Category: General

In business, we are taught to manage systems, P&Ls, and teams. But as Peter Drucker famously noted, the most difficult person you will ever have to manage is yourself.

I recently attended a panel at the Peter Drucker Forum titled “The New Sciences of Managing Yourself.” The speakers, ranging from F1 performance experts to global CEOs, all landed on a singular, striking truth: High performance is not a business strategy; it is a physiological and psychological state.

If you want to lead in a turbulent world, you have to start in the driver’s seat of your own mind.

The F1 Principle: Recovery is Performance

Annastiina Hintsa (CEO, Hintsa Performance) works with 60–70% of the F1 paddock. Her secret? She doesn’t just ask drivers how they drive; she asks them who they are when they aren’t driving.

• The Identity Trap: If your identity is 100% tied to your title (CEO, Manager, Founder), a setback at work becomes an existential crisis. To survive high pressure, you need pillars of identity outside the office.
• The Pit Stop Mentality: In F1, you don’t stop because the car is broken; you stop to ensure it doesn’t break. Hintsa argues that sleep, nutrition, and mental energy are not “perks”: they are the prerequisites for the split-second decision-making leadership requires.

The Brain’s Verdict: Fear vs. Readiness

Eva Asselmann (Professor of Psychology) reminded us that our brains treat failure like social rejection. When the “internal alarm” (the amygdala) fires, we freeze.

• Action Shapes Belief: Don’t wait to feel confident before you act. Self-efficacy, the belief that you can handle what’s coming, is built by doing.
• The Story Matters: Your body feels the same during fear as it does during excitement (racing heart, sweaty palms). The elite leader reframes the story from “I’m scared” to “My body is pumping up to meet this challenge.”

The Leader’s Daily “Micro-Toolkit”

Niren Chaudhary (Former Chair, Panera Brands) shared six daily habits to bridge the gap between “knowing” and “leading.”

1. The Three Marbles: Carry three imaginary marbles into every meeting. Every time you speak, you lose one. Use them wisely to create space for your team to grow.
2. Learn and Love AI: Spend 30 minutes daily playing with AI. It’s not an end, it’s a means to stay curious.
3. Choose Courage over Noise: When the world feels chaotic, ignore the macro-noise and ask: “What can I control in my immediate community today?”
4. Practice “Wicked” Goals: SMART goals are for maintenance. WILD goals (Wicked, Illogical, Disruptive) are for transformation.
5. Build Grit in the Small Stuff: Do the extra five minutes on the treadmill when you want to quit. That’s how you train for the board room.
6. The Compassion Multiplier: Trust = (Competence + Character) x Care. Showing you care is the ultimate force multiplier.

Final Thought: The Diamond of Life

Niren closed with a beautiful metaphor. Life is not a flat marble; it is a diamond with many facets: work, family, health, and service. A leader who only shines in one facet is dimmed. To lead well is to do justice to the whole diamond.

Sustainable performance isn’t about running faster. It’s about knowing when to make a pit stop to finish the race.

Next Step for You: Pick one “WILD” goal for this month, something that feels slightly impossible. How would your approach change if you started at “impossible” rather than “achievable”?

Picture by Stuart Seeger from College Station, Texas, USA – Mika’s Lotus Debut, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5495395

Something curious happened last week.

Three different people, from entirely different professional contexts, asked me the same question: “How do we actually create effective team agreements?”

It wasn’t just the synchronicity that struck me; it was the timing. It’s the start of the year, a season where we naturally audit what’s working and what’s causing friction. There seems to be a quiet, collective realization spreading across teams: We can’t keep working by accident.

From Assumption to Intention

Team agreements aren’t about rules or corporate control. They are about alignment. In the book I co-authored with Michael Doyle, I Am a Software Engineer and I Am in Charge, we describe these agreements as a living document, a shared understanding of our habits, expectations, and rhythms. It is the bridge that moves a team from assumption to intention.

We use the story of Sandrine to illustrate this. She starts her journey frustrated, feeling like her team is constantly out of sync. Her turning point comes when she stops waiting for things to change and realizes:

“How do they know what I need if I haven’t told them?”

By making her needs explicit, she helps the team do the same. That is the heartbeat of a team agreement: It begins with a conversation, not a process.

