Reading the room.

If you only listen to words, you're getting half the story.

Leadership Squared is a deep dive into the new era of human and modern business leadership. I delve into my professional and lived experience and provide my perspective on topical issues that are close to my heart.

Welcome to the January newsletter. This month’s theme is: reading the room.

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.

Lois Dodd | Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Framing the Ephemeral, August 30, 2025 - April 6, 2026.

Dodd (1927) played an important role in the art scene of post-war New York, and she was one of the founders of Tanager Gallery in the 1950s: a place where artists themselves provided space and attention to exhibit their work. She hung out with artists such as Willem de Kooning and Alex Katz and shared an atelier building with Katz in Maine. Dodd is exceptional in her tenacity. While the art world experienced wave after wave of new movements in the second half of the 20th century - from abstract expressionism to pop art, from minimalism to conceptual art - Dodd stayed true to her own method: observing and painting what she saw. Where innovation can be mistaken for progress, Dodd shows that sticking to a personal vision is at least as powerful. Her oeuvre forms a rare beacon of calm, dedication and focus within the tumult of the 20th century. Dodd observes change at a micro level.

Lois Dodd’s oeuvre demonstrates an uncompromising commitment to ‘looking’. Her paintings celebrate life as it really is, without embellishment, with all the more depth. Eight decades of work - at the age of 98 she is still painting - reveals impressive integrity and quiet strength.

*****

Welcome to my first newsletter of 2026.

The first full month of a new year is almost behind us and I’m still moving at a pace that’s like counting breaths. Slow. And steady. January winter is special because it feels to me like a liminal space in which all life in most of the Northern hemisphere is falling deeper into the heart of the season, into the coldness and the darkness of middle winter.

I do not mind this.

In fact I welcome it.

January is a doorway, no rigid plan, no perfectionism, no forcing, just small consistent aligned actions and noticing when I veer off course. Rolling with the punches and seeing challenges as the natural ebb and flow of life. Building momentum by setting a steady tone. Momentum in January comes from consistency. Steadiness helps people focus, settle and move with confidence.

My year starts properly in February, when we come out of the depths of winter and can turn towards Spring.

The Year of the Snake ends on February 17^th – now is about sitting calmly in the dark, early nights, deep thinking and ideally shedding what no longer serves us (those snakeskins gotta’ go).

On My Mind

Yes, we may be on the verge of the collapse of the rules-based order.

Yes, Donald Trump lawlessly abducted a sitting president and his wife on drug charges he admits were fabricated lies, dragged them before a kangaroo court, only to be told Venezuela is ‘un-investable’ as oil companies scurry for cover. Yes, the US wanted to invade Greenland and pushed Arctic security to the top of Nato’s agenda. Yes, the Nobel Peace Prize winner gave her medal to the US President to thank him for bombing her country. Yes, In Trump’s America citizens get executed for disrespecting ICE. Yes, anyone watching the Minneapolis videos would have seen a woman shot dead at point blank range as her vehicle was turning away from an ICE agent at slow speed, and a man shot 10 times in the back after trying to protect a woman from being manhandled. Yes, Trump, Vance, Noem, Bovino, Miller, et al are willing to lie in the face of overwhelming video evidence, absolute in their certainty of the tribal stupidity and cynicism of their supporters who will blindly repeat their lies. Yes, Bondi explicitly tied the administration’s violence in the Minnesota state to its’ determination to get its hands on voters’ personal data before the 2026 election. Yes, this administration is stirring the American public out of an apathy that is essential to any power grab. Yes, Emmanuel Macron went full Top Gun at Davos. Yes, Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ looks very much like a plan to replace the UN Security Council with an imperial court of vassals in which he is chairman for life; less a benign peace initiative and more a potential prototype of the final system: an elite, globalised ‘order’ built on money, influence and intimidation, where peace becomes a slogan, and the Palestinian people, first and foremost those in the Gaza Strip, are a complete irrelevance, at most an obstacle in the way of real estate opportunities to be removed. Yes, the UK government officially admitted that it threatened ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan in an attempt to dissuade him from continuing investigations into crimes perpetrated by Israel in the Gaza Strip. Yes, the UK will not be joining Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ for now, citing Putin’s invitation, Yvette Cooper says - but Netanyahu is OK.

