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The Words We Don’t Hear Ourselves Say

February 16, 2026
Article, Conversations, Language, Nonviolence, Nonviolent Communication, Violence
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The Words We Don’t Hear Ourselves Say

Every day, you speak thousands of words. You choose your sentences, craft your arguments, express your feelings. Or so you think.

Beneath the surface of conscious communication runs a deeper current—patterns of speech so automatic, so culturally embedded, that they pass through us unexamined. These aren’t mere quirks of grammar. They’re windows into how we construct reality, distribute responsibility, and quietly do violence to ourselves and others without ever noticing.

Here’s a map of the territory you’ve been speaking without knowing it.

‘X Needs To…’

‘She needs to calm down.’ ‘He needs to be more assertive.’ ‘The country needs stronger leadership.’

This construction sounds like observation. It feels like fact. But pause on it: how do you know what someone else needs?

When we say ‘X needs’, we’re rarely reporting on X’s actual requirements. We’re projecting our own discomfort, preference, or agenda onto another person and disguising it as their deficiency. ‘She needs to calm down’ typically means ‘her emotional state is making me uncomfortable’. ‘He needs to be more assertive’ often translates to ‘I wish he would behave in ways that served my interests better’.

The listener hears a diagnosis. What’s actually being delivered is a demand wrapped in the language of care.

The alternative: Own the want. ‘I’d prefer if she spoke more quietly’ is honest. ‘I’m finding this conversation difficult’ is vulnerable. Neither claims to know what another person’s soul requires.

‘I Should Have…’

‘I should have called her back.’ ‘I should have known better.’ ‘I should have left years ago.’

Marshall Rosenberg, who developed Nonviolent Communication, had a striking phrase for this: he called ‘should’ a form of violence we do to ourselves.

Notice what happens in your body when you say ‘I should have’. There’s a tightening, a small internal flinch. The word summons a judge—some internalised authority who stands apart from you, measuring you against a standard you’ve already failed.

‘Should’ contains no learning, only verdict. It collapses the complexity of past decisions (made with incomplete information, under pressure, by a different version of you) into simple moral failure. Worse, it offers no path forward—just an endless loop of self-prosecution.

The alternative: Try ‘I wish I had’ or ‘Next time I want to’. These carry the same recognition without the violence. They acknowledge preference without installing a courtroom in your chest.

‘Deserves’

‘She deserves to be happy.’ ‘He got what he deserved.’ ‘They deserve better.’

‘Deserve’ is one of the most quietly loaded words in English. It sounds like justice. It feels like moral clarity. But examine its machinery.

To say someone ‘deserves’ something is to claim the existence of a cosmic ledger—a system in which actions are weighed and outcomes are rightfully distributed. It implies that suffering and joy are earned, that there’s a correct matching between what you do and what happens to you.

This belief is comforting when it goes our way. But it’s also the foundation of every form of victim-blaming: if good things come to those who deserve them, then those experiencing bad things must have done something to warrant their fate.

‘Deserve’ smuggles judgement into apparent compassion. Even ‘you deserve to be happy’ contains within it the shadow possibility that some people don’t.

The alternative: Try ‘I want this for you’ or simply describe what you hope happens. Strip out the metaphysical accounting.

‘You Made Me Feel…’

‘You made me so angry.’ ‘You make me happy.’ ‘You made me feel stupid.’

This one hides in plain sight because it sounds like emotional honesty. But track the grammar: it positions the other person as the cause and you as the passive recipient—a container that gets filled with whatever emotion they pour in.

This construction outsources responsibility for your inner life. It makes other people responsible for managing your emotional states, which is both unfair to them and disempowering to you. It also tends to escalate conflict, because the other person now has to defend themselves against the charge of making you feel something.

The alternative: ‘When you did X, I felt Y’ or even simpler: ‘I felt angry’. This keeps the emotion yours while still noting the context that triggered it.

‘I Can’t’

‘I can’t make it to the party.’ ‘I can’t deal with this right now.’ ‘I can’t tell her the truth.’

Sometimes ‘can’t’ is literally true—you cannot fly by flapping your arms; you cannot be in London and Sydney simultaneously.

But most conversational ‘can’ts’ are actually ‘won’ts’ in disguise. ‘I can’t make it to the party’ usually means ‘I’m choosing not to, and I don’t want to own that choice’. ‘I can’t tell her the truth’ typically means ‘I’m unwilling to accept the consequences of honesty’.

This matters because ‘can’t’ erases your agency. It positions you as constrained by external forces rather than making a choice. Over time, habitual ‘can’t’ creates a felt sense of powerlessness that doesn’t match reality. You start to believe your own framing.

The alternative: Try the sentence with ‘won’t’ or ‘I’m choosing not to’ and see how it feels. If it feels uncomfortable, that discomfort might be worth examining.

‘Just’

‘I just wanted to check in.’ ‘It’s just a thought.’ ‘I’m just saying.’

‘Just’ is the word of pre-emptive apology. It minimises before anyone has objected. It shrinks the speaker before they’ve even finished speaking.

Watch for this one in professional contexts, where it often functions as a class or gender marker—a way of making oneself smaller, less threatening, less likely to be seen as demanding. ‘I just wanted to follow up’ is a request pretending to barely exist.

The alternative: Delete the word entirely. ‘I wanted to check in’ is neither aggressive nor presumptuous. It’s merely clear.

‘Always’ and ‘Never’

‘You always do this.’ ‘She never listens.’ ‘I always mess things up.’

These words feel emphatic, but they’re lies of a particular kind—they delete every counterexample from history and present a pattern as a law.