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How to Start (or Restart) Your Agreements

If your team agreement is currently a forgotten doc in a wiki, or if you’ve never had one, here is how Michael and I suggest you breathe life into it:

1. Start with Frustrations and Joys: Don’t start with a blank template. Ask the team: What has been draining your energy lately? What moments last month felt effortless? Use these stories to find where agreements are actually needed.
2. Focus on “Moments That Matter:” Don’t try to legislate everything. Focus on high-friction touchpoints: How do we handle interrupts? When is it okay to say “no” to a meeting? What does “done” actually look like for us?
3. Co-creation over Command-and-Control: An agreement handed down from a lead is just a rule. An agreement built by the group is a commitment. If people help build the house, they won’t want to burn it down.
4. Review and Revise Often: Agreements should have an expiration date. Your team changes, so your agreements should too. Make them a recurring topic in your retrospectives.

A Tip from the Field

In my other book, Changing Your Team from the Inside, I explore how the simplest acts, like discussing how you prefer to receive feedback, can build immense trust. A team agreement is simply an invitation for everyone to say: “This is how I work best. How about you?”

Another Tip from the Field

I also love the way Isabel Monville approaches this. She often reframes the exercise by asking the team to look through the eyes of a newcomer: “What would a new team member need to know to be successful here? What is okay to do, and what is definitely not okay?” This shift in perspective makes the invisible “unwritten rules” visible, allowing the team to decide which ones are worth keeping and which ones are just bad habits.

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Your Turn: A Small Experiment

Next time you’re in a team meeting, try asking just one question:

“What is one working agreement we could make today that would make our day-to-day easier?”

Pick one thing. Write it down. Try it for a week. Reflect. That is how agreements become culture.

Are you rethinking your team’s rhythms this year? I’d love to hear what’s working (or what’s driving you crazy). Let’s talk.

Anger is one of those emotions we’re taught to see as bad, unproductive, or destructive. We learn to calm down, to let it go, to avoid it.

But what if that instinctive rejection of anger is actually making us less effective as leaders, as coaches, and as human beings?

This is where the work of Phil Stutz, the psychiatrist and author, gives us a powerful reframe.

Stutz is known for his long career in therapy (he began working as a psychiatrist in New York and later in Los Angeles) and for co-authoring books like The Tools and Coming Alive. More recently, his short essays were collected in Lessons for Living: What Only Adversity Can Teach You, a book full of reflections on real human challenges, including one titled The Positive Side of Anger.

Anger as a Signal, Not a Problem

Stutz doesn’t dismiss anger. He doesn’t see it as a flaw in character or something to be sublimated or ignored. Instead, he treats anger as information: a powerful emotional signal that something important is being violated.

When we feel angry, Stutz suggests, it is because something deeply matters to us. It’s a boundary signal, a marker that a value has been crossed or a personal standard has been ignored.

The trouble doesn’t come from the anger itself, but from how we respond to it:

• If we suppress anger, it often turns inward as depression, apathy, cynicism, or self-criticism.
• If we explode with it without reflection, it becomes blame and conflict.
• If we instead own the anger and clarify what it is protecting, it becomes energy for change.

Stutz’s approach here is subtle but powerful: anger is not the problem, mismanaging it is.

Why Anger Is Useful

There are three important truths about anger that come through in Stutz’s writing:

1. Anger pinpoints what matters most.
   It’s not noise. It’s a directional signal that something significant for your identity or values is at stake.
2. Anger holds energy.
   Rather than draining us, when we own anger and interpret it accurately, it becomes fuel for clarity, resolve and action.
3. Anger is a stepping stone, not a destination.
   The aim is not to indulge anger, but to use it to uncover what needs to change and then move toward that change with intention.

In this sense, anger cleans the lens through which we see a problem. It helps us see beyond surface discomfort to structural issues like unmet expectations, crossed boundaries, or values under threat.

How This Applies to Leadership and Work

In organizational life, anger often shows up:

• when leaders are exhausted by repeated blocks,
• when teams feel undervalued,
• when stakeholders ignore boundaries,
• or when performance feels misaligned with values.

Too often, leaders either minimize anger or react to it without reflection. The result? Resentment, turnover, disengagement, burnout.

Stutz’s perspective gives leaders a different path: Use anger as a compass.

Ask:

• What boundary is being crossed?
• What value is being violated?
• What concrete action would protect that value?

This shifts anger from a reactive emotion to a source of agency.

The Broader Stutz Framework: Adversity as Growth

Stutz’s book isn’t just about anger. Lessons for Living is structured as a series of essays on universal human challenges: envy, insecurity, bad habits, conflict, and yes, anger. What unifies them is a deep conviction that adversity is not a sign of failure but a teacher.

