Leadership

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.

We talk a lot about self-awareness in leadership. And rightly so. It’s the cornerstone of emotional intelligence, the root of empathy, the spark of growth. Without it, leaders drift. With it, they navigate. But let’s be honest: being self-aware all the time is utterly exhausting.

We’ve all met a Batman. You know the type, the overworked, emotionally repressed, control-driven “leader” who believes no one can do the...

Many trade association boards find themselves in a similar pattern: engaged, but in the wrong place. The energy they invest in measurement is admirable, but if it comes at the expense of foresight, the organisation is left exposed.

The lesson of the Avengers is that talent is not enough. You can assemble the brightest minds, the biggest reputations, and the most impressive CVs but without trust, accountability, and a shared culture, you don’t have a team. You have a fragile coalition waiting for the next crisis.

Opening a business bank account should be straightforward, yet for many membership bodies, trade associations, charities, clubs, and professional societies it has become anything but. Over the past two years, an increasing number of organisations have reported long delays, outright refusals, or sudden account closures. For bodies whose very survival depends on secure banking facilities, this is more than an inconvenience. It threatens credibility, financial stability, and mem

Princess Leia remains more than a sci-fi heroine. She is a case study in resilience, compassion, decisiveness, and the realities of leading in a complex and often hostile environment.

Delegation is not abdication. It's a discipline of trust, supported by oversight. When done well, it creates space: space for leaders to lead, space for staff to act, and space for the organisation to keep moving no matter who is away. When authority is restricted to one individual however, everyday transactions become dependent on their availability. That might look like control, but in reality it’s a bottleneck. Business continuity falters. What should be routine becomes co