The Coherent
Field: Manifesto
Conscious leadership is evolving
Manifesto
"There is, at this time, a need for us to reimagine leadership, culture, and organisational behaviour. Leading think tanks, organisations, and consultancies have been circling this change for a decade - their calls are becoming more urgent."
“Tomorrow’s leaders will have to know how to listen, how to get inspired and how to cooperate… they need courage and the capacity to innovate and keep driving change.” - C.E.M.S.
"Leadership today requires… navigating ambiguity, holding multiple truths at once and acting decisively under pressure" - W.E.F.
"The future of leadership is being reshaped by the principles of empathy and emotional intelligence amidst the rapid explosion of technology" - Forbes
It all starts with conscious leadership from an authentic place:
Since the end of the covid-19 pandemic all of us in leadership roles have seen unparalleled pressure, disruption, complexity, and expectation. I felt this powerfully as we brought talent back into studio and hybrid models - a shift in the dynamic field of collaboration and creativity.
The future success of leaders won't be built on control, coercion, or productivity hacks. It will be built on presence; the ability to hold paradox; to empower, encourage, and direct; the strength and resilience to lead with integrity and self-awareness.
In this time of increasing complexity - environmental, technological, societal - many leaders are completely overwhelmed. Maybe they mask it at work, fearful of consequence - hiding their truth while they suffer. The data says otherwise: Over 80% of executives are reporting the symptoms of burnout.
Many are sensing the need for change and adapting. They are working out how to access deeper intelligence, broader awareness, whilst sustaining emotional coherence.
Companies around the world are seeing that dated leadership models, already looking and sounding anachronistic, aren't scaling to match the times. We urgently need new approaches, new thinking, new models and metaphors.
The world needs it. Talent expect it.
A place where consciousness is a leadership superpower:
Over the past 5 years, we've seen a revolution equal to the time when we first walked out of the fields and into the factories.
As AI increasingly outpaces and replaces routine tasks, the most valuable leaders can't be the most ‘efficient’ or productive - it's always been a fallacy - it will be those who are aware of the hidden dynamics of creativity and innovation, and the most impactful at effecting them. Those who can tap into cognitive and embodied wisdom, hold paradox with elegance, and respond from stability rather than reactivity.
They will inspire and empower those they interact with.
As CEMS puts it:
“The next generation of global leaders must know how to listen, how to get inspired, and how to cooperate across boundaries.”
The World Economic Forum lists emotional intelligence, curiosity, and systems thinking among the top 10 skills of the future.
In the new context, consciousness is the fundamental leadership technology.
Relational development becomes the equal of executive function:
Real transformation happens when we allow our intelligence and creativity to flow in service of our goals, our organisation's goals, our teams' goals.
When we work with the wisdom we already possess, rather than bearing down with external techniques and hacks. When we create the conditions for our own insights and solutions to emerge and blossom.
Leadership is both personal and systemic:
It's no secret that your inner state creates ripples. Its quality influences everyone around you - family, friends, colleagues, the organisations you lead. When you develop genuine coherence, it flows into all your relationships with a tone that is impossible to ignore.
We've observed the 'field effect' of this since Lewin's work in the 1940s.
We now have empirical evidence — from HRV synchrony studies to collective intelligence research — that individual coherence shapes team performance in measurable ways.
When your own stance and coherent state supports the psychological safety of your teams, performance follows.
Recent research confirms this: Google's Project Aristotle found psychological safety was the strongest predictor of team effectiveness. Amy Edmondson's Harvard studies show that leaders who can create these conditions see 47% more learning behaviors and 67% fewer failures in their teams.
The most powerful organisational transformations begin with leaders who are willing to do their own deep work first.
We need to meet complexity with depth:
Over the 30 years I've been working in studios large and small, I've noticed that most leadership challenges aren't tactical problems - they're systemic consciousness problems. Teams attempting to tackle a challenge at the same level of awareness that created it. Running the same human firmware. Coming from the same metaphorical space that shaped the issue, which we know cannot fruit the most elegant solutions. When we access expanded awareness, our embodied intelligence, and systemic insight without judgement— when we change the model and metaphors — solutions often become obvious.
The evidence supports this deeper approach: leaders who develop these capacities create environments where innovation accelerates, trust deepens, and teams naturally align around shared purpose, all without requiring constant management.
1 Sources: Amy Edmondson (1999), Psychological Safety & Learning in Teams; Uhl-Bien et al. (2007), Complexity Leadership Theory; Woolley et al. (2010), Collective Intelligence in Groups; Bass & Riggio (2006), Transformational Leadership.
As AI handles more routine tasks, our uniquely human capacities become exponentially more valuable: intuitive pattern recognition, relational attunement, original insight, co-creation, the ability to foster the conditions for innovation to emerge, to hold uncertainty with grace.
I believe in values that transform, not just inspire:
- Presence over presentation
- Emergence over control
- Consciousness over conditioning
This isn't about becoming a different leader. It's about becoming who you actually are, beneath the patterns and conditioning that keep you stuck in old ways of leading.
I work with leaders ready for deep transformation:
- Visionary founders navigating scaling challenges and complexity
- Senior executives feeling the limitations of conventional approaches
- Creative leaders seeking to integrate consciousness with performance
- Anyone sensing that their next level of leadership requires inner work
- This isn't coaching that just gives you new frameworks to apply.
- This is transformational work that also develops your innate capacity.
And when you develop this capacity individually, it naturally becomes available systemically — in your team, your culture, your field of influence.
Begin with a conversation.
Ready to lead from the inside out?
Begin with a conversation. Ready to lead from the inside out?