Rather than trying to avoid pain or conflict, Stutz invites us to face these experiences with curiosity.

A Practical Takeaway

Here’s a simple reframing you can use immediately — for yourself, or with a client:

Anger is not the enemy. Anger is the part of you that still knows what matters and refuses to give up.

That’s not a dismissal of discomfort. It’s an invitation to listen to what’s being said beneath the emotion.

In Practice: A Short Coaching Prompt

When someone says “I’m angry”:

1. Pause and validate “Anger tells us something matters here.”
2. Ask the deeper question “What boundary feels crossed?” or “What value is being defended?”
3. Solicit concrete action “What is the smallest next step that honors that value?”
4. Move toward ownership “What part of this is in your control right now?”

This turns anger from a stumbling block into a stepping stone.

We’ve all been there: You wrap up a powerful, high-energy, face-to-face quarterly meeting. Your leadership team is aligned, initiatives are clearly defined, and everyone enthusiastically volunteers to lead their respective actions.

You walk away feeling unstoppable… until you get back to the office.

Now, weeks later, you find yourself having to push every team member, individually and collectively, just to get the agreed-upon initiatives to budge. It’s frustrating, energy-draining, and makes you wonder: Why the resistance?

This is where a fun concept from psychology can shed some light.

Introducing: “Musturbation”

Coined by the influential psychologist Albert Ellis in the 1960s, Musturbation is his term for the human tendency to hold rigid, absolute, and irrational demands on ourselves, others, and the world—using words like “must,” “should,” and “ought.”

In the context of our post-QBR frustration, the “Musts” are likely manifesting as:

• Your Internal Must: “They must execute on these initiatives without me having to chase them, because they agreed.”
• Their Potential Internal Musts: “I must focus on my daily urgent tasks first,” or “This initiative must be perfect before I show anyone the progress.”

The Leadership Lesson: Stop Musturbating, Start Facilitating

The moment we believe our team “must” behave in a certain way, we replace clear, flexible facilitation with rigid, frustrated demands. We assume that agreement in a meeting translates directly into smooth, effortless execution, but that is rarely the reality in complex work environments.

Instead of operating from a place of frustration (“They must do this!”), leadership needs to:

1. Acknowledge the Obstacles: People return to a whirlwind of existing demands. The quarterly initiative is often a “should-do” competing with daily “must-do’s.”
2. Translate Agreement into Action Systems: Did you define the first next step? The accountability mechanism? The weekly check-in?
3. Replace Demands with Preferences: Shift your thinking from: “They must do this for the company to succeed.” (Rigid, frustrating) TO “I strongly prefer they do this, so what flexible system can I put in place to help them succeed?” (Flexible, empowering)

If you’re tired of pushing, stop assuming the “must” and start designing the system that enables success.

What is the most common “Must” you hear (or think) in your leadership meetings?

In many leadership workshops, we introduce a simple idea that quickly becomes a powerful lens: the idea of the line.

Above the line, we are open, curious, and ready to learn. Below the line, we are closed, protective, and trying to get through the moment.

It is easy to assume that one is good and the other is bad. But that is not the point at all. The point is simply to notice.

There is something almost like a leadership version of the Heisenberg principle. We cannot predict with certainty whether someone will be above or below the line in a specific situation. We can guess. We can know habits, patterns, preferences. But we cannot know for sure.

A difficult conversation, a stressful deadline, a sense of threat, a flash of insecurity, an unexpected constraint. Anyone can drop below the line. Likewise, the right environment, a supportive colleague, or a moment of clarity can shift someone above the line just as quickly.

There is no moral judgment in this. There is only awareness.

A big part of what pulls us below the line is our relationship with pain and uncertainty. Uncertainty carries the possibility of discomfort, disappointment, or loss, so our first instinct is often to avoid it. We try to control it, fix it, or eliminate it. This creates a kind of tension inside. We are not reacting to what is actually happening. We are reacting to the possibility of pain.

That is why uncertainty can feel like a wave we want no part of. If we are below the line, the wave seems unpredictable and dangerous. We brace. We contract. We try to make the wave smaller or make ourselves smaller. The energy becomes something to resist.

But above the line, uncertainty takes on a different meaning. Surfers know this well. A wave is not an enemy. It is a source of movement and energy. It is something to ride, not something to fear. When we stop trying to protect ourselves and start being willing to learn, the same uncertainty becomes possibility. It becomes play instead of pressure.

