What’s Happening • News and Blog
Helping professional coaching shape its future
Neil has been invited by the International Coach Federation to help design and facilitate and event celebrating their 20th Anniversary. Happening in Portland, Oregon, it's an opportunity for coaches from around the world to come together, hear from inspirational and...
Is your ‘Purpose’ working for you?
All organisations that create a big impact have a big, inspiring purpose. Get the purpose right and you will attract support, commitment and resources. For your team it will create a sense of ‘shared endeavour’. It can work hard for you and all you care for. In...
New ERA, new culture
When you and your team are leading big change, there are inevitably going to be complexities, ambiguities and stresses. And in all organisations, it is standard for people to face a constant stream of performance reviews, critiques, 360s and more. Unfortunately these...
Finding the Good Will
So the intent was to write a message of seasonal good cheer. But the news of recent days is making that a bit tough: violence, abuse, intolerance, professional misconduct, breaches of trust. A lot of hurt, anger and fear. Ho Ho Ho? The strange synchronicity is that we...
Staying connected
How do I "stay connected"? People who are leading big change often tell us that they find it hard to "stay connected" - to the end result, the inspiring purpose - the energy source, if you like. For example, senior leaders at Macmillan Cancer Support have told us how...
Getting good from bad
Neil writes: Some pithy words popped into my head a few years ago, and have made people up to good things smile on many occasions since: “It can be a fine line between Cr@p and fertiliser.” Often it’s just a matter of time to let things mulch down a bit. A testing...
Calm ways through the storms
Much of the work we do supporting organisations up to big change involves working with boards, SMT’s and project teams. There are passions. And there are pressures. And inevitably there are different ways of looking at problems, and different suggestions for getting...
Strategy for leading big change
It is always a real pleasure for us at One Leadership to discover an organisation that is leading big change in the world, and even more of a joy to be asked to help. And so it was with Publish What You Fund, an organisation that was established only six years ago but...
Inspiring each other to find the answers to our biggest challenges
If the 21st century is teaching us one thing, it’s that ‘it’s complicated’. We often meet people who have ‘the answer’ to their big challenge. “If only we…” or “The answer is to…” they say and somehow it will all be fixed. We wish that were true. It may be a start, an...
Taking care of business – taking care of yourself
In our recent work on compassionate leadership one aspect has proven to be particularly valuable - self compassion. Many (most?) people who are making good things happen in their workplace or the wider world, serving beyond self, caring about others, find that...
System shifting – past and present
Have you seen 12 Years a Slave? It's a harrowing true story of an Afro-Caribbean free man from the northern states of the USA kidnapped and sold to the south in the early 1800's. The depiction of the way the the slaves were treated is distressing enough to watch on...
Take a moment in nature…
At One Leadership we often hear of the benefits that spending time in nature has for people who are dealing with complicated things: providing inspiration and relaxation; a space to think, perhaps to blow off steam or maybe be still, seeing the passing seasons turn,...
What is it time to let go of?
This question has come up so often in conversation and proven so useful and generative for people dealing with multiple projects and complicated issues in recent months that we thought it’s time to share it. We are always changing, shaped by our experiences,...
Time for a bit of Marmite?
“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.” Winston S. Churchill It is almost self-defining that people who want to make good things happen are, in smaller or greater part, the sort of people for whom upsetting others can...
True Transformation
Some years ago we heard of a French explorer who said “There are two types of explorer. Those who really want an adventure. And those who secretly don’t.” For people who are being catalytic, these words seem to hold a certain magic about embracing vulnerability,...
Humility and Compassion
At the time of writing flood levels are rising along the Thames, large areas of Somerset are under water and the South West of England has all its rail services cut off by flooding, subsidence and storm damage. Of course, this is not purely a problem local to the UK....
Legacy: ‘Our first responsibility is to be a good ancestor’
Speaking with James Kerr, author of 'Legacy - What the All Blacks can teach us about the business of life - 15 lessons in leadership' - The Story “There’s a fundamental Maori spiritual concept called ‘whakapapa’ – a long unbroken chain of humans standing arm in arm...
Bringing Compassionate Leadership into the World
“It’s about giving managers a space to imagine, understand and embody the shift from a focus on performance to being a compassionate leader. To reflect on who they are as people and what an integrated healthy life looks like for them, how they can look after...