Recently, I was at an event where a Black woman shared an observation that has stayed with me. She spoke about how waiting has become something many folk whose identities are marginalised have become expert at. Waiting for harm to be named, waiting for people to show up with care, waiting for institutions to catch up with realities that have already landed in our bodies, waiting for plans to move from words on a page into actions and behaviours. And because that waiting can become so familiar, so repeated and so normalised, it starts to shape how people move through the world and settles into the system around them.

When I speak to Black and brown people in organisations, I hear many people living in that space between waiting and what comes next. The reality of a much harder climate where anti-immigrant sentiment is becoming more visible and more acceptable is being widely felt. We are living in times where hostility is increasingly directed not only at immigrants, but at those considered, in an expanding number of ways, as not fully belonging. This is already shaping bodies, routines, relationships and working lives in ways that create discomfort, anxiety, distress, fear and panic. What’s concerning is either this is going unnoticed, isn’t being held or supported or isn’t being taken seriously enough by organisations and leaders.

What gets hidden when racism is called ‘anti-immigration’

Perhaps that is because the shift towards dehumanising language and othering has been incremental, unfolding over years rather than all at once. So some of its logic may even have started to feel normalised, including to those most affected by it.. But this is not background noise, nor can it be neatly contained under the label of a problematic ‘minority of idiots’, conveniently cast as unlike the rest of us.

It is being legitimised across all kinds of settings and situations, whether in the normalisation of ‘anti-migrant’ rhetoric in media, the suspicion attached to Muslims and others seen as having foreign allegiance that creeps into everyday moments, the inflammatory views being openly shared by high-profile CEOs or politicians that vilify groups in society, the actions or practices of institutions or organisations silencing dissent or questioning about International issues, or the real increased risk that visible difference can make someone more exposed to hostility or physical attack.

What we are facing is partly a difference in naming. For the people most affected, this is not a debate about immigration. It is being experienced more clearly, and more viscerally, as racism: in the conditional nature of belonging, in the way foreignness is assigned, and in the sense that safety, credibility and legitimacy are becoming less secure. For others, the same moment is still being framed as politics, opinion or a conversation about borders, which isn’t seen to have a valid place inside workplaces and is easily dismissed as being irrelevant to their lives and not in scope for work conversations.

Returning to the question of waiting: what happens when you are seeing something more clearly, and living it more directly, while others, especially those in your workplaces, are minimising it, misnaming it, or seem unable to name it at all? There is something deeply unjust about asking people to be endlessly patient, endlessly resilient, and endlessly explanatory in the face of a climate they did not create.

What this is doing to people’s lives

This climate is not only changing what people think, it is changing how people live. It shapes how those most at risk move through public space, what risks they assess, how visible they feel able to be, and how much trust can be placed in the people and institutions around them. The Angelou Centre’s work last year on the impact of the far-right riots makes that plain, showing how fear, vigilance and reduced safety on public transport have remained part of everyday life for Black, brown and migrant women long after the headlines moved on. This weekend’s march in Manchester is likely to have sharpened that reality again for many people living and working in the area, especially in a region where Reform has already built strong support and with elections just around the corner.

For some, this shows up in very ordinary decisions that no longer feel ordinary at all: whether to take a particular route home, whether to enter a certain space, whether to speak or speak up in certain contexts, whether to correct an assumption, whether to make yourself smaller, quieter, less noticeable. It also shapes what it means to travel to and from work, to move through stations, buses, streets and public places while carrying a heightened sense of risk that others may not have to think about in the same way.

The rise in public hostility, including the increase in public-facing abuse and attacks matters not only because of its impact on safety on the street, on transport, or in other everyday settings. But also because it builds permission. What can now be said more openly, what can be acted on more confidently, and what kinds of suspicion or exclusion are allowed, all become looser and easier to justify - and that should be deeply concerning for any employer committed to inclusion, anti-racism and creating workplaces of belonging.

How workplaces fail to meet this moment

That permission does not stop outside the workplace door. There is very little documentation about the rise of far-right sentiment in workplaces, but an October 2024 Irish Times report found that around a quarter of people reported a rise in far-right sentiment in their workplace. That number is likely to have grown since, and I find it interesting that there isn’t more documented data about this given the external climate.

We have to wake up to the reality that the outside climate will be reshaping organisational life. When public hostility becomes easier to carry into meetings, corridors, customer interactions, hiring decisions, performance judgements and everyday conversations about who is seen as credible, trustworthy and part of the team because of their identity - it becomes a matter for leadership and employer concern.

This matters across organisations, but it matters especially for those in public-facing roles where they are feeling the full force of the rising racist sentiment on a day to day basis. Workers in retail, hospitality, healthcare, transport and other customer-facing settings are more exposed to whatever the wider climate makes possible. For them, the spillover is immediate, often personal and harder to avoid. The same permissions that make hostility easier to voice in public also make it easier to direct at workers whose jobs require them to be visible, accessible and in contact with the public.

This is where employers are already letting people down. Too many organisations still behave as though the wider climate is external to work, or treat what is happening as politics, opinion or isolated incidents rather than recognising the full pattern of discrimination their staff may be living. The result is that workers are left carrying not only the hostility itself, but the additional burden of judging what is safe, what can be reported, and whether anyone will really act.

That is part of why the October 2026 law change matters. Employers will be under stronger duties in relation to harassment by third parties, including customers and the public. In other words, the law is beginning to catch up with what many workers already know: that hostility from outside does not stay outside. It becomes part of the conditions people are working in.

We may not like to think that this could happen in our own organisation, but it would be naive not to prepare for the fact that it might.

What workplaces need to do now

If this is the reality people are moving through, then the question is not whether organisations should respond, but whether they are willing to respond in ways that match the scale and nature of what is happening.

Part of the problem is framing. When this is treated mainly as a matter of immigration, politics or opinion, organisations place it outside themselves, something to stay neutral on, something awkward, something easier left untouched. But that position is increasingly irresponsible.

There is also a failure of scope. Many organisations still approach this through separate categories such as race, religion, harassment or customer abuse, and in doing so miss the convergence of the moment. They miss how race, religion, accent, visible difference and perceived foreignness are being read together, and how that changes what people are carrying at work. We need to get more comfortable in being with the complexity and looking at this in a more joined up way.

That gap between what organisations say about anti-racism and what they are prepared to name in practice is now too wide to ignore. General language about inclusion is no longer enough.. A more honest response would begin by measuring what is actually happening, not only race or religious harassment in isolation, but tracking and being connected to the wider patterns shaping safety, belonging and perceived ‘foreignness’ at work.

There is a need to treat organisational values as something more than language. In a harder climate, values either shape behaviour or they do very little at all. That means being clearer about how colleagues speak about identity, migration, religion and difference, and being equally clear about what is not acceptable.

There is work to do in ensuring people feel supported to uphold these values in practice so that there is less room for harmful narratives to hide inside the language of opinion or debate. Managers cannot be left without the confidence or permission to challenge misinformation, coded hostility or disinformation when it appears in everyday working life.

Leadership matters here too. Leaders have to name what is happening, challenge harmful narratives, and make clear what will be protected. Silence does not create neutrality. It creates permission. If leaders are serious about anti-racism at this moment, they have to treat the wider climate as relevant to organisational life and respond in ways that make staff feel recognised and protected, not left to absorb the hostility alone.

For public-facing workers, the stakes are even sharper. In retail, hospitality, healthcare, transport and other customer-facing roles, the outside climate becomes part of the conditions of work. The October 2026 changes on third-party harassment make that harder to deny, but the reality is already here. Employers have to make reporting routes clear, follow up consistently, and put visible protections in place for workers exposed to customers and the public. This cannot remain vague or optional.

And if workplaces are serious about staying in touch with the reality their staff are living, then conversations about safety and belonging cannot remain occasional or reactive. They have to become part of how organisations pay attention. Not one-off listening exercises after the damage is done, but regular opportunities to notice what is shifting before people are left carrying it alone.

The start of meaningful action

If anti-racism means anything in 2026, it has to be broad enough to respond to the full reality of this moment: the hardening of anti-immigrant sentiment, the conditional nature of belonging, and the way public hostility is already entering organisational life.

