There’s an old Aesop fable about a farmer with a goose that laid a single golden egg each day. Impatient for more, he killed the goose to get all the gold at once. He found nothing. In trying to extract maximum value, he destroyed the very thing producing it.
Right now, in boardrooms across Australia, a version of the same conversation is unfolding: How do we get more out of AI? More use cases, more automation, more outputs, faster. It’s an entirely rational response to a 60-year productivity low and a technology that genuinely promises to help.
There’s no doubt that generative AI (GenAI) is enabling us to dramatically increase the volume of output. Within seconds, GenAI tools can perform analysis, generate polished slide decks, and write glossy, executive-ready reports. Tasks that once required significant time, skill, and cognitive effort are now accessible to almost anyone with a capable prompt and a decent model.
At first glance this looks like the saviour to our productivity woes. But look closer, and the early evidence is telling a different story. A 2025 MIT Media Lab report found that despite pouring $30–40 billion into GenAI, 95% of organisations studied were getting zero return.1
But the real story is not in the balance sheets. It’s in what’s happening to the people actually using these tools every day. When we look more closely at how GenAI is shaping human performance, an uncomfortable truth emerges. Using GenAI may not be accelerating your best people. In some cases, it may be diminishing the very capabilities that make them effective.
It turns out the golden goose is not GenAI itself. It is the people using it. And your best people may be the ones most at risk.
A recent study2 of business school students offers insight into why organisations may be struggling to capitalise on GenAI technologies.
The researchers asked students to use Gen AI tools while completing complex, time pressured tasks, and found something striking:
Low performing students improved their performance using GenAI. In contrast, high performing students got worse.
When both lower and higher performers move towards an average when they collaborate with AI, GenAI begins to look less like a productivity amplifier and more like a productivity equaliser. For your lowest performers, that may be welcome news. For the people your organisation depends on most, it’s a serious problem.
Why is this the case? The researchers argue that the underlying difference lies not in the technology itself, but in how people use it. AI is a tool and like any tool, value is driven by the mind of the person wielding it.
The researchers traced this back to cognitive load – the amount of mental effort being used by working memory at any given time.
Both groups heavily deferred to GenAI outputs. But what happened in their brains differed significantly.
Lower-performing students offloaded their thinking to AI and freed up mental capacity. Higher-performing students, by contrast, saw their cognitive load rise. Their mental effort shifted from composing to monitoring, evaluating, and integrating AI outputs. GenAI created more options, more iterations, and more signals to interpret. The result was rising stress, eroded clarity, and a constant tension between their own judgement and the machine’s.
This is the trap most organisations aren’t seeing. In the race to extract more from AI, they are quietly heaping pressure onto the very people who were already delivering the most. The goose isn’t being killed all at once. It’s being worn down, egg by egg, day by day.
The implications go well beyond business schools.
Research is finding that GenAI leads some employees to work at a faster pace, take on a broader scope of tasks, and extend into longer hours, often without being asked3. Over time, this expands the overall volume of work and the cognitive load required to find the signal in the noise. The next iteration of this – deploying swarms of AI agents to run tasks in parallel – risks intensifying the problem further.
AI is so good at generating outputs that look polished and articulate but are actually vapid, incomplete, and unhelpful that someone had to invent a new word for it. The cognitive effort your team saves by producing “workslop” with GenAI gets handballed directly to whoever has to decipher, interrogate, and rework what they’ve been given. In many organisations, these are the very people who can least afford the distraction.
A survey of 5,000 white-collar workers across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada found that while over three quarters of C-suite executives believe their employees can save over half a day per week using AI tools, only 11% of workers agree with them, and 40% said that AI tools save them no time at all.
What can look like higher productivity in the short term may, in practice, be an accumulation of noise, task-switching, and a slower drift towards exhaustion.
These are not only questions about individual judgement. They are questions about organisational design and leadership. If AI is amplifying volume while eroding clarity, senior leaders need to look beyond the tool itself and examine the environment in which it is being used.
This isn’t an argument against AI. It’s an argument for using it deliberately to protect the real golden geese: your best people.
A 2023 BCG study5 found that GenAI enhanced performance for 90% of participants on creative ideation tasks, producing 40% higher output quality. But on complex business problem-solving – tasks requiring nuanced judgement and contextual reasoning – participants using AI performed 23% worse than those who didn’t use it at all. While GenAI capabilities continue to evolve, the principle remains the same: Leaders need to stay current and think critically about what AI is actually good at. The tool is only as useful as your clarity about when to pick it up.
The more readily you reach for AI before engaging your own thinking, the more you risk eroding the judgement that makes you effective. GenAI can be sycophantic and opaque; it can reinforce first instincts, enable confirmation bias, and produce answers without making its reasoning visible. When you are working at pace, you’re less likely to interrogate what it gives you, and that is precisely when errors and flawed decisions begin to creep in.
In the rush to apply AI everywhere, many organisations are either neglecting or actively undermining one of their most valuable resources: human cognitive capacity. Design work with not only the benefits of AI in mind, but the quality of attention required to use it well. Resist the impulse to default to AI. Build in real pauses. Make space for deep work. Slow down enough to think clearly. Over time, that is what enables better speed, not just more activity.
Continued overreliance on AI can erode both cognition and confidence over time. Judgement, inquiry, attunement, presence, purpose, and accountability are not fixed traits that remain strong by default. They are capabilities that need to be consciously developed and continuously exercised. Left unused, they atrophy. The leaders who will get the most from AI are not necessarily the ones who use it most. They are the ones with the discernment to know when not to.
