Posts by SusanBreedt
Immature Leadership: How to Escape the Vortex of Short-Term Thinking
Leadership can easily become an endless cycle of urgent issues demanding your attention. But what happens when that becomes your default mode? Immature leadership keeps you stuck in this reactive pattern, where the focus is always on solving today’s problems instead of building a sustainable, long-term strategy that benefits both you and your organisation years…
Read MoreHow to Lead As One: The Inner Workings of an Effective and Thriving Executive Team
Even the most capable executive teams struggle, and the cause is less about lack of skill, but rather because unspoken tensions, competing priorities, and deeply ingrained habits get in the way. Yet, real alignment isn’t about sitting in meetings and enjoying a pleasant conversation. It’s about thinking, deciding, and leading as one. Drawing on…
Read MoreWill tech do a better job at being human than we can?
By Dr Julia Kukard with Rikus Combrink and Lucille Greeff We humans are not doing very well at looking after our planet, each other, or even ourselves. “It’s astonishing that we are still around”, says Tech Philosopher and Aephoria AI guru Rikus Combrink. “I wonder whether tech would do a better job at…
Read MoreTransforming What’s Broken: A Story of Culture Change
When an organisation faces challenges and pain, leadership has a choice: hope things will fix themselves or step into the discomfort and rebuild – slowly, intentionally, and courageously. In this case, they chose to try. No one expected overnight change. Slowly, over about six months, our Aephoria team, led by Kate Clayton and Pete…
Read MoreHow Inner Development Will Help Us Solve the World’s Biggest Problems
In 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were created as a blueprint for a better world – a bold call to end poverty, tackle inequality, and protect the planet. They comprise 17 interconnected goals and come with a 2030 deadline. However, as each of us knows deep down, these ambitious external targets,…
Read MoreThe Art and Joy of Stuckness for Coaches and their Clients
Stuckness is a shared human experience that touches individuals, organisations, and even entire societies and countries. It’s the uncomfortable state where we find ourselves disconnected, out of step with our current context, and unable to move forward. Yet, while it can be profoundly frustrating, stuckness holds the potential for deep transformation. “When we…
Read MoreBreaking Relational Cycles: Insightful Uses of Object Relations in Coaching
Object relations theory, paired with the Enneagram, can make all the difference when coaching clients out of repeating old emotional patterns. By helping clients see how past relationships shape their present interactions, you can guide them to finally break free of these cycles. It’s about giving them the tools to rediscover themselves. “The Enneagram…
Read MoreThe Person and Presence of the Leader by Dr Simon Whitesman
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for In haunting, poetic, and prophetic words, an unnamed Hopi Elder urges us to “not look outside ourselves for the leader”. They invite us into an essential encounter with ourselves and how we choose to positively impact the world we inhabit, with a soul-reverberating truth: “We are the…
Read MoreWhy Leadership Maturation is a Smarter Investment Than Buying a Management Development Programme
The world needs leaders who can lead us into the future. This leadership deficit is well documented, but anecdotal evidence from emerging markets suggests that the leadership vacuum is even larger. Typically, it takes over 15 years to build the capacity of a senior manager in Europe. In Africa, we don’t have that luxury; we…
Read MoreLeaky Containers: How to Anticipate and Work With Them in Facilitation
Have you ever facilitated a meeting, whether in person or on Zoom and found yourself wondering if anyone was truly paying attention? In virtual settings, it might be a sea of dark, empty screens. In person, it could be people sneaking glances at their phones or stepping out for “a quick call.” In both cases,…
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