Christmas Curation 2024

As we draw to the close of another year, I have been reflecting on what has inspired me and what has accelerated my learning, leadership and coaching practice in 2024.

Gifts under a Christmas tree

Working with leaders, I often provide of ‘buffet’ of ideas for people to consider, taste, and enjoy to develop their self-understanding and leadership in practice.

I hope you enjoy some of the buffet I have curated for you, and something to your ‘taste’

It has been a busy year for Leadfully, developing the business and areas of focus. I have really enjoyed working in different ways, with wonderful clients and colleagues (always learning) and developing new skills, muscles and connections.

I have been spending time working through my take on ‘what is compassionate leadership?’ and discovering  ‘how’ and ‘what’ leaders can do to create the culture that supports and enables this.  And providing the tools and insights in ways that support and enable Compassionate Leadership in really impactful and practicable applicable ways.

This is my Christmas gift that I hope you will enjoy, and it will stimulate and encourage curiosity. Do let me know what you think and what else should be included in future curations.

Things that I have been thinking about for leadership development:

As leaders, part of our role is to create and hold space for others. This is even more critical when the problems we are working on are complex, messy, and require different ways of thinking and systems of relationship to work through them. This has got me interested in the art of Convening and creating holding space for others as a skill. As with all skills, with intentionality, we can learn and practice. We move from a mindset of planning and performance to focus on collective, trust, sense making and learning together as a whole system. The infographic below from Helen Bevan encapsulates the Art of Convening.

Early in the year I had the pleasure of being part of a research group that Prof Megan Reitz and John Higgins were conducting around Spaciousness and exploring as leaders, and how could we practice and help others find spaciousness in the busyness and ‘always on’ world. Megan and John’s findings will be published soon, and I have certainly found it a really helpful frame, personally, when coaching and working with leaders. The positive psychology and ‘flipping’ unleashes creative thinking that helps open up possibilities enabling focus on ‘what really matters’. I predict Spaciousness will be a growing area and essential for leaders to understand and practice.  

I love this quote from Megan

“When you’re in uncharted territory and there isn’t a clear how-to-guide, one thing you’ve got to do is make space to reflect and learn and talk”“When you’re in uncharted territory and there isn’t a clear how-to-guide, one thing you’ve got to do is make space to reflect and learn and talk”

Creating Psychological Safety as leaders remains a key foundational focus in helping leaders and groups and build trust, and open and honest communication to work well and effectively together. The Centre for Creative Leadership: How can Leaders build Psychological Safety at Work is a great practical summary.

Much of my work this year has been working with leaders individually, in groups around challenges or in organisations/ systems to help them elicit and articulate their Values and Behaviours and working to understand the conditions - physical and psychological that enable Values to be lived.

I have actively deepened my understanding of emotional intelligence, being self-aware, effective and empathetic communication, building and maintain trust, enabling a growth and learning mindset and creativity along with resilience. This has allowed to support leaders in authentic, practical and transferable ways and to learn more about behavioural science to support change.

As I am often am asked to support and coach clinicians and leaders who find themselves in difficult situations, I undertook Hogan Personality Accreditation and have found this to be really helpful in supporting understanding, thinking and behaviours, in an objective and practice focused approach. I have been developing greater understanding of Perfectionism Hogan: Managing Perfectionism in the Workplacetraits linked to my work on Imposter Thinking and also understanding Narcissism Hogan Narcissism and Leadership, and what this means for individuals and people working or living closely with them.

Being able to access different ways of communicating and thinking - often through storytelling or poetry - has been enlightening and I find David Whyte’s work really helpful. I am in a Bookgroup where we are working through Consolations: a Solace, Nourishment and Underlying meanings of everyday words, and I find his poetry helps shift my mood and energy, with deeper insight.  This has provided additional and different perspectives to the definitions of emotions by Brené Brown in Atlas of the Heart.  

A friend recommended the following poem, when I found myself stuck and it was so helpful to reconnect with what mattered most.

Start close in ~ david whyte

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Reproduced with kind permission of David Whyte, River Flow: New and Selected Poems. Also found in David Whyte Essentials

I have been cautiously dipping my toe in the water to understand the role and impact of AI, in health and care, in coaching for leaders, and wider life, and holding the space for the desire for human connection alongside technology enabled improvement.

 I hope there has been something in this curation that has been helpful, maybe the embedded resources, or the emerging ideas, or you have enjoyed the fusion of reflective thinking. Do connect, I always love the dialogue and connection.

“Changing the world for the better, one conversation at a time”

I will be sharing more thoughts by a leadership theme each month during 2025.

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