The farmer killed the goose because he couldn’t wait. He had something genuinely valuable and, in his impatience, destroyed it.
The golden goose in your organisation is not AI. It’s the people using it.
For senior leaders, the challenge is not simply to accelerate adoption. It is to lead with enough wisdom and foresight to ensure AI serves human capability rather than substituting for it. The organisations that will create enduring value will not be those that deploy AI most aggressively, but those that consciously regenerate and elevate the human system around it: the people, the thinking, and the leadership conditions that allow sound judgement to flourish.
Value has always followed what is hardest to replicate.
For decades, production was the constraint. Competitive advantage came from producing more, faster, at lower cost. That logic shaped how organisations were designed, what they measured, and what they came to value in their people.
AI is dismantling that logic faster than most strategies have caught up with. When production stops being scarce, it stops being the source of advantage. And when certain outputs become cheap, what remains hardest to replicate becomes proportionally more valuable.
Which raises a question most leaders have not sat with long enough: if production is no longer the constraint, what is?
A 2023 BCG study1 offers both a clue and a warning: GenAI reduced the diversity of thought among consultants performing everyday work tasks by 41%. When people prompt similarly and use the same tools, outputs converge. When outputs converge, thinking converges. What would it mean if your whole industry started thinking the same thoughts?
This is the deeper shift at play: as AI drives down the cost of production, distinctly human capabilities become comparatively scarce, and therefore more valuable. Here is where value is moving.
From information to judgement. Information is abundant. What matters most now is the capacity to interpret it critically, weigh tensions and trade-offs, and exercise sound judgement when the stakes are high and the answer is not obvious.
From answers to inquiry. When answers become ubiquitous, advantage moves to those who can ask better questions. The leaders who create value will be those who can inquire beneath the surface, challenge assumptions, and open up new ways of seeing, rather than simply move faster through familiar thinking.
From prescription to attunement. The ideas generated by AI are a mirror of what has come before. In a world where AI tools pull us towards uniformity, leaders who can attune to what is emerging will have the edge. Attunement is holding context alongside content: sensing what is unspoken, what is needed here, now, with these people, under these conditions, and when wisdom matters more than consistency.
From polish to presence. As generic content floods every channel, what cuts through is not simply visibility, but resonance. People trust what feels grounded, human, and real. As noise increases, authentic human connection has never been more valuable. AI can produce polished language. It cannot bring the presence, lived experience, and relational depth that create genuine connection.
From optimisation to purpose. AI can refine a process, improve an output, and model possible futures. But it cannot tell us what is worth building, protecting, or becoming. In a world of increasing intelligence, the leaders who matter most will be those who can orient people towards meaningful futures; futures that generate not only performance, but purpose, energy, and belief.
From activity to accountability. AI can generate options, make recommendations, and accelerate execution. But it cannot own the consequences. Accountability still sits with people; those willing to make hard calls, stay with the trade-offs, and carry the weight of decision with integrity.
Ask most leaders what AI is worth to their organisation, and the conversation often starts in the same place: how much can we save? And what does that translate to in FTE?
It sounds sensible. But framing AI solely as a substitute for human effort rests on two flawed assumptions: that human work is simply a bundle of tasks, and that as AI performs more of them, people become proportionally less necessary. Both are wrong. Outputs are not impact. Hours saved by AI don’t amount to entire roles. And treating them as interchangeable is where many AI strategies begin to unravel.
AI and humans create value in fundamentally different ways. As AI drives down the cost of producing outputs, the value of what only humans can do does not stay the same. It rises.
The capabilities that are becoming more valuable – judgement, inquiry, attunement, presence, purpose, and accountability – are not tasks that can be automated. They are not outputs at all. They are the conditions under which good decisions get made, trust gets built, and organisations flourish in a fast-evolving world.
The opportunity is to stop treating AI and human effort as interchangeable, and start using AI to create more space for the capabilities that now drive real advantage. That is the shift many organisations still fail to see: AI changes not only how work gets done, but what human contribution is now worth.
Most organisations are still optimising for efficiency. In a world where production was scarce, that made sense. That world is changing.
Use AI solely to produce more of what is already abundant, and you have invested in the wrong asset. Use it to free up human capacity for what is becoming genuinely scarce, and you will lead and shape what comes next. Speed without wisdom is just faster noise.
Leaders need to be asking themselves:
Knowing what to invest in is the easier part. The deeper leadership challenge is creating the conditions for those capacities to actually flourish: the cultures, conversations, expectations, and ways of working that allow judgement, inquiry, attunement, presence, purpose, and accountability to take root. That is where the real work of leadership now sits.
The leaders who will thrive are not those who deploy AI most aggressively. They will be those who use it wisely, while becoming more intentional about the human capacities it can never replace. They will measure success not only by what gets produced, but by the quality of thinking, relating, deciding, and creating that sits behind it. That is how organisations build advantage that endures, and futures worth inheriting.
What if the most powerful lever for superior leadership, peak team performance, and strategic decision-making lies not in external strategies, but within?
There’s an often-overlooked internal system shaping every interaction and outcome. Mastering this isn’t about personal comfort; it’s about forging an unshakeable foundation for impactful leadership, cultivating high-trust environments, and consistently delivering unparalleled results.
When collective nervous systems are activated by urgency, pressure, and reputational stakes, perception becomes skewed, risk tolerance shifts and performance suffers.
This dynamic was tragically evident in the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Engineers had already identified that the O-ring seals were vulnerable in cold temperatures; the data was known and discussed the night before launch. Yet within NASA and its contractor Morton Thiokol, schedule pressure and hierarchical dynamics created a decision climate where basic safety data was overridden and the launch proceeded.
