Global Leadership Foundation

Global Leadership Foundation Global Leadership Foundation was established to provide leadership pathways and build leadership capa

Global Leadership Foundation bases the way in which it works with and engages others on 3 Guiding Principles. Each of these principles impacts on and influences the other. As a person gains insight in one of these areas, the significance of the connection to the others becomes apparent. Self Realisation
Leadership begins with knowing ourselves and recognising our potential, understanding our prefe

rences and styles and the way in which this impacts on all aspects of our lives, particularly in the way we lead and work with others. Collaboration
Leadership involves engaging and enabling others to achieve success. Making a difference in any group or community relies on the collaboration of individuals. Acknowledging the uniqueness of others needs to be balanced with how best to engage them to work effectively together and achieve success. Stewardship
Leadership includes an obligation to individuals, communities, humanity and the planet in order to ensure the sustainability and viability of all concerned. Successful leaders are seen to be those involved and concerned about their impact on others and their ability to "give back" into their communities.

Anyone who’s lived through the entire life of the public internet of the last 30 years will probably remember when Googl...
05/05/2026

Anyone who’s lived through the entire life of the public internet of the last 30 years will probably remember when Google arrived on the scene. Launched in 1998, Google made searching the internet fast and efficient. It was also clean and uncluttered, presenting us with a blank white screen, a search box and the Google logo – nothing else.

In 2000, the company developed an advertising model and things started to change. By understanding what individual users were searching for, Google could target specific ads to specific users. They could offer a far more efficient mode of advertising than the traditional ‘broadcast’ model of television ads, newspaper ads and billboards.

Over the first quarter of this century, the advertising models and the algorithms that drive them have become more and more sophisticated. Meanwhile, the parallel evolutions of social media and smartphones have led to a saturation of targeted ads that is very difficult to escape.

In the context of our world and the concepts of emotional health and the Enneagram, these ads are playing on a basic fear that each of us holds as part of our personality. We share these basic fears in our book Working with Emotional Health and the Enneagram.

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Slipping into a lower level of emotional health can make you vulnerable to falling for the 'tricks' of many online ads. These ads play on a basic fear that each of us holds. If we can stay above the line, we can reduce our chances of being taken advantage of.

There’s a perspective on emotional health that we haven’t discussed a lot in our blog. It’s the role of emotional health...
07/04/2026

There’s a perspective on emotional health that we haven’t discussed a lot in our blog. It’s the role of emotional health in ‘bigger issues’, by which I mean societal or global issues.

Often when we talk about choosing our responses and staying above the line, it is in the context of personal relationships, such as between a leader and their team members. Staying above the line in this context means avoiding blame, denial, self-justification and defensiveness in a given situation, and rather taking personal responsibility for your responses.

However, what about the situation where, say, a world leader is taking actions that make us angry or frustrated, where blame feels easy to attribute and where we have little or no control over what is going on, sometimes ‘in our name’? Are we ‘failing’ if we feel these emotions? What does an emotionally healthy response look like in this case?

The first point to make is that emotions like anger and frustration, and the desire to blame or to deny or to defend, are all perfectly natural.

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What’s the role of emotional health in ‘bigger issues’ - in societal or global issues as opposed to those between, say, a leader and their team? Are we failing if we fall below the line when a world leader is making us angry, and when we have little or no control over what is going on ‘in ou...

At the end of each month’s issue of our newsletter, Global Connections, we include a story from Fix the News, which shar...
03/03/2026

At the end of each month’s issue of our newsletter, Global Connections, we include a story from Fix the News, which shares positive stories of progress from all over the world. It is a regular reminder that despite the political and global chaos that fills our news outlets, there are thousands of organisations and tens of thousands of leaders globally who continue, day after day, to stay true to purpose and get on with the job of making the world a better place.

In our work, we have more and more conversations with leaders who are dedicated to building sustainable organisations and who recognise that achieving this is going to take more than bringing their technical skills to the table.

These leaders recognise the importance – for both themselves and their people – of understanding what drives and motivates them. Of appreciating their own impact on their relationships with others.

Our new public program, ‘Strengthening Emotional Health and the Enneagram’ which will commence next month, is aimed specifically at any leader who feels like this and is looking for ways to develop their emotional health through vertical development.

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In our work, we have more and more conversations with leaders who recognise the importance – for both themselves and their people – of understanding what drives and motivates them. Of appreciating their own impact on their relationships with others.

‘In hope there is longing for something more; in hope there is a desire for what might be; in hope there is deep caring ...
03/02/2026

‘In hope there is longing for something more; in hope there is a desire for what might be; in hope there is deep caring for the potential in all of us; in hope there is love for all who hope’.

As I wrote these words at the end of last year, I found myself reflecting on what hope actually means for us as leaders, as people seeking to grow, and as human beings navigating an increasingly complex world.

Hope is not passive wishing. It is not blind optimism that ignores the challenges we face. Rather, hope is an active engagement with possibility – a recognition that while we cannot control everything that happens around us, we can influence how we show up, how we relate to others and the impact we choose to have.

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‘In hope there is longing for something more; in hope there is a desire for what might be; in hope there is deep caring for the potential in all of us; in hope there is love for all who hope’.

As you may know, Global Leadership Foundation collaborates with a worldwide network of Fellows who are as passionate as ...
02/12/2025

As you may know, Global Leadership Foundation collaborates with a worldwide network of Fellows who are as passionate as we are about raising the emotional health levels of people on the planet.