The question is not whether this climate reaches the workplace. It already does. The real question is whether organisations are prepared to recognise it in full, and whether their version of anti-racism is broad enough, honest enough and brave enough to respond to it.

References

Angelou Centre, Why Do I Have to Hide Away? executive summary, August 2025.

Irish Times archive entry for 21 October 2024, including the article ‘A quarter of people report rise in far-right sentiment in the workplace’.

GOV.UK, Plan to Make Work Pay and Employment Rights Act: timeline update, updated 15 April 2026.

Acas, Employment Rights Act 2025 guidance.

British Future / Ipsos, Noise and Nuance: What the public really thinks about immigration, 2025.

Migration Observatory, UK Public Opinion toward Immigration: Overall Attitudes and Level of Concern.

I’m really enjoying working with a client to figure out how to really activate their new values in a way that understands where their organisation is on its journey, their readiness for change and the desire to do it in a way that feels like it’s true to the values themselves. The idea that so much values embedding work has historically over focused on knowing the values making the assumption that people actually know what it takes to actually apply the values is kind of interesting to reflect on.

This week we talked about emotions in one of my EDI learning journeys. Actually since starting this business I have always started work in this space with a new group by naming the emotions that are with us. Fear, guilt, powerlessness, anxiety, apathy ... seen these in so many organisations and how the fact that no-one names them means that they quietly lead to inaction, deprioritisation, paralysis, avoidance or keep things in ‘too hard’ box. I also bring it in early because it’s emotional to be a person who’s workplace experience is impacted by how effective EDI work is - its tough to see your needs and sense of importance feel treated in this way. That’s been coming up alot in conversations with Black and brown teams in charities in particular - the emotional impact of seeing leaders in this paralysis space and how hard that is to see and work with.

I’m very excited to be starting a new learning journey with a philanthropy client looking at power and supremacy culture dynamics. I’ve been wanting to work internally with a team in this space with this work for a while, so here we are, it’s happening! It was timely that I came across this great piece of thinking by Urvi Kelkar about making change in this context, and in particular her reflections on dealing with shadows - being honest about who we really are and what we are really doing. Such synchronicity, as I am testing out bringing in shadow journalling into some of work, including this project, with Oliver Mann

The photo of the week was taken walking through the Plaza de Sant Jaume this week - visible leadership in action. There is something so healing in seeing police and institutions connected with messages of resistance as is captured in this shot.

I wanted to write about a very specific moment in this piece. And it’s the moment when a leader loses credibility fast. It’s not irrecoverable. It’s certainly repairable, and can even become a moment for growth. But it matters because it is the moment when someone realises: ‘you are not the ally I thought you were’.

It happens so quickly, so I want to slow it down for you. It might be something that’s said in passing, or sometimes through hesitation or a struggle to find the words. Often, through what’s not said, or when responses come with words that sound official or not naturally theirs. Here are some moments of things I’ve heard leadership say to bring this to life:

“We can’t respond to every moment”
“We need to stick to our core business”
“We have to be careful not to alienate people”
“I’m not sure it’s my job as a leader to stand up to the far right”

The Moment It Shifts

On the surface, they all sound measured, reasonable, even responsible. But the reality is that they land very differently for the people already carrying the implications in their bodies, relationships, and sense of safety. That is the moment I want to explore here. Because for the person hearing it, something shifts. Shifts in safety, a pang of disappointment hits, and trust thins. To many, nothing of note happened, but for those of us on higher alert, it reveals: you do not understand what this moment is asking of you, and you may not have my back in the way I thought you did.

I have written before about the ways systems protect themselves, about integrity gaps and the different realities they create, and about the myth of political neutrality at work. What I want to name here is something more specific. There are moments when leaders’ reactions undermine, or at the very least call into question, their credibility in anti-racism or anti-oppression work.

I do not think leaders intend for this, and I actually think some would be mortified to learn that this is the experience of those moments. I share these reflections with loving-kindness because I believe that understanding them will help facilitate more considered, sensitive and reflective responses. Because many are far less aware than they need to be of what they centre in these moments.

Faced with rising fear, hostility, or harm, they often move quickly and intuitively towards themselves, the organisation, or the comfort of the wider group, rather than towards those most impacted. They centre whether they feel confident or brave enough to speak and what the cost of speaking out will cost them. They consider whether the organisation can manage the risk of saying something clear and how that will be received by others. They centre on whether others might feel alienated, misunderstood, or unfairly judged. They worry whether it might spotlight them when they’d prefer to blend into the crowd. They centre optics, cohesion, tone, reputation, and process. I’ve sat in conversations around these things quietly listening and waiting for the moment when the people most at risk will enter the long list of reasons why not, and so often they don’t.

A Hierarchy of Concern

What gets revealed in that moment is a hierarchy of concern. I often speak about belonging as the act of widening the circle of concern. Here we see who is in that circle and who is not in these moments. So whilst the leader may believe they are being thoughtful, balanced, or responsible, what is felt on the other side is hardcore ‘othering’. That is why the moment lands so sharply.

And once that has been seen, it is hard to unsee. Because credibility in anti-racism or anti-oppression work is not built through strategy documents, statements or carefully worded commitments. It is built in the moments when racism becomes harder to name, riskier to confront, and less convenient to respond to. It is built when the conditions outside are already reorganising safety, trust, and belonging inside the organisation, and leaders have to decide whether they still recognise that as part of their leadership terrain.

What many are experiencing in organisations in these last couple of years are the limits of solidarity. The person listening experiences this instinct to protect calm before people and the organisation’s comfort before the dignity of those most affected as a moment of betrayal. That is a painful realisation, especially when it comes from people who have spoken the language of equity, inclusion, or justice in other settings. And no amount of rationalising as to why it cannot be different can be reassuring because who matters and who doesn’t has been made clear at a cellular level. The room no longer feels the same. The meaning of belonging changes. Trust becomes more conditional. And anti-racism work is now heard differently. More thinly. More sceptically. More as something the organisation can afford to care about, only when the conditions are favourable.

From Rupture to Repair

If there is a way through this, I think it starts there. With leaders becoming more aware of what they centre under pressure. With a greater willingness to move towards, rather than away from, those most impacted. With more visible anti-racist leadership, more transparency, more support, and more honesty about the discomfort these moments bring. None of that guarantees a perfect response - it’s unfair for anyone to expect this. But it does make a different response and solution possible. One that does less harm. One that gives people more reason to believe that the language of equity, justice, and belonging can still hold when conditions get harder, which they will. One where we can work together to figure things out.

We have 2 organisations keen to explore an in-house journey to move beyond white supremacy culture. This will be the first time we take our programme and design it support one organisation’s mission, culture and leadership. This feels really energising to me because it has the power to drive a much bigger cultural shift and spark new practices and initiatives in ways that aren’t possible when we focus on individual unlearning. Bring it on!

I’ve been really pleased to see the response to my article about charity engagement with Reform. In a week where Reform MPs have stated they will be removing the Equality Act, as well as threatening to remove Bangor University’s funding because of students’ refusal to debate with them, it feels important that we grapple with the possible realities and be better prepared. I’ve had some lovely private notes sharing how much food for thought it had given them. I’ll post a link to it again below.

Since joyful living is my intentional response to these times, I’m personally enjoying community building in new ways, both locally and internationally. This week, I joined an initiative where you go to dinner with a group of 8 strangers. I absolutely love social experiments like this, and I made friends with a local neighbour. I also recently learned about “care pods”, and they beautifully capture how my community is growing: through intentional requests to be part of each other’s support systems.

“A care pod holds us emotionally includes people who can sit with us in crisis, witness us without judgment, and support steadying the body when it shakes.These connections already exist in many communities, often informally, yet they can be strengthened intentionally”.

Speaking of being intentional, as I was (finally) setting up my home office, I found these wristbands in a box (image below) printed a very long time ago for workshop participants. I can’t remember whether I created these or if they were made while working with another partner, but I love the idea! Might revisit this with something more up-to-date for my work today. If you recognise them, let me know! I’d love to know where these came from!