The lesson for organisations is that nervous system regulation is not peripheral to performance; it is foundational. Without it, cognitive flexibility shrinks, dissent feels unsafe, and even obvious warning signs can be missed in plain sight.
Ever feel a sudden rush of energy or a wave of calm? That’s your nervous system at work. It’s a vast network constantly sending signals, shaping how you think, feel, and act, often without you even realising it. Think of it as your internal operating system, running everything behind the scenes.
We’re particularly interested in the Autonomic Nervous System. This clever system handles the automatic functions: your breathing, heart rate, and digestion. It’s always on, keeping you going.
The ANS has two key players, always in a dynamic dance:
The magic happens in the balance. An effective nervous system knows when to speed up and when to slow down, responding perfectly to life’s demands and bouncing back strong.
The good news is that while functions are largely automatic, you possess powerful tools to influence your state. This isn’t about suppressing emotions; it’s about cultivating a resilient internal environment that supports your highest potential. Think of it as fine-tuning your internal operating system for optimal output.
Here are actionable strategies to bring your nervous system into a state of balanced regulation:
By consistently applying these strategies, you build a robust capacity for self-regulation, transforming reactive states into intentional responses. The best part is these are accessible to you anytime, for free.
Ultimately, nervous system regulation provides the essential base layer for high performance and efficiency. When your internal state is calm and focused, your cognitive functions are enhanced:
A regulated nervous system is the bedrock of genuine trust and safety, both within yourself and in your relationships (including the workplace). When you are internally calm and present, you project an aura of stability and authenticity.
The principles of nervous system regulation extend directly into the workplace, forming the invisible architecture of psychological safety. In environments where leaders and team members are largely regulated, the collective nervous system of the organisation thrives.
Psychological safety, which is the belief that one can speak up, ask questions, offer ideas, and even make mistakes without fear of punishment or humiliation, is not a ‘soft skill’; it’s a strategic imperative.
When individuals feel safe, the part of the brain responsible for higher-order thinking, innovation, and problem-solving is fully online. Conversely, a dysregulated state, triggered by fear or perceived threat, shuts down creativity and critical thinking, pushing individuals into survival mode.
Leaders who prioritise their own nervous system regulation, and actively foster it in their teams, create environments where:
This isn’t just about being ‘nice’; it’s about creating the optimal conditions for human potential to be fully realised, driving tangible business outcomes.
This integrated approach to well-being and performance isn’t a trade-off; it’s a synergistic pathway. By investing in nervous system regulation, you’re not just improving your personal well-being; you’re strategically enhancing your capacity for leadership, innovation, and sustained success. It’s about building a future where you can consistently operate at your peak, creating ideal outcomes in every facet of your life.
Ever felt that subtle tension in a team meeting, where a crucial insight remains unspoken?
Or perhaps you’ve seen a project falter because a quiet concern wasn’t raised in time?
As a leader, you’re wired for success; for high performance, commercial edge, and relentless standards. Your team mirrors back your ambition; actively striving, head down towards the lofty targets you set.
But are they truly playing to win, or merely playing not to lose?
This was the question Amy Edmonson, pioneering researcher of psychological safety, posed at the World Business Forum (WOBI) in 2025. Psychological safety often feels like a soft concept, a distant relative to the hard numbers of performance. However, the research and our experience tell us that they are fundamentally intertwined.
When psychological safety is missing, organisations don’t become bolder; they become fragile. A culture of caution takes hold. Truth becomes a precious item, carefully edited, softened, or hidden as it travels upwards. Risks are contained, mistakes buried, not openly examined.
By 2016, Nokia had exited the mobile handset market after selling its division to Microsoft. Retrospective analyses suggested the issue wasn’t all about technical capability gaps, it was mostly a cultural one.
Engineers reportedly knew their operating system couldn’t compete with Apple and Android, but senior leaders were seen as intolerant of failure or adversity. Instead of bold adaptation, a culture of caution took hold. Mistakes weren’t openly examined and truth became edited as it travelled up the hierarchy.
The result wasn’t resilience, it was fragility, and ultimately Nokia lost it’s footing in the market.
Without psychological safety, organisations don’t get braver under threat. They become brittle.
On the surface, this might look like smooth operations; meetings run easily, decisions are made quickly. But beneath this calm exterior, a dangerous vulnerability grows and valuable energy is wasted. Short-term tasks might still get completed, often driven by fear, but this comes at a high price: learning slows, new ideas shrink, and big risks build up quietly, becoming unmanageable before anyone notices.
In her presentation at the World Business Forum (WOBI) in 2025, Amy Edmondson shared a simple sequence to support psychological safety in the workplace:
This sequence, though simple, is incredibly powerful. She asserts that psychological safety is the invisible support that keeps the system honest, enabling crucial adjustments while there’s still time to change course. It doesn’t lead to ‘nicer’ conversations – it leads to more effective ones. Direct feedback arrives sooner, assumptions are tested right away, and tensions are dealt with while they’re still manageable, not after they’ve become fixed problems.
Leaders who see difficult truths as important insights will hear more of them. Mastering psychological safety isn’t just about team well-being; it’s about elevating your leadership presence, building a team that trusts you implicitly, and driving results that truly stand out, making you a more influential leader within the organisation. High standards and psychological safety are not opposing forces; they work best together. Teams push harder, innovate more freely, and achieve more when they know their challenges will be met with curiosity, not punishment.
