Tribe365®

The most critical element identified was the idea that leadership is fundamentally a missing skill in everyone. This skill is not about providing answers but about mastering one’s own internal state and subsequent actions. Self-leadership is the ability to navigate one’s emotions, to remain present, and to take “the next best course of action” in any given moment. This ability stems from a comfort with the uncertain and the unknown, areas in which individuals commonly express “immense discomfort”.

The importance of this internal management was starkly framed: all societal challenges—ranging from personal boundary issues to large-scale organisational failures—were proposed to be consequences of a root cause that is a lacking of self-leadership. This lack is manifested either as individuals not managing their own emotions effectively, or not understanding how to support this essential skill in others. Therefore, leadership is redefined as the act of navigating a situation to deliver the best possible outcomes, always starting with the self.

Beyond the internal focus, leadership was defined by its effect on others and the environment.

• Enabling Individual Potential: A primary function of a leader is to make people better and more equipped for what they need to do. This role involves acting as a role model, mentoring, and coaching, with an underlying understanding that one is leading “humans with brains,” rather than managing objects or processes. The best leaders are those who succeed in bringing out the best in everyone.
• Understanding Systems: While leadership is not management, especially in complex institutional settings, there is an element of understanding pre-existing systems and supporting them to achieve positive outcomes. However, the core of leadership remains the support and navigation of the people withinthose systems.

The workshop participants implicitly rejected the notion that leadership is about being the most prominent person in the room or the one who provides all the answers. Instead, it is framed as a commitment to shaping direction and ensuring everyone involved moves towards a common, positive goal.

One participant, drawing on experience within institutional health settings, identified a major issue where leadership is habitually conflated with management. In this context, leadership is incorrectly equated with the administrative tasks of a line manager, such as handling one-to-one performance meetings, approving holidays, and performing other devolved HR functions. This conflation reduces the perceived value of leadership to mere administrative oversight, diverting focus from its true purpose: to make people more capable and to foster a positive environment. The view was strongly put forward that this “dictator side thing of leadership” might work temporarily but is not a sustainable, long-term approach for leading humans.

A “huge conundrum we have within society” was identified in the context of recruitment and role assignment. Organisations frequently hire for specific technical experience—such as recruiting a project manager to oversee a project with a deadline. Yet, there is an unspoken expectation that leadership will automatically accompany this functional role. The senior individuals or decision-makers expect that by giving someone responsibility, they are also endowing them with the leadership capabilities required to deliver complex work. This gap between hiring for experience and expecting leadership creates pervasive issues in environments where clarity, cohesion, and direction are lacking.

The participants engaged in a direct debate over whether it is desirable or even possible to separate management and leadership into distinct functions.

• Argument for Distinction (Implicitly): The distinction of the separation of leadership and management was proposed by highlighting how conflation happens in large institutional settings, stressing that leadership involves acting as a role model and looking after “humans with brains”. This view implies that while management handles the system, leadership handles the people and their potential.
• Argument Against Separation (Explicitly): Separation was questioned with the proposal that it is “not okay to separate the two” between leadership and management. The rationale was that anyone who is responsible for people or for overseeing a process—whether a parent, a line manager, or a process owner—is inherently expected to lead. It was proposed this responsibility automatically carries the mandate for leadership.

The conversation acknowledged that while there is an element of understanding and supporting complex systems (a managerial function), the responsibility remains for individuals to

understand what leadership truly means and ensure people become the best versions of themselves within those systems.

Participants agreed that good leadership requires strong decision-making based on context. Crucially, this requires the courage to make a decision without always relying on a committee. The conversation noted that a common challenge in organisational settings is seeing people who are “almost afraid to make decisions unless it’s by committee”. This fear highlights a failure in self-leadership, where discomfort with uncertainty prevents necessary, timely action.

While the decision-making process must involve courage, the participants clarified that this does not negate the importance of collaboration. Leadership by committee, where ideas are fostered and explored to collectively reach a next step, was deemed “entirely healthy”.