Recently I came across an initiative called Wall Street Discriminates, It is an anonymous platform created by a group of former Citigroup managing directors as a safe space for women in financial services to share unfiltered accounts of discrimination, harassment, and systemic bias. What began as a response to patterns of women leaving major firms has grown into an archive of personal experiences aimed at surfacing broader systemic patterns of workplace harm rather than isolated incidents. They cover stories from many different places, including the USA and the UK. They’re not limited only to finance, although that sector is heavily featured. It’s a powerful attempt to surface a new conversation, which is why I’ve decided to write about it.

The Habits of Harm

Honestly it’s more than depressing to read.

Collectively they tell a bigger story of organisational culture and how power works. Of how institutions keeps harm happening, stops people challenging it and keep power with the most powerful (men).

Before we dive into that, it feels important to take time to understand the insidious nature of the harm they speak of.

There are plenty of examples of harassment, bullying, overt racism, sexism, homophobia and ageism. But what feels more prevalent are the deliberate and intentional uses of institutional power to control, limit or remove women whilst preserving the organisation’s innocence.

Women and marginalised people describe being strategically undermined, their credibility chipped away, their options narrowed, and their exits engineered through systems that look neutral on the surface. Performance processes are used to rewrite reality. HR procedures are used to redirect blame. Complaints trigger scrutiny of the person who raised them rather than the harm itself. It’s next-level coordinated corporate gaslighting, and it’s happening in lots and lots of places.

‘HR is weaponised to squash anyone speaking up. They train us to speak up, contact Ethics or HR, and when you do, everything is used against you.’

What white supremacy culture helps us see

As someone who thinks a lot about organisational culture, I’m left with the question: what lessons should we learn from this, especially if we’re serious about integrity?

When I use the term white supremacy culture here, I’m not only talking about overt racial hostility. I’m naming a set of organisational habits and norms that prioritise control, comfort, and hierarchy over truth, equity and care. It’s a system of power, then is shaped by patriarchy, defended by capitalism and it constrains most of us, but especially those who are not at the centre of the power wheel. If you want to know more about this, you can go to Tema Okun’s website about this. These habits show up with remarkable consistency across the stories.

Defensiveness: the institution always comes first

A recurring pattern is how quickly organisations move into defensive mode when harm is named. The priority becomes managing exposure rather than understanding impact. The system searches for ways to neutralise the issue: minimising what happened, reframing intent, or questioning credibility. Defensiveness allows the organisation to remain stable, even if people are harmed in the process.

“The audacity to ignore facts, not addressing issues raised, labelling emails as just jokes, misunderstandings or mistakes, then the retaliation and the pressure to quit.”

Power hoarding: inclusion without power shift

Power hoarding isn’t just “decision-making is concentrated”. It’s the deliberate keeping of discretion in the hands of a few so outcomes can be engineered without accountability. It shows who gets to define performance, who controls hiring and restructuring, who decides what counts as evidence, and who uses phrases like ‘poor performance’, ‘poor fit’, or ‘it’s just business’, to remove people.

This is also how institutions can perform inclusion while keeping power exactly where it is. I’ve seen it, as I’m sure you have too - the language changes, the structure doesn’t. But this one contributor shares just how intentional that was in the place where she worked:

‘Their DEI strategy, underpinned by fake interviews, does not advance inclusion. It weaponises diversity for optics while maintaining entrenched privilege. The cost is borne disproportionately by Black, Brown, female, and LGBTQ candidates, who are exploited for appearances and left with lasting professional scars. Wells Fargo must be held to account for a system that prioritises quarterly profits and appearances over fairness and equity. Until then, marginalised people will continue to be denied genuine access to opportunity under the pretence of diversity.’

Worship of the written word: HR controls the paper trail

Another defining trait is the elevation of documentation over lived experience. What matters is what is written down, not what actually happened. But crucially, the institution controls what gets written, how it gets framed, and what becomes “evidence”. In these stories, HR often sits at the centre of that control.

“Over time, I watched HR shift from being a safeguard to becoming a translator, converting bias, fear, and power struggles into clean language and compliant processes.”

That translation is where legitimacy is produced. Harm is recoded into neutral categories and labelled with terms such as ‘communication’, ‘conflict’, ‘fit’, or ‘misalignment’. Once that translation is included in the documentation, it becomes authoritative and factual. Once something is documented in institutional language, it follows people, shaping future decisions. It can outweigh years of contribution or consistent evidence, because the written record is treated as the truth.

This is also how coordinated gaslighting can happen. The written word becomes a weapon, not a safeguard.

Right to comfort: whose comfort matters?

The ‘right to comfort’ is often described as people wanting to avoid awkward conversations. These stories show that comfort is also a form of power.

In many of these accounts, the organisation treats discomfort for leaders and high performers as an emergency, while treating harm to women and marginalised people as manageable. That is a hierarchy of care. The urgent things are the discomfort of being confronted, of reputational risk, of a complaint landing on someone senior. These become crises. Meanwhile, the person harmed is asked to be patient, reasonable, measured, and collaborative. This is where white supremacy culture, patriarchy, and capitalism overlap. Patriarchy demands that women stay easy to manage. White supremacy culture rewards calm control and punishes emotional truth. Capitalism backs whatever keeps the machine running.

The women behind these stories often paid a high price for speaking up, whether it was about their own treatment or on behalf of others. Inconvenient truth-telling or whistleblowing is seen as a risk to the system and is shut down and managed. There are no conditions in these organisations that support speaking up, and all cultural and leadership messages are to stay in your lane.

‘I demanded a chance to defend myself. Denied. My boss repeated the script: ‘The decision has been made. Call HR with any questions.’

Bravery is not a solution to systemic harm

There are many more examples of other traits laid out in these accounts, but for now I’ll stop there. What’s clear is that if the harm is institutional, solutions can’t rely on individuals being braver inside a system that punishes bravery, although there is some deeper personal work to be done to shift these norms being so readily accepted and reinforced.. The lever for lasting change is governance: reducing discretion, breaking retaliation pathways, increasing transparency and accountability mechanisms and making patterns visible and costly.

I’ll be following this initiative with interest, keen to see what it does next in taking this evidence of patterns and institutional harm into meaningful change in this sector.

The response below to the stories really moved me. What’s clear is that the solution isn’t only about men - there’s also women upholding and reinforcing these dynamics too, but it will need this kind of collective introspection to begin a journey of meaningful change.

“As a man my head hangs in shame when I read about these experiences of so many women across organisations, levels and geographies. What is it with us men that is forcing such behaviour? Do we achieve a sense of accomplishment by harassing the other gender or we have lost the sense of right and wrong?

This calls for deep introspection and course correction on our part. Both organisations and family set ups have an important role to play. If teach our kids from an early age to respect women at home a lot will be achieved. Organisations need to practice meritocracy and ‘old boys clubs’ need to be eliminated totally. Hopefully we can make the society a better place for everyone to coexist respectfully”.

I even saw this play out again in another form this week while using an AI tool to draft a piece, ironically, on the silencing around institutional cultures of misogyny in the finance sector (more on this soon). It kept trying to water down the analysis, nudging me toward caution and institutional comfort. I literally felt like I was being gaslighted by a man, which was a replica of what I was actually writing about! Oh, the work, there is SO much to do.

But back to my weekly reflections. From now on, I will also share my ‘Reflections in Practice’ notes here every Friday as a separate thread. I think these offer important insights into leadership, culture, ethics, integrity, anti-racism and EDI in general, and especially at this time.

Here’s my 5th Reflections in Practice in full:

Reflections in Practice #5

I watched a really moving interview this week, featuring Marcia Howard, one of the central community organisers in Minnesota. It’s not an easy watch, but the interviewer takes such care to create a space where Marcia can share the lived reality of the last few weeks. It feels important for people to really understand the levels of racism and white supremacy that are being experienced and normalised. She also shares how all kinds of leaders, groups, and organisations are coming together with neighbours to counter this. It’s a really powerful conversation.

