Why this website?

There are moments in your professional life when something quietly but unmistakably feels off. For me, that realization unfolded slowly, over years of working in what Barbara Kellerman (2012) calls the leadership industry. I loved the work, guiding leaders, creating learning spaces where reflection could take root. And yet something in the whole system often felt misaligned. The promises were grand, the programs well-intentioned, and the personal insights often moving. And still, the deeper layers of organizational life, the field in which leadership actually takes place, often remained untouched.

A question began to form: What are we really developing when we talk about leadership development? Are we truly cultivating leadership, or are we simply perfecting individual repertoires of behavior within systems that remain largely unquestioned? And why does so much of current leadership development I am involved in address the first four functions of leadership as Gary Yukl (2012) described them, but hardly touch the fifth function he identified which refers to values?

This website is my way of taking those questions seriously. My personal motivation comes from the disappointment of seeing so many expressions of leadership, in organizations, in politics, in public life, disconnected from the values that could lift the human spirit in organizations to their higher or fuller potentials. I often sense an absence of coherence, a kind of energy that doesn’t quite flow. Yet, alongside that disappointment, there is also hope: the intuition that another way is possible. That leadership might be less about individual excellence and more about a collective realization of potential, about learning to work with the deeper, coherent field from which a more value-based kind of leadership might emerge.

The starting point for a quest

My first impulse was frustration, not toward people or organizations, but toward the larger system in which leadership takes place, a system I was also part of. I noticed how easy it was to become cynical about the endless parade of leadership models, frameworks, and heroic narratives. Every year brought a new wave of programs, TED talks, and best-selling books, each promising to finally reveal the secret of great leadership. Meanwhile, we were all busy talking about “impact,” “implementation,” and “measurable results.” And still, something essential remained unspoken: the ground in which leadership actually grows.

I began to realize how often organizations behave as if leadership were a product that could be bought off the shelf, something you have or do, regardless of the environment in which it unfolds. Yet no leader operates in a vacuum. Context, culture, and the invisible patterns of collaboration and competition together form the field in which leadership either flourishes or falters.

At the same time, a field seems to carry an energetic quality that cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. What if that energetic quality is the field itself, something that both emerges from and shapes what happens within it? A field comes into being under certain conditions; it unfolds, evolves, and simultaneously manifests. My initial frustration turned into genuine curiosity: how does a field arise, grow, and contribute to the leadership process?

This is the landscape in which my quest takes place. Instead of seeing leadership as an individual competence, I’ve come to view it more as a field phenomenon: an interplay of energies, intentions, and relationships. The question is no longer only how leaders develop, but also where and under what conditions leadership can thrive. What are the unseen, perhaps even transcendent, aspects of this field that deserve more of our attention?

Merry, Movius & Susskind, Kellerman

As with any genuine inquiry, there came a point when my own experiences were no longer enough. I needed language, frameworks, metaphors, and points of orientation. And as so often happens, they came from people who had already wrestled with similar questions.

Peter Merry’s Leading from the Field (2020) was one of those sources. His description of the field as the dimension where “potential, coherence, and interrelatedness” converge offered words for something I had long intuited: that leadership emerges not merely from individuals, but from the invisible dynamics that connect them. Merry’s call to pay attention to “the dynamics of the whole” resonated deeply. And yet, my critical voice stirred. His approach leaned heavily toward the personal, almost spiritual, and read like a guide for individual awareness. But where, I wondered, was the organization in this story? Where was the structural, relational fabric through which leadership takes shape every day?

Another piece of the puzzle came from Built to Win (2009) by Hallam Movius and Lawrence Susskind. Although they were talking about the skills needed to become a better negotiator, their argument that organizations waste millions on training because they treat negotiation as an individual skill rather than an organizational capacity made a lot of sense to me. I figured that their appeal to treat negotiation as an organizational core competence could, with some adjustment, apply just as powerfully to leadership.

And then there was Barbara Kellerman, with her unflinching critique of the leadership industry. Her 2016 article entitled “Leadership – it’s a System, Not a Person!” exposed how deeply our ideas about leadership are anchored in the individual and how little attention is given to followers, context, or system.

These three voices strengthened my growing sense that leadership is not exclusively about the personal qualities of the leader nor about the industry’s tendency to “develop” these qualities.

 Seeing a leadership field as bedding

Gradually, I began to realize that leadership is not only what someone is or does but also about something that happens. It arises in the spaces between people, in the dynamic tension of relationships, meanings, and intentions. That space, that field, is often invisible yet profoundly influential. When it is open, coherent, and safe, leadership can develop and move forward. When it is fragmented or constricted, movement stalls.

The concept of a field helps me explore this subtle layer, not as a metaphysical abstraction, but as a practical reality. Every organization, however rational it may appear, carries such an energetic-relational field: a collective atmosphere where beliefs, emotions, and unspoken assumptions converge. It quietly shapes what is possible and what is not.

I’ve come to see that many leadership interventions fail or fall short because they attempt to change behavior without addressing these underlying field conditions. As facilitators and coaches, we design programs that may offer useful moments of reflection and skill building, but the deeper drivers of organizational life often remain untouched. We train leaders to communicate, decide, and self-reflect, but seldom do we inquire deeply into the climate in which their actions take place. In doing so, we focus on the tree while neglecting the soil.

That is why the metaphor of a field as bedding feels right to me. A healthy riverbed supports the flow of water; it gives direction without control, form without rigidity. In a well-tuned leadership field, individual leadership is not diminished or dissolved but held. The field itself becomes a living ecosystem in which leadership is no longer an individual accomplishment, but a collective expression of coherence.

In this view, the task of leaders is not only to inspire or direct others, but to tend to the conditions that keep the field clear and vital, conditions like (psychological) safety, resonance, meaning, and clarity of intent. In that sense, perhaps a leader is less an architect and more a gardener; and leadership, less a strategy and more an ecology.

An invitation to shared inquiry

As I continue exploring this idea of leadership as a field of coherence and vitality, I notice how tempting it is to pin it down, formalize it, or turn it into a model or framework. But I resist that pull. A field is, by nature, alive and it shifts and evolves with whatever enters it. It is not something to be owned or concluded, but to be cultivated and experienced. A field seems to arise in and around polarities like the personal and the collective, the visible and the unseen, the structured and the fluid. I’m interested in looking at how these dynamics can contribute to a broader understanding of how to “lead” in a better way and how those of us working in the leadership industry can re-evaluate the value and effectiveness of our work.

That is also why I see this website as a space for inquiry, a place where different voices, perspectives, and experiences can meet. My hope is that this space becomes an invitation for others to bring their own experiences, insights, and questions into the conversation. And that researchers, practitioners, leaders, and followers alike might begin to sense the underlying patterns that either nourish or inhibit value-driven leadership.

I return to Peter Merry’s observation that our role as leaders will shift “from perfecting the visible to tending the energetic, relational, and material architectures of our organizations.” That shift goes straight to the heart of this quest. For in the end, leadership may be less about power, influence, or style, and more about coherence. And about the quality of the space we share, and the degree to which we shape and attend to that space.