LeadershipLens: When To Coach. And When Not To
Coaching is powerful, but it is not always the answer. Not every situation calls for a coaching approach. The real leadership skill is knowing when to coach, mentor, teach, or when to direct and when to simply get out of the way. The problem with coaching everything “Coaching is the secret sauce of great leadership!” […]
Leadership Lens: Coaching is No Longer Optional for Leaders
Outstanding leaders don’t just give orders or manage performance; they coach people to think, grow and take ownership. Leadership has changed, but too many leaders are still operating from an old playbook, or as I say like ‘it’s 1999’. They believe their job is to have all the answers, fix everyone’s problems, make the decisions […]
Leadership Lens: The cost of not coaching your leaders
Executive coaching should not be reserved for the most senior execs. In fact, let’s start calling it organisational coaching. Because when coaching is used well, it is not a niche perk for a handful of people at the top. It is a practical, strategic tool for growing leadership capacity across the organisation. And here is […]
Leadership Lens: Hybrid work is not the problem. Leadership is.
I can’t believe we are still talking about this… but here we are. Years after COVID changed work for good, too many leaders still lead as if the whole team is in the office, together, under the same line of sight. They’re not. In hybrid and dispersed teams, people work on different days, from different […]
Leadership Lens: Build change stamina with micro-practices
Most managers aren’t resisting change. They’re exhausted by the volume of it. Not because they’re “not adaptable enough”, but because change has stopped being an event and become the background condition of work. New priorities. New systems. New reporting lines. New expectations. New language. New pressure. And somehow, managers are expected to absorb it all […]
Leadership Lens: When the system sets good people up to fail
There is a leadership habit that quietly damages teams every day. Something goes wrong. A deadline is missed. A client gets the wrong information. A handover doesn’t happen. A decision creates chaos weeks later. And almost instantly, the room starts looking for the person who dropped the ball. Who missed it?Who owns this?Who made the […]
Leadership Lens: If you keep avoiding it, you’ll keep managing it
I’m the first to admit: I’m a world-class avoider of tough conversations. And I know that’s many people’s reality. Not because they’re weak or lack backbone, but when change piles up and things get heated, their brains get stingy. We conserve energy, avoid conflict, and delay anything that feels emotionally expensive. So, the hard conversation becomes “later”, the decision becomes “let’s circle back”, the standard becomes “we’ll reset expectations next week”… and quietly, almost […]
Leadership Lens: Stop running workshops. Start building transfer
You can’t run a brilliant leadership workshop and hope it magically shows up in Monday’s meetings. Without nudges, rewards, and reinforcement, even great training becomes merely ‘a great day out’. “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” – B.F. Skinner Most organisations still treat leadership development like a […]
Leadership Lens: The Manager Squeeze isn’t Personal – it’s Structural
Your managers aren’t struggling because they’ve suddenly forgotten how to lead. They’re struggling because the organisation is spending their time as if it’s unlimited. Week after week, managers all over the world are pulled into restructures, system rollouts, client escalations, AI change, internal noise, and endless coordination. And then we still ask them to coach, […]
Running Leadership Like it’s 1999? Here’s the cost
If your leadership strategy relies on managers “just coping”, that’s not leadership development, that’s organisational denial. When priorities keep stacking, and nothing gets removed, managers become the shock absorbers… and leadership turns into survival mode. The uncomfortable truth: your system is setting managers up to fail Most workplaces don’t choose to overload managers. […]