Thank you for being a member of Leadership Squared, where we take a deep dive into human and modern business leadership and the systemic realities of the world in which we live.
Welcome to the June newsletter. This month’s theme is: How to respond to dysregulation: emotional regulation, differentiation, and taking a stand.
As always, this is an invite to for you to pass on your thinking and send me ideas, because I treasure it and regard most of what I do here as an emerging, hive-mind process.
Monique
‘I’m 82, I am going to die. We die because we are born. The only things that matter in life are food and love, in that order, and also our little dog Ruby. I truly believe this, and for me, the basis of art is love. I love life.’
David Hockney, Painter (1937-2026), letter to Ruth Mackenzie, 2020
The longest day.
Astonishingly, the Summer solstice is somehow this week.
The last time we were talking about heatwaves there was hail bouncing off the windows, but our faith was rewarded - and I can only hope that it will be again. Sun sun sun on the way this weekend and I’ll be out there for every second of it.
How the days slip by one by one until 30 are gone, and then another, I do not know.
I have been away from my ‘regular’ London life since March, touching old lives and new lives mostly from a canal house in Amsterdam, 8th floor apartment in heart of The Hague and small-scale care location for people with dementia in Deurne.
Being selectively online in ways that benefit me without feeding the machine more than necessary, living at the source not the feed, hasn’t held me back. On the contrary. Sometimes it is as if I have stopped counting my life by days; when I lose track, other things naturally take shape.
The summer months often bring a quieter kind of reflection – on relationships, growth, and the ways we care for what matters most. With Father’s Day approaching in the UK, it’s also a time when many of us think more deeply about family, origins, belonging and connection.
Some people are so poor that the only thing they have is their money.
Look at the protests Jared Kushner has caused in Albania.
There was a time when Western elites saw themselves as custodians of institutions, rules and the places they touched. That instinct is fading. What remains too often is the Columbus reflex: arrive by yacht, ‘discover’ land that people already know perfectly well, and treat the rules as obstacles reserved for everyone else. And then have the wisdom to go on camera and brag about it. No wonder Albanians are now on the streets.
What actually happened is that Jared Kushner set out to cash in on his father-in-law’s temporary power as President of the United States. That status means precisely nothing in Switzerland, with its seven centuries of direct democracy and institutions no outsider can buy. It means everything to a weak man like Albania’s Prime Minister, Edi Rama, cornered at home, courting Washington, and now under criminal investigation for how his government handed this deal away. Kushner understands that asymmetry perfectly, and he wants to exploit it. Period.
That is the difference between a custodian of capitalism and democracy - like Warren Buffett and the late Charlie Munger - and a primitive land-grabber without any moral compass and integrity.
The thousands in the streets of Tirana understand corruption instinctively. They are not protesting a resort. They are defending the only thing that gives their country a future and hope, and a path into the EU: the rule of law applied equally to all.
The Flamingo Revolution may not topple Rama tomorrow.
But a generation is sending a message that cannot be ignored: dignity is non-negotiable. Accountability is non-negotiable. And this generation? Also, non-negotiable.
This could be a shining light for Europe: it is the lens through which I read what is happening on Sazan Island.
I have been lucky enough to live my life in a period of relative peace, stability and prosperity. Since 1980, that stability has been accompanied by a quasi-religious belief that the free market and global supply chains will solve all our problems, thereby relieving government of the need to have coherent, joined-up, forward-facing policies. But today, with a collapse of governance and the rules-based order, our peace and prosperity (and the ability to feed ourselves: the United Nations has warned that 45m people risk acute hunger if fertiliser supplies don’t make it through the Strait of Hormuz before the end of the month) depend on the egos and impulses of a few rich and powerful men.
The President of the United States is asleep at his desk. Again.
Behind him stand seven grown adult men in expensive suits, and not one of them is doing anything about it.
The rest of the world is watching, and the rest of the world has noticed something: Americans are terrified of authority. That fear has settled over this administration like a fog, and it turns otherwise functional adults into furniture. Nobody moves. Nobody speaks. The paralysis is total.
In any European parliament, in any boardroom from Amsterdam to Olso to Madrid to Ljubljana, someone would have leaned over by now. Tapped a shoulder. Said, quietly but clearly, that perhaps this isn’t the moment. Somebody would have done something, because the alternative, pretending a sleeping man is running a meeting, would have been too absurd to entertain.
