What dancing kizomba has taught me about leadership and collective intelligence.
There is a particular look I have come to recognise on people’s faces as they arrive at a session. It is the look of someone who is technically in the room but still mentally three meetings back, with two more already pressing in. They are here, and they are not here. And increasingly, this is the condition we are all working in.
The signs are everywhere. Sessions are getting shorter. Diaries are stacked so tightly that thinking time never makes the cut. Cancellations and drop-outs creep up, not because the work doesn’t matter, but because there is simply no slack left in the system. We have become, in a phrase that has stayed with me, time poor — and time poverty has a way of quietly shaping everything: how we lead, how we listen, and how much of ourselves we actually bring to the people in front of us.
The instinctive response to scarcity is to do more with less. Pack the agenda tighter. Speed up. Cover more ground in the time available. But after years of facilitating leaders and groups, I have come to believe this instinct is precisely wrong. The answer to time scarcity is not to cram. It is to create space.
Spaciousness is a choice, not a luxury
Here is the reframe I keep returning to: spaciousness is not the same as having lots of time. It is a quality of attention, and it can be created in surprisingly little time if you are deliberate about it.
I think it begins the very moment people arrive. If someone walks into your session and it feels like every other back-to-back meeting they have had that day, you have lost them before you have started. But if something signals this is different — a question about how they are actually arriving, a moment of music, a pause before the work begins — you give them permission to land. You are telling them, in effect, that this hour is going to be used differently.
It need not be elaborate. Five minutes of an arrival activity. An invitation to turn off the distractions. A single minute of stillness to think before anyone speaks. A one-minute pause can feel long and a little uncomfortable at first — but that discomfort is the sound of people slowing down enough to think. And thinking, real thinking about the problems that actually matter, is the thing we have squeezed out of our working lives almost entirely.
The leader’s job is to protect the thinking, not fill it
There is a temptation, when time is short, to lead more forcefully — to direct, to steer, to make sure every minute is “productive.” I would gently push against that too. The more scarce the time, the more important it is that the people in the room get to decide how it is spent. Your job as a leader or facilitator is not to be directive. It is to create the conditions in which others can think well, and then to get out of the way.
That requires a discipline of subtraction. Given our limited time, what really matters? is one of the most useful questions a leader can ask out loud. It gives everyone permission to let go of the merely urgent. More cases means less time for each; more topics means less depth. You cannot escape that trade-off, so name it, and choose consciously. Often the braver, more valuable choice is fewer things, held more spaciously.
And it requires presence — yours. We model what we want to see. If I want a group to be present, I have to be present for them, not half-listening while planning my next move. Presence is contagious, and so, unfortunately, is distraction. The leader sets the temperature of attention in the room.
A few practical moves
For all the philosophy, this is also wonderfully practical. Some of the things I find myself reaching for:
• A timed share. Two minutes each, with a visible timer. It sounds rigid, but a clear boundary is freeing — it tells people their turn is protected, and it tells them to share the essence rather than the whole backstory.
• Think, then speak. Give one minute to consider what you actually want to say before anyone says it. The quality of what follows is transformed.
• Let people choose. Post the questions or topics and let each person pick what to answer. Ownership of the agenda is itself a form of respect for their time.
• A halfway turnaround. Pause in the middle and ask the group: is this working — where do we want to go from here? Adaptability mid-session almost always creates more value than rigidly sticking to the plan.
What we are really practising
Much of this thinking has been shaped by my work with Action Learning — the discipline of bringing real problems to a small group and thinking them through together. At its best, Action Learning is a community that enables thought, dialogue and honest reflection, where people receive help without having to ask for it, and without feeling they are a burden for needing it. That, to me, is a model for leadership in a time-poor world: an environment where focus, listening and presence are not occasional virtues but the actual work.
It makes me ask sharper questions of my own practice. What is the minimum time a person needs to truly get inside a problem? What is essential for me to keep, and what can I let go of? When am I most alive, most useful to the people I am working with? And what do people leave with — not what did I cover, but what are they carrying out of the door?
The world of work is not going to hand us more time. That much is clear. But scarcity, faced honestly, can be a kind of gift. It forces the question of what really matters, and it invites us to lead not by filling every gap, but by protecting the space in which good thinking can happen. The leaders I most admire are not the ones who do the most. They are the ones who, somehow, create the sense that there is room to breathe.
In a time-scarce world, that may be the most valuable thing any of us can offer.
If this resonates, I’d love to hear how you create space in your own work. Or better still let’s have a chat about this important topic.
Many leaders spend so much time doing—solving problems, supporting others, keeping everything going—that they lose connection with why they started in the first place. This can quietly lead to exhaustion and a sense of unfulfilment. Drawing on psychosynthesis, I’ve been reflecting on the importance of balancing doing with being—the ability to be fully present and lead with awareness. For me, time in nature is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to reconnect with this. It doesn’t give answers, but it changes how we hold the questions—and that’s often where real leadership shift begins.
