Ruth Allarton

Just a reminder that I'm hosting a webinar with Caroline Webb at 4pm UK time today. We will be discussing her new bestselling book Leadership Intelligence. During the webinar, we will discuss the leadership principles that are behind the book. I love the practical tools and frameworks for leaders that the book covers so I will ask Caroline to take us through some of my favourite ones. There will be time for questions and answers. The session is aimed at leaders in health and care but the learning is generic so it's open to all leaders who want to improve their leadership practice. There is still time to sign up: events.teams.microsoft.com/e… I hope to see you there. Helen

“Change begins with me”. As change leaders, we can feel a lack of power or agency when the situation we’re trying to change feels immovable. A new book by @Caroline_Webb_, “Leadership Intelligence” sets out multiple actions we can take to make a difference. We don’t need to rely on (or wait for) other people or other things to change. The change can come from within us, by thinking & acting differently. She shows us how the part we can control is bigger than it often feels. To define “Leadership intelligence”: a combination of wisdom (widening perspectives & easing mental load), inspiration (helping people expand their sense of personal competence & build social connection) & resilience (making situations feel manageable & amplifying what’s meaningful). Caroline Webb says “leadership is about enabling a group of people to achieve more together than they could on their own." So the intelligence in question is relational, not individual cleverness, the kind of thinking & practice needed in an era of AI. The book has 21 chapters. Each sets out a challenge leaders face daily, a role model who faced it, then advice in the form of a tool or framework. It’s all evidence based, grounded in psychology, neuroscience & behavioural economics. I’ll go back to many of the tools when I’m in a specific situation. Here are four of the frameworks I’ll build into my change practice now: - The ACORN approach (aim, criteria, options, rating, next steps): helps us make better decisions by giving us a way to organise & progress our thinking. - The “four frequencies of effective communication”, needed for a message to truly land. It covers frequencies at the level of personal (“I’m appreciated & respected”), team (“reminds me we’re doing something useful together”), leader (“shows my leader is a fellow human being”) & message (“makes me feel I’ve understood”). - The “bridge model” for improving a difficult stakeholder relationship. Understand the towers (their concerns & your reaction), build the connections (cables) & meet in the middle on the deck. - The “know-be-do” framework of certainties for leading in times of upheaval: things we know (facts, timings, priorities, feelings); things we continue to be (strengths, values, experience, routines) & things we choose to do (attitudes to adopt, scenario planning, no-regrets moves, next steps). The book quotes Jacinda Ardern: “While we cannot change everything about the environment we are in, we can change ourselves – to build greater strength & resilience, in spite of the headwinds around us”. I’ve spent decades on change efforts where the system often felt impenetrable. My own sense of agency lived in what happened between me & the people I worked with. The questions we asked, the thinking we made room for, how easy we made the new ways of working, the steadiness we held when things got tough. Caroline Webb has given us the science & multiple practical tools for all four. The book "Leadership Intelligence": carolinewebb.co/liorder See also: "5 Science-Backed Ways to Become a Better Leader" from the @NextBigIdeaClub: nextbigideaclub.com/magazine… "How to Lead When You Don’t Know What Comes Next" with Jessi Hempel: linkedin.com/pulse/how-lead-… There are some great reader's resources on the Caroline Webb website, including downloadable guides for reading paths, an AI guide and a guide for groups that want to discuss the book together: carolinewebb.co/leadership-i… I'm thrilled to announce that I'm leading a webinar "In conversation with Caroline Webb" on Friday 16 October, 1600-1700 BST. We will discuss the implications and opportunities of "leadership intelligence" for leaders in health and care. It will be hosted by our friends at @Aqua_NHS. I will advertise it on X. All welcome. Hold the date!

Apologies the link to the article "Curiosity as a Compass for Complex Change" isn't working. Here is a link that works: performancefrontiers.com/ins….

Are we realising the potential of our networks to make change happen? Most innovation emerges from collaborative projects where teams openly “borrow” & adapt each other’s (often small but powerful) ideas. Many networks & communities of practice could achieve so much more by experimenting together around collective priorities to generate & share new solutions. This is beyond spreading known “best” or “good” practices. It is about innovating to design new solutions collectively. So I appreciated this piece from Ed Morrison of @Strategic_Doing about three different kinds of networks: - Advocacy networks are communities that seek to mobilise people, creating pressure to shift policies, priorities or messages in a particular direction. Their aim is to connect & influence rather than to change how they themselves work. - Learning networks are communities of practice. They share knowledge, compare practice & build shared capability. Learning networks often excel at spread & improvement of existing practice, but only sometimes move into structured innovation work. - Innovating (or transforming) networks are communities that combine their assets - ideas, relationships, data, capabilities - to create new value that none could produce alone. They manage collaboration as a process of experimentation: agreeing a shared outcome, running multiple connected tests of change, learning by doing & amplifying what works across the network. linkedin.com/posts/efmorriso… Every learning network has the potential to become an innovating/transforming network. Some actions to enable this: 1. Build a foundation of strong, trusting relationships within the network, understanding each member’s starting point & motivation for change 2. Focus on helping each other to succeed; listen to each others’ stories & plans, co-coach, give advice to each other & build shared inquiry 3. Move from “sharing” or “raising awareness” to some concrete outcomes the network want to change together through collective experimentation 4. Agree some simple norms for the network so that members help each other to make progress, make it safe to try things, fail fast & share incomplete work 5. Encourage multiple, parallel tests of change around similar outcome so projects can “steal with pride” from one another & quickly refine promising ideas 6. Put simple routines in place for noticing patterns (what is shifting where & why), capturing these insights & amplifying them across the network 7. Add additional success metrics including innovations tested, adapted & adopted in multiple places Graphic by Ed Morrison. Content with added inspiration from @juneholley.

Our beliefs & assumptions about change are often the biggest barrier to leading & enabling effective change. @DigitalTonto describes “change management beliefs that consistently sabotage genuine transformation”. The first such belief is that large scale change is persuasion at scale; the idea that we can change opinion across an organisation by communicating a compelling case. However, change is much more about collective dynamics than about persuasion. People are more likely to be influenced by what their peers think than by top-down messaging. If we want change to spread, we need to help activate peer networks. The second belief is that a large scale change initiative should have a “big bang” launch. The aim is to create widespread awareness that the change is happening & drive the message home. The problem is that undifferentiated messages create early resistance that can kill off promising initiatives. Much better to protect, test & nurture new ideas with committed stakeholders to pave the way for wider adoption over time, rather than trying to convince everyone at once. The third belief is that once people understand the change, they will embrace it. The issue is that people are typically navigating many competing influences—prior beliefs, habits, social pressures & noise from many directions. That’s why ideas spread most effectively through peer networks, not top-down campaigns. People adopt the ideas they see working around them. What might work better? 1. Deliberately starting where there’s already energy & enthusiasm & building out from a local majority (eg., three allies in a room of five) instead of trying to convert everyone first 2. Intentionally working through & connecting peer networks so people are influencing “others like us”, rather than relying on one-to-many broadcasts 3. Creating early proof through local majorities that “people like us are already doing this,” tapping into social proof rather than abstract persuasion techniques. 4. Expecting that some people will resist change & take steps to work with it, rather than assuming that better messaging will win “resistors” over 5. Focusing less on increasing information and more on enabling people to see others like them succeeding with the new behaviours, so they can appropriate and adapt the change as their own. Leading large scale change is less about convincing people to think differently; it’s more about creating the conditions that enable people to act differently. digitaltonto.com/2025/3-stub…