Each of our Fellows makes a positive difference through they work they do. As a group they come with significant expertise in leadership and team development, organisation transformation and culture change, board governance and performance, and executive coaching (to name a few of their collective talents). They are recognised by their clients and peers for the contributions they make to individuals, organisations and communities worldwide.

It is our honour to introduce Raffaella Barbieri and Mele-Ane Havea as the newest members of our Global Fellows community, and to share a little about each of them in this month's blog post.

It is our honour to introduce Raffaella Barbieri and Mele-Ane Havea as the newest members of our Global Fellows community, and to share a little about each of them in this post.

I recently came across the word ‘permacrisis’, which the Oxford English Dictionary made its word-of-the-year in 2022. Th...
05/11/2025

I recently came across the word ‘permacrisis’, which the Oxford English Dictionary made its word-of-the-year in 2022. They define the word as ‘a situation characterised by constant and significant turmoil or instability’.

We know many of us feel this is an apt word to describe the time we have lived in at least since the Covid-19 pandemic.

We know this not just because of a never-ending stream of commentary on the state of the world; we also know it because Malcolm and I have both found ourselves being asked a version of the same question in recent weeks and months.

That question is this: how do I stay above the line, how do I remain emotionally healthy, when it feels as if the world around me is lurching from one crisis to another almost daily?

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The word ‘permacrisis’ is defined as ‘a situation characterised by constant and significant turmoil or instability’. We know many of us feel this is an apt word to describe the times we live in.

In the most recent edition of our newsletter Global Connections, we shared a wonderful article by Megan Holbeck entitled...
07/10/2025

In the most recent edition of our newsletter Global Connections, we shared a wonderful article by Megan Holbeck entitled ‘Reframing the whole adventure’. Megan contrasts the common metaphor of ‘life as a journey’ with an alternative, ‘life as a garden’, which she sees as offering a much broader framework when considering life’s possibilities.

Megan kindly credits me with the garden analogy, as she first came across it in a conversation we had during her MBE year during which she explored the many contexts of leadership. In truth the analogy is not new, and certainly not my work alone.

However, the gardening analogy is a powerful metaphor for leadership and one that we haven’t yet explored in our blog, so I thought this would be a good time to introduce it.

A central idea here is that of cultivation, which obviously lends itself to the analogy of a garden.

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Cultivating a healthy and successful garden is not ‘set and forget’. Building an effective, emotionally healthy team also requires ongoing work from its leaders. As a leader, you need to be meeting your people where they are individually, and with patience

We had the pleasure of hosting Dr Leo Martin of Extent Heritage on our most recent Leadership Experience to Arid Recover...
02/10/2025

We had the pleasure of hosting Dr Leo Martin of Extent Heritage on our most recent Leadership Experience to Arid Recovery in South Australia. Leo has written an insightful article on Extent Heritage's Substack about what a Leadership Experience looks and feels like, what he got out of the experience himself and the benefits of the remote setting.

Connecting Leadership, Heritage and Biodiversity

It sounds almost clichéd to talk about how the pace of change and level of uncertainty in today’s world makes leadership...
02/09/2025

It sounds almost clichéd to talk about how the pace of change and level of uncertainty in today’s world makes leadership especially challenging. Leadership has always required navigating uncertainty. However, I am noticing that things have amplified in 2025. In a ‘post-truth’ world, many leaders at both national and organisational levels are struggling to navigate the way forward when almost everything they reach for is intangible.

In this atmosphere, many leaders, regardless of experience, are questioning their capacity to handle their responsibilities. The way they respond to this situation is telling, and a real test of emotional health. When faced with these challenges, some leaders manage to stay above the line, while others struggle to do so.

I’ve written previously about the role of vulnerability in authentic leadership. I wrote about the ‘protective coatings’ that leaders can adopt when their focus turns to self-protection, even if that is detrimental to the greater good.

What is happening now, as things become harder still, is that some leaders are doubling down on their self-protection strategies. This is an understandable automatic reaction, given the pressures involved. However, it nearly always achieves the opposite of what they intend.

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In a ‘post-truth’ world, many leaders at both national and organisational levels are struggling to navigate the way forward when almost everything they reach for is intangible

Cathy Duvel recently shared some exciting news with me. Many of you will know Cathy, a long-time friend and colleague of...
05/08/2025

Cathy Duvel recently shared some exciting news with me. Many of you will know Cathy, a long-time friend and colleague of ours, and one of our inaugural Global Fellows. Cathy Duvel was telling me about some of the work she will be doing over the next year or so, which includes an exciting opportunity in South Africa, the country where she grew up.

Cathy’s work has always aligned very closely with the concept of emotional health. Regular readers may remember when we previously introduced her work around the Thinking Environment and Time to Think, which she brought to Australia 19 years ago. In more recent years, she has been putting more focus on an extension of those concepts centred on the importance of psychological safety and appreciation.

Put briefly, the central argument of this concept is that a strong link exists between a culture of appreciation and a strong sense of psychological safety, which in turn contributes to sustainable high performance.

What does this look like in practice? It’s actually quite simple...

Research in neuroscience and psychology has shown that a strong link exists between a culture of appreciation and a strong sense of psychological safety, which in turn contributes to sustainable high performance.

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