However, the challenge is that what is often lacking in these collaborative scenarios is the ability to summarise and shape what the next steps are efficiently. This task falls to the leader, who must provide commitment to shaping the direction with all involved and prevent an “over-reliance on a stronger voice rising up” to dominate the process. A key function of the leader in a group setting is to maintain efficiency and clarity of direction.

The recruitment of a leader, particularly into a new project or troubled environment, is often an attempt to resolve a specific set of deficits that include a lacking of decision-making, cohesion, and clarity of direction. These missing elements are symptoms of the underlying root cause: poor self-leadership across the team. When individuals fail to lead themselves, the entire environment lacks the confidence and presence required to navigate uncertainty and commit to the necessary course of action. The solution, therefore, is not always to hire an external person for the answers, but to cultivate the capacity for self-leadership and decision-making within the existing individuals.

The speakers observed that the concept of leadership is often attached to people who are perceived to provide all the answers. This is the image of the “most prominent person in the room” who simply dictates direction by saying, “this is the way we’re going”. The discussion concluded that placing this burden on one individual, or expecting a single person to emerge as the “magnificent individual” to solve all problems, is neither the healthy nor the safe option. Such an approach is susceptible to the influence of a “great salesman” who might convince the group to take a direction that others could have predicted would fail if they had truly thought things through.

The participants proposed that the ideal form of leadership is one where all individuals need to be leaders. This is not an empty or theoretical concept but a call for every person to focus on the essential task of leading themselves and supporting others. This collective leadership is the true solution to organisational deficits, replacing the recruitment of a “leader of sorts” with a distributed capacity for clarity and action. The real solution is for everyone to lead themselves and simultaneously support others in doing the same

To achieve this collective capacity, one participant introduced Gordon MacKay’s three-component model for moving forward, emphasising internal drive as the source of external influence. This model highlights:

1. Agency (Understanding of Self): This component focuses on the individual’s sincere understanding of their own being and what drives them.
2. Intent (Understanding Alignment): This relates to having a clear alignment with a goal or purpose.
3. Motivation (Ability to Engage): This is the ability to engage fully with the necessary activity.

The discussion noted that this model is similar to the HPTM framework’s concepts of autonomy, alignment, and engagement. Once individuals sincerely understand their agency, the likelihood of them engaging in things with “full intent and motivation” increases, turning them into an “almost glowing light” that inspires others. The key takeaway is that leadership is an internal state that, when mastered by many, results in a powerful collective capability.

The primary challenge identified, which acts as the root cause for all subsequent issues, is the lack of self-leadership throughout society. This lack is not merely about personal failure but involves individuals either struggling to manage their own emotional state or failing to understand how to support self-leadership in others. The belief is that if individuals were better at navigating their own emotions and taking the next best course of action, the vast majority of societal and organisational problems would cease to exist, as they are seen as mere consequences of this deficit.

A related challenge is the widespread discomfort with the unknown, the uncertain, and the complex. This discomfort is what causes people to habitually “look for the answer” in an external figure (the perceived “leader”) rather than engaging with the complexity themselves. The leadership challenge is therefore to help individuals overcome this innate discomfort and develop the capacity to navigate uncertainty from a position of presence and emotional awareness.

The specific example of complex environments, such as institutional health settings, was used to illustrate this. Despite integrated systems that have evolved to support positive physical health outcomes, the current challenge lies in the lack of understanding among the people within those systems regarding how to manage fears, navigate complexities, and execute effective decision-making.

A significant part of the leadership challenge is the essential need for support. Even a person committed to self-leadership will require assistance, often asking, “how do I do this” or “what do you think about this”.

This challenge extends to fostering a supportive environment, which involves:

• Curiosity: A leader or supporting individual must maintain curiosity, rather than assuming they know everything because of years of experience. This curiosity is vital for exploring things with experts and finding out what others do well.
• Creating a Positive Environment: A crucial component, which is often neglected, is the need for enjoyment and pleasure in the work. This means actively creating a nice environment, recognising milestones, and celebrating each other’s success.

