1️⃣ You can’t fence a child into loving something.
Jude quit piano at the end of Grade 8. The lessons were boring, the teachers strict, and she dreaded every minute of practice. Then she picked up the saxophone and everything changed. Same girl, same school, but this time she wanted to be there.
In her latest LinkedIn post, she works out why, with a story Keith Coats tells about a farmer in the Outback who keeps his sheep without a single fence. It stretches well beyond music.
She has also started a free community on Skool for parents and educators thinking about what a changing world means for our kids. If it resonates, you can join here.
2️⃣ He told them one group was smarter. It wasn’t true.
What you believe about someone shows up in how they perform, even if you never say it out loud. Keith shares the 1963 experiment that proved it. First with rats, then with schoolchildren. Both times the researchers were told one group was brighter, and both times that group came out ahead. The difference was made up.
Sixty years on, it still leaves a real question for anyone leading a team. Watch here…
3️⃣ The leaders who let go when everyone else grips harder.
When things get hard, most leaders tighten up. More check-ins, more approvals, more sitting in on things they used to leave alone.
David Grossman’s research with The Harris Poll found some go the other way. They hand over more, and they trust their people at the exact moment instinct says to pull it all back. Not because it feels good. Because people do their best work when they know it has been left with them. He ends with three things you could change on Monday. Read the full article here…
4️⃣ What if the thing holding you back is what you already know?
This week Graeme shared a short reel on the one skill he thinks matters most right now. Not learning, but unlearning, letting go of what we already assume to be true.
It took us back to an earlier ThrowForward Thursday where he puts that to work. He thinks today’s young people will live past 120, and asks what that does to a life. Careers that run in cycles instead of one long stretch. Falling in love at 25 and facing a hundred years of marriage. None of it works unless you drop what you already assume a life looks like. Watch here…
5️⃣ The most expensive shoelace trip in history.
Someone on your team is going to get it badly wrong. Not through carelessness, and usually at the worst possible time.
There is a story Keith tells about a man in a Cambridge museum who tripped on his shoelace and took three priceless Qing vases down with him. Half a million pounds, gone in seconds. He was arrested on suspicion it wasn’t an accident. Read more here…
What a leader does in that moment shapes everything after it. Invitational Leadership is Keith’s framework for building the kind of environment people can recover in and keep contributing to. It starts with three assumptions. There is a best in everyone. Everyone has something worth offering. And people would rather give it than hold it back. From there, it works through four practices: respect, intentionality, optimism, and trust.
He works a room in a relaxed, easy way, using humour and real examples so the ideas stay with people. Available virtually or in person, and shaped around your team.
If you would like to book him for your next leadership workshop, contact us, and we will connect you.