For a long time, psychological safety was mostly a ‘cultural’ topic. That is quickly changing as regulations, like Victoria’s psychosocial hazard amendments taking effect in 2025, now require employers to identify and manage psychological risks with the same strictness applied to physical safety. The message is clear: psychosocial risk is no longer an informal concern.
Compliance will drive basic actions, but rules alone cannot create a voice. A true speak-up culture is built in daily interactions, in meetings, one-on-one talks, and, most importantly, in how leaders respond when the news is unwelcome.
Most organisations approach psychological safety from a protective angle: preventing harm, reducing stress, managing exposure to psychological risks. These are all essential. Yet, the performance benefits are often greatly overlooked. This isn’t just good for the company; it dramatically reduces your managerial headaches, elevates your impact, and positions you as a truly effective, effective leader.
To truly unlock the power of psychological safety, consider these practical steps for reflection and action:
“Leadership and change do not start with a strategy, it begins with a process of becoming aware.” – Otto Scharmer
As we lean into 2026, we’ve been thinking about how we can best invite positive intention and action into our daily lives, to be and make the changes we believe in. Unfortunately, it’s an all-too-common human experience to feel powerless in the face of the overwhelming realities we confront. Especially the big-ticket issues: economic and social inequities,
environmental concerns, and political divides. Many of us wonder, “What’s the point of trying to change anything? I’m just one tiny cog in the inexorable machine of life. What difference can I possibly make? I have no agency.”
But there is a powerful antidote and counter view to this hopelessness, which can also be a valuable leadership tool for leaders in large systems that intertwine with other large systems. Thought leader, Otto Scharmer, calls this alternative thinking “overcoming the illusion of insignificance.”
Scharmer’s work resonates with us because we agree with him that change does not lie exclusively in the hands of people who hold power and influence; rather, change is many people doing small things. This notion is supported by Scharmer’s lifetime of research into the nature of systems and has led him to believe that change can be affected
by anyone through one simple movement – a step into awareness. It’s with awareness that individuals are able to translate their desires and intentions for change into action and achievement. And this necessary mind awakening occurs in the “social soil” of social systems.
After a lifetime of studying systems, Scharmer has learned that:
● You can’t change systems unless you change consciousness
● You can’t transform consciousness unless you make a system see and sense itself
● You can’t do any of these things unless you sense, embody, and co-shape the emerging future (i.e., be the change you want to see)
So, how do we be and enact the change we want to see?
Well, this brings us to what we also know about trees. What we see above ground in our flourishing forests – our majestic Karri’s, hardy Banksia’s, and prolific Wattles – is a direct function of what is happening below ground in the soil. Some scientists (it is still a debate), call this the “wood wide web” – a system of fungi that exchange nutrients and information, by wrapping around or penetrating tree roots, to create a shared underground network of electrical and chemical signals. Using this system, trees make all sorts of decisions about their health and welfare. It is an elegant and effective communication net of sharing and caring that, left undisturbed, allows the system to thrive and adapt.
Scharmer applies this same natural systems-thinking to human social systems. In order for human social systems such as organisations to be healthy, fruitful, for them to grow and evolve, and stay resilient i.e., change, they rely on what is happening deep in their system’s ‘social soil.’ In this analogy, the social soil might comprise behaviours such as how
we listen, co-imagine, the conversations we have, how and what we co-create, and how we approach and give space for what might come. What determines the health of those behaviours, and therefore the system, is the quality of awareness of our social relationships i.e., how we think, converse and act.
Scharmer is convinced that by doing the work in the social soil, bringing a greater awareness to our relationships, we are preparing for action. Without it, he says, we are floundering in a 4.0 world using 2.0 methods and tools because our social soil is not being well tilled. Human health within systems is directly connected to the quality of the social soil, meaning the way we ‘are’ with each other.
Organisations across the world are intentionally seeking transformation away from operating systems designed for efficiency only and toward
those that are people-centric and regeneration-centric. But there is a disconnect between the challenges coming at us, and the institutional methods and tools available for us to use.
Turning these intentions into action – by improving the health of our social soil – can be accomplished by everyone, every day, through habitual practices such as:
The first and most important movement, though, is understanding that enacting meaningful change is an ability we all hold if we give our attention to becoming aware of what feeds a healthy social system.
It’s that simple and that powerful.
Welcome to a new year full of all the possibilities that you can realise.
At Performance Frontiers, our experience in guiding executives through the intricate landscapes of organisational change has revealed a profound truth: the capacity for curiosity is not merely an advantage, but an imperative. In a world poised for unprecedented evolution, we are witnessing a surge of leaders hungry to learn how to inspire and embed cultures of curiosity, recognising this as paramount for adaptation, innovation, and purposeful leadership. We believe in forging a future where organisations are not just resilient, but regenerative; driven by an expansive and conscious approach to leadership.
The good news is that curiosity isn’t a luxury, it’s our natural state; a fundamental brain function that directs our attention and drives learning. From the moment we enter the world, we are wired to explore, question, and make sense of our surroundings. Think of a child, utterly absorbed in discovering how a toy works or why the sky is blue. This innate wonder is powered by a relaxed brain state, often characterised by alpha and theta brain waves, which are associated with calm alertness, creativity, and deep learning. When our nervous system is regulated, our heart and brain enter a state of coherence, fostering optimal cognitive function and an open, receptive mind. This is the fertile ground from which genuine curiosity springs, often accompanied by the release of dopamine (the brain’s ‘pleasure drug’), which fuels our drive to explore and learn, allowing us to see possibilities rather than just problems.