This external challenge requires stepping beyond the “inner core” of personal performance to engineer an environment that acknowledges and thanks all contributors, including those who are not formal project team members but who have provided support above and beyond their duty.

It was established that passion is a compelling component of leadership because a leader who is truly passionate about a subject can easily inspire others. When someone speaks about a thing in “glowing terms” because they love it so much, that passion naturally shines with everyone else.

This influence operates because the passion of one individual helps others find shared importance in the subject. Even if an observer is not initially interested in the core topic, they become interested in why that person finds the thing so appealing, and how it gives them a sense of achievement and motivation to get out of bed. This emotional resonance is an effective, organic form of leadership influence.

The participants noted that this genuine passion, linked directly to the internal model of agency and intent, cannot be manufactured. It stems from a deep self-understanding. The emotion that results from witnessing this intense passion and drive in others was described as the “most enjoyed emotion,” highlighting its positive and contagious influence. Therefore, identifying and celebrating these “pockets of passion and love” is seen as critical for collective leadership.

One participant described the personal challenge of becoming the default “problem solver” in a household, a role that, while initially helpful, risks making things worse by hindering the self-sufficiency of others. By constantly solving non-urgent problems (such as finding a forgotten item of clothing), the individual risks making everyone else’s journey “too easy”. This behavior directly contradicts the core leadership definition of striving to make people better, as it removes the opportunity for others to prioritize, troubleshoot, and learn from necessity. The discussion highlighted the need for leaders, including parents, to deflect issues when possible to encourage learning and growth.

A significant theme emerged around the failure of others to respect clearly stated priorities and schedules, a failure attributed to a lack of self-leadership and prioritisation.

• Working from Home Perception: The participants noted that working from home (WFH) is often incorrectly perceived by others as being more flexible, acting as a “green card” for interruptions. Despite treating WFH with the same rigid focus as being in an office to “actually deliver stuff,” the perception of flexibility leads family members to prioritise their own immediate needs over the stated work schedule. The discussion concluded that this dynamic results from people becoming comfortable prioritising their own needs over the expressed priorities of others.
• Lack of Troubleshooting: A specific example involving an urgent school issue demonstrated how this lack of self-leadership manifests in a failure to troubleshoot a situation before defaulting to the “obvious person who just will pick it up”. This lack of problem-solving by others causes frustration because scheduled commitments are not prioritised, undermining the importance of the leader’s focused time.

The conversation touched upon external societal and institutional influences, contrasting them sharply with the supportive ideals of the HPTM® model. A discussion on potential new staff sickness laws illustrated how systems can impose requirements that reflect a lack of respect for individuals. The idea of requiring staff to immediately contact a manager at the first sign of illness and obtain immediate proof (like a fit note) was viewed as imposing unnecessary hassle and stress on individuals who are already severely ill and are barely capable of sending a text. This contrasts with the self-leadership focus, which aims to support people and recognize their individual vulnerability.

The workshop concluded by discussing the project’s strategy for building a supportive environment that reinforces positive behavior, moving beyond the “inner core” of individual work. The next layer of development involves adding enhancements to the environment.

• The Reward System Challenge: One challenge discussed was the difficulty of finding resources and mechanisms to acknowledge and thank supporters who are not formal project team members but who have gone above and beyond to help. It was noted that traditional project management often lacks resources for such gestures.
• Engineering Positive Environment: The goal for the future is to develop a reward system that contributes to positive “brain chemicals” by celebrating and recognising these external contributors. While the internal progress on the “inner core” of individual performance is deemed the most important thing currently, the speakers recognise the “fascinating journey” ahead in building systems that positively reinforce support and community engagement. This commitment to celebration is viewed as an essential part of the “mechanics of engineering an environment”.