Your team brings every decision to you because your behaviour has trained them to. You believe you empower people, and you say the right things, but your non-verbal behaviour tells a different story and the team reads that story rather than the words. Until you change how you lead, they will keep waiting for permission.

Team performance comes down to behaviour. Twelve hidden dynamics of nonverbal behaviour govern how a team actually performs, and every one of them can be seen in how people behave when the pressure rises. Until teams interrupt their unconscious patterns of behaviour, these dynamics remain unspoken and continue to influence performance.

The Organisation Model describes leadership as happening in three places: the front, for clarity and direction; the middle, where execution, collaboration, and support happen and where the operational detail lives; and the back, for accountability across the whole system. Most teams lead least well from the front, rarely from the back, and get dragged into the middle.

I had the honour of judging at the UK EXA Awards 2025 this year. I judged the Rewards and Recognition category and the Best Company Culture for companies with 1000+ employees.

The quality of the entries was strong and the judging was tough. It was great to work with Hannah Cox and Busola Firnamade. It was great to see how seriously organisations are taking culture and recognition, not as a “nice to have” but as a business-critical part of performance.

It’s a myth that trust takes months to build. Whilst it deepens over time, trust is a leadership choice and a foundation for building strong relationships.

In this story, I explain how using trust as a foundation in uncertainty created greater safety for Gio as well as me.

“I’ll work with one of the other horses because Kalle looks aloof.”
“I don’t think she likes me because she’s the only horse who hasn’t said hello.”
“This horse doesn’t want to work.”
“Is this the stubborn one?”

These were just a few of the comments I heard from clients

“That’s a lot of horse,” I thought. It was an understatement. Kalle was majestic, galloping up and down the arena with her mane and tail flying behind her, snorting as she charged from one end to the other. She was powerful, confident, and unmistakably in charge. And I… well, I was a novice.

My husband and I move through life at different speeds. I tend to be quicker, more immediate. He’s more measured, more deliberate. That doesn’t make either of us right or wrong, just different.

If you’re not clear on your intention, that in itself is an intention. A former colleague, Alan, once headed out to bring the horses in. I could tell by his walk that he didn’t believe they’d come. Sure enough, later he admitted that that was exactly what he’d been thinking. The horses took off at a gallop.