However, the modern workplace, particularly during periods of complex change, often pulls us away from this natural state. Organisational transformation, while necessary, can trigger deep-seated threat responses. When faced with uncertainty like job security, new processes, shifting power dynamics, our ancient survival mechanisms kick in. The amygdala, our brain’s alarm system, goes into overdrive, flooding our system with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline (epinephrine). This physiological response, often referred to as the ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ response, is designed to prepare us for immediate danger, narrowing our focus to perceived threats. All of a sudden, our body still looks like an adult in a boardroom but our nervous system is running riot like an animal being chased across the desert in a fight for survival.
While essential for survival in a truly dangerous situation, our threat response severely impacts our capacity for curiosity. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for higher-order thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, becomes inhibited. Our attention constricts, making us less likely to consider diverse viewpoints, challenge assumptions, or explore novel solutions. Instead, we cling to what is known, even if it’s no longer effective. This explains why organisations, once giants like Kodak, Blockbuster, or Nokia, failed to adapt; their collective threat response to emerging technologies stifled the very curiosity needed to innovate. As leaders, understanding this neuroscientific reality is crucial: a threatened brain, inundated with stress chemicals, is a closed brain, incapable of the expansive thinking required for true transformation.
The good news is that we can consciously intervene. By actively regulating our nervous system, we can shift from a state of threat to one of curiosity, redirecting our attention towards problem-solving and forward momentum. This isn’t about ignoring challenges; it’s about approaching them from a place of calm strength.
Practical strategies for nervous system regulation at work include:
Once regulated, we can consciously redirect our attention. This involves engaging the prefrontal cortex by asking open-ended questions, actively listening, and seeking to understand rather than to judge. Frame challenges as “puzzles” to be solved collaboratively, rather than insurmountable “problems.” This shift in perspective, backed by a calmer nervous system, allows us to access our innate problem-solving abilities and generate innovative solutions. It builds forward momentum by transforming potential paralysis into purposeful action.
Harnessing curiosity isn’t a one-off event; it’s a continuous practice, a commitment to lifelong learning and exploration. For leaders, this means fostering an environment where curiosity is not just tolerated but celebrated and integrated into the fabric of the organisation. Think injecting colour, play, texture and fun into the environment on the regular. The sustained engagement with new ideas and challenges continues to stimulate dopamine pathways, reinforcing the reward associated with learning and discovery and keeps the team engaged.
We begin by tackling the “layered puzzles”; the complex, interconnected challenges within our immediate operational sphere. Each solved puzzle builds confidence and capability, creating a virtuous cycle of learning and adaptation. This iterative process allows teams to develop systems thinking, understanding how different parts of the organisation interact and influence each other, and feel more deeply connected and invested in the organisation.
Ultimately, this sustained curiosity prepares us to explore the “mysteries of our world”; the deeper, more profound questions about our purpose, our impact, and our potential. What kind of future are we building? How can our organisation contribute to a more regenerative society?
These are questions that transcend immediate objectives, inviting us to engage with a broader, more holistic vision. By nurturing curiosity, we not only solve today’s problems but also empower ourselves and our teams to shape a more conscious, adaptable, and ultimately, more fulfilling future. It is through this continuous journey of enquiry that we truly unlock our innate edge, transforming challenges into opportunities for profound growth and collective impact.
To further embed these principles and cultivate a truly curious culture, we invite you to explore the Performance Frontiers ASK Toolkit. This practical resource is designed to equip leaders with the art of asking powerful questions – questions that not only challenge assumptions and uncover insights but also foster psychological safety and ignite the innate curiosity within your teams. By consciously shifting your questioning approach, you can actively support a transition from reactive problem-solving to proactive exploration, empowering your people to engage with complexity, unlock innovative solutions, and collectively shape a more regenerative future.
Most of us, either directly or indirectly, have experienced the disruption of a natural disaster. Increasing in frequency and intensity, these events create enormous upheaval as well as fear and anxiety about the future. If, however, we take the time to observe nature in its recovery, we can learn valuable lessons of successful adaptation and thriving beyond disruption. After a summer wildfire scorches the earth or a thunderstorm uproots trees and devastates wildlife, the landscape doesn’t return to its former state; it regenerates.
This process of regeneration results in ecosystems that are more resilient to future disruptions. For example, a forest recovering from a fire may develop a mix of fire-resistant species or those better equipped to withstand future heat stress, ultimately strengthening the ecosystem in the long term. Regeneration can also lead to greater biodiversity, as new species occupy ecological niches left vacant by those lost. Species may adapt to changing environmental conditions, fostering a more diverse and complex ecosystem. This process of regeneration goes beyond recovery towards transformation: an adaptive and sustainable response to adversity.
The landscape of leadership today is increasingly defined by disruption, and like the natural environment these disruptions are becoming more intense and more frequent. From AI-driven acceleration to cybersecurity risks, skills shortages and global political instability to the rising expectations of stakeholders. Traditional leadership approaches, which rely on predictability, stability and control are no longer sufficient. Our established systems and processes are too slow and rigid in this new and rapidly shifting terrain.
As author Ben Rennie urges:
Real-time navigation is about being deeply present in the moment, attuning to the emerging needs of both self and system, and responding regeneratively. In nature, ecosystems don’t repeat ‘tried and true’ pathways, they adapt in real-time to changing conditions, responding to disruptions in ways that renew and sustain life. Similarly, we can no longer follow a fixed route, we must cultivate the ability to navigate dynamically, making decisions based on real-time insights for regenerative futures. Regenerative leadership acknowledges that while disruption may feel chaotic and overwhelming in the moment, it ultimately leads to a system better suited to its environment.