My friend John Poelstra, an executive coach based on the US West Coast whom I highly recommend, once offered a metaphor that may be even more helpful than surfing: dancing. Surfing is an individual sport. Dancing requires relationship. It requires sensing another person, adjusting moment by moment, and sharing leadership.

In a dance, the question is not Who is above or below the line?

The real question is How do we move together, given where each of us is right now?

Dancing works only when there is responsiveness. And responsiveness begins with noticing.

In teams, just like in dance, we cannot control whether people are above or below the line. But we can cultivate shared awareness. We can normalize the idea that both states are human. We can learn to pause. To breathe. To reconnect with intention instead of fear.

Above the line is not a superior state. Below the line is not a failure. Both are part of being human. The shift comes from recognizing where we are and choosing how we want to engage with the wave in front of us.

As you think about your week ahead, here are a few questions to explore:

What signals tell you that you are dropping below the line? What helps you return above the line without forcing it? How do you react when someone else is below the line? What would change if you stopped trying to avoid pain and started working with uncertainty instead of fighting it?

I would be happy to hear what you notice.

At the Peter Drucker Forum, I attended a powerful conversation titled Stick to Business or Take a Stand?

The panel, chaired by Thomas Lange, Managing Director, Achleitner Ventures, featured

• Tom Tugendhat, Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom; Former UK Minister
• Xavier Huillard, Chairman of the Board of Directors of VINCI
• Antonella Mei-Pochtler Executive Vice Chair, Pochtler Industrieholding
• Andreas Treichl, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, ERSTE Foundation

The discussion revolved around one essential tension that leaders face today. When should a leader simply focus on running the business, and when should they take a public position on broader social and political issues?

What struck me during this conversation is how deeply connected this question is with the polarity between the short term and the long term. It is not a problem with a single right answer. It is a polarity to manage carefully and continuously.

The world today pushes leaders toward the short term. Shareholder pressure. Quarterly expectations. Electoral cycles. Social media outrage. Geopolitical shocks.

Yet almost every speaker insisted that leadership requires something very different. It requires seeing beyond the urgency of the moment.

Tom Tugendhat said it clearly. Politics often operates on very short time horizons. Electoral cycles and media storms pull elected leaders into the daily fight. But business has the opportunity, and even the responsibility, to bring in long-term thinking. Decisions on energy, technology, rare earths, supply chains, and defense have consequences that unfold over decades. When business leaders focus only on the short term, society loses one of the few voices capable of thinking beyond the next three years.

Antonella Mei Pochtler added another dimension. Many global companies face situations where taking a stand is difficult, because they operate across countries that are in political conflict. What position should a company take when the United States and China oppose each other, and the company depends on both markets? Taking a stand might hurt the business. Not taking a stand may quietly support an authoritarian regime. This is a long-term dilemma: protect immediate business interests or defend values that ensure long-term legitimacy.

Andreas Treichl offered a complementary warning. In recent years, many companies, governments, and institutions pushed too fast on various ESG topics without bringing people along. The result was a backlash that played directly into the hands of populists. Progress that does not match the pace of public understanding eventually works against the long-term goals it tries to advance.

This brought the conversation back to a fundamental point. For a democratic society to function, people need to understand how their institutions work. And that includes their companies.

Several speakers argued that companies should be radically transparent with their employees. Explain how the company really makes money. Explain the pressures, the constraints, the trade-offs. Help people understand why they are paid what they are paid, and what decisions shape the future of the business.

When employees understand the inner workings of the company, they become less susceptible to manipulation from populists on the left or the right. They develop a deeper sense of agency and clarity. They can then participate more confidently in long-term decisions.

This is where the polarity of short term versus long term becomes visible inside organizations too. Short-term secrecy may simplify life for leaders who prefer not to explain everything. Long-term transparency is harder, but it builds understanding, resilience, and trust.

To help visualize this polarity, here is the polarity map for Short Term and Long Term.

The panel reminded me that next-era leadership is not only the capacity to take a stand. It is the capacity to take a stand while thinking across decades. It is resisting the pressure to react to every wave of anger or confusion, and instead building organizations where people understand, participate, and grow.

It is also refusing to be neutral when neutrality reinforces oppression. Some speakers insisted that not taking a stand against an authoritarian regime means silently supporting it. Others insisted that taking a stance could put thousands of employees or billions in revenue at risk. There is no simple answer. But the conversation made one thing clear. Silence is a choice. And choices shape the long-term world in which we all live.