I think the sense of ‘history repeating itself’ might be part of why we’re seeing growing interest in our Beyond White Supremacy Culture programme. People are shifting from feeling powerless to recognising the one thing they can always influence: how they behave, make choices, challenge harm, and move from passive concern to active solidarity. Because systems are made of people, it’s in everyday actions and decisions that systems are maintained or interrupted. I’ve felt really encouraged by how we’ve seen people step forward from journalism, the arts, charity, consultancy, health and education sectors, and show interest in unlearning.

Although this is still a minority group, which is a worry. I think for many marginalised folk we feel alot of uncertainty in the future right now. I had a coaching session last week to discuss my own strategies for managing this, and I am living in a country that is openly welcoming immigrants and speaking out against a genocide. A colleague in the US shared how someone they knew was barely leaving their university dorm. Another in my community shared how the level of trans hate they were experiencing was the worst they’ve ever known.

In a couple of projects I’m in right now, we’ve been talking about the UK and the rise of the hard right and what it means across sectors. Just yesterday, someone said they were alarmed by how little attention this is getting inside organisations, as if it’s ‘outside’ the workplace rather than an operating condition shaping people’s safety, trust, and willingness to speak. We’re already seeing organised mobilisation spill into sector spaces, from conservation and sustainability to education, food and farming, and civil society.

I shared this video with a client this week, as a reminder of what true solidarity actually is. These wise words from Oli Mould feel like the right ending for this week’s reflection.

It’s been a little while since I’ve written. In part because of the constant barrage of news, so often connected to integrity gaps - it takes its toll. This year, I’ve had to redesign how I’m personally resourcing and supporting my energy levels because the old strategies weren't cutting it. Managing my online time has become a higher priority for me as an intentional part of my wellbeing toolkit.

We are living in times where dehumanisation, the rise of authoritarianism and racist xenophobia are becoming normalised. It can, temporarily, knock you off your game. But …I’m back and with new energy, focus and perspective, and it’s exactly this experience that has inspired this piece of writing today.

Last week, I had a conversation with a charity leader supporting women of colour, particularly first- and second-generation immigrants. They shared their observations about the well-being of these women following the riots in the UK and the huge impact that moment back in summer 2024 had on their community.

We spoke at length about what we might describe as a “Matrix moment”, where two completely different realities were now being lived side by side in their community.

The women of colour who now live in real fear for their safety are no longer able to trust their neighbours. They are experiencing an increase in overt racism and xenophobia and noticing markedly different treatment by doctors, police and other services.

And their white neighbours, fellow residents and colleagues, for whom the riots feel like a distant memory. Perhaps they were briefly reminded of them with the recent arrival of the flags. Still, it doesn’t preoccupy them, and their attention isn’t on the sustained impacts of the moment, nor on how it affected the targeted people. Possibly that’s because they don’t see themselves as part of the problem, so it’s not something that needs to involve or concern them.

The gap between these two versions of reality is the thing I want to talk about. Let’s call it the integrity gap - it is a place of unseen, unacknowledged pain.

An integrity gap is the space between what people, organisations or communities say they value and how they actually behave. It means the truth of people’s lived experience doesn’t match the publicly upheld version of reality, and the people living the truth pay the price.

And because of this, integrity gaps create different realities:

• one group still living the impact,

• another group moving on or refusing to see it altogether,

• no shared naming of what actually happened,

• and an external narrative that either slowly erases or fails to notice it at all

We see and experience integrity gaps in many ways in workplaces. I’ve seen all kinds over the years. Organisations focused on supporting women being bullied, yet struggling with their own internal bullying culture. External commitments to EDI are made yet the business continues to protect senior leaders causing harm. Those who cite transparency as a value, except not when a whistleblower speaks up. Those in the sector focused on enabling social mobility, yet they underpay and never promote working-class team members.

Integrity gaps are bad for your health!

Some integrity gaps we can live with. Maybe we can make a trade-off because, on balance, there is enough value or investment in the relationship or sufficient trust that patience will be worth it. But sometimes we can’t live with them, and they become damaging to our health and wellbeing.

Years ago, I worked in a consultancy that was toxic inside but celebrated outside. No one wanted to hear what was actually happening, because it didn’t fit their romantic view of the brand. I burned out and left as a result, and it took me a long time to overcome the trauma of that sustained rupture. Integrity gaps literally make you sick, in a multitude of ways:

Your body absorbs the harm first

Integrity gaps land physically before anything else - your body registers the rupture instantly, even when others don’t. Whether it’s an integrity gap that comes about because of an event or moment, or it’s revealed over time, the somatic shock and deepening is really felt. Our safety systems no longer feel safe, because what we thought we knew about what people or organisations cared about can no longer be trusted. That can feel like loneliness or even like a betrayal, especially when it’s an integrity gap that deeply compromises our values.

Your reality is dismissed or unseen

Because others don’t register the rupture, you’re left doing all the emotional and cognitive work, naming it to yourself, making sense of it, holding the contradictions, navigating the silence. You’re living one reality while those around you move through a more comfortable or unchallenged one, and you have to figure out how you’ll continue to be in a relationship with people who don’t see or acknowledge what you’re going through. That can feel heavy and draining - needing to sit with your own compromised personal values, the feeling of invisibility, or the challenge of having to put your pain away in service of someone else’s comfort.

Trust and safety become challenging

When people can’t (or won’t) see what happened, a shift takes place. For some, this shift looks like becoming more cautious around a particular person - less open, less trusting, less willing to be vulnerable. For others, it shows up as a growing scepticism toward a team, an organisation, or even a wider system. It’s not that you want to lose faith; it’s that your body and your experience make it harder to hold onto the belief that you will be protected or heard or understood.. Distance replaces openness.

You grieve what you thought you were part of

Integrity gaps reveal truths you didn’t want to learn about people, organisations, or systems. You grieve the imagined alignment, solidarity, or shared values you believed were real. You realise the reality you were living in wasn’t the one others were committed to. This has been a hard one personally this year. Seeing the ease with which so much violence and hate can be justified through policy and law, normalised through claims of pride or protection. And also having to dig deep to stay in relationship with people who don’t see the integrity gaps I experience or care about, and figuring out how to do that with compassion and love.

Where Do We Go From Here?

If integrity gaps create different realities, then closing those gaps depends on a shared narrative. This has to make space for multiple truths to exist within it, rather than replacing one narrative with another. I also believe that healing is part of the journey towards this - that when we don’t make space for healing and move too quickly to a solution, the integrity gaps don’t have the time, space, and attention needed to properly repair, and for new shoots of recovery to take hold.

That’s the work ahead of us. We need spaces where people can understand the impact of what they don’t see. And we need practices that help us build alignment again, centred on what is real, what is happening, and what it costs people.

I’m spending more of my time next year building the tools and conversations that help us do exactly that because when we can see the same thing at the same time, we can begin to act together.

More on that soon.

A Turning Point for Leadership

This week has been a sobering wake-up call for many. Whether one is just turning towards a new emerging reality or has feared it coming to fruition for some time, there’s been no shortage of evidence that we have arrived in a new moment.

This feels like a turning point for leadership, where a choice needs to be made. Do you move towards leadership better suited to the realities of a world where everything has become politicised and the blurring of small and big P politics needs careful navigation and strategic response? Or do you remain in a state of denial that feeds on outdated ideas that it is possible to keep personal and professional, politics and business, in separate spheres?

This article explores how today’s shifting and uncertain ground calls us to lean more firmly into our values and principles. It requires us to be intentional about the paths we choose as leaders and organisations, and to think critically about how we operate. We are being asked to choose if we are ready to move from compliance to courage, placing justice and solidarity at the centre of decisions, whether commercially driven or tied to charitable objectives. There’s an urgency to get there, but it needs to be considered and thought about too.

This feels like a more directive piece than I’d usually write - and that perhaps reflects my own need to see the growth of a movement that brings leadership fit for these times, and my concern that it feels very lacking. I’m very aware of the privilege I hold through my vantage point - British mixed race woman living in Barcelona, away from the UK. Living in a place that is doing a better job of fighting the rise of fascism, is very aware of its recent authoritarian past and is currently standing up against a genocide. I am responsible for using my position, energy and distance to support and guide others well.