So, what are the tools of real-time navigation? What does this new approach to leadership look like? Among the plethora of potential responses, three concepts emerge as central to regeneration: connection, creativity, and courage. These concepts, manifest in action, can be developed through conscious practice and reflection.
“Connection is why we’re here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.”
Brené Brown
Connection is at the heart of regenerative leadership. It’s the practice of nurturing the relationships, systems, and environments that allow life and leadership to flourish. Connection begins with attunement: to self, to others, and to the wider ecosystem in which we operate. It calls for empathy, reciprocity, and the capacity to listen deeply, creating spaces where people are seen, valued, and empowered to contribute. To experiment in cultivating connection, try:
Presencing: Choose a scheduled meeting that is challenging for you or doesn’t always go as you envisage. Try deep listening. Resist the urge to state your position, or immediately problem-solve. Attempt to discover how others are thinking and feeling, get curious and aim to discover something you didn’t know or understand previously.
Mapping Interconnections: On a whiteboard, map out key relationships, processes, and systems in your organisation. Identify gaps or points of stress, then experiment with interventions to strengthen those links.
Cross-Team Collaboration Experiments: Pair people from different functions for short-term projects to encourage knowledge sharing and diverse perspective taking. Observe how relationships and ideas evolve.
“Everyone has huge creative capacities. The challenge is to develop them.”
Sir Ken Robinson
Creativity is an exploratory process, a way of seeing, questioning, and imagining that invites us to let go of old assumptions and habitual patterns of thought. It involves experimenting with new perspectives, embracing uncertainty, and generating ideas that are both novel and meaningful. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, pioneer of the psychology of ‘optimal experience’, describes creativity as the ability to approach challenges with fresh, adaptive strategies while continuously responding to an ever-changing moment. At its core, creativity is about curiosity and intuition, backing yourself and your people to discover paths that were previously invisible. To experiment in cultivating creativity, try:
Idea Sprints: Allocate short periods for teams to brainstorm multiple solutions to a single challenge, initially emphasising quantity over quality. Make these open, playful sprints where no idea is a bad idea, and thoughts can build freely on one another. Frame the session with divergent thinking techniques to prompt the team’s creativity.
Perspective Shifts: Encourage team members to imagine solutions from different stakeholder viewpoints, opposing positions, and/or future generations. Draw parallels from unrelated fields through analogy or consider how someone you admire might approach this challenge, for example: What would Steven Spielberg do in this situation?
Engage with Art: Art activates and integrates brain regions that don’t usually work together in everyday, goal-directed tasks, generating new pathways for divergent thinking. Try partnering with a local gallery, artist, or creative organisation to design a team encounter. Invite a First Nations storyteller to share their relationship with listening and story. Do theatre sports, or an open mic night at your local comedy club.
“Courage is being scared to death … and saddling up anyway.”
John Wayne
Regenerative leadership calls for the courage to step into the unknown. Taking that step means recognising that something more important than fear is at stake, it’s a gesture rooted in integrity, trust, and hope. Courage is choosing to act despite uncertainty, it’s the resolve to uphold your principles when the path ahead is unclear, to make difficult decisions with honesty, and to face discomfort in service of something larger than yourself. In an environment of perpetual change, courage means leading without a fixed map, but with conviction, humility, and a steady moral compass to guide the way. To experiment in cultivating courage, try:
Decision Reflection Practices: After a challenging decision, reflect on the core intention behind the decision, how it aligned with the values, and purpose of your organisation. Consider who was affected and how, and did you act in ways that preserved dignity and fairness. How did you show up as a leader and what did you learn about yourself?
Transparent Communication: Model courage by openly discussing unknowns, uncertainties, and potential risks with your team. By acknowledging what is unclear or may fail, leaders normalise ambiguity, reduce fear, and create space for collective problem-solving and innovation.
Explore Ethical Dilemmas: Engage an external facilitator who brings expertise in scenario design, safe exploration of moral tension, and structured debriefing. They can Facilitate sessions where leaders and teams explore difficult choices, weighing values and trade-offs, building moral courage in decision-making.
As a form of integration across all three concepts: connection, creativity and courage develop a practice of Leadership Journaling. Set a regular rhythm for your journal writing, make initial observations, notice patterns, capture insights, and explore how you show up as a leader. As a starting point you could answer these questions:
By viewing disruption as a chance to regenerate, leaders can create environments that foster adaptability, inclusivity, and renewal, enabling their organisations to not only survive but thrive, emerging stronger, wiser, and more connected. Regenerative leadership, like natural ecosystems, transforms adversity into opportunity, helping both leaders and organisations evolve to shape dynamic and sustainable futures.
Brown, B. (2012) Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. New York: Gotham Books.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Perennial.
Robinson, K. (2001) Out of our minds: Learning to be creative. London: Capstone.
Schechner, R. (2013) Performance studies: An introduction. 3rd edn. London: Routledge.
The idea of interpersonal or relational curiosity as a leadership skill has been remarkably undervalued. When we think of being curious, we picture the act of sparking ideas and innovations through enquiry. But it could be argued that it’s the other dimensions of curiosity that make the world go around, i.e., relational and self.
Relational curiosity is a recognised catalyst for building deeper trust and connection. This, in turn, leads to increased collaboration and better problem-solving, allowing us to transform conflicts into learning opportunities and create a more enjoyable, engaging environment for everyone involved. While self-curiosity invites an awareness of ourselves that creates space for other people’s stories.
Previously, we’ve dipped into the nature of curiosity, how it manifests, and why it’s crucial in leadership. Here we are going a step further, diving into how we might dial up relational and self-curiosity to superpower levels.