This brings me back to the core idea of Emerging Leadership. It is the practice of creating systems where people take responsibility for both the next step and the next generation. It is the discipline of balancing urgency with vision. It is the courage to create organizations that serve society, not just the quarter.

As we close, here are the questions I invite you to reflect on this week:

Where in your leadership are you being pulled too strongly into the short term? Where should you be taking a longer view to serve your team, your organization, or society? What would more transparency inside your organization make possible? What stand would you take if you were not afraid of the immediate consequences?

I would be glad to read your reflections.

Last week, I attended a fascinating panel at the Peter Drucker Forum:
​Real-World Lessons from Hierarchy-Busting Pioneers, chaired by Michele Zanini from the Management Lab.

The speakers were
– Michael Lurie from Bayer
– Michael Y. Lee from INSEAD
– Kevin Nolan from GE Appliances, a Haier company
– Karen Massey from argenx

All of them described how their organizations replaced traditional hierarchies with networks of small, cross-functional teams focused on delivering value to internal or external customers.

What impressed me is that these transformations work at scale.
Haier and Bayer each have more than 100,000 employees. Both used to be very hierarchical. Both removed entire layers of management and replaced them with teams that are closer to the customer, faster in execution, and clearer in accountability.

Karen Massey brought an important nuance. She leads argenx, a younger company founded in 2008 that has grown to around 2,000 people. You might think starting from scratch makes it easier to avoid hierarchy. But as she explained, even when you start with a horizontal structure, the people you hire still carry the mindset of hierarchy with them. They need help to understand and value horizontal relationships instead of vertical ones.

Working with teams, I often hear that the real problems come from the levels above them.
Speaking with senior leaders, I often hear that they truly want change but feel blocked by the structure, the expectations, and the perks associated with climbing the ladder.
It becomes clear that the hierarchical ladder has its own way of protecting itself.

Which leads to one conclusion.
If you want to change the way an organization works, you may need to remove the ladder completely.

When people no longer look up or down, they start to look across.
This is where collaboration, learning, and accountability start to emerge naturally.

Here is the question I leave you with this week:

In your organization, which part of the ladder could you remove to make space for genuine collaboration?

I would be happy to read your reflections.

Many organizations struggle to find the right balance between giving people freedom and keeping things under control. They often try to fix a “trust problem” with more control, or fix a “control problem” with more trust.

But these are not opposites to be solved. They are a polarity to be managed.

In Polarity Management, Barry Johnson showed that many tensions in leadership, such as trust versus control, stability versus change, or individual versus collective, are not problems with one right answer. They are ongoing dynamics that must be balanced over time.

When we overuse control, we get bureaucracy, fear, and disengagement. When we overuse trust, we get chaos, inconsistency, and uneven performance.
Yet when we balance the two, we create clarity and empowerment, high standards and high commitment.

A perfect example of an organizational model that overuses control is Taylorism. It was built on the belief that people could not be trusted to think, only to execute. Managers designed the work, workers performed it. Efficiency improved for a while, but curiosity, initiative, and humanity were left behind.

Now imagine instead a Michelin-starred restaurant. Every detail is thought through carefully. Standards are sky-high. Yet everyone, from the chef to the dishwasher, plays an active role in maintaining those standards. Trust and control coexist. Precision and creativity reinforce each other.

That is the sweet spot of emerging leadership.
It is not about choosing trust over control.
It is about creating systems where trust enables control, and control protects trust.

In your team, where might you be overusing one side of this polarity?
And what small shift could bring you closer to that Michelin balance: high standards, high trust, and collective excellence?

Photo de Laura Heimann 

In busy weeks filled with meetings, decisions, and endless messages, it is easy to lose sight of what drives us.
Sometimes we move from one task to another without noticing whether we are acting out of obligation or out of genuine choice.
This quick reflection can help leaders and teams reconnect with what truly matters.

Take a piece of paper.
Draw a horizontal line across it.

Now think back over your past week.

Each time you did something because you had to, make a small mark below the line.
Each time you did something because you wanted to, make a small mark above the line.

Pause.
Look at your page. What does your week look like?

This simple exercise can reveal a lot.
It shows the balance between obligation and intention, between compliance and choice.
A week filled mostly with marks below the line might feel heavy, reactive, or constrained.
A week with marks above the line often feels lighter, creative, and purposeful.

Now ask yourself:

• Are there any “below the line” activities that could move above the line if I changed how I look at them?
  For example, a difficult meeting you “had to” attend could become something you “want to” do if you saw it as an opportunity to learn, to build trust, or to clarify direction.

