On emotional contagion, the culture nobody writes about and what riders and elephants have to do with it. Jonathan Haidt described the mind as a rider sitting on an elephant. The rider is our rational, planning self and the elephant everything emotional and instinctive. It’s the elephant that is stronger. Chip and Dan Heath later borrowed the image in Switch to explain why so much change struggles. You can give the rider a perfectly good map but if the elephant isn’t persuade

On imposter feelings, what we actually call them and why the language is doing more work than most people realise. Hands up if you’ve sat in a room and felt that painful sense of not quite belonging, of it not being your place, your tribe or not being good enough. It might be a new role, a more senior meeting or just a conversation with someone who seems to know exactly what they’re talking about. Whatever the trigger, your inner critic tends to say roughly the same things: O

Why 2026 feels different – and what to do about it. Something has shifted this year. You can feel it in meetings – a sharper edge to conversations, a restlessness that wasn’t there before. Decisions that used to queue politely are arriving all at once. People who are usually measured seem more reactive. The pace of change, already fast, has accelerated again. You’re not imagining it. And it’s not just your organisation. In Chinese zodiac tradition, 2026 is a Fire Horse year.

Key to all healthy organisations, teams and relationships is trust. There are ways to build trust and ways to destroy it.