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What if the problem isn’t our managers… and isn’t even our senior leaders or CEOs?

Lately I’ve been wanting to write about the difference between leadership and management.

Not from theory.
From what I keep seeing in real organizations.

This isn’t just a conversation about leadership vs management—it’s about how organizational systems shape behaviour.

In coaching conversations with senior leaders & CEOs, the same frustration comes up again and again:

“The managers need to lead more.”
“They stay too operational.”
“They don’t think strategically.”
“They won’t take ownership.”
“They keep bringing problems instead of solving them.”

March 15th was my birthday.

And March 15th, I lost my best friend.

There is something surreal about holding those two truths at the same time. One day marked by celebration, another marked by loss. One reminding me that I am still here, another reminding me that she is not.

If you have read my writing before, you know I often talk about how we live in paradox. Life is rarely either/or. It is almost always both/and. We can feel joy and grief in the same moment. We can feel gratitude and heartbreak at the same time. We can be celebrating one life while mourning another.

This is that.

This birthday was the clearest example I have ever lived of the paradoxes I so often write about. The day I celebrate my life is now the day I will always remember hers.

Why Fun Is a Strategic Leadership Advantage for Energy, Resilience, and Performance

(Inspired by The Power of Fun by Catherine Price)

Over the past year, I’ve found myself quietly researching something that doesn’t often make it into board decks or executive coaching goals: FUN.

Not “corporate fun.”
Not forced team building.
Not distraction.

But real, energizing, connective fun — you know, the kind that restores leadership energy rather than depletes it.

Clarity is one of the most consistently misunderstood practices we have—particularly when conversations turn to kindness and love.

In leadership and in life, kindness and love are often conflated with being accommodating, agreeable, or pleasant. They are reduced to tone. To softness. To the avoidance of discomfort.

A widening, a deep breath, and a season of evolving with intention.

This is the story of how ‘Expand’ found me this year — and how it might spark something for you as you choose your own word for 2026.

Understanding the neuroscience of safety, threat, and leadership integrity

We like to believe we’re rational. Thoughtful. Deliberate.
But most of the time? We’re not.

Our brains are wired first and foremost for survival, not logic.
Zoe Chance’s framing in Influence Is Your Superpower — the Gator and the Judge — has become one of my favourite ways to help leaders make sense of what’s really happening inside their heads (and their teams’) when things heat up.

As we near the close of this year, it is that time where I reflect on the word that quietly guided
me through 2025: Flourish.
When I chose it last January, I imagined growth, ease, and expansion. I imagined blooming.
What I couldn’t have predicted was how precisely Flourish would ask me to stretch—not in
grand, sweeping gestures, but in the subtle, rooted, everyday choices that shaped the year.

When we think about leadership transitions—new roles, reorganizations, retirements, or even layoffs—our first instinct is often to focus on strategy and structure. Who’s leading what? What’s the plan? How do we communicate the change?

But underneath every org chart update sits something deeply human: grief.

We rarely name it that way, yet every transition involves a loss. The loss of a familiar rhythm. Of a trusted colleague. Of a way of working that, even if imperfect, was known.

We all worry—it’s part of being human. A little worry can even be helpful: it nudges us to prepare for the presentation, double-check the flight time, or plan for the future.

But for many of the leaders I work with, worry doesn’t stop there. It spirals. What starts as a protective instinct quickly becomes a mental loop—one that drains energy, clouds decision-making, and robs us of presence.

In preparation for The Energy Edge Program, coming January 2026, I found a rabbit hole on worry and thought I would share some of what I found and liked.