I will be honest with you, most of the time, I am talking to a company about their exec leadership team (because that is where we need to do personal and professional development work first if we want to develop our culture and help our people thrive). But sometimes that group has done quite a lot of work in the past either with us or elsewhere. Perhaps they have had a lot of their own coaching and they are quite functional and harmonious. Their focus now is the next generation who will ultimately succeed them. One organisation I spoke to recently shared a bit around their needs for th ..read more

  I feel like there are many ways to answer this question but let me draw on some useful people and tools to help us get started. Norman Wolfe wrote a book called The Living Organisation, in which he distinguishes between three types of energy fields in the workplace. (Bear with me, this will get practical) The three fields are: Activity, Relationship and Context (I will keep these capitalised for ease of reading). Activity refers to the energy of action, so what we do and how we do it. Relationship refers to the energy brought to the interactions–what we say and how we say it–for exampl ..read more

  As leaders, why are we not having the conversations we need to be having? I don’t believe that those of us in leadership roles are having the conversations we need to be having. Why? It’s not out of malice or stubbornness or prejudice. Rather, we are scared. And, it is costly. As we are currently physically separated, it can be easy for us to avoid difficult conversations. It can be easy for us to focus on the ‘nice’ stuff and think we are doing the best by everybody. As human beings, we all have fears. Fear of conflict and ‘wanting to be liked’ can be a really common experi ..read more

  What is equanimity? Equanimity is a powerful and particularly useful concept within Mindfulness as we grapple with our global pandemic. This word can commonly be misinterpreted as a form of chilling out or achieving a detached state. It’s actually a long way from this and is vital in chaotic times. To define equanimity, it’s best to look at the roots of the Pali word used by the Buddha. There are two words that it translates to and are worth defining. The first is upekka which means ‘to look over’ and refers to the power of observation and means we can see something without b ..read more

  There are many widely propagated myths about Mindfulness and I can often be found busting them when I blog or in my speaking and training work. Now, the biggest myth in my opinion is the idea that Mindfulness is about achieving a state of calm or zoning out from life. In fact, Mindfulness is quite the opposite. This is what I need written on a t-shirt: Mindfulness is about tuning in not zoning out. I’ll take you back to 2011, I woke up in the middle of the night experiencing (what I now know as) my first panic attack. To cut a long story short, I was catastrophising about all the thing ..read more

There are an awful lot of self-development and leadership development books out there, aren’t there? And according to all the perfect-CEOs-of-Twitter, it is easy to read 50 books a year… *snear* For the rest of us who don’t have robotic schedules, involving 4am coffees, 2 hour gym workouts and 1-2 hours of reading a day, how do we know where to focus? In the past, I have produced recommended reading lists for people who might enjoy some of the books that I mention regularly to leaders. These have supported me and I regularly hear great feedback on them from clients. But on this occasion, I a ..read more

    Book Launch: ‘Next Level Leadership: Nine lessons from conscious leaders’ Author Ruth Farenga was inspired by toxic boss experience Sir John Timpson CBE, Chairman of Timpson, calls it a ‘powerful read’   Most of us have suffered a toxic boss at least once in our careers. How can you ensure that you’re not that type of boss but, instead, a conscious and compassionate one? ‘Next Level Leadership: Nine lessons from conscious leaders’, by Ruth Farenga, is an opportunity for leaders to gain an insight into the top traits and behaviours of some of the UK’s most admired leaders. I ..read more

  This week, I spoke at a Mindful Leadership Breakfast on this very subject. It’s pretty challenging being a leader in business at the moment. You’re supposed to be visionary, yet down to earth, impressive but not egotistical, participatory and yet not mowed down by others. This is an artform if ever I saw one, a continuous balancing act. One of learning and growing step by step. The main challenge that leaders face is how to bring others along with them. You’re not a leader without a following. And whether you have a team or not, you want people to listen but more importantly, you want ..read more

  I could give you all the ‘worky’ reasons why I wrote this book but the reality is that I started the Conscious Leaders Podcast (and then wrote Next Level Leadership) because I worked under a terrible, unsupportive leader and I wanted as few people to go through that experience as possible. I know many of you have already. I’m not saying I was blameless in the situation but I was crushed by it. It went like this… I worked at an organisation where I admired another female leader from afar and I wanted to work for her. Eventually, my wish was granted and I was really excited about what we ..read more

  Psychological Safety underpins the other dynamics of an effective team (Google’s Aristotle Project 2012). This suggests that, as leaders, we need to get clear on what the term means so that we can explore how to create and co-create higher levels of Psychological Safety in our own teams. Psychological Safety is a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.’ ~ Amy Edmonson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School Examples of interpersonal risks are asking questions, admitting mistakes, suggesting ..read more