Yes but, I hear you cry, the only story in town – the only story anyone really cares about – is the fall of the House of Beckham: celebrity children and what it costs to grow up as a commodity, part of a package your parents have chosen to sell. This story too is about narrative and how it can be controlled by the rich and powerful. And, of course, it’s about dynasties balancing publicity, privacy and the projection of power.

The US is in a dark place, a place some of us very much expected and it is not grandiose to call this the end of the Western alliance.

The story underlying all others is that the United States Congress passed a law requiring the Department of Justice to release all the Epstein files - the files from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the activities of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein - no later than December 19 2025, and it has not done so.

‘Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.’ - Frank Zappa

Many are laughing at how clownish this administration feels, Trump’s appeals are often wrapped in silliness and performative absurdity, but historians of fascism aren’t laughing, some are packing their bags. Crackdowns on universities. Pressure on judges. Tactics straight out of Hungary and Poland, now showing up in the US.

His actions will only get worse. He wants domestic upheaval. He wants civil uprising. He wants martial law and no elections. He wants unbridled power. He wants his history. He doesn’t think like us. He genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Peace Prize. He is abnormal, his ear grows back.

Evil doesn’t arrive as a monster, it arrives as permission. When norms rot, ordinary people adapt. That’s the real danger - not the loud demagogue, but the quiet acclimation. History isn’t driven by villains alone. It’s driven by millions who decide, day by day, that this new low is ‘normal enough’.

Mark Carney in his speech at Davos quoted the Czech dissident, playwright, and poet Václav Havel on how structural violence persists: ‘Through ordinary people participating in rituals they privately know to be false.’ We do what’s deemed acceptable to not bring the fire to our door.

It was David Lammy who helped me understand that the old saying that ‘politics is showbusiness for ugly people’ was referring not to an unattractive physical appearance, but to an ugly soul.

The continuum between culpability, complicity, and complacency. A few billionaires (Musk, Huang, Wirth, Dimon …) seem to have found the way to navigate this administration is to fawn and fight in just the right doses. But what, truly, is the cost of getting in the commander-in-chief’s good or bad books? Alison Taylor shares her insights in ‘Fear and Loathing in Corporate America’, you can read her Substack Higher Ground here.

Yes indeed. The US is destroying world order.

And so did Israel for the last two years. With the UK’s and Germany’s support. The Gaza genocide is Europe’s Achilles’ heel. German and other European leaders cannot suddenly discover that the rule-based order is on its’ knees when they have governed over its’ demise for the last two years. There are so many European leaders and their sycophants in the media who have been contorting themselves to excuse the inexcusable, went along with every abuse against Gaza, Iran, Venezuela. What has energised European leaders - Greenland - is that it turned on them. It might also explain why the Democratic Party who couldn’t draw a line at genocide, can’t draw a line at and defend the assault on US democracy

Complicity, tacit agreement, appeasement, silence: these have a cost. A high cost.

And you, I, we will all end up paying for it.

Over to You

‘The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.’ – Carl Rogers

The world isn’t ending. A world is ending. A leader’s job, our jobs, is to midwife the next one.

Mark Carney’s choice of Václav Havel was not accidental. Havel’s concept of ‘living in truth’ is an essential guide to this moment.

The goal right now for leaders, the voices with something to say, a promise of a better world, is to be clearer, sharper and more precise. We don’t have to be louder, we never did.

Of The Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

Mary Oliver, from her 2008 collection, Red Bird, p. 46, published by Beacon Press.

I wonder what Mary Oliver would say to us today?

One of the reasons this moment in history is such a head fake for leaders is that it demands they do opposite things at the same time. They need to shut out the noise but also listen carefully, ignore it but also take some pretty radical action.

The ultimate form of preparation is not planning for a specific scenario, but presence, a mindset that can tolerate emotion and handle uncertainty. When uncertainty appears, we often tighten and try to think our way out. This is an opportunity to do something softer instead, to make a little space around the discomfort - our own and that of others - rather than fighting it.

Reading the room: what it means, how emotional awareness strengthens leadership and how to get better at it.

‘Reading the room’ is the skill of observing group dynamics in real-time: the unspoken needs, power dynamics, and readiness of a group, allowing you to choose the right tone, pace and intervention at the right moment.

It means tracking the two conversations that are happening at once:

• the explicit talk (the words)

• and the tacit one (facial expressions, body language, alliances).

