Can you hear yourself think?

DeEtta Jones is the founder of one of the world’s leading EDI training and strategy consultancies.

She’s seen leadership and leaders through many lenses. And she’s learned that the best of them are not necessarily the ones making the most noise.

Leadership is changing in real time. I see evidence everywhere, every day.

The beliefs we have grown up with about leadership - that it starts with standing in front of a group and selling them on a vision, that your success depends on your ability to put everyone else first and yourself second, that your confidence and certainty is the fuel on which the race to the future is run.

There is still some truth in these. You still need to be a reference point, a compass, a constant.

But if you try to do those things and be those things before you have done the quiet work of understanding who you are, before you are clear about what matters to you, before you can be honest about when (and why) you get in your own way, then you are building your leadership on quicksand.

Knowing who you are and who you want to be are foundations strong enough to support not just your future, but that of anyone that matters to you.