An 80-year-old man who has long dealt in chaos is now being consumed by that chaos. In Trump’s business life, the result of his stubbornness and haphazardness was often bankruptcy. Now, in strategic terms, a collapse of US interests across multiple verticals.
His episodes are becoming more frequent, his good days further apart. What he has lost is not a sense of decency or decorum - he never had those - but any remaining sense of self-control. Unless he finds a humiliating but necessary off-ramp, as he rarely did in business, it gets worse. The tragedy is no longer Trump’s, it is now America’s.
Everyone around him can see it. Yet, whether from ambition, cowardice, or weary acceptance, they keep looking for ways to rationalise his behaviour.
In the US nobody dare tell the Emperor he isn’t wearing clothes; his VP brags that the POTUS messages him at 2am. The POTUS should sleep at 2am and stay awake during the day.
Not here.
Here, seven men have collectively decided that the correct professional response to the President losing consciousness in the Oval Office is to carry on as though he were a particularly demanding houseplant.
Every reform, every invention, every act of moral courage in history came from someone with an internal anchor strong enough to resist the current. Remove those people and all you have left is the current.
Speaking at London Tech Week, Sir Keir Starmer announced that AI tutors will be rolled out to 450,000 children on free school meals to ‘close the attainment gap’.
A society reveals itself by what it is willing to give its’ children.
If we believe that every child matters, then we must ask why some are offered the company of machines whilst those who can afford it continue to receive the guidance, attention and care of human beings.
Research from Brookings warns that ‘at this point in its trajectory, the risks of utilising generative AI in children’s education overshadow its benefits’, including the danger of cognitive offloading (the surrender of thought itself) as young people become dependent on machines to do the work of reasoning, questioning and understanding.
Technology may be a useful servant, but it is a poor substitute for human presence. No child should be asked to accept automation in place of investment, relationship and expertise.
The measure of our commitment to equality is not whether we can provide the cheapest solution for the poorest children, but whether we are prepared to give every child what we know to be best.
On My Mind
How to respond to dysregulation: emotional regulation, differentiation, and taking a stand.
I know who I am. I’ve long preferred the company of four-leggeds over two-leggeds because they saw me in a way friends and family would not. I’ve been called an idealist and too sensitive, as if it were a flaw. I feel things strongly. I listen deeply. I see things others cannot see. I know how to hold paradox and complexity.
Somewhere along the way, I realised that these qualities - the very ones the world tried to train out of me - are the most important things I have to offer.
I see a lot of dysregulation (when a person cannot effectively regulate their emotional, behavioural, or physiological responses, resulting in mal-adaptive responses that are disproportionate to the situation or stimulus encountered) these days, in my professional and in my private life. And lots of opinions about it.
When your nervous system is activated, the wise, mature adult, thinking part of you goes offline. Your kneejerk survival instincts, the adaptive child response, kicks in: fight, flight or fix.
1% of the time, my behaviour is ugly just like everyone else’s, but 99% of the time, I am able to get back in the part of me capable of choosing better. The difference isn’t that I don’t get triggered, I do, it’s what I do when I am. I want to take the conversation a step further, and contemplate what we can do to improve situations, even just a little bit.
It’s easy to believe that the world’s greatest problems live ‘out there’ in distant countries, in governments, in systems too large to influence. Yet, we encounter these same dynamics much closer to home. These patterns also live in our places of work and in our own internal worlds: reactivity, abuses of power, silencing dissent, and inequality.
We are living in an age of dysregulation.
The scale of human suffering can feel overwhelming. Images, statistics, and the horrors of war flood our awareness. At times, I find myself needing to look away, to take a break from the news.
Do you feel that pull?
The temptation to scroll past, to compartmentalise, to stay focused only on what feels manageable.
But being an advisor and coach asks something different of me.
I am called to show up when it’s hard. To bear witness. To stay present in the face of conflict, pain and tension. To resist the pull toward avoidance, denial, or easy alignment with what feels safest.
Session after session, meeting after meeting, I hold the complexity of clients with their strengths and their limitations. I resist collapsing into binaries of right and wrong, good and bad.
I see it when one person in a team dominates and the other folds and accommodates. I witness it when differences are vilified rather than engaged. I feel it when difficult truths are avoided or denied.
