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Part 1: Why the Advice “Be Resilient” Prevails (And Why That Made Sense… Until Now)
What if the workplace wellness consensus we built together is solving the wrong problem? Resilience has become professional lingua franca. It’s in performance reviews, wellness programs, leadership development curricula. We’ve accepted it as best practice—coaches recommend it, organizations fund it, employees pursue it. “Build resilience” sits comfortably alongside “take initiative” and “communicate effectively” as unquestioned…
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Emotional Intelligence & Psychological Safety: The Leadership Antidotes to SAM
Emotional safety sounds modern, but our Stone-Age Mindset still runs the show. This piece exposes why old survival wiring keeps sabotaging us—and what that means for real leadership today. (Originally published on LinkedIn.) You know the scene. You’ve prepared for the difficult conversation with a struggling team member. You’ve read the books, practiced the frameworks,…
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The Stone-Age Mindset: Why Our Brains Resist Modern Leadership
What if we’ve been misreading why leadership feels so hard—and the answer lies in how our Stone-Age brain handles modern complexity? (Originally published on LinkedIn.) I recently raised the question of why smart leaders make puzzling choices and introduced a framework I call the Stone-Age Mindset, or simply, SAM. A framework that has been quietly…
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The Unexpected Gift of Reluctant Leadership: Discovering the Leader Within
I never set out to be an organisational leader. In 2010, however, it found me! Suddenly tasked with leading a team that was already established, I remember wrestling with self-doubt and uncertainty. The questions I faced about my abilities and decisions were constant. Every day felt like a new challenge as I navigated team dynamics,…