Then, take the reflection one step further:

• What might the week of my colleagues in the leadership team look like?
  What would happen if we shared our drawings and compared perspectives?
  What would we learn about where our collective energy goes?

And finally:

• What might the week of the people in our organization look like?
  Are we, as leaders, unconsciously pushing work “below the line,” assigning tasks that feel like obligations?
  Or are we creating the conditions for people to want to do work that truly matters to the organization?

This simple drawing can open a deep conversation about motivation, meaning, and the space between “have to” and “want to.”

And that space, as Viktor Frankl reminded us, is where our freedom (and our leadership) begin.

We often talk about values as if they were things we already have. We list them in presentations, print them on posters, or mention them when asked about what matters most to us.
But if we look closer, our real values show up in what we do, especially when no one is watching.

In The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris reminds us that values are not goals or traits, but directions.
They are not achievements to check off, but aspirations that guide how we live, lead, and make decisions.

He offers a long list of possible values to help us reflect on who we want to be in different areas of life.
Here are a few examples that often resonate with leaders and teams:

• Authentic – being genuine, real, and true to myself
• Courageous – persisting in the face of fear, threat, or risk
• Curious – being open-minded and willing to explore and discover
• Kind – being considerate and caring toward myself and others
• Mindful – fully present and engaged in what I am doing
• Responsible – being trustworthy, reliable, and accountable for my actions
• Supportive – being helpful and encouraging toward others

And this is only a glimpse. Harris’s complete list contains 36 values, including accepting, adventurous, assertive, caring, compassionate, cooperative, creative, forgiving, grateful, helpful, honest, independent, industrious, loving, open, persistent, playful, protective, respectful, skillful, trustworthy, and many more.

When you read through them, which words describe how you want to show up in your work and life?
Which reflect the person you want to become?

Values are aspirational by nature. We never fully arrive. And that is the point.

Benjamin Franklin understood this very well. At the age of 20, he designed a personal system of 13 virtues to guide his growth:

1. Temperance – Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence – Speak only what may benefit others or yourself.
3. Order – Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution – Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality – Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; waste nothing.
6. Industry – Lose no time; be always employed in something useful.
7. Sincerity – Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice – Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation – Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries as much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness – Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Tranquility – Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity – Use physical pleasure with care for health and peace of mind.
13. Humility – Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin’s system gave him the chance to practice each virtue four times per year. Every week, he focused on one of them, tracking his progress in a small notebook.
He did not expect perfection; he practiced awareness.
He later wrote that although he never achieved all his ideals, he became “a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been.”

Maybe that is the heart of living our values: not perfection, but practice.
Not claiming them, but embodying them, one choice at a time.

So here is a small exercise for this month:
👉 Pick one value that matters to you.
👉 Notice how it shows up (or doesn’t) in your day.
👉 Ask yourself: What would it look like to live one step closer to that value today?

We often talk about leadership as if it’s a role, something that begins when you’re promoted or when your title changes.

But the truth is, leadership is a collective capacity, not a position. It’s something we build together, moment by moment, through how we show up, communicate, and make decisions.

This month, I’d like to explore a few simple ways to practice leadership wherever you are, drawn from the conversations I’ve had with inspiring guests on Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership.

1. Lead by Clarity and Care

In my discussion with Russ Laraway, author of When They Win, You Win, we talked about how great leadership is measurable. It shows up in clear direction, thoughtful coaching, and meaningful career conversations.
Russ’s advice was simple: set clear expectations, offer real feedback, and invest in people’s growth.

Try this: Pick one person this week and ask, “What’s one thing I could do to better support your success?” Then act on what you hear.

2. Build Trust by Talking About How You Talk

With Jeffrey Fredrick, co-author of Agile Conversations with Douglas Squirrel, we explored the idea that every problem in an organization is ultimately a conversation problem.
Jeffrey shared that high-trust teams don’t just talk about what they’re doing; they talk about how they talk. They examine their assumptions, make their reasoning visible, and invite challenge.

Try this: In your next meeting, pause to ask, “What assumptions might we be making here?” or “Is there something we’re not saying?”

You might be surprised how quickly this opens up honesty and alignment.

3. Empower the People Closest to the Work

In my conversation with Maria Bracho, CTO for LATAM at Red Hat, she shared that the most effective leaders are those who trust their teams to make decisions.
Her insight was clear: People closer to the work usually know best what needs to happen. The leader’s role is to create the conditions for them to act.