New Times for Solidarity and Safety

It’s a distressing time for anyone with a marginalised identity, facing real far-right threats to safety and freedom. People in my community are in a state of hyper-vigilance, not knowing who to trust. At the same time, leaders are struck by a new kind of paralysis: the desire to hold together a broad mix of people narrows options for action, and the fear of alienating one group leaves them trapped in visible inaction, which is upsetting and isolating to those most in need of support.

Whether leaders choose silence or visible solidarity, the ideas being promoted by the far right are already part of everyday reality. Those views walk into offices, factories, schools, and shops, newly emboldened. Staff see them on their timelines, hear them in corridors, and feel them in the risks to their own safety. What once might have been dismissed as fringe rhetoric now has the potential to shape the everyday workplace climate that leaders must manage.

For many, we are talking about physical safety, not just psychological. The rise of violent racist attacks feels heavy in the air. Many people are living with a new kind of uncertainty, not knowing which colleagues might have been on the rally, what their real views are on immigration (and is it coded racism?), whether they care about diversity or multiculturalism, and what they really think about Islam. That’s alot to carry - a constant state of vigilance, scanning for clues of safety and concern for whether the person sitting next to them believes they “deserve” to belong.

Belonging cannot be reduced to simply “feeling included” in teams right now; it has to mean knowing you will be backed, protected, and defended if you are targeted. Solidarity is no longer symbolic; it’s something you do, not just say, by showing how safety and belonging are priorities at work. Leaders who fail to recognise this risk leaving staff exposed and isolated at precisely the moment they most need reassurance that they are not alone.

And there is a reckoning to be done to reconnect with the disenfranchised and disconnected, those who’ve lost trust in institutions and leaders, those who feel that stories of belonging do not include them. The work of the Othering Belonging Institute has always talked about belonging needing to ‘expand the circle of concern’ and I think that’s a good starting point for leaders reflecting on how they build belonging in organisations that gives everyone agency and a voice.

The Myth of Political Neutrality at Work

Politics has always been in the workplace, despite the leadership myth that they haven’t. We’ve heard this mantra for decades: Politics doesn’t belong at work. It sounded like wisdom - a way to preserve professionalism, reduce risk, avoid conflict and maintain focus on the job at hand. However, this faux separation only ever worked for people whose working lives were not impacted by politics. Anyone facing racism, misogyny, homophobia or ableism does not have that luxury - and the lived reality of these systems of oppression impacts performance, wellbeing, progress, psychological safety, visibility, job security, and pay - so both Politics and politics are felt in everyday tangible ways.

One reason leaders ask that politics stay outside of workplaces is that neutrality feels safer. It promises calm, cohesion, and protection from conflict. But what happens when staff see a stronger connection between their work and politics than you do, and being asked to strip that back feels like a challenge to their personal expression or identity?

Inside organisations, politics shows up in what staff are allowed, or not allowed, to say and do. I’ve heard of people who have been told not to wear T-shirts or jewellery with political messages, have been encouraged to leave because of their visible support for Palestine on LinkedIn, or have been dismissed for highlighting organisational practices or supplier relationships that are misaligned with claimed values of justice and equity. These restrictions are framed as “keeping politics out of work,” but the effect is the opposite: they reveal whose politics is seen as disruptive, and whose is allowed to pass as normal. For those silenced, the message is clear: your safety and identity are negotiable. And for leaders, the cost is growing distrust and a culture where solidarity fractures along the very lines they hoped to hold together.

But this raises the more difficult question that I’m sure has been on people’s minds: what about when the politics being expressed actively undermines the safety or dignity of others? What if someone comes to work in a Make Britain Great Again or Reform UK T-shirt? The answer cannot be to pretend this is the same as a badge of solidarity or a call for justice. One set of politics asserts belonging and survival; the other denies it. Leaders must be clear that workplaces are communities built on inclusion and respect. Free expression cannot extend to views that strip others of safety.

So where does that leave us?

The way through is not a blanket ban on politics, which only deepens distrust and disproportionately silences those already marginalised.

Instead, leaders need to draw a principled line: support for justice, equity, and belonging must be protected, while expression that denies the dignity of colleagues cannot be allowed to stand. This is not about “letting politics in” but about recognising that politics is already here, and choosing to anchor organisational life in values that safeguard everyone’s right to belong.

Clarity or Complicity?

The politicisation we see inside organisations is mirrored outside them. The mood of communities, citizens, and consumers has shifted: people are becoming more politicised, vocal, and willing to hold organisations accountable. Those who respond with clarity and integrity are building deeper trust and connection. Those who retreat into silence or denial are increasingly boycotted, criticised, or left behind.

Some organisations and artists are showing what it looks like to lead with clarity. At Ben & Jerry’s, activism has long been part of the brand’s DNA, with campaigns on racial justice, climate, and Palestine continuing even as co-founder Jerry Greenfield has stepped back, proof that values can outlast individuals when they are embedded deeply enough. Lush has taken a similarly principled approach by closing stores in solidarity with Gaza, framing the move not as marketing but as integrity in action. That same refusal to separate art, politics, and commerce drove Massive Attack to withdraw their music from Spotify, citing its founder's investment in militarised AI as an ethical issue. And beyond this, movements like BDS continue to mobilise collective consumer pressure, raising a collective conscientiousness about the link between commerce and politics and the ethical trade-offs placing profits over human rights.

But many organisations are not rising to this moment, and that includes charities. In the UK, while charities are legally barred from party politics, they are equally permitted, and often required, to campaign on issues that further their charitable purpose. Too often, leaders use charitable objects as a shield for silence, retreating from clarity even when their missions are rooted in justice. Yet communities expect more: they look to charities not only for services but for solidarity, voice, and moral leadership. There are many ways to act with integrity without breaching charity law - but a lack of prioritisation, creativity, and courage to explore them meaningfully is hurting the sector’s relevance. When organisations whose very purpose is to challenge injustice fall back into silence, the gap is all the more glaring.

A Choice for Leaders: Neutrality or Courage?

The big story is about what leaders choose when politics walks through the door:

• Do they default to neutrality, control, and comfort?

• Or do they bring moral clarity, solidarity, and courage?

Like I said at the start, this feels like a turning point for leaders and organisations to decide how they want to show up. Like any choice, it needs reflection, discussion, strategic thinking, and a set of values and principles to guide us toward action. If we choose to evolve our leadership to meet the moment, it will also mean growing the skills that help us get there.

I’ll leave you with some questions to reflect on as this week comes to a close:

• Are we truly aligned on what matters most, or are we papering over differences?

• Where are the conflict lines in our leadership team and are we naming them?

• Are we talking about what these issues mean for our organisation?

• How are our values helping us be ready to act with clarity on complex issues?

• What strategies do we have for when far-right ideas impact our work?

• What is our updated story of belonging and fairness at work?

• What conversations are we avoiding because they feel messy or political?

• Do we know what solidarity looks like, and can every leader answer this?

• If we were judged only by our actions this week, what would staff say?

If these ideas and reflections speak to you, you might want to check out our upcoming Leading on the Line programme. Take care everyone x

Last week I was in conversation with a leader who asked me:

“What does good use of self as a leader look like when authoritarianism and fascism are right on our doorstep?

It was the first time I had such a focused conversation about leadership intentionality for this specific moment. But, I suspect many people are asking similar questions about what good leadership looks like from here, whether these are asked aloud or pondered silently. We’re in a deepening integrity crisis, where leaders’ personal value systems are out of sync with what feels possible or permissible in organisational contexts. We’re short on role models leading the way, sharing their best practices for others to follow. And much of what we have learned about leadership so far doesn’t feel fit for purpose. This is less about finding a voice to speak up, declaring what you are ‘for’ or ‘against,’ and more about a fundamental reassessment of how to lead when authoritarian, fascist, and racist practices are becoming normalised.

Authoritarianism Is Not Abstract

I don’t know about you, but my LinkedIn feed is full of people grappling with what this means for their personal safety, belonging, community cohesion and, more existentially, for Britain's future. I’m seeing people unsure about how to find steady ground as consultants, and I’m feeling the unease of leaders who worry that what they say isn’t enough. We’re all seeing the stories that are reinforcing a new reality that hate and racial abuse are spilling into everyday life, along with a divisive nationalism visible in the rise of flags.

