06 | In Community
A few years ago I woke up unable to speak. I held so much tension in my jaws that it physically hurt to open my mouth. As I learned to heal with my jaws I discovered the wisdom of my body in that moment. Unknowingly, I had muzzled myself – I had kept so much […]
04 | Coming True
I recently walked through the Sigmund-Thun Klamm gorge in Austria and felt the pure force of the Kapruner Ache river. Powerful streams that, over thousands of years, cut through resistant mountain rock to gradually carve a new path. As I listened to the thunderous rushing river and felt its cool mist accompanying me, I was […]
The Confidence Trap – How Not to Lose $2B
The Seduction of Certainty This recent video by science communicator and Veritasium host, Derek Muller, got me thinking about the role of confidence in leadership. In Muller’s telling, a trader—smart but prone to over-confidence and hiding his errors—watched his $40,000 loss turn into $1.3B, all by trusting his instincts and belief he could feel patterns […]
04 | Activating Agency
For me, activating agency has felt like jumping off a cliff at the edge of the sea with the knowledge of how to swim. But then, the jump itself teaches me how to fly – completely changing my perspective and showing me how to let go of what I thought I knew. Activating agency is […]
03 | Awakening Intention
What I always found curious about Aaron’s U-Turn is that he didn’t start with the intention to depict a free, flying bird that would tell an inspiring story. He began with drawing a bird sitting on the ground, an action that slowly gave rise to a question about identity: If the bird has wings, what […]
02 | Deepening Attention
In my last article I spoke of Aaron and the impact he had on my life. For Aaron, the bird had been motionless. For me, the bird was endlessly doing, but the result was the same. In both cases, the bird had forgotten its capacity to fly. Sitting on the ground meant being so disconnected […]
01 | An Invitation
In 2008 I met Aaron. We shared an interaction that lasted about one hour and I have not seen him since. And yet, the ways we both chose to show up to that moment changed my life forever. I had just moved to New York City to start university and was struck by how many […]
Presencing Community
The adaptive challenge of our time We face what Eric Martin would call a profound adaptive challenge: how to create meaningful change in a world that has been fractured by centuries of individualistic thinking. This isn’t a technical problem with a known solution—it’s an adaptive challenge that requires us to examine our deepest assumptions about […]
Talking Adaptive Strategy vs Actually Doing It
Ever since Peter Senge published The Fifth Discipline in 1990, how leaders think about strategy has never been the same. Few still believe a five-year strategic plan will hold in a volatile world. Around the same time, “adaptive” entered the mainstream lexicon thanks to the work of Ron Heifetz and Harvard Kennedy School on Adaptive […]
Leading Meetings that Matter
Most of us have been in meetings where the energy dips, conflict flares or the conversation goes nowhere. Conventional facilitation techniques often aim to smooth things out, keep people comfortable and move the agenda forward. That can be useful, but it often leaves the real work untouched. Adaptive leadership offers a different way. Instead of […]