Try this: Instead of giving solutions, ask: “What do you think we should do?” Then, genuinely listen.

Empowerment is not a slogan; it’s a daily choice to let others lead.

4. Make Change Feel Possible, One Step at a Time

When I spoke with Tamar Bergovici, VP of Engineering at Box, she described how real transformation doesn’t come from big speeches, it comes from small, consistent actions that build trust and momentum.

Try this: Choose one thing your team has been struggling with. Instead of planning a massive fix, take one visible step forward this week. Then, celebrate it.

Sustainable change isn’t imposed, it’s co-created.

The Leadership Experiment for This Month

Here’s a simple exercise to try over the next two weeks:

1. Pick one area where you want to see leadership emerge. It could be clarity, trust, empowerment, or change.
2. Name one small behavior that would make a difference.
3. Invite others in: tell your team what you’re trying and ask them to join you.
4. Reflect: What shifted in you? What shifted in others?

Leadership grows when it’s shared.

Keep Exploring

If these ideas resonate, listen (or re-listen) to these episodes of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership:

• ​Russ Laraway – Redefining Leadership​
• ​Jeffrey Fredrick – Agile Conversations​
• ​Maria Bracho – Leadership and Open Source​
• ​Tamar Bergovici – Leading Change with Empathy​

Leadership isn’t about having the answers—it’s about creating the space where better answers can emerge.

You can listen wherever you already get your podcasts. Just pick your favorite platform and hit “subscribe” so you won’t miss any new episodes:

• ​Apple Podcasts​
• ​Spotify​
• ​Castbox​
• ​Amazon Music​
• ​RSS Feed​

And if your favorite platform isn’t on the list, just let me know, I’ll be glad to add it.

I’d love for you to join me there! See you in your earbuds!

Before closing, a quick update! This month, I’ll be in Vienna, delivering the opening keynote at a private client event, while Isabel will deliver the opening keynote for Agile Tour Bordeaux. These talks mark the beginning of a new season, with fresh insights drawn from our upcoming book, set for release next year. If you’re organizing a public or private event and would like us to bring these ideas to your audience, we’d be delighted to join you.

Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs, are simple in form and powerful in practice. Used well, they connect vision to execution, align teams on outcomes instead of outputs, and create a learning cadence that compounds over time. Used poorly, they become a quarterly spreadsheet that encourages busywork and sandbagging.

This edition is a practical guide to OKRs you can trust. Along the way, I will reference three favorite conversations from Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership: Christina Wodtke on Radical Focus, Radhika Dutt on Radical Product Thinking, and Gojko Adzic on Impact Mapping.

1) OKRs in one page

• Objective​
  A short, qualitative statement that inspires focus for the next cycle. Think of it as a mission for a quarter.
  ​Christina’s reminder: the Objective should be meaningful enough that people care, and specific enough that people can act.
• Key Results​
  Three to four measurable indicators that show you are achieving the Objective. They describe evidence of change, not tasks.
  ​Christina’s warning: avoid the seduction of the task. If a KR reads like a to-do, rewrite it as a result you expect to see.
• Cadence​
  Weekly check-ins on progress and learning, a monthly regroup on what is helping or hindering, and an end-of-cycle retrospective.
  ​Christina’s emphasis: cadence is what turns OKRs from set-and-forget goals into organizational learning.

2) From outputs to outcomes

A common failure mode is to treat OKRs as a dressed-up backlog. You see KRs like “launch feature X” or “install CRM.” Those are outputs. Great KRs answer “what will be different if we succeed.”

Rewrite example

• Weak KR: “Install a new CRM.”
• Strong KR: “Increase returning customer purchases by 20 percent.”
  Now you can ask whether a CRM is the best lever or if there is a better path to the same outcome.

Christina’s lens: OKRs unite people who love numbers with people who love meaning. Objectives hold the story. Key Results tell us how we will know the story is becoming true.

3) Strategy first, then OKRs

OKRs do not replace strategy. They operationalize it.
​Radhika’s contribution: treat execution as hypotheses derived from strategy, not as pass or fail exams. Her RDCL strategy mnemonic is a useful checklist:

• Real pain points that bring users to you
• Design choices that solve those pains
• Capabilities that power the solution
• Logistics that deliver and sustain it

Write KRs that test RDCL​
For each element, ask: what do we believe, how will we know, and what will we do next if we are wrong. That turns KRs into evidence, not vanity metrics.