And if I’m willing to look, I see it in myself as well.
This is where the work becomes both more demanding and more meaningful. It’s one thing to name injustice externally, it’s another to examine how I may unknowingly participate in it.
So, I ask myself:
How do I manage my own anxiety, my self-esteem, my fear of not belonging?
Do I stay silent in sessions and meetings when I’m afraid to speak?
Do I align too quickly with the more powerful person in the room?
How do I hold hope when things feel stuck or overwhelming?
At its’ core, the work is a model for becoming a more engaged and present human. Differentiation asks me to keep developing myself, over and over again.
To take responsibility for how I show up - even when it’s uncomfortable.
To recognise both my vulnerability and my privilege.
To stay connected to others without losing myself.
This is not abstract work. It happens in small, everyday moments in my personal relationships and in the work with clients.
When I name something that feels off.
When I refuse to collude with patterns that diminish, exclude, or silence.
When I challenge with clarity and respect.
These moments may seem small or insignificant, but they’re not.
What we challenge clearly, respectfully, and with conviction can begin to shift the culture around us.
As advisors and coaches, we often focus on helping clients communicate better. But communication alone is not the goal: personal and relational development and empowerment is. To learn how to recognise and interrupt reactivity and the tools to regulate the nervous system, so relational skills are usable – right when they’re needed most.
We are helping our clients become more capable of holding themselves, of facing difficult truths, of engaging with difference or otherness without collapsing or attacking.
‘If you can see it, you don’t have to be it.’
Over to You
So, the question isn’t just what’s happening in the world.
It’s this:
Where am I willing to take a stand – as a person and as a professional?
Not in grand or performative ways, but in everyday life. In the places closest to me. In my relationships. In my work. In the moments where it would be easier to stay silent.
Development doesn’t happen in theory. It happens in action, in the many moments you choose courage over comfort, risk over complacency, and presence over withdrawn hopelessness.
Life is becoming more transactional and less transformational, I feel it too.
But in the board room, at home, with our neighbours and random strangers we can take a stand for transformation.
‘Do something that will last and be beautiful.’
Arthur Miller, Playwright
What might that be for you?
Think about it and make some notes or share in the comment section. Or share your thoughts about dysregulation and development, transactional vs transformational moments, or other reflections prompted by this newsletter.
Thank you for your commitment to ‘Do something that will last and be beautiful.’
Monique Loves
Things I have watched, read, listened to and loved this month
Watched
‘Disorientation is part of the journey.’ This exhilarating, head-spinning documentary taken from more than 20,000 sources over 7 decades is ode to the collective courage of Lebanese people. The free-associative flow allows you to build up your own mental image of Lebanon as a society of immense complexity and uncrushable vitality and that, as the 1970s song title suggests, calls out to be loved as well as understood.
Brexit: A Very British Civil Affair – BBC iPlayer
This inside story of a vote that divided a nation is remarkably comprehensive, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Jeremy Corbyn, Gordon Brown and Nigel Farage all offer their view of events among many other MPs and special advisors. The only person missing is Dominic Cummings, director of Vote Leave who did not respond to requests for an interview. It unravels the rivalries, betrayals and conflicts that tore apart the campaigns, told by those at the heart of Leave and Remain. The levels of incompetence and chaos are almost as shocking as the pettiness and insecurities that these most instrumental men appear to possess. What’s missing for me is what the Brexit referendum, and subsequent rancour, has done to British society.
Inside Anthropic, the $965 Billion AI Juggernaut | The Circuit – Bloomberg Originals
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, awkwardly smiles through his answer to a question about why Claude AI directly contributed to the US Military bombing of the elementary school in Minab.
The worst part is him saying the strike on the elementary school in Minab (that killed 168 schoolchildren and teachers) ‘is a use case that doesn’t even violate our red lines.’
Also notable is how little this question phases him, compared to another part of the interview where he gets very upset about being (correctly) accused of overhyping AI’s capabilities through ‘doom marketing’: more concerned about the bubble bursting than Iranian children’s lives.
Especially for someone who markets himself as driven by ‘values’.
