Emma Canter 
I reflect on how our earliest experiences of care and survival shape the way we relate to dependency as adults, and how those patterns quietly show up in leadership, teams, and organisations.
This episode came straight from real life. As I watched my son move from dependence to independence, it made me pause and reflect on how dependency shows up in leadership and in the workplace.
There’s an assumption within the workplace that teams will inevitably gel over time, and that cohesion, alignment and mutual trust will simply emerge as part of the working process. But imagine hearing in a board meeting that there are major issues with finances, cash flow, or strategy, and the recommendation being that the issue will ‘probably’ resolve itself, rather than rolling out meticulous planning and reviews.
I sat down with Gabe Winn, founder of Blakeney, and honestly, his career path is a full plot twist marathon.
Actor dreams, Accenture, game ranger training in Zimbabwe, then yes, a BBC show that involved being trained like a spy, and somehow it all makes sense once you hear how he thinks about people, purpose, and influence.
Today I’m talking about the part we usually skip, the connection between what you do and how others respond. If you want new behaviours in your team, you have to be the stimulus, consistently.
HR professionals sit at the emotional centre of organisations. They hold confidential conversations, absorb uncertainty, manage conflict, and often carry the worries of others long after the meeting has ended. It all culminates in a particular tension I see again and again when working with HR and people leaders; having little or no space to process, recover or reflect, even though these should be non-negotiables in the workplace.
I’m back with a more personal episode, sharing the self-reflection I’ve been doing over the last few months and the question that’s been steering it all: what do I need in place to do my best work?
As we step into a new year, I wanted to pause and challenge the way we think about New Year’s resolutions. I share why I am not a huge fan of big, dramatic goals set in January, and why so many of them quietly fall away by the end of the month.
As we close out 2025, I wanted to slow things down and talk about gratitude, not in a cliched end of year way, but as a real, everyday leadership practice.
I share research that shaped my own thinking, showing how much more weight negative thoughts and interactions hold compared to positive ones.
This episode is a little different, because instead of sharing my reflections, I am handing the space over to you.
As we reach the end of the year, it is the perfect moment to pause, look back and make sense of what shaped you as a leader in 2025. Reflection is one of the strongest predictors of leadership growth, yet it is the habit most people skip when the pace picks up.