What kind of legacy do our choices create?
For some time now, we’ve been thinking about legacy. It’s come into sharper focus this month as Letesia turns 50, a milestone that naturally brings up questions about one’s journey, impact, and what’s still to come. It has been, so far, a life well-lived with many experiences and memories. But looking at legacy through the lens of leadership feels especially urgent. We're reminded of the concept of cathedral thinking as we ponder this important question: what kind of leadership do these times demand?
What feels increasingly clear is that the frameworks and rule books guiding how leaders and organisations behave are out of step with the world we’re living in. We used to know what accountability meant, what ethics looked like, what integrity felt like in the workplace. Those values might not always have been fully realised, but we could point to guiding light examples.
Integrity and accountability challenges are in danger of becoming the new normal. In just the past month we’ve seen reports of workplace identity theft surface as a new HR challenge, Microsoft, who were once known for its strong stance on data privacy (they were even an ex-client of Letesia's in another career, but that’s a story for another time), now accused of gathering genocide-enabling data, and employees fired for racism and misogyny whose shows are still kept on air by the BBC.
Out of the many thousands of business leaders in this country, only 1000 have signed Business Leaders for Peace open letter. We've had conversations with clients working out how to approach partners or suppliers investing in Israeli businesses and projects. The chilling quiet response to the rise of racism and fascism in the UK is really alarming, with the Raise the Colours campaign gaining momentum and neither the media nor politicians being awake to the permissions they are given to embolden racism and discrimination against difference.
So what does that tell us about where we are?
For us, the legacy that matters is finding ways to make the world better by exercising the power we have in the spheres of influence we hold. It’s hard to do this when we feel depleted and under-resourced. But it is necessary and important that we do not accept these as new norms and reconnect to our values and principles that made us leaders who care.
It’s a moment to lean into learning with and from others who are trying to create and co-create new rules that centre values when no one has the perfect answers. It’s about stepping into both collective and self-leadership because this isn’t only about who holds the top job, it’s about all of us seeing the role we can play in shaping change from where we are. We're here for it.
What we’re noticing
Embedding Justice into the Everyday
At the moment we’re working with a couple of different clients, both of whom want to embed the Justice part of JEDI more centrally into their organisations. We love this work because when someone is keen to explore the J as more than an acronym it means we are looking more fundamentally at who they want to become as an anti-supremacy organisation.
This means they are ready to investigate what this means not just what they say, but what they stand and advocate for and how that translates into what they offer and how they offer it, as an organisation. It’s the attention and care applied to understanding how processes and ways of working ensure power sharing, non extraction, care and accountability. It’s about ensuring a cultural shift that helps set teams up ready to work with healthy conflict, make reflection a norm and be curious to challenge where supremacy culture is creating harm.
Some powerful questions and observations have been surfacing with this work recently, which we’re working together to explore and respond to.
Expecting leaders to take all the responsibility isn’t the way of justice focused organisations, so how are we supporting teams to bring self leadership?
JEDI is a new way of being in an organisation which needs resourcing and accountability, so how do we ensure our board is on the journey when they are less connected to the day-to-day of things?
How can we shift from focusing on identity-based issues to looking more at systems of oppression and aligning our work to changing those?
How do we resolve Global North and South tensions when so often the power sits within such strong euro-centric thinking and ways of working?
what we’re practising
Integrity Under Pressure - our next Community Conversation
The absence of visible, values-led leadership in these times have led us to collaborate with Jo Atkins-Potts on a leadership programme for those wanting to show up with more integrity in moments of pressure and challenge. More on this exciting initiative soon!
Our September Community conversation will dive deeper into this question of integrity under pressure. We're opening up space to name the tensions many of us are navigating: caution vs. courage, personal clarity vs. organisational risk aversion, the desire to be visible vs. the pull to stay silent. Together, we’ll explore why integrity matters now more than ever - not just as an activist stance, but as a principled, everyday way of operating that builds relevance, resilience, and responsibility.
We hope you'll join us!
Time & Date: Tuesday 16th September 12pm - 1:15pm BST
What's resourcing us
James Baldwin – Integrity as Choice
James Baldwin’s words in the documentary Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970) feel piercingly alive for this moment:
“Love has never been a popular movement and no one’s ever wanted really to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of very few people.”
Baldwin reminds us that integrity isn’t about being in the "bigger group", but about choosing - again and again - to act from a place of love and accountability, even when it’s hard. He leaves us with a powerful invitation:
“Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon and look around you... Everyone you’re looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster. And you have to decide in yourself not to be.”
It’s a call to integrity and a reminder that legacy is forged in the choices we make each day.
Business Leaders for Peace – Legacy Through Action
We are feeling inspired by the recent Action Hour for Gaza hosted by Business Leaders for Peace - a much needed reminder that we don’t have to act alone.
It’s energising to feel the collective momentum building among businesses that refuse to stay silent. And their shared Action List for Gaza is an incredible resource - offering practical ways to channel outrage into action.
Everyday Joy – Sustaining Legacy
And sometimes, resourcing ourselves means stepping away for a moment. Letesia has been delighting in wholesome K-Dramas, and Eloise recently found a little pocket of utopia at Green Man festival in Wales (pictured above).
These moments remind us that tending to joy isn’t a distraction from the work - it sustains us so we can keep choosing integrity and building the legacies that matter.
Building Cultures with Care
As we think about the legacy our choices create, building cultures of belonging needs to look different in 2025 and beyond. That’s why we’ve launched More Than Words - a self-paced course to help people and teams practice the self awareness, compassion, courage and empathy that's needed.
It’s for all of us: supporting those who experience racism to process and sustain hope, and providing tools for colleagues who want to change behaviours. How we approach this moment of growing division as leaders and change-makers is vital - this is here to help.