If you only listen to words, you’re getting half the story. When you read the room, you are identifying the group’s active patterns:

• who leads

• who questions

• what’s ‘OK’ to say

• and whose opinion carries weight.

It also means tracking the two streams of any interaction:

• the task stream (the work, decisions, content)

• and the relationship stream (trust, tension, belonging).

Meetings derail when these signals are ignored.

It’s a pattern recognition that is learned. It often happens unconditionally, but it can be deliberately practiced and improved.

Here are a few things to for you to try.

Mentally step out of the conversation: Detach from your own agenda and focus on the interactions and flow of the conversation. Adopt a curiosity mindset.

Be present: Focus fully on the moment and the people in the room. Listen to understand, not to prepare your next response.

Observe body language: Pay attention to nonverbal cues like posture, facial expressions, and gestures. Silent signals can reveal more about the group’s dynamics than spoken words.

Track energy and relational shifts: Notice when the room’s energy changes. Does a particular topic spark enthusiasm or create discomfort? How do different people react to others’ interventions? How do pre-meeting relationships play out in this meeting? Recognising these moments can help you identify key issues or power dynamics.

Test your assumptions: The biggest trap is misinterpretation. Crossed arms might mean ‘upset’ or ‘defensive’, but they could also mean ‘the room is cold’. Treat your observations as hypotheses, not facts.

Ask open-ended questions: Encourage others to share their perspectives to reveal hidden dynamics. Questions like ‘What’s your take on this?’ or ‘How do you think this is going so far?’ can draw out quieter participants and uncover diverse viewpoints.

Address the elephant: If you detect tension or disengagement, address it directly, rather than ignoring it.

When you start reading the room, you stop leading from assumption and start leading from awareness. You notice the energy before the agenda, the tension before the words, the opportunity before the moment slips away.

That’s where leadership really happens - not in the slides or the strategy, but in your presence.

So this week, in your next meeting, pause for a second. Step away, onto the proverbial balcony. Listen for the conversation you can’t hear. That’s where your next breakthrough begins.

As always, I am taking my own advice. I’m hosting an in-person session next week at Quilter Cheviot about time, ‘what is time for?’ and will be practicing one or two of these techniques.

Here is to shedding, to presence, and freedom to respond, which hopefully opens up more space for all that we want to bring into our lives and organisations in its stead.

What seeds are you planting?

And when you plan, remember that the best way to help a world in turmoil, is to live a life of purpose and joy. That energy radiates out in more ways than you know. And it does make a difference.

Wishing for you some reasonably quiet time this month to mourn, and ponder our culpability in this mess.

It’s also an invite to for you to pass on your thinking, because I treasure it and regard most of what I do here as an emerging, hive-mind process.

Standing strong with you in 2026.

Warm regards,

Monique

Monique Loves

Things I have watched, listened to and loved this month

Watched

La Femme la Plus Riche du Monde

Carried by an imperial Isabelle Huppert, a truculent Laurent Lafitte and a determined Marina Foïs, The Richest Woman in the World sees its director, Thierry Klifa, revisit the said case in fiction, and by changing the names.

For his sixth feature film, Thierry Klifa succeeds in creating a jubilant and grating comedy, caricatural and colourful, freely inspired by the famous and fascinating Banier-Bettencourt affair (more below).

What makes the film so successful is above all the fantastic couple of actors Laurent Laffite (Banier/Fantin) and Isabelle Huppert (Bettencourt/Farrère) who highlight each other in their extravagant, special relationship

L’Affaire Bettencourt (I watched this documentary to better understand the real-life story behind the film)

Between 2010 and 2017, the whole of France was fascinated by the Banier-Bettencourt affair. There are three parties to the issue: Liliane Bettencourt, a billionaire businesswoman and heiress to the L’Oréal empire, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, her daughter, and François-Marie Banier, a photographer and close friend of the former who was the subject of financial largesse denounced by the latter. Allegations of abuse of weakness are at the heart of a legal conflict full of twists and turns.

Before this scandal, the ultra-rich, we didn’t really know about them. We knew they existed, of course, but they were often hidden behind a brand. This woman, who had been absolutely discreet throughout her life, became, in spite of herself, the first identifiable face of the ultra-rich.

Nouvelle Vague

The behind the scenes of the filming of Jean-Luc Godard’s A Bout de Souffle (Breathless,1960), a landmark of the French New Wave film movement.