We’re in times of multiple truths - there are people in need of pride and recognition, fear of difference and blame of the other is being stoked and encouraged, the seductive power of white supremacy culture growing, belonging has become increasingly conditional and dissent is seen as a problem to be silenced and managed when it highlights inconvenient truths (800+ arrests at a protest against genocide, 24 for a racist, nationalist one).

Leaders, authoritarian and fascist dynamics are not abstract risks happening somewhere else. They are shaping the environment your people move through every day. The question is not whether these dynamics will surface in your workplace, but what you will do when they do. How will you bring your leadership - your values, voice, and actions - to respond with integrity when they do.

Why This Matters for Leaders in Social Change

For those working, in or caring about, social change, social cohesion, or social justice, this context cannot be treated as ‘political noise’ outside of organisations. These dynamics shape the air our people breathe. They determine how safe staff feel to bring their full identities into work, whether conversations about justice or global solidarity are welcomed or silenced, how quickly leaders retreat into a posture of ‘neutrality’ when funders, politicians or media stir fear, and how communities read our signals - as gestures of solidarity or as signs of exclusion?

For leaders, the challenge is this - authoritarianism thrives on fear, obedience, and silence. Social change and justice work depend on courage, dialogue, and solidarity. You cannot serve both. Choosing integrity means resisting the pull of authoritarian logics, even, and especially, when doing so is uncomfortable.

The dead leadership ideas that walk amongst us

I recall coming across a brilliant piece of research last year that discussed the phenomenon of zombie leadership, which feels particularly pertinent to return to right now. It’s the concept that modern leaders are guided, consciously or unconsciously, by dead leadership ideas that no longer feel fit for purpose. Haslam, Alvesson & Reicher (2024) call these the “dead ideas that still walk among us” - myths such as the belief that the heroic lone leader will save us, that leadership is an inborn trait that only some of us have, or that leaders are inherently morally good and are deserving of (unquestioning) follow-ship.

These zombie ideas keep organisations hooked on leaders who perform certainty, charisma, or control, even when evidence shows these qualities often reproduce inequality, silence dissent, and, in themselves, have an authoritarian quality.

In practice, Zombie leadership can look like:

• Performative values: statements without action, carefully polished comms while injustice goes unnamed

• Fear-driven avoidance: protecting comfort, funders, or reputation at the expense of moral courage

• Disconnected authority: leaders insulated from staff experiences, who speak for but not with their people

• Surface-level fixes: restructuring or culture initiatives that avoid reckoning with deeper wounds or challenges

What worries me especially is that when the wider culture is drifting toward authoritarianism, these dead ideas do more than hold us back - they actually make us complicit. They have trained us to value control over courage, performance over presence, and comfort over integrity. So, when we, as leaders, feel uncertain or afraid, the seductive power of these age-old ideas is far greater than stepping out with braver alternatives.

Integrity-Led Leadership in a Time of Threat

That client’s question has stayed with me, and we talked about how important it is to take an existential step back to be able to connect to the question of how to use ourselves best - our voice, our presence, our positionality, our values and our daily practices - in ways that create meaningful change.

The alternative isn’t clearly defined, but it’s rooted in integrity, guided by values and informed by anti-supremacy principles to forge a different approach.

It recognises that leadership is not the preserve of a chosen few but the practice of the many, self leadership is expected and is not only the preserve of the exec. It is about showing up in ways people can see and feel: leading from values, learning out loud, speaking into moments of injustice, even when it is uncomfortable. It understands that the personal is political, that power is something to be examined and shared, and that relationships, not grand gestures, are the real infrastructure of change. It treats care and connection not as soft extras but as the very ground of leadership. And when ruptures happen, as they inevitably do, it insists on repair and accountability rather than hiding behind authority or polishing the façade.

This kind of leadership is a practice. And more than ever, we need to see more of it.

Long-Termism and Your Theory of Change

Authoritarianism thrives on urgency and fear. It wants leaders stuck in fight-or-flight, reacting rather than intentionally being in a steady flow of reflection and intentional action.

In my client conversation, we talked about the importance of shifting our mindset to long-termism. Taking the long view as a way of both retaining perspective and giving the possibility for imagination and active hope. When our focus is too near-term, our frame for change also becomes limited, making it harder to feel grounded in our leadership. This means stretching our thinking over a longer time frame to give it appropriate resources, energy and investment.

The current situation is not a quick fix, and it asks us to resist falling into panic mode, trying to make ‘things go away’. I’ve talked before about cathedral thinking, and I still find that framing helpful in giving perspective to the change journey and what’s required to get there. Long-termism means recognising that authoritarian drift is a generational challenge, not just a one-off incident, and committing to building resilience and courage for the long journey is what’s required.

But long-termism is not enough. Leaders also need clarity about their own theory of change, which is about aligning beliefs about change with the energy and skills they have to facilitate that shift from their sphere of influence:

• Where do I believe meaningful change begins - in policy, culture, relationships, or direct action?

• What kinds of change work best align with my skills and positional power?

• Where do I have real influence, and how can I best use it?

• How do I stay rooted in my long-term vision when the pressure of short-term fear is louder?

My own theory took shape when I realised that systems change comes about by focusing on relational change. I hold close Adrienne Maree Brown’s insight that “small is all.” - it’s the small actions that ladder up into something greater, with lasting sustainability. Change rooted in relational change - how we speak to one another, the courage we model in front of colleagues, the trust we rebuild conversation by conversation - is where we witness it as real. Every shift in relationship is a seed of cultural change, and over time, those seeds create the garden we’ve been trying to nurture into reality. Once I connected to that, the whole energy of my work around systems change shifted.

When leaders combine long-termism with a clear theory of change, they are less likely to collapse into reactivity or retreat. They can act with integrity and purpose.

Healing leaders last longer

Good use of self begins with noticing that leadership wellbeing for these times also needs to look different. Self care and community care are both important ingredients. Taking care of nervous system regulation matters more if we want to be able to bring courage, hope, inspiration and longevity. This means attending more deeply to when fear is in the driving seat of decisions and actions, because more of our lives are spent in a context where anxiety is the norm.

This is where a resourcing plan comes in. Every leader needs one. It’s not indulgence; it’s survival. It asks:

• What practices return me to myself when fear hijacks my nervous system?

• Who are the people I can call for perspective and truth-telling?

• What boundaries protect my energy and integrity so I can keep leading?

• Where do I go for reflection and inspiration?

• What is the community I need to build for these times?

Operating from a healed place is how leaders avoid replicating the behaviours that authoritarianism thrives on.

Practising Leadership When It Matters Most

We are living through a time when leadership is being tested at every level. The alternative is not found in heroic gestures or polished statements, but in the daily practice of integrity: showing up, naming what is true, repairing when harm is done, and keeping our leadership alive, relational, and human.

There is no map for this. Each of us has to locate our own theory of change, our own resourcing practices, and our own commitments to solidarity. But what we share is the responsibility to resist the pull of authoritarian logics, to refuse fear as the driver of our choices, and instead to lean into courage, care, and accountability.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has reflections, insights, or offerings in response to this piece. What questions or concerns are keeping you awake at night? What’s supporting you and what support is missing?

This week I saw someone who had built a huge career from talking about people shifting from mindless consumerism into active citizenship, speak out on Palestine for the first time. It was a vulnerable share about their sense of powerlessness, not knowing what to say or do to make a difference, and how they have reached a point where they simply couldn’t stay silent anymore. I was a little taken aback to know this was the first time they were using their voice and platform because when I think of their mission, it seemed obvious to me that they would have had a point of view on this. They literally advocate for collective action and solidarity, hope over cynicism, institutional accountability and community empowerment. It was a strong reminder of how powerfully supremacy culture can silence the best of us. I share this not to judge them in any way, but to highlight just how challenging closing the integrity gap can be in moments when the shit really hits the fan.

On the same day, we saw a masterclass in leadership integrity. The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, shared a renewed set of sanctions and clarified their stance on Israel. In explaining their rationale, he acknowledged that Spain’s actions probably won’t fix things but can play a small part in making change happen, and for this there was huge value.

