(a journey from reasoning to reckoning)
There was a time
when I believed in leadership development.
Not just believed…
I delivered it.
Designed it.
Defended it.
Reasoning was the compass;
Analysis, the path.
Models, frameworks, evidence, logic;
Clean lines of thought drawn across messy lives.
Sinek said “start with why”.
West said “lead with compassion”.
Britnell sketched the future in NHS blue.
And I followed.
But over time, the logic frayed.
The frameworks thinned.
The systems stopped making sense
in the face of what people were really carrying.
What looked whole on paper
felt hollow in practice.
So I began to turn
away from reasoning
and toward something deeper.
Something older.
A kind of reckoning.
Not with outcomes,
but with meaning.
Not with strategy,
but with soul.
Reckoning invited me
to bring back the parts I’d left behind:
Imagination.
Aesthetics.
Grief.
Longing.
Ethics, not as principle,
but as presence.
The moral weight of a moment.
The quiet shame of pretending.
The courage to ask:
“What does this ask of me?”
“Not just what works—but what’s right?”
It was no longer enough
to analyse complexity.
I had to feel it. To dance with it.
I had to let it change me.
To let a poem
teach me more about leadership
than a thousand keynote slides.
To let silence
become more illuminating
than any strategy session.
To let beauty
reawaken a part of me
that had gone numb from too much sense-making
and not enough wonder.
Now, I sit with people,
not to teach,
but to listen.
I ask them not what they know,
but what they’re carrying.
What they’ve lost.
What they can no longer ignore.
We don’t fix.
We reckon.
Together.
So no, I don’t do leadership development anymore.
Not as it’s usually done.
I walk with people
who are ready to leave the map behind.
Who are willing to ask:
“Who am I now?”
“What does love require of me here?”
“What if I led from my aliveness, not my CV?”
It’s not fast.
Not neat.
Not scalable.
But it’s true.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
Are you ready to Follow the Thread?
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