Nouvelle Vague is Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater’s love letter to the revolutionary magic of the French New Wave, reimagining the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, which ultimately cemented Godard as a pioneer of global cinema. As critic turned director Godard makes and breaks the rules, a mix of fresh faces and daring talents - including Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Guillaume Marbeck as Godard himself - bring his spontaneous, electric film to life. Capturing the youthful dynamism and creative chaos at the heart of one of the world’s most beloved and influential movies, Nouvelle Vague transports us to the streets of 1959 Paris for an ode to the transformative power of cinema.

Bardot

Touting an all-star French cast, the six-episode biopic series traces the life of the ’50s ‘French bombshell’, from her first audition at 15, through her explosive international breakout in Vadim’s risqué 1957 And God Created Woman, to her powerful performance in Henri-Georges Cluzot’s Truth in 1960. Bardot is more than a myth in her native country - ‘sex kitten’, Marianne (the national personification of liberty), unrelenting animal rights activist, and what Simone de Beauvoir called ‘the most liberated woman in post-war France’, all rolled into one. And de Nunez indeed manages to evoke all that with grace, poise and apparent ease in this post-WWII Pygmalion story in which a sheltered bourgeois teenage girl ignites a veritable sexual revolution in France.

I found the reactions to Brigitte Bardot’s death on 28 December 2025 quite interesting in that respect. Animal rights activist, far-right supporter, racist, feminist impact without feminist allegiance, born into privilege but not freedom, a disruptive force. Many people seem unable to hold influence and imperfection in the same frame.

The Reckoning

People fall under Diddy’s spell, then get unnerved, then dismiss the worst of him as he dangles carrots to seduce them further, until they can’t see a way out from under his boot. It’s surprising just how many interviewees The Reckoning production team managed to secure, as we hear again and again how scary it is to speak out against someone this dangerous and this powerful. He’s in prison right now, which may be why people feel safe to open up, but this series alleges that the music industry gatekeeper is someone who can take revenge if you cross him.

The series lines up and explains accusations of manipulation, abuse, criminal activity and violence, some we know and many we don’t. They go on and on and on – and on.

The many months of drug-fuelled confusion experienced by Lil Rod while inside Diddy’s whirlwind producing the rapper’s most recent album, The Love Album, feel chilling in a different way.

By the time it finishes, you’ll be exhausted by the seemingly endless list of misdeeds, of all the terrorising and manipulating, which paints a portrait of a terrifying individual with far too much power.

Cover-up

Laura Poitras’s Seymour Hersh documentary is a thrilling ode to journalism.

As in All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Poitras’s outstanding 2022 film on artist Nan Goldin’s efforts to remove the Sackler name from the prestigious art galleries that managed to weave together the opioid crisis, Aids activism and personal history into a singular narrative, Cover-Up demonstrates Poitras’s genius for structure. The 117-minute film, which premiered at the Venice film festival, proceeds chronologically through Hersh’s most significant scoops and scattershot through his personal life, masterfully integrating his tart personal accounts with over half a century of shameful US history.

Cover-Up smartly spends large sections enmeshed not just in Hersh’s process of reporting, but the reporting itself. It often plays, to its benefit, like a straightforward history documentary, relying on sharply edited and restored archival footage to evoke and educate on some of the US government’s most ignominious recent chapters. Among them: My Lai, in which US soldiers raped and murdered hundreds of Vietnamese civilians, including infants; the CIA’s illegal surveillance of the US student movement against the war in Vietnam; the CIA’s illicit and ultimately failed attempts to breed their own Manchurian candidate via LSD; covert US involvement in the instalment of the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile; the slow-motion executive car crash that was Watergate.

But whether inaccurate or, mostly, scarily accurate, Hersh’s dogged pursuit of truth serves to underscore the film’s point, framed by man’s prolific ability to rationalize evil, to metabolize or celebrate or numb to unimaginable violence. In the past: a map of My Lai annotated by a US soldier – ‘observed approx 50 bodies’ next to ‘ate lunch’. In the present: Hersh on the phone with a source in Gaza, poring over photographs of Israeli military plans on destroyed homes in Gaza, showing they know exactly where civilians are before they bomb them. Cover-Up adeptly illustrates the patterns of official cruelty: deny, downplay, quibble, destroy. Justify on the grounds of ‘national security’. Repeat. ‘We’re a culture of enormous violence’, Hersh remarks. ‘You can’t just have a country who does that and looks the other way.’ Brisk, lucid and sweeping, Cover-Up assures that some, at least, will not.