“We know that all those measures won’t be enough to stop the invasion or the war crimes. But we hope that they will serve to add to the pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government, to alleviate some of the suffering of the Palestinian population, and to let the Spanish people know that their country was on the right side of history when it came to one of the most infamous episodes of the 21st century.”

As a less influential country in the context of this genocide, its decision may or may not be a catalyst to wider action, but it certainly comes from a place of being values aligned at a time when so few can resolve the dissonance. As a resident of this beautiful country, I honestly couldn’t have felt more proud to have my values represented in this way. There are many things people say this government doesn’t get right - and that is the thing about integrity - it doesn’t mean behaving in complete perfection and never making mistakes. It’s how we show up to what’s right in front of us, in that moment. Letting the Spanish people know that we acted on the right side of history was one of the most powerful things I’ve heard any leaders say in recent times, and coming back to my first example, I wonder what role the will of the Spanish people, in their increasingly vocal protest of Israel, had on his decision to step up the sanctions.

Sanchez was able to side-step the pressure that comes from white supremacy culture in a way that our first guy could not. In my experience, the right to comfort is one of the biggest challenges of our time, keeping people in check and towing the party line.

Here’s how it works:

It Prioritises dominant-group feelings

Fear of ‘making others uncomfortable’ keeps many quiet. Whether it’s funders, employers, or peers, the imagined discomfort of those in power is placed above the urgency of naming genocide and mass displacement.

We Tone police ourselves

People edit their language so that instead of speaking with moral clarity, grief, or outrage, they try to sound ‘measured’, ‘unemotional’ and ‘reasonable’. In doing so, they replicate the same tone-policing that has long been used to dismiss calls for justice.

Workplace and institutions avoid conflict

Workplaces, charities, and universities discourage open conversation about Palestine under the guise of neutrality. Those inside these systems absorb the message and choose silence rather than risk reputational or professional consequences.

We centre comfort over harm to others

A focus on the awkwardness of Western audiences displaces the catastrophic reality of bombings, starvation, and mass death. The hierarchy of concern becomes protecting feelings here instead of acknowledging violence there, and it conveys a reality of how we rank humans, putting the West and its comfort at the top.

There is internalised fragility in the room

Individuals, especially those with racial or social privilege, internalise the belief that their discomfort with speaking up is evidence that silence is safer. When the language of ‘feeling triggered’ or ‘protecting my wellbeing’ is used to justify avoidance of hard truths, fragility is repackaged as self-care. That fragility then reproduces the system: silence becomes complicity.

Finding Courage

If silence reflects the pull of the right to comfort, integrity requires us to act differently. Integrity is the practice of aligning what we know to be true and how we choose to show up. The first step is to name where the integrity gap lives, and here are some questions that might support you with that.

• Discomfort as signal: When I feel uneasy speaking about Palestine, do I interpret that discomfort as a reason to stay silent, or as a signal to act differently?

• Solidarity as responsibility: Do I see solidarity with Palestinians as someone else’s job, or as a responsibility that comes with my values and privilege?

• Institutional alignment: How do I respond when my organisation or community hides behind ‘neutrality’? Do I go along with it, or do I name or challenge it?

• Western fragility: What patterns do I notice in myself to justify avoidance or inaction, or to not stay present with hard truths?

• Community practice: Who are the people I can lean on to practice truth-telling, and how am I building or joining networks that make speaking up more possible?

I especially love this last offering - being a part of the farewell to the Global flotilla last weekend gave me such a boost of clarity and courage, it’s personally given me a lot of thought about the importance of regular moments of self care for me right now is being in spaces where speaking about these issues is normalised, encouraged and taking action with what I have is valued.

One such place that is doing that for me right now is the Action Hour for Gaza, in association with Business Leaders for Peace. You can find out more about this here.

Rupture is inevitable. No organisation, leader, or movement can live perfectly in alignment with its values all the time. Most organisations will face moments when the integrity of their mission, leaders, or culture is shaken. Sometimes, it happens in public, perhaps an organisation or a leader being called out for hypocrisy, or being exposed for saying one thing and doing another. Other times it happens inside teams, where internal practices, decisions and choices reveal misalignment with values, raise questions about the mission or undermine core principles.

In my experience, integrity challenges cut deepest when belief in the mission is high. In our work alongside third sector and positive impact businesses, people join not just for a job but because the cause is closely connected to personal values and identity. They often see the organisation as a place to practice these convictions.

They chose to be here because of the integrity this organisation brings to how they achieve their mission - perhaps working on root causes and not being stuck on the symptoms, perhaps because of the comprehensive way they’ve integrated race equity into their organisation and culture, perhaps because of the powerful reputation of a founder or brand ambassador and their impact, or perhaps because of the boldness in which they are disrupting and going about change.

When integrity ruptures occur in that context - when promises fracture, or actions contradict the stated values - the impact is visceral. It isn’t just professional disappointment. It feels existential, as if a part of their own integrity has been betrayed.

The Faces of Organisational Integrity Ruptures

It wasn’t until I sat down to write this article that I realised just how many projects we’ve worked on have involved integrity ruptures. We’ve often been called in once an ‘us’ and ‘them’ divide has started, and the leadership team needs support to repair and heal. This is a challenging time to come in as a consultant. It needs a great deal of care to ensure that you are seen from the outset as someone with real integrity, someone to be trusted - but that’s probably a whole other piece of writing on its own.

Here are some of the themes that have stood out to us about integrity ruptures and the contexts in which they arise.

Bold Feminism, Practices of Oppression

When an organisation’s external brand or voice is strongly rooted in feminist principles - intersectional feminist values, speaking truth to power, and focusing on solving root causes - but in a critical moment, leadership undermines this with racism, misogyny or patriarchal behaviours of dominance, control or colonial thinking, it can be extremely challenging. I’ve seen this rupture occur a few times in different contexts, and it cuts to the core because the very ethos they project is undermined from within.

Equity Outside, Inequity Inside

When an organisation’s mission is to support Black communities to overcome economic hardship, yet inside the organisation Black staff feel they are underpaid and undervalued the integrity rupture feels deeply personal. It’s confronting when externally there’s been strong messaging about anti-racist practice, and that was part of what drew you in, but internally, teams are under-equipped to handle occurrences of racism, however it manifests. This gap between external promise and internal practice makes the harm especially hard to navigate, because it can feel like intentional gaslighting when usually it’s a mix of unintentional carelessness - that comes from inaction, missed opportunity and lack of attention.

Silenced/ing on Palestine

When teams want to speak or act on global injustices, such as Palestine, and leaders are seen to choose silence or actively silence others, relationships can start to break down. In our experience, it becomes an integrity rupture when there was a belief - because of organisational values, anti-oppression ethos, leadership reputation - that we would behave differently.

For some, the rupture is quiet but devastating: a total loss of respect for their organisation’s credibility because it stayed silent, leading to growing disconnection. For others, the rupture comes after they try to instigate conversations or explore organisational action, only to be shut down by leadership. Either way, the effect is the same: painful divides open up, and the integrity of the organisation as a place of moral courage is profoundly undermined.

Global Brand, Colonial Practice

When a global organisation is celebrated for leadership on social change - whether in environmentalism, women’s empowerment, or international development - yet its benefits, policies, and priorities are designed primarily for Northern Europe, with European values as the assumed norm, we have the conditions for integrity ruptures.

As calls for decolonisation grow louder, this systemic integrity gap is becoming more visible and more impactful. Organisations that speak with global authority but fail to reckon with colonial legacies are steadily losing credibility. When what is preached globally is contradicted internally, trust in the mission and its leaders begins to unravel.

Poor Response to Complaints

When racism complaints are mishandled or minimised until they spill into public view, this has alot of potential to create ruptures The harm lies not only in the original incident but in the response. In fact, it’s the stories of how it was handled that stay strongest in organisational memory. We’ve had more than one client who has a memory of ‘the meeting’ and everyone knows the deep context and impact of this shorthand, whether they were in that meeting or not. The rupture is a result of the organisation’s failure to protect staff and stand by its values, revealing that its integrity falters when courage is most required.

