Welcome to Leading with Coherence, my monthly blog, where I share perspectives and practices on leading change and leading in change. 

  

In this month’s edition

  • Perspective: When intention meets reality
  • Practice: Reflecting on intention and emergence in 2025
  • An invitation: The Coherent Change Leadership Cohort

 

 

Perspective: When intention meets reality

What do you do when your intentions meet reality?

December is a threshold month. The year isn’t quite over, but we’re not really starting anything new either.

There’s a lot of “let’s catch up in the New Year” energy about. We’re wrapping up projects, pausing activities, and for some of us, we are turning our attention towards family and friends.

Here in Ireland, we’re also in the darkest days of winter with the solstice arriving next week. The Irish word for "solstice" is "grianstad", with a literal translation of "sun stop". It's a turning point, between the days shortening and the days lengthening.

This in-between space invites us to linger. To delay making that decision. To go offline. To not push forward … just yet.

It reminds me of another threshold we visit often, that moment between our intentions and how reality unfolds.

At the start of a year or a project, we set intentions. We make plans. We decide where we’re going and how we think we’ll get there. Sometimes, reality co-operates. Very often … it doesn’t!

Last month, I did a workshop on Adaptive Leadership with a group of senior managers. I felt a level of skepticism in the room about the 2026 planning process they had just completed. So far 2025 had felt like a washing machine on the 1400 spin cycle. The word change fatigue didn’t do justice to the world-weariness of this group.

Their plans at the start of 2025 were exciting and yet reality bites … a significant restructuring giving rise to change from inside, and a regulatory environment forcing changes from outside. 

We talked about that moment between the intended plan and the unfolding reality. And how you respond in that moment. 

What struck me most was how often leaders experience this moment of emergence as a problem to be fixed, or a deviation to be corrected. When in fact, it’s often a signal. An invitation to pause and make sense of what’s arising.

When I look back on my intentions for this year, I had planned to launch my online course, Leading Change with Coherence. And when it was ready, I hesitated. I had other courses to launch and client work and … if I’m honest … something about a standalone course didn’t feel coherent with how I wanted the work to be experienced.

I lingered on the decision, and over time it became clear that I want to work with people on coherent leadership in a live in-person context. The online course is available, but that act of pausing pulled me toward designing the live cohort experience, and I’m very glad of it. 

Adaptive leadership is often about standing on that threshold between intention and reality. Between what we planned and what’s actually happening. Try the reflection below to look back at 2025 through this lens. 

My advice for 2026? When reality messes with your plans, stand on the threshold, don’t just jump through it. Stay a while. Linger. Reflect. Check your gut instinct. Look around for signals. Then move forward.

 

 

 

 

Practice: Reflecting on intention and emergence in 2025

Staying with this theme of intention and emergence, I invite you to look back at 2025 using the reflection below. You might want to journal, take a walk, or simply sit quietly with the questions.

  • What were your plans at the start of 2025, personally or professionally?
  • In what ways did those plans get disrupted or reshaped as the year unfolded?
  • Can you identify one intention or goal that didn’t materialise in the way you originally envisaged?

Let’s explore that one intention in a little more depth.

  • Think back to the time when you held that intention with confidence and conviction. What did it feel like in your body and your energy?
  • What factors arose that diverted you from that intention? Were they internal (a shift in motivation, hesitation, energy, or priorities), or external (new information, organisational change, opportunities, or constraints)?
  • How did you respond when those factors appeared? Did you try to keep going with the plan, abandon it altogether, seek out an alternative resolution, or stay open to the signals around you until a good course of action emerged?

As you reflect, notice what this reveals about how you respond when intention meets reality, and what that might be useful to consider as you plan for the year ahead.

 

 

An invitation: The Coherent Change Leadership Cohort

Last but very definitely not least, I’d love to invite you to join my Coherent Change Leadership Cohort, starting at the end of January. 

In my work today supporting leaders, I see how often our mainstream leadership approaches fall short in the face of today’s scale of complexity and pace of change. Coherent change leadership is my response, and this cohort is designed to help you develop your capacity to lead with greater coherence at a personal, relational and systems level. 

It’s an immersive small group experience, taking place virtually over six 2-hour sessions. 

Session 1: (Re)orientation
Arriving into the cohort, we'll explore some of the core ideas that underpin the program, and experiment with somatic intelligence as a tool for navigating complexity.

Session 2: Meeting our workplace realities
Distinguishing between how work should be and how it really is, this session builds your capacity to see the system more clearly and to work with complexity.

Session 3: Leadership as connection
Developing your relational presence, you'll practice non-judgement, noticing more and connection - increasing your capacity to hold space for others while staying steady in yourself.

Session 4: Collective sense-making
We'll explore how to surface diverse perspectives, generate insights and guide groups out of entrenched positions into a more open and fluid dialogue.

Session 5: Navigating deliberate and emergent strategy
Reviewing how deliberate planning and emergent developments interact in complex systems through the lens of polarity, you'll learn how your own preferences impact your response to stability and change.

Session 6: Integration
Our closing session helps you to make sense of your journey, integrate what’s changed for you and commit to the ongoing practices that support coherent leadership.

All the details, including dates and pricing, are available here. As a thank-you to my readers, you can use FRIENDS20 for a 20% discount. 

If this feels supportive for you as you step into 2026, I’d love to have you join us.