Read
Het Leven is Niet Leuk als je je Mond houdt – Marli Huijer
(Life isn’t fun if you keep your mouth shut)
Philosopher and physician Marli Huijer, the successor of René Gude as Thinker of the Nation, is not just an armchair scholar, even though she has written several books, like the recent Rhythm and Discipline. She is not an opposing thinker, nor a conformist, but a in-between thinker (brilliant word and what it represents); she wants the voices of all kinds of different people to be heard. In the interviews in Life Isn’t Fun If You Keep Your Mouth Shut, Peter Henk Steenhuis talks with her about her source of inspiration Hannah Arendt, her move from working at the methadone clinic in Beverwijk to philosophy, her contribution to Trouw’s Philosophical Eleven, how we interact with each other, how you can discipline yourself, Simone de Beauvoir and Martha Nussbaum, the participatory society, dealing with disappointments, and population screenings. Amid this variety of topics, Huijer repeatedly emphasises that it is important to speak out freely.
Listened to
Londongrad, Slow Newscast from The Observer
Somehow, this 6 part series past me by when it first aired in 2022.
Londongrad Britain prides itself on being impregnable, a country which hasn’t been invaded for 1000 years and can’t be bought. The Lebedevs give the lie to all that. They spent a lot, but not a fortune, buying their way into British society and public life.
How the Lebedevs partied their way to power investigates two men at the heart of the story of Britain opening its doors to Russian oligarchs. Alexander Lebedev is a former KGB officer. He’s the man with the money and - as you’ll hear - with the plan. Alexander’s son, Evgeny, rose from a fixture on the social scene to a seat in the House of Lords. He did it with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s help and against the advice of the security services. A larger story about Britain’s central role in creating a financial system and subservience of British public and private institutions to cater unwaveringly to the needs of the super-rich, irrespective of their nationality or sources of wealth; it highlights the intricate interplay between global finance, corruption, wealth, and power, offering insights into the ethical and societal ramifications of these ‘butlering’ activities.
Loved
Let’s start with what I have not loved … trying to send a few boxes with personal belongings and mementos from The Netherlands to the UK; after Brexit, it’s become a dystopian maze of personal allowances for non-excise goods, customs duty and import VAT.
A rejoin referendum likely won’t happen anytime soon because while Nigel Farage and Reform remain influential, the EU simply won’t have the UK back.
Farage’s chaos is the biggest barrier to fixing Brexit.
Rees-Mogg admitted in a recent interview with Bloomberg that the Leave Campaign was chaotic, different people promised different things, no coherent plan, and the government implementing it (Theresa May, a Remainer) didn’t believe in it.
Classic Brexit: sold with lies, delivered with confusion.
Ten years on, the division Brexit created inside the Tory party helped birth Reform and now it’s blocking the very reset or rejoin that a growing majority of the public wants. The irony.
Brexit broke British politics. Fixing it means moving past the Farage era.
A campaign that I do love is San Pellegrino’s let’s spark the conversation.
S. Pellegrino has transformed its iconic bottle labels into conversation starters for its’ ‘Dinner Dialogues’ campaign. These thought-provoking questions are designed to spark meaningful conversations and create genuine connections around the table.
My favourite question - so far - is ‘be right or be liked?’
And last but not least …
This post by former US Congressman Adam Kinzinger right here on Substack.
‘We Don’t Know Too Much About You, But We Want to Welcome You Here.’
Beautifully written, in form and substance.
*****
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Summer often bookmarks a period when we take stock and realise it’s time to make some moves; uplevels are required to meet this moment and the consciousness we are moving through.
Clear and calm energy, less emotional density, deep intuition, creativity and trust are the building blocks of our new world.
If you’re hitting a growth wall, the solution may lie in a deeper dive to examine the unconscious barriers to success and the ways you may be holding yourself back.
The reward of clearing these blockages is profound, allowing you to make aligned, impactful decisions with more ease.
I’ve been doing this work for over 20 years and I’m here to support you in growing yourself and your business to your and its’ highest contribution and capacity.
So, if you’ve been interested in working with me for a while, maybe it’s - finally - this year.
If that’s the case, you can take action today.
Do get in touch if there are any projects I can support you with over the coming year, and visit my website for a quick tour of my favourite work. And if there are any contacts in your network you feel I could add value for, don’t hesitate to introduce us.
I’ll be back next month.
In the meantime … observe the world, don’t absorb it.
Warm regards,
Monique