Organisational Trauma and Wounds

If not handled quickly and effectively, ruptures become organisational wounds. I love the work of Patricia Vivian and Shana Hormann, who wrote a book about their observations on this topic - they describe organisational trauma as a collective wounding that overwhelms an organisation’s protective capacity, whether from a single event or repeated harm.

When wounds form, organisations can close in on themselves, develop amnesia about their stated values, or fracture into us versus them. Integrity collapses into camps, and what once held people together is pulled apart.

Rupture and Repair

Deb Dana, working from a nervous system perspective, names rupture as the breaking of trust or connection, an event that disrupts a sense of safety. Repair is the act of restoring that connection through acknowledgement, accountability, and visible change.

Rupture is a felt experience, we feel it in our body. And following that, we lose a sense of safety we once had, and our neuroception, the nervous system’s radar for safety and danger, becomes hyper-alert. People begin scanning for risk, questioning every signal, bracing for harm. In organisational life this looks like mistrust of leadership statements, suspicion of new initiatives, and hypersensitivity to perceived slights or exclusions.

This is why repair is so hard. Once safety has been challenged and values betrayed, every attempt at rebuilding trust is filtered through a system on high alert. Leaders often mistake this for resistance or cynicism, when in fact it is the body’s survival response to betrayal.

Why the Pain Runs Deep

The rupture of organisational integrity destabilises more than trust in leaders. It compromises people’s values, the very reason they joined. When it falters, it feels existential: If the organisation I trusted to live these values cannot uphold them, what does that mean for me?

The Way Back: Stages of Repair

Drawing from both organisational practice and trauma-informed work, I see five stages leaders can lean into when trust has been broken:

This cycle is not linear. Organisations may circle back through these stages more than once. But each loop, if entered with courage, strengthens the collective fabric rather than fraying it further.

Practice Prompt: Integrity Check-In

I’m curious to hear where you see integrity ruptures in your work, and what you’ve seen that helps move towards repair and healing.

I’ve put together a set of questions that might be helpful when considering how to move through the integrity repair cycle. I’d love to know how they support you.

Ho

1. Naming

• What truth about a rupture or wound am I avoiding naming out loud?

2. Listening

• Who needs to be heard in this moment, without me rushing to fix or defend?

3. Owning

• Where is my responsibility in this rupture, and what do I need to own clearly?

4. Repairing

• What visible action or shift would show we are serious about making this right?

5. Restoring Relationship

• How can we move at the speed of trust to ensure lasting repair?

Getting the story straight

And finally, we are off with Substack. I’ve been hesitant about bringing an additional tech platform into my life, at a time when I’m trying to simplify life and get back to more analogue connections with folk.

When I set this page up back in March, I began with the title' How to live a vital life’. Vitality, in its core meaning, refers to the quality of being fully alive in all aspects of one's self. I had envisaged it as more of a personal space to unpack ideas about living in alignment with values, connecting to sources of energy and inspiration, and as a tool for personal resilience. In honesty, it was more for me than for you!

But as time passed, I realised that this framing wasn’t quite right for what I felt called to write and share about. It didn’t make enough space to be with the messiness, the complexity or the grief we’re experiencing. I didn’t want to separate personal from professional - I wanted a place to write as a human, thinking about what’s happening outside the world and how it impacts the inside of our organisations. I also realised I was looking for more community with people who care about showing up to their lives and leadership with integrity.

So here we are - welcome to The Integrity Practice.

This is a space for people who see integrity as something we practice. It’s not a destination that is reached. New scenarios constantly surface that challenge ethics and integrity, and these need to be navigated. The societal context of what is seen as behaving in and out of integrity also shifts and morphs, and what is accepted as ethical in one period of time isn’t in another. Practice means it’s imperfect; we’re all students or apprentices, although some might bring more experience or expertise than others. It takes time, patience and intentionality. This is a place for all of this.

My integrity story

I’ve been thinking about integrity and ethics in the workplace for a long time.

The reality of integrity being more than a value one claims to hold came into sharp view when I burned out 10 years ago. The dissonance between the values I was trying to live and the organisational practices I was asked to uphold became too much, and as a senior leader, I imploded. But it was also connected to being personally unable to hold a widening gap between a working life of developing strategies for brands whose products or services were reinforcing mindless consumerism, unsustainable practice, led usually by teams of white Western men who didn’t particularly care about EDI unless they saw those communities as dollar signs.

So I retrained and became an organisational change consultant working with leaders on building purposeful cultures. But here I saw that so much of culture and leadership work was at the level of the façade. So much talk about values, vision, and purpose while workforces were burning out, tensions and organisational wounds were ignored or buried, dysfunctional leaders weren’t challenged to evolve, and no one was doing anything about diversity or representation. There was sometimes a gaping divide between who organisations say they are and who they actually are. Oftentimes, putting more energy into hiding or disguising this reality than into doing the actual work.

This disconnect between the inside and outside was a problem I wanted to address. Its impact on people, wellbeing, equity, and accountability became my focus.

It wasn’t long after this that I set up New Ways. I wanted to break leaders' silence on racism in the moment that followed George Floyd’s murder, so I created a course called "How to Talk about Race at Work”. As a brown woman with Jamaican heritage, I have long believed that anti-racism isn’t only a moral imperative, it is good business practice. When we have structures, practices, behaviours and a mindset that unpicks supremacist and colonial ways, we have an imaginative, free and inspiring place to work where people and organisations thrive. And as the business grew from this programme into a bespoke consultancy, I could fully focus on showing up with integrity for organisations that cared about leading and being better.

The integrity call

So here we are today in 2025, where our integrity challenge feels more pertinent than ever. Authoritarianism, rise of fascism and racism, accountability as a shadow of its former self, growing inequalities and systemic inequity in most of our systems. The awakening to who we really are is setting in for those in the Global North as the Global South are raising their voices and rightly so. The integrity gap feels like it’s getting bigger and deeper every week, revealing a new crack to heal.

It can feel overwhelming, especially when we try to navigate this alone. But it is a moment to ask new questions about what it really means to lead with integrity. What does that look like in our lives, communities, leaders and organisations?

In my life and work on equity, belonging and anti-racism, leading with integrity is something I don’t always find easy, but it’s a path I won’t stray from. I want to bring about the best we can offer to one another as humans, as a diverse group of people coming together to make positive change for society.

It often means having challenging conversations or taking risks to stand up for people or ideas, both in and out of work. It sometimes means learning out loud to invite discussion and encourage others to think about their choices and decisions. It involves navigating when to walk away and what to say no to. It inevitably means learning from mistakes, dealing with ruptures, and finding ways to repair in relationships. It means being honest about when my own right to comfort overshadows bringing integrity. It needs alot of compassion because at the root of integrity is honesty - truly naming our reality with a readiness to face contradictions or tensions.

Integrity Practice isn’t theory. It’s lived, messy, human, and deeply tied to justice. In this space, there isn’t a capitalist separation of the personal and professional, politics is part of the integrity story. We start by seeing systems change being enabled by relational change - how we relate to ourselves and others. We sharpen discernment on ethics in practice, staying attuned to what we care about, what we stand for and stand up for, and the change we can make from exactly where we are to resolve dissonance.

I believe it’s the only path worth walking. I want this space to be where I can connect to others who wish to be on that path, starting from wherever they are, but equally seeking to bring more vitality into life, leadership and work. Where our actions, choices, and values are aligned, not just in our personal lives but also in our working lives. When we can show up with courage and creativity rather than numbing ourselves or pushing through on autopilot. When efforts around justice, anti-racism and power don’t just “solve problems”, they open up space for organisations to move beyond control, silence, and placation into ways of working that are creative, courageous, accountable and life-giving for everyone involved.

If this sounds like a space for you, then welcome aboard. Here I'll share musings and reflections from all aspects of life and work. Offer insights on where I see integrity being modelled well and where we can learn from mistakes. It will be a thinking space for integrity challenges I’m wrestling with and a window into how we navigate this as a business and with our clients, too. I’m not committing to a post frequency, but I have a lot to say about this right now, and LinkedIn is feeling less and less like my place, so who knows!

Signing off now as I’m off this morning to a writing workshop with the very appropriate title of Radical Acceptance. It all starts there.