This week I took part in a facilitation learning day exploring Theatre of the Oppressed. One exercise unexpectedly led me to act out a situation I’ve experienced more than once: being invited into work partly to demonstrate diversity. It raised an uncomfortable but important leadership question — are we being invited for our contribution, or for what we represent? I’ve written a short reflection on the experience and what it taught me.
Are Coaching Competencies Truly Universal?
On the final day of a recent coach training programme, I was assessing participants against the competencies defined by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) and the International Coaching Federation (ICF) coaching competencies on the final day of a foundation skills program .
Most demonstrated clear evidence of the required standards. One participant did not.
A few years ago, I might have delivered a straightforward verdict: “I’m sorry, you did not meet the standard. I did not observe sufficient evidence of the competencies.”
This time, I paused and didn’t feel right about doing this.
Over the last decade I’ve trained and supervised coaches across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. I’ve seen a pattern emerging — one that challenges the assumption that competency frameworks are culturally neutral.
The Conversation That Changed the Assessment
The participant in question was an African man with deep professional credibility and strong relational presence. Yet in the assessed session, he struggled to demonstrate what the frameworks call “powerful questioning” and “maintaining a coaching mindset.”
Afterwards, he said:
“In my culture, it is hard to speak about personal matters with someone you don’t know well. And if someone presents a problem, they are expecting advice and action. I struggle to understand why I would only ask questions.”
This wasn’t a lack of intelligence.
It wasn’t a lack of effort.
It wasn’t even a lack of skill.
It was a clash of paradigms.
Is This About Skill — or Culture?
Coaching as defined by EMCC and ICF is rooted in Western philosophical traditions:
Individualism
Self-discovery
Psychological safety through verbal exploration
Non-directive practice
The belief that the client holds the answers
In many cultures, however:
Authority carries responsibility to guide.
Advice is a sign of care.
Personal disclosure is earned over time.
Problem-solving is expected from someone positioned as an expert.
In those contexts, the idea of “just asking questions” can feel incomplete — even irresponsible.
So when a coach does not demonstrate non-directiveness in the prescribed way, is that:
A skills deficit?
A mindset issue?
Or a cultural mismatch with the framework itself?
Can Western Competency Frameworks Be Universal?
Both EMCC and ICF describe their standards as global. And they have made important strides toward inclusivity. Yet the core model remains heavily influenced by European and North American psychological traditions.
Competencies such as:
Evoking awareness through questioning
Partnering as equals
Refraining from advice
Maintaining coach neutrality
These are not culturally neutral behaviours. They are culturally situated ideals.
When we assess coaches globally against one dominant model, we risk unintentionally:
Privileging Western communication norms
Framing culturally different practice as “less competent”
Conflating cultural difference with professional inadequacy
A Different Response
Rather than failing this coach, we explored:
What kind of coaching felt authentic to him?
How might he describe his style?
Where could he contract explicitly about offering guidance?
What contexts would value his more directive presence?
We talked about transparent contracting:
“In my coaching, I may offer suggestions or share experience. If that happens, you are free to accept, reject or explore it.”
We explored culturally congruent coaching — not as a lesser form, but as a different expression of developmental dialogue.
And importantly, we asked:
Who decides what “good coaching” looks like?
Are we assessing competence — or conformity?
The Tension We Must Address
There are real risks in abandoning standards. Coaching needs credibility. Professional bodies protect quality and clients. But there is also risk in assuming universality. If coaching is about expanding awareness, then surely our profession must expand its own awareness — especially about culture and power.
The question is not whether standards are needed. The question is whether they are sufficiently adaptive across cultures.
Managing the Challenge as Faculty
For those of us who train and assess coaches internationally, this tension shows up regularly. Some approaches I’ve found helpful:
Separate ethics from style.
Ethical clarity and client safety are non-negotiable. Stylistic expression may be culturally influenced.Assess impact, not just method.
Is the client thinking more clearly? Taking responsibility? Experiencing insight? There may be multiple routes to that outcome.Use explicit cultural dialogue.
Invite trainees to articulate how coaching aligns — or conflicts — with their cultural norms.Encourage transparent contracting.
Cultural differences can be surfaced rather than hidden.Challenge the bodies respectfully.
Professional associations evolve when practitioners feed back lived experience.
An Invitation to the Profession
I am certain I am not the first to wrestle with this. If coaching is to be genuinely global, we must ask:
Are we teaching a universal discipline — or exporting a Western model?
How might competency frameworks evolve to recognise culturally diverse expressions of coaching?
Can we distinguish between poor practice and different practice?
Perhaps the real developmental edge for our profession is not in refining questioning techniques — but in examining the cultural assumptions beneath them. I would love to hear how others navigate this tension when assessing coaches across cultures. Because if coaching is about inclusion, growth and awareness, our standards must reflect that too.