Read

JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference

I’m surprised this didn’t make more noise in Europe because this is unarguably a much bigger deal than the sanctions on former European commissioner Thierry Breton.

The Vice President of the United States is officially saying that Europe’s right to possess nuclear weapons is conditional on Europeans voting for people Washington approves of.

In other words, he’s literally saying that democracy in Europe is a national security threat to the United States.

I’m not exaggerating: he explicitly calls European election outcomes ‘a very direct threat to the United States of America’ if ‘Islamist-adjacent people’ eventually gain ‘significant influence in a European nuclear power’ by winning national elections.

Which is perfect proof that all his talk in Munich in 2025 and in the new National Security Strategy about Europe needing to be more ‘democratic’ is code for ‘electing people we approve of’.

It’s also utterly bizarre to have such civilisational determinism, whereby if France ever were to have a Muslim president they’d necessarily want to nuke the US? By this logic, Pakistan - an actual Muslim-majority nuclear power - should terrify Washington, yet the Trump administration actually has excellent relations with them (which causes great ire in India). It’s all so incoherent.

As a matter of fact, the nuclear argument is so absurd it can’t be the real concern. What Washington actually fears isn’t a French Muslim president nuking the US - it’s one who might, for instance, pursue independent policies in the Middle East. ‘Islamist-adjacent’ is just code for ‘not sufficiently aligned with US interests’.

Which means what they’re actually terrified of is democracy and independent policymaking in Europe. The identity politics fear-mongering is just the PR for it.

Mark Carney’s speech at Davos

If you’d told anyone 5 years ago that Canada, of all countries, would deliver the obituary of American hegemony and exhort others to stop ‘living within the lie’ of the rules-based order, you’d have been laughed out of the room.

Carney is, at heart, a central banker. As such he understands the power of words and beliefs better than anyone: when you strip things down to their core, a world order - like trust in a currency or a financial system - fundamentally relies on the maintenance of belief. Systems of power exist because participants act as if they exist. That’s pretty much it: perception is reality.

This speech is one for the history books. But that’s less a compliment, than a coda.

Carney has given us the words to mark the end of the ‘rules-based order’…by acknowledging it never really existed.

It was a collective illusion. That now is over.

Listened to

The Mishal Hussein Show: Rutger Bregman is Thinking about Billionaires, the US vs Europe and Saving the World

Rutger Bregman knows what appearing at Davos can do for your profile. His reputation was made when he went there in 2019 and attacked the rich. The clip went viral.

A historian and author originally from the Netherlands, Bregman has been focused on elites ever since, most recently in his book Moral Ambition, and in a series of lectures on the BBC, after which he accused the organization of censoring his views on Donald Trump.

In this conversation with Mishal Husain, we hear more about his worldview, which is more nuanced than some might expect. He discusses how he is impressed by entrepreneurs, favours action over commentary and is putting his book profits toward building a community that furthers his beliefs.

Loved

Limonettes de Marrakech aka bergamot lemons from Riverford. Their scent and flavour are incredibly aromatic, fragrant, with a slightly floral taste. It’s a tonic I look forward to every year. Their season is very short, December - February.

Lotus Wei

A brand I first read about in Galina’s Curiosity Gap here on Substack in which she spotlights the company and its Founder.

Did you know that flower essences have been used for healing in cultures all over the world for thousands of years?

I promptly took the flower quiz (our eyes are naturally drawn to the flower we need like a dowsing rod identifies the source of water) on the Lotus Wei website and received recommendations for an elixir, mist and anointing oil to add to my daily routine.

Remarkably accurate!

Are you constantly ahead of the curve and at times wary to mention your latest idea for fear that people just won’t get it? – Inspired Action

Have you recently experienced some form of heartache or heartbreak? – Fierce Compassion

Do you want to create something you’ve never created before but not sure how? Do you feel like you’re on the verge of a major breakthrough? – Inner Knowing

*****

Now that you’ve made it to the end of this month’s installment, why not forward the email to someone who’d also enjoy it?

Or share it across one of your social networks, with a note on why you found it valuable.

Remember, the larger and more diverse the Leadership Squared community becomes, the more interesting for all of us.

The darkness of winter 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