Often, I hear teams in the middle of some tough stuff:

Teams often can't shift the budget, or their management, or the roles they hold — in other words, their circumstances. But that doesn't make them powerless to feel refreshed.

However, teams CAN shift their relationship to their circumstances — their perspective.

Here are a few perspective shifts that I've seen have impact:

• Stop pretending nothing has changed. Take a moment and acknowledge that the team may have been through major shifts and notice if team members have been trying to keep doing the same thing with noticing the impact.
• Change how you communicate and manage. Your previous style of communication, processes, tools, etc. may not be the right stuff for right now. Take the time to consider that you need to adjust some of the "how" of getting things done.
• Subtract a process. Sometimes we are doing work because we used to need it. Teams rarely let go of or "subtract" a process that no longer serves the team.
• Bring in energy. Start your meetings with an intentional moment of connection. Even without getting super personal, you can bring some fresh air -- and fresh thinking -- by refreshing your meeting openers

Is your team carrying something that needs naming? I'd love to talk.

Here's something I hear often from coaches in supervision: it feels a lot like coaching.

They arrive with a case. They want to work through it. They want to leave with something — a reframe, a next step, an insight they can use. Goal-oriented. Agenda-forward.

Which makes sense. It's what we're trained to do.

But supervision isn't coaching. It lives in a different space — slower, more emergent, less interested in resolution. Its job isn't to move you toward an answer. It's to help you sit with the question long enough that something true surfaces.

This is exactly why I've been so excited about what I am completing with Paul Sanbar: both LEGO Serious Play(tm) and Liminal Spaces coaching certification.

What I love about bringing LEGO into supervision is that the bricks do something the conversational format struggles to: they remove the agenda-seeking reflex. There's no right model to build. There's no correct answer hiding in the plastic. You're just making something with your hands — and your hands know things your words haven't found yet.

The constructivist, emergent nature of the activity leans deeply into what supervision is actually meant to be: Reflective. Restorative. Spacious.

I watched this happen in my own training. The moment someone builds something and says "I don't know what this is yet" — that's the supervision moment. That's the thing that was living below the case they brought.

I'm excited to bring this into my supervision work — both individual and group. And yes, I can mail you a small kit so we can play together in a session.

Curious? Just reply to this email.

Renee Rubin Ross is a longtime colleague, and her self-published book Inclusive Strategic Planning is exactly what the sector needs right now.

What I love about it: she doesn't back off from the hard things. Not the time it takes to do this well. Not the real risk of building a plan that looks inclusive but isn't. And not this: "Visioning is hard — not because people lack ideas, but because uncertainty and urgency shrink our sense of what is possible."

That line stopped me. It's true of every strategic planning process I've ever seen go sideways — not because the team wasn't smart, but because the container was too small for real imagination.

Renee's book is a roadmap for keeping that container expansive while staying honest about the pressures that want to shrink it. If you're heading into a planning process — or supporting one — this belongs on your desk.

I've been noticing something lately — how my energy moves with the light. As the days get longer, something in me loosens. I feel it as emergence: not a plan, not a resolution, just a quiet sense of what wants to come forward.

The blossoms don't know yet if it will be a good year for apricots. Neither do I. But they showed up anyway.

What's emerging for you this spring?

​Let's do a coffee chat!​