Adam Grant’s quote speaks directly to the importance of relational curiosity by suggesting its role in how we learn about empathy. Empathy is considered not only a desirable human trait but a vital leadership competency. Studies show that there is a strong connection between empathic leaders and performance at work, particularly in cultures where power is concentrated at higher levels. (And as a side note, it’s important to recognise that feeling empathy is different to showing empathy.) This tends to mean traditional Western hierarchical organisations.
Relational curiosity is the drive to understand others through their feelings and experiences, which is the beginning of us feeling that necessary empathy. It’s the bee that pollinates the flower. Humans are born with a capacity for empathy but need social interaction to develop it. Curiosity about ourselves and others is the unlock.
So, what are some of the ways we can build this buzz of relational curiosity to enrich our empathy capacity?
Getting curious with others takes time and a relational focus. Start thinking of yourself
as a more people centred leader and not entirely task focused.
The answers to your questions might require a perspective stretch, and your first
step to leading with empathy is by stepping into someone else’s world-view. This should
not be interpreted as weakness or inaction. It is in, in fact, a superpower.
Instead of focusing on another’s actions, ask how they approached a task or what
they found interesting about it.
Learning about how others think and feel is bound to challenge your own way of looking
at the world. Consciously suspend your judgment to hold a safe space for them and
their perspectives.
Be creative and consistent with how you check in with your team. Celebrate
questions that open insights, not just offer answers. Consciously create a culture of
inspired curiosity.
And while these are helpful tips, it’s equally important to realise that your ability to effectively practice relational curiosity will be impacted by how adept you are at self-curiosity. We’ve all heard many times that leadership begins with self; so, it makes sense that internally-focused enquiry is the activator of that notion.
Try some of these practices:
Whichever dimension of curiosity you are employing as a leader; intellectual; relational; self; you may experience certain reactions of your own. For instance, being curious can be uncomfortable if you aren’t well-practised in it, or it can take you somewhere uncomfortable. Opening to another’s perspective may feel like unsteady ground. In these moments, mindfulness is your ally. Think: “I’m here to understand, not to agree or fix.” You can also use pauses to metabolise a conversation by simply saying, “I need a moment to think about that,” or, “That’s a lot to take in, can we come back to this soon?”
It can also be helpful to create your own curious checklist of ways to approach building a habit of deeper, people centred enquiry. Here is an example:
And remember that relational curiosity is a mindset and a tool for leading people. AI will not offer the same insights, nuances and emotional responses as your team. While it might be tempting to get the quick answers and data from technology, the deeper more potent answers reside in people.
The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, will never know how pertinent his statement would be in our BANI world. But thanks to his influence on Western thought, we have a simple yet profound way to frame the human condition. We are born into, live through, and die in change. And how we navigate it determines much of how challenging and fulfilling our experience is.
The impact of change is never more potent than in our work lives, where we encounter its various transformations through leadership spills, redundancies, takeovers, market crashes, booms, technology revolutions, scaling, downsizing, organisational upheavals, and redesigns.
So, what is the key to riding this inexorable state of flux?
Well, we believe it is curiosity – our number one leadership superpower!
It’s important to understand firstly, that curiosity as a natural brain function that directs our attention and drives learning. It’s innate and part of normal human growth and development. But for large swathes of history it has been discouraged, especially in children. Curiosity, after all, killed the cat. In the workplace, we’ve also been dissuaded from being too inquisitive, leaving corporate history littered with examples of how blind acceptance and unchallenged assumptions can lead to the demise of organisations. Look at Blackberry, Kodak, Blockbuster, and Borders bookstores.
Fortunately, since the 1990s, we’ve begun to better understand the role of curiosity in how we best adapt, survive and thrive. This shift is reflected keenly in college commencement speeches. Once upon a time, these addresses to students followed a certain script of “what to do” to be successful. Nowadays though, they tend to encourage graduates to let curiosity guide them, suggesting that valuable lessons and opportunities can be found by seeking out diverse viewpoints to learn how to think. More than ever, there is an emphasis on “how to be” by acknowledging the complexity of life and applying a curious mindset to unlocking fulfillment. Curiosity today means “being open to the unknown, leaning into your anxieties, and trying many things.”
Most of us are familiar with the idea of intellectual curiosity. It’s that urge to accumulate information and problem solve and the spark that drives innovation and fuels motivation. If your organisation is undergoing a transformation, intellectual curiosity is the catalyst that can surface diverse ideas and solutions. It also helps us recognise the difference between puzzles (solvable problems) and mysteries (ongoing exploration).
However, it’s not the only dimension that powers our adaptive thinking. Relational Curiosity is about having a deep interest in learning about other people, their motivations, and their experiences to build stronger relationships, trust, and communication. In organisational transformations, high relational curiosity will amplify buy-in and empower individuals to find their own solutions. A work culture that promotes curiosity about how its people tick will be naturally resilient and collaborative.
Self-curiosity is another important dimension in leadership in transformation. Through the active, ongoing practice of asking ourselves introspective questions, we can better understand our strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots, leading us to more effective and authentic leadership. Leaders with self-curiosity are open to learning and challenging their own assumptions, and therefore, adapt better to change.
So, as you find yourself in an organisational transformation, how can this vital force that directs our attention serve you best? How can you use curiosity to keep your teams out of threat, and in a state of exploration?
Firstly, get to know some of your number one superpower’s characteristics.
Curiosity…
With these traits in mind, a helpful way to start putting curiosity to work is by asking some relevant framing questions. For example:
These types of questions are a first step in making sure you are using your superpower for good.
