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Balance. It’s a horrid word to many leaders. 

We are tempted to drive ourselves to the limits of the well being scale in order to demonstrate dedication, justify our existence and deliver the bottom line results. 

But let’s face it, dead is dead. 

Physically, intellectually, relationally our emotionally. If any of these values become numb, you are in trouble. And if you are in trouble then your organisation is in trouble!

I have this saying, When leaders rise, everyone rises. You must be well in order to lead well. Not that hard a concept; but much harder to actually achieve. I talked recently about the need to take creative time out, time that feeds your creative, imaginative, reflective self needs. But along side that is the resetting of emotional balance, the fuelling of your intellectual hunger, the health of your personal and professional relationships and the biggie; to balance and gain perspective on your emotional drain. (People)

The reason I provide supervision for leaders, which roughly translates as a neutral, coffee drinking, scratching post, with objective wise thoughts, is so we keep each other accountable to the idea that we must stay tanked up in order that we can go faster. 

If you have hit the ground crawling…let’s face it, 2023 was not the kindest mistress we have ever met, then drop me a line. Remember, Coffee Fixes Everything. We help grow great leaders, and we write lousy eulogies.

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For so long we have been stacking legislation upon legislation in a vain attempt to alter negative outcomes and change peoples behaviour.

This has spectacularly failed and we see a rise in poor well being, low engagement, unkind leadership, mediocre productivity and a rise in pyscho-social harm.

The most impactful actions you can take to shift these stats is to become lovers of people and understand what people need to perform at their best and what prevents that..and that will only ever come though deepening relationships and the intentional curiosity and recognition of what individual team members need to thrive and excel. The big shift in leadership for his season is a deeper handle on human psychology.

Latent skills and high functioning contributions lay hidden under the ridiculousness of regulation and legislation. Regulations do not change belief systems. We apply punitive measures to chastise error and failure when what we need to do is to be moving in closer and closer to understand the why events happen and foster the encouragement of solution discovery as a standard practice. Anytime you have punitive action, you bury your opportunity to uncover truth and the pathway to better. We are suffering from the gap between relationship and knowing deep functional data.

People talk much about "Courageous Conversations" (which I personally believe are nonsense - feel free to ask me why) however, what is really courageous is for a leader to first determine that people don't come to work to wreck organisations, and secondly, that real courage is to be able to look at ones own leadership and discover where systems and processes have facilitated error and systematic failures. Remember, YOU have what you lead and YOU have what you tolerate. We are where we have been led.

A courageous conversation had with yourself makes discovery possible and change towards excellence imminent. …


The opposite of kindness is not unkindness or meanness as you might expect.

It is abandonment.

In a leadership context we find it evident that there are people you favour because for one reason or another you resonate with that person and you just like them. At the simplest level, the action of 'LIKE' is to invest your time, your thinking, your generosity of wisdom, advice, assistance, favour, opportunity etc. into that person's day. (This is the recognition of value)

The polar opposite of that investment is evident in the people you don't resonate with. This starvation of those values (the intentional lack of the milk of human kindness.) is a deprivation of connection, the thirst for encouragement, which our teams of course desperately need.

And make no mistake, there is a stark awareness of that intention to everyone on your team, after all, behaviour follows belief.

"Kindness is a choice even when fondness is not" (Samuel Johnson 1709-1784)

This quote for me summarises how we must model leadership evenly.

I'm not saying you don't have favourites as you are human, and we are all subject to attraction and choice. It is highly unlikely you will feel drawn to all your team, but you can regardless of attraction practice and demonstrate kindness. Generosity only shown to the favoured is not really generosity at all.

If a team member becomes abandoned, their performance and contribution becomes stunted which is the last thing you want or need. Everyone's  voice creates the conditions for better even though they may be square pegs.

If you struggle to like or resonate with a particular person or group of people, I have some questions which help to open up a conversational channel which will change your view point or at the very least provide you the opening for kindness and connection.

Oscar Wilde wrote: "People are like books, some deceive you with their cover, and others surprise you with their content." But if we don't ever pick up the book, how will never known what is inside it.

Email me at lead@thethinkfarm.org (Subject: Five Questions) …