Leadership

In recent months I’ve seen several cases where individual members have pursued their association with such ferocity you’d think they were trying to bring it down altogether. At best, it’s puzzling. At worst, it’s toxic. Either way, it’s worth understanding why this pattern is becoming more common, and what it means for the leaders charged with holding these organisations steady.

Lord Vader is not a role model in any conventional sense. Yet he does show how structure, clarity, self-discipline, and strategic focus can help someone step into leadership with more stability than they ever enjoyed before.

I’ve been conducting a process review recently. As always, it’s fascinating how every conversation follows the same pattern: Ask someone how the organisation operates, and they’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong - with everyone else’s area. Marketing takes too long to sign off. Finance slows everything down. IT doesn’t understand the business. HR gets in the way. Leadership lacks focus. But when we get to their function, their processes, their team, and their role, the tone shi

In the Marvel universe, few characters are as complex or as quietly commanding as Natasha Romanoff, better known as Black Widow. A former assassin trained in the Soviet Red Room, she is introduced to us as a weapon: efficient, calculating, emotionally detached. Yet by the end of her story arc, she is the moral centre of the Avengers, the glue that holds the team together when everyone else falls apart. In our latest  The Leadership Multiverse Podcast ,  Ellen Daniels  and I e

We used to dream of connection; now we pay for disconnection. Progress has flipped on itself. But maybe that’s a good sign. It suggests people are waking up to the cost of constant availability. They’re starting to value attention as much as ambition.

Leadership isn’t a function of hierarchy. It’s the craft of judgment under pressure, the discipline to choose what matters, and the courage to act when information is incomplete. Those abilities don’t automatically appear because someone once managed a budget line.

Despite (or because of) their flaws, the Ghostbusters complement rather than compete. Venkman sells the mission. Ray sustains it. Egon powers it. Winston redeems it. Together they form a balanced, if chaotic, unit. They are a model for how multidisciplinary teams succeed when they value difference over dominance.

Last year, I heard a trade association CEO joke that he used to have a “real job, back when he worked in industry. The line fell flat. Not because the audience lacked humour, but because it betrayed a familiar mindset: that association leadership is somehow less real than corporate life. It’s not.

Professional advice isn’t a luxury. It’s the infrastructure of competence. Whether you’re improving strategy, upgrading systems, refining governance, or rethinking engagement, the quality of your advice determines the quality of your organisation. Cutting corners here is the definition of false economy.

Most superhero teams are built on noble ideals. They’ve got pristine headquarters, glossy PR, and a mission to save the world. But The Boys are something else entirely: a scruffy guerrilla unit of misfits, bound together not by virtue, but by trauma and vengeance. They shouldn’t work. And yet, they do.

Our brains are designed to prioritise threats over rewards. Evolution decided long ago that it was more useful to remember the snake that bit you than the fruit that tasted nice. Psychologists call this negativity bias, i.e., the tendency to notice, remember, and be influenced more by unpleasant experiences than positive ones. For leaders, this is both inconvenient and instructive.

Who could argue with fairness? Who wants to be accused of gatekeeping in a world obsessed with openness, inclusion, and accessibility? But the reality is that for membership organisations, this way of thinking can be fatal. When everyone has access, the very purpose of membership disappears.

Facilitation is not about avoiding discomfort. It is about staying steady in the discomfort so that others can do their work. Sometimes that means holding silence. Sometimes it means naming patterns. And sometimes, it means carrying on with composure even when your insides are burning.

This summer, when MindsEye, the studio’s first release, finally arrived, it crashed spectacularly. Players called it broken, reviewers called it unplayable, and within weeks hundreds of staff were gone. What followed wasn’t just a failed launch but a public unravelling of leadership itself.

Over recent months, the UK trade association sector saw a slew of new CEO announcements and each had something in common: a middle-aged white man taking the helm. I am categorically not questioning the abilities of the appointees because each individual brings invaluable experience and dedication to their new organisations; but when the outcome is always the same, it tells us something important about trade associations, i.e., their leadership pathways are too narrow and too

Membership organisations exist to serve, represent, and empower their members. Yet in too many boardrooms and inboxes, the people running those organisations find themselves on the receiving end of cynicism, contempt, or outright hostility. It's time to bust some myths.

In Game of Thrones, Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, is the embodiment of integrity. He’s transparent, dutiful, loyal to his people and his cause. He lives by the code that “he who passes the sentence should swing the sword.” He’s the leader we all say we want to be - fair, consistent, courageous. And he gets his head chopped off.

Membership organisations thrive on trust, between members, volunteers, and executives. That trust is built on visible, credible governance. Giving the CEO a board seat may feel like a gesture of partnership, but in practice it blurs accountability and weakens independence.

Eight national rugby unions have threatened to ban players who join the proposed R360 League from representing their countries. In short: play our game, or don’t play at all. Their decision says a lot about power, fear, and protectionism, and not just in sport. It’s a mirror many membership organisations would do well to look into. Because whether you’re a rugby union or a membership body the instinct to control rather than evolve is a sure sign that your model is wobbling.

In our latest Leadership Multiverse podcast, we explored Kirk’s leadership through a contemporary lens of servant leadership, risk appetite, moral integrity, and the fine art of strategic rule-bending. What emerged is a portrait of a complex leader: fallible, impulsive, but deeply principled. And, for modern executives, surprisingly relevant.