The next step is about embedding the practice. While curiosity might be a natural urge, in the workplace we need to support its appropriate application. Studies have shown that there are a few crucial components needed to bring it to life.
Thinking transformation? Think PIAC.
Employing more than one dimension of curiosity is an effective way to soften resistance to change and inspire new beginnings. It’s more than asking questions, it’s about taking action through curious connection and communication.
In the earlier articles in this series, we explored the profound impact that asking great questions can have on your team and how they can support you, as a leader, to transform performance in a neuroscience backed way. Now, we’re excited to introduce a practical tool designed to help you master this essential skill.
As leaders, you face complex situations every day – juggling competing priorities to drive results, develop your team, navigate change and foster collaboration. We created the ASK Toolkit because we were observing certain common frustrations holding leaders back and wanted to offer them some practical scaffolding to help them in the moment.
Some of the frustrating scenarios that ASK is designed to help you navigate include:
These situations aren’t just uncomfortable, they are major blocks to creativity, productivity and engagement. We believe that equipping leaders with the ability to ask better questions is the most powerful way to navigate these challenges.
The ASK Toolkit is designed to be a practical, accessible resource you can turn to in the moments that matter. It includes several key components:
This page provides a clear overview of the toolkit and how to use it effectively. It gets you up and running fast. It provides the foundational understanding and practical tips needed to start using the toolkit immediately and with confidence. It breaks down:
What’s Inside: Here you’ll find a summary of the toolkit’s components.
Breakdown of Different Questions: We give you an introduction to the various types of questions included in the toolkit, linking back to the categories we’ve discussed in earlier articles (Connect, Understand, Explore, Progress, Learn) and the more specific types of questions within them (like Clarifying, Divergent, Action-Oriented, Reflective, etc.).
Quick Pick Solution: A clear guide to help you quickly identify the right type of question to solve some of the most common situations we know leaders face.
Behavioural Success Markers: We give you practical tips on how to ask questions so they land effectively. It covers setting the stage, managing your own state (“Mind Your Vibe”), mastering delivery, and following through.
The Guide Map is the heart of the toolkit’s decision-making process. It’s designed to help you quickly diagnose your situation and find the most helpful type of question.
How to Use the Guide: You start in the centre by identifying “What is happening?”. With a bit of observation and self-reflection, you’ll be able to
name what is going on and where asking questions can help.
Walk Through Sections: You scan the centre bubbles and match what you’re noticing (e.g., “Stuck in the Loop,” “Reading the Room,” “Spinning Wheels,” “Fog of Confusion,” “Growth Sparks,” “A learning moment has arrived,” “It’s time to move forward”). Trust your instincts here.
Choose Your Path: Follow the colour-coded paths outwards, corresponding to the five main categories: Connect (Orange), Understand (Green), Explore (Yellow), Progress (Pink), and Learn (Purple).
Take Action: Check the more specific indicators within that category and select the specific question type (e.g., within Understand, you might find Clarifying or Unveiling questions are needed). This leads you to the relevant question cards.
By using the Guide Map, you will find increasing clarity on your direction and a specific type of question that is most likely to create positive change in that moment. It helps you cut through complexity and focus your energy effectively.
n your personal library, you’ll find a deck of cards, each featuring specific questions categorised by type (e.g., Clarifying, Divergent, Action-Oriented, Reflective, etc.).
Each card offers a selection of powerful questions designed for a specific purpose, aligned with the Guide Map.
For example, the “Action-Oriented” cards provide questions like “What’s one concrete step you could take now to build momentum?” or “What’s getting in the way right now, and how could we remove or reduce that barrier?”.
The “Reflective” cards might ask “Looking back, what do you wish you’d done differently, and what might you try in your next effort?” or “Which of your values are most reflected in this decision?”.
The cards are designed for you to pick them up, read through the options, and choose the question that resonates most for the situation. This process builds your intuition and confidence over time, helping you internalise the art of asking impactful questions.
This toolkit is designed for anyone in a leadership or influencing role, particularly middle managers who want to improve their communication, build stronger relationships, facilitate better problem-solving, and drive team performance. If you find yourself struggling with difficult conversations, team dynamics, or getting clarity and buy-in, this toolkit is for you. You don’t have to be at a particular point in your leadership journey, or at any certain level of leadership to benefit from what the toolkit has to offer.
Use the ASK Toolkit anytime you are preparing for or are in a conversation where the outcome matters. This could be one-on-one check-ins, team meetings, brainstorming sessions, conflict resolution, planning discussions, or performance reviews. The Guide Map helps you pinpoint the right time and context for different types of questions and the comprehensive library of questions offers you exactly what you need at your fingertips. It’s highly compact and can be easily brought along wherever you need to go.
The ASK Toolkit is designed as a personal development tool for individual leaders. We encourage team members who are also in leadership roles or aspire to be, to get their own toolkit to support their personal growth journey.
The investment in the ASK Toolkit translates into significant intangible benefits that directly impact tangible results. By asking better questions, you will:
These factors contribute directly to improved team productivity, employee satisfaction and overall business agility; which all have a positive impact on the bottom line.
The ASK Toolkit is more than just a set of cards; it’s a system for developing one of the most critical skills in modern leadership. It empowers you to let go of needing to know all the answers while supporting you to navigate complexity, build stronger relationships, and unlock the full potential of your team by asking the right question at the right time.
To read the other articles in this series, check out the links below.
Questions: From Telling to Asking
Ask to Lead: Mastering People-centred and Task-focused questions
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