Leadership lessons from the hive. We’ve been thinking a lot about bees lately. Not in a garden-glancing way, but thanks to Thomas Seeley’s research on how honeybee colonies make decisions. Their process? Surprisingly relevant for corporate hives too. When a bee colony needs a new home, after a storm or when space runs out, they …
A senior leader I work with said something that rings true for most leaders: “Everyone expects clarity from me. But I’m figuring things out just like everyone else.” That sentence captures a quiet truth of leadership today. The world keeps shifting, technology, geopolitics, even what people want from work, and what work expects from its …
Picture a symphony. The strings rise, the percussion steadies the rhythm, the conductor lifts their baton. Then, quietly, a new instrument enters, one the orchestra hasn’t played with before. At first, the musicians glance sideways, unsure if this newcomer will drown them out. But as the performance unfolds, they discover it doesn’t erase their sound. …
When I first read Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, one phrase jumped off the page: fear of conflict. It triggered a memory from my early career, sitting in a leadership meeting where a young manager disagreed openly with the CEO. The room went still. You could almost hear people silently begging, please …
A few weeks ago, a Gen Z cousin and I were talking about career plans over coffee. When I asked if they were eyeing a leadership role, their response was disarmingly candid: “I don’t want to be the person stuck between unhappy employees and demanding bosses. I’d rather do meaningful work, learn, and live a …
Lessons in Leadership (From the ones who taught us how to cross the street) I was recently doom-scrolling through Instagram when I came across a Simon Sinek video I’d seen before but hadn’t really heard until then. In it, he draws a parallel between parenting and leadership not in the way of coddling or caretaking, …
This is back in the day when we only had landlines. My father was a General Manager of this large pharmaceutical company. He used to keep so busy that I rarely saw him much on weekdays. However, almost every day after school, I’d dial the landline number of his office (I didn’t know the extension). …
The financial year reset is upon us, and with it comes the sacred ritual of budget planning. Across boardrooms, spreadsheets glow with freshly projected figures, and leaders make the annual pilgrimage to debate costs, investments, and—somewhere in the mix—employee wellbeing. Traditionally, this conversation culminates in a well-intentioned yet predictable line item: the grand annual offsite. …
“…Because I’m happy Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof Because I’m happy Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth..” I’ve been humming Happy by Pharrell Williams for the last couple of days. You know how a song gets stuck in your head, and suddenly, everything seems to …
A few years ago, I had a moment of realization that changed the way I think about leadership. I was working on a particularly thorny challenge one of those problems that doesn’t have a clear solution, just layers upon layers of shifting variables. At some point, I found myself longing for a simpler time, a …
