposeful life look like for me?

Sometimes we don't need more information. We need the space to think, reflect and become clearer about what we already know. Coaching can create that space, so if you are ready to live more intentionally, contact me via this link.

Standing at the gate

When you dare to be different, you create the possibility of finding your tribe. There is a difference between being able to make people laugh and being a comedian. Between being able to cut hair and being a barber. Between being able to cook a meal and being a chef. The difference is mastery of the craft. There is a sweet science to becoming really good at what you do. I think it comes from learning, practising, experimenting, making mistakes, paying attention and dedicating yourself to the craft over time.

Being different may get you noticed, and when you master your craft, it will give people a reason to remember you. And somewhere on that journey, you may discover that the people who appreciate what makes you different are often the people you were looking for all along.

Lucky people

People we describe as “lucky” often have habits and qualities that increase their exposure to opportunity. They work hard, have integrity, show up on time, challenge their own sense of entitlement and treat people with respect. They anticipate outcomes, give more than they take, have good manners, learn quickly and remain self-aware, optimistic, kind and generous. They also understand that relationships matter, and they are willing to forgive first, open doors for others and contribute without always asking, “What’s in it for me?”

None of this means that good character creates luck. Timing, circumstances, access and chance still matter. I think good habits and character can increase the likelihood that you notice opportunities, build relationships and are trusted when those opportunities arise. And generosity does not mean giving endlessly. Forgiving first does not mean accepting poor treatment as good character also requires boundaries. Perhaps what we call luck is sometimes the combination of being prepared, being open to opportunity and being the kind of person others want to open doors for. What do you think?

The great turning

We want to live in a world where powerful systems help us become more human, more connected and more alive. Rather than taking something away from us, they should give something back. Perhaps instead of asking how much we can extract, we should be asking how we can sustain life. How can we use these systems to help repair, remake and restore our world? The great turning is not simply about what technology can do for us. I think it’s about what kind of world we choose to create with it. What do you think?

““It’s hard to see what you don’t believe.””
— Burrellism

Empowering people

The better you become at human skills, the stronger the relationships you build with the people you coach. When people feel genuinely seen, heard and supported, that can lead to trust, loyalty and recommendations. I think it is often more fulfilling to give someone your time and energy than simply giving them money. Time, attention and genuine support can have a lasting impact.

The human dimension remains essential because AI can process information and support many aspects of our work at a speed and scale that humans cannot match. That is why I focus on the person, not just the problem. Change management is part of the solution, and sustainable change ultimately requires people to change how they think, behave and work with others.

““True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own.””
— Nikos Kazantzakis

Leadership is demonstrated through behaviour

The characteristics of a true leader are not defined by their job title. Leadership is demonstrated through the ability to influence, uplift, build trust and demonstrate vision and integrity. The best leaders also have the capacity to be vulnerable and human, and to recognise the unique qualities of others, particularly people who are different from themselves.

Your role does not define your leadership competence, your behaviour does. And leadership is something you can consciously and deliberately develop. It requires self-awareness, reflection and a willingness to examine how you show up and how others experience you. How you work with others is essential. How are you making sure your team understands what you do, what you expect, and the standards you want to maintain? Doing excellent work is important, and I think it’s only part of the equation. If you want to explore how you can develop your leadership presence, behaviour and impact, book a discovery session here.

Keep on moving

Human capital is increasingly important to organisational performance, and the investment we make in people matters. As a coach, you often see things that people may not yet recognise in themselves. Sometimes I encourage people to start a coaching journey before they actually feel they need one. Why wait until there is a problem before you start developing the capacity to deal with it?

It is the same with relationships. You build relationships before you need them. You build trust before you need it. You develop yourself before the pressure arrives. In that sense, sales is a prevention profession. You cannot wait until you need the relationship to start building it. You cannot reap if you have not sown. The knowledge is already there. The question is whether we are prepared to do the work before we need the results. Preparation is not something you do when the pressure arrives. Preparation is what allows you to meet the pressure when it does.

Measuring the impact of coaching

What are we actually measuring when we measure the impact of coaching?

It could be technical capability, cognitive skills, emotional intelligence, confidence, behaviour or other human growth skills. The important question is not whether someone has changed, it’s whether that change is contributing to what matters to the organisation. I think a return on investment (ROI) is what matters to the organisation. And it’s our responsibility to identify meaningful indicators and show evidence that something is changing as a result of the coaching. This could include productivity, efficiency, employee satisfaction, leadership behaviour, confidence, decision-making or collaboration.

The impact should go beyond the individual, for example, Are you changing the culture? Are leaders telling a different story? Are behaviours changing across the organisation? Are you building a team rather than simply bringing together a group of people? Ultimately, measuring coaching impact is about connecting individual growth to organisational outcomes. Are people not only becoming better at what they do, and changing how they think, behave and work together?