What if your power as a leader isn’t in fixing, but in naming what’s real?
What does leading with integrity look like when everything is in tension?
We’ve been thinking a lot about integrity and how we show up and lead from that place when so many things make it hard to show up consistently, and sometimes what integrity is in practice isn’t always that clear. For people passionate about what they do and how they show up, these times are hard.
The everyday existence of tensions is the new normal for leaders - contradictory pulls in different directions with a myriad of multiple truths creating new complexity around decision-making. Tensions get a bad wrap. We tend to avoid, deflect, gloss over them because if we face them what unravels will be so much worse.
But the reality is many of us are sat with tensions that are hard to name, let alone solve.
How do I align my personal values with organisational values in these times? How do I lead with energy when I’m burning out and disconnected from myself? How do I build a culture of care when what I really need to see is a culture of performance? How do I balance raising funds and support with activism? How do I create more accountability without being controlling or overbearing? How do I meet the needs of the team without compromising leader/manager wellbeing?
Solving is one of the fundamental functions of leadership but how can we approach our work in ways that help us make different steps towards progress for everyone, including the leadership.
Pause to Name - making space to actually notice and name the root of the tension rather than getting whipped up in the washing machine of symptoms is a first step. What’s the issue underneath the issue here? This is why slow moments for reflection are so unbelievably critical to leadership effectiveness today.
Naming is Claiming - honestly, there is so much power and emotional release in simply naming the tension, making space to discuss it and not having to have the answers. It can be an opportunity to share a new way of seeing challenges and frustrations, in building connections and empathy and a shared understanding of our reality. Simply naming it creates a whole new set of possibilities to find solutions.
What we’re noticing
Building remote cultures
One tension that is coming up often for us in our work is around how to build strong cultures when working remotely. Letesia was in a session recently talking about the organisational value of belonging for one of our clients. One person shared that they’d never felt a stronger sense of belonging to an organisation’s mission and at the same time felt the most lonely they’d felt in a workplace. It was a hard-hitting moment that took colleagues straight out of their day-to-day transaction and into the zone of relational care.
It led to a beautiful and spontaneous appreciative feedback and a reinforcement of what was valued about this person. They named a tension, found a way through it, using their values as an (unintentional) guide. And all without a leader in sight!
What we're practising
Working with Polarities
This month, we’re returning to a practice we explored with our Collective last year: working with polarities. In our session we explored the contradictions or opposing forces that often arise for us in our values-oriented work - the places where our needs, roles, and realities can pull in different directions.
As we've mentioned above, in leadership, systems-change work and everyday life, we often find ourselves navigating tensions that don’t have simple solutions. Some of these can be resolved - they emerge from misalignment or confusion that can be addressed.
But other times, what we’re facing is not a problem to fix - it’s a polarity to work with: two interdependent truths, each holding value, that need to be managed over time rather than solved.
Think:
control ↔ autonomy
structure ↔ flexibility
stability ↔ innovation
Each side offers something of value, and each carries risks when overemphasised. Often, burnout, conflict, or disconnection show up when one side dominates and the other is ignored. Working with polarities is a practice of noticing the dynamics at play, naming what’s being prioritised (and what’s being left out), and finding ways to move more consciously between the two.
It’s also about moving beyond binaries - loosening the grip of either/or thinking so we can hold complexity with more spaciousness, compassion and clarity.
Try it yourself
We’ve created a worksheet to help you explore the polarities that might be present for you right now, whether you’re leading a team, holding space for others, or sitting with a personal tension of your own. We'd love to hear what surfaces for you, or where you notice any of these polarities showing up in your own work.
What's resourcing us
Redefining Wellness
In this month’s community conversation, we explored the many tensions we’re holding as leaders, practitioners, and humans - and how these tensions can impact our wellbeing.
Together with the brilliant Maude Burger Smith, we talked about the dissonance between our personal values and organisational realities. The loneliness of leading with integrity in systems that don’t always reward it. The emotional labour involved in resisting the status quo. The hope and heartbreak of being awake to the world's troubles.
What emerged was a reminder: wellbeing isn’t a fixed state, it’s a relational practice - one that requires us to be honest about the things that are negatively impacting our wellbeing, courageous in naming what we need from our community, and the awareness that these things might shift from week to week.
What made this conversation feel so resourcing was the time and space to speak some of those tensions out loud - to hear our own stories reflected in others, and to feel less alone in what we’re carrying. There was something cathartic about not necessarily offering firm answers to all the big questions and tensions that arose - but just sitting with them.
We left with a feeling of spaciousness, and a deeper commitment to collective care.
A place to exhale
This past week, Letesia has been spending time at Palestine House - a beautiful community hub centring Palestinian culture and solidarity. It’s been easing some of the tensions she’s been carrying - a reminder that spending time in inspiring spaces can be deeply restorative.
A reflection for you to take away:
Leaders are often the last to consider their own wellbeing - too busy holding space for everyone else. Your wellbeing matters. Not just for you - but for everyone around you. Let this be a gentle invitation to notice what's resourcing you right now.
A FINAL PIECE OF INSPO
To end, we wanted to share the words that we closed our community conversation with - a reading from We Will Not Cancel Us by adrienne maree brown. It’s a reminder that none of us are doing this alone, and that even within moments of tension and messiness, there is still connection and possibility:
"We all have work to do. Our work is in the light. We have no perfect moral ground to stand on, shaped as we are by this toxic, complex time. We may not have time or emotional capacity to walk each path together. We are all flailing in the unknown at the moment, terrified, stretched beyond ourselves, ashamed, realising the future is in our hands. We must all do our work, be accountable and go heal simultaneously, continuously. It’s never too late... Each of us is precious. We, together, must break every cycle that makes us forget this."
P.S. Some of you may have noticed that the format of our newsletter has changed slightly. We recently gathered some feedback from our Community members - big thanks to those of you who responded to our questionnaire. We heard that we’re great on inspiration, challenge, and provocation, but we’re lacking in action, solutions, and practical tips on what to do, so we're trying out some new "content buckets" in light of this. Let us know how this lands with you!