Radhika’s insight on tradeoffs: be explicit about vision vs survival. Sometimes you incur vision debt to win a deal. Name it. Add a short survival statement so teams understand the tradeoff without losing faith in the long term.

4) Creating OKRs with Impact Mapping

If OKRs are the scoreboard, Impact Mapping is how you design the game plan.
​Gojko’s idea: map the chain from business goal to the actors who can help or hinder it, the impacts you want in their behavior, and the deliverables that might enable those impacts.

Mini impact map template

• Goal: what business outcome matters now
• Actors: customers, partners, internal roles that influence the outcome
• Impacts: specific behavior changes you want from each actor
• Deliverables: initiatives or features that could enable those changes

Then write OKRs from the map

• Objective: restate the Goal in plain language
• Key Results: quantify the desired Impacts
• Initiatives: select Deliverables as bets to test this cycle

This keeps OKRs laser-aligned with real behavior change rather than a pile of tasks.

5) How to write great OKRs

A simple checklist

1. One objective that matters now​
   If you have three, you probably have none.
2. Three to four key results​
   Each KR is a measurable outcome, not an activity.
3. Clear baseline and target​
   Everyone should know today’s number and the ambition for the cycle.
4. Explicit assumptions​
   Note the hypotheses you are testing so you can decide faster next time.
5. Weekly learning ritual​
   What did we try, what moved, what will we try next.
6. Ownership without individualization​
   Teams own OKRs. Use OKRs to develop the product and the system, not to grade people.
   ​Christina and Radhika agree: tying individual compensation to OKRs distorts behavior and kills learning.

A quick example

• Objective: Make it effortless for first-time users to get value in 10 minutes.
• Key Results
  1. First session completion rate rises from 38 percent to 60 percent.
  2. Time to first successful action falls from 12 minutes to 7 minutes.
  3. Trial to paid conversion within 14 days increases from 8 percent to 12 percent.
• Initiatives​
  Guided setup, new sample data, contextual tips.
• Hypotheses​
  Sample data reduces blank-page anxiety. Guided setup reduces errors.
• Review cadence​
  Weekly metrics review and experiment stand-up, end-of-cycle retro.

6) Common traps and how to avoid them

• Task KRs​
  Replace to-dos with evidence of user or business change.
• Too many goals​
  Pick one objective. Park the rest.
• Cascading paralysis​
  In large orgs, align instead of cascade. Company sets the north star. Teams propose their contribution.
• Command and control​
  OKRs thrive in empowered cultures. In top-down environments, they turn into pressure targets that invite gaming.
• Set and forget​
  No weekly learning, no OKRs. Cadence is the engine.

7) Culture is the multiplier

Radhika’s culture model: map work along two axes, fulfilling vs not, urgent vs not. Aim to maximize fulfilling and non-urgent work, and reduce the other quadrants like heroics and busywork. OKRs can help by removing noise and focusing attention, but only if leaders protect time for thinking, learning, and steady progress.

Christina’s team lens: great OKRs live inside teams with clear goals, roles, and norms. If feedback is avoided or roles are fuzzy, OKRs will surface conflict rather than resolve it.

Gojko’s product lens: if the behavior change is unclear, you do not have an OKR problem, you have a strategy and product problem. Go back to the impact map.

8) Try this with your team next week

1. Draft a one-line Objective that everyone understands.
2. List five candidate Key Results. Keep three that reflect behavior change.
3. Sketch a quick impact map. Confirm which actor behaviors your KRs reflect.
4. Write two explicit hypotheses. Decide how you will know within two weeks.
5. Put 30 minutes on the calendar every Friday for progress and learning. Celebrate movement, not perfection.

If you want to go deeper, listen to these episodes of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership while you refine your next cycle

• Radical Focus with Christina Wodtke for cadence and outcomes over outputs
• Radical Product Thinking with Radhika Dutt for hypothesis-driven strategy and honest tradeoffs
• Build a Product with Gojko Adzic for impact mapping and measuring what matters

Let’s keep goals human, focused, and useful.

You can listen wherever you already get your podcasts. Just pick your favorite platform and hit “subscribe” so you won’t miss any new episodes:

• ​Apple Podcasts​
• ​Spotify​
• ​Castbox​
• ​Amazon Music​
• ​RSS Feed​

And if your favorite platform isn’t on the list, just let me know, I’ll be glad to add it.

I’d love for you to join me there! See you in your earbuds!