"Leadership is still a deeply personal act. And it’s one we can choose to reimagine, together."

Leadership isn’t just evolving, it’s leaping. In this week's article, Melis shares a growing unease: we’re using old models to respond to new realities: polarisation, AI disruptions, climate urgency, collapsing trust in institutions.

And these models are manifestly falling short. We still valorise charisma, confidence, control, and performance even when they cost relational maturity, truth, and collective wellbeing.

What’s needed now is a leap toward leadership that is fully human: courageous in relationship, wise about systems, and generative in imagination. Leaders must stay grounded in emotion and somatic presence; see beyond silos to how everything connects; and imagine new ways forward, not just critique what’s broken.

Because the world we’re inheriting demands it. Being a leader today means more than strategy. It means being awake, humble, curious, and committed to doing leadership in service of life. That shift, that leap, can change what’s possible.

Latest article

✍️ The Leadership Leap

Latest Podcast

🎙️ Episode 12 of The Smoosh Podcast
Title: The transformative power of anger

What's happening with Melis

Reading:
Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind by Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist. I'm currently reading the chapter about ‘Opening to the other’ by Lane and Sarah Conn. It's an exploration of what it’s like to open ourselves to the more than human world. Fascinating.

Listening to:
Mongolian throat chanting, I know, it’s a bit out there and certainly not for everyone. In some odd way I’ve found it deeply grounding in a tumultuous life.

Doing:
My sit spot practice, sitting in nature and exploring peripheral awareness. Incredible how much you notice when you’re not focused on something. Even that sentence sounds a bit weird. It feels like an altered state of consciousness.

Pondering:
How this expanding understanding of our humanness makes sense in a world of increased abstraction, disconnection, pace and skimming along the surface. Trying to land on what my unique contribution is, to help as many people as I can, respond in a life-giving way to the challenges we’re facing.

What's happening with Ben

Reading:
Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. It explores attachment theory and how it shows up in adults and our relationships.

Listening to:
White Male Stand-Up by Alan Davies, a British comedian who gives a raw, honest account of his early life and how it shaped him.

Doing:
Keeping my eye on the prize. It's my final semester of my gestalt therapy master's and it's all systems go! Assignments, clients, supervision. Life is full...and fulfilling.

Pondering:
What the term 'safe space' really means. I hear it spoken a lot these days in my work environments. Everyone seems to want it, but I don't always see the behaviour that's required to support it.

In what ways is your inner leader ready to leap?

You've got this.

Love,