In conflict, ‘always’ and ‘never’ are especially corrosive. They transform a specific complaint into a character indictment. The other person now has to defend their entire history rather than address the present situation. Unsurprisingly, this tends to produce defensiveness rather than resolution.

The alternative: Specificity. ‘You did this yesterday and last week, and I’m seeing a pattern’ contains the same concern without the totalising claim.

‘But’

‘I love you, but…’ ‘That’s a good point, but…’ ‘I’m not racist, but…’

Whatever precedes ‘but’ is about to be negated. Everyone knows this instinctively—it’s why ‘I’m not racist, but’ has become a cultural punchline. The word functions as an eraser.

In feedback, ‘but’ creates a structure where the positive is perceived as mere setup for the criticism that actually matters. The listener discounts everything before the pivot.

The alternative: Try ‘and’. ‘I love you, and I need to tell you something difficult’ holds both truths simultaneously. It’s more honest and less structurally deceptive.

The Collective Contagion

These patterns don’t stay contained in individual minds. They ripple outward, and when millions of people speak them simultaneously, they begin to shape the social fabric itself.

Consider what happens when ‘X needs to’ scales up. Political discourse becomes saturated with projections disguised as diagnoses. ‘The other side needs to wake up.’ ‘Those people need to understand.’ ‘This country needs to return to its values.’ No one is actually listening; everyone is prescribing. The impossibility of productive dialogue isn’t a mystery—it’s the predictable outcome of a species that habitually frames its preferences as others’ deficiencies.

Or consider the collective weight of ‘deserves’. Entire economic and justice systems are built on this single word. The belief that outcomes are deserved—that the successful earned their success and the struggling earned their struggle—underwrites policies that would otherwise be difficult to stomach. It allows a society to witness suffering and feel, not compassion, but a kind of grim cosmic satisfaction. ‘Deserve’ is the load-bearing wall of every system that tolerates unnecessary pain.

The ‘should’ we do to ourselves, meanwhile, creates a population primed for external authority. People who have internalised a judge—who constantly measure themselves against standards they didn’t choose—are remarkably easy to govern, market to, and shame into compliance. The internal tyrant makes the external one almost redundant. Mass self-violence through language produces a species perpetually convinced of its own inadequacy, chronically seeking approval from systems happy to withhold it.

‘You made me feel’ might be the most politically consequential of all. When emotional responsibility is habitually externalised, the search for someone to blame becomes a cultural constant. Grievance becomes identity. Groups form not around shared vision but shared antagonist. The person or party or nation who ‘made us feel’ this way must be confronted, punished, defeated. The pattern that starts in a kitchen argument scales to geopolitics with alarming ease.

And ‘always’ and ‘never’—the totalising words—train us for a kind of cognitive fundamentalism. Nuance becomes unbearable. History becomes a weapon rather than a teacher. Entire populations learn to sort the world into permanent categories: those who always betray us, those who never understand, those whose nature is fixed and knowable. This is the grammar of dehumanisation, and we practise it daily on the smallest scale before deploying it on the largest.

What we’re looking at isn’t just bad habits of speech. It’s the linguistic infrastructure of human dysfunction—the patterns that make tribalism feel natural, that make compassion feel naive, that make self-hatred feel like rigour and projection feel like insight.

Language is the technology through which humans coordinate. When that technology is riddled with hidden malware—programmes that run without our awareness, serving purposes we didn’t choose—the coordination fails in predictable ways. We talk past each other, dominate each other, blame each other, and judge each other, all while believing we’re simply describing reality.

The social fabric isn’t fraying despite our communication. It’s fraying through it.

Why This Matters

You might wonder whether this is all overthinking—whether language is just language, and we should say what we mean without parsing every syllable.

But here’s the thing: you’re already being shaped by these patterns. The question isn’t whether to be affected by language but whether to be aware of how it’s affecting you.

Every ‘I should have’ deepens a groove of self-judgement. Every ‘you made me feel’ incrementally shifts responsibility outward. Every ‘X needs to’ practises a subtle imperialism over other minds. These aren’t single events—they’re habits, repeated thousands of times across a lifetime, slowly constructing the felt sense of who you are and how reality works.

Awareness doesn’t mean constant vigilance. It doesn’t mean policing every sentence. It means, occasionally, catching yourself mid-pattern and wondering: Is this what I actually mean? Is this true? Is this kind?

The unconscious patterns will still run. But now and then, you’ll hear yourself—and in that hearing, find a small freedom to speak differently.

And different speech, over time, makes for a different life.

What patterns have you noticed in your own language? Sometimes the most revealing ones are the hardest to catch—precisely because they feel so natural that they’ve become invisible.

Further Reading

Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62–65.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.

Pinker, S. (2007). The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human nature. Viking.

Rosenberg, M. B. (2015). Nonviolent communication: A language of life (3rd ed.). PuddleDancer Press.

Crime and Punishment: Why Our First Instinct Is Always to Punish

February 14, 2026
Actionable Insights, Article, Language, Violence
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Crime and Punishment: Why Our First Instinct Is Always to Punish

There’s a moment we’ve all experienced. Someone cuts in the queue. A colleague takes credit for your idea. A stranger is rude for no apparent reason. A family member says something hurtful.

What happens in your body? Your jaw tightens. Your pulse quickens. And somewhere deep in your mind, a verdict is already being handed down.

They should pay for that.

It’s remarkable how quickly we become judges, juries, and—if given the chance—executioners. Not literally, of course. But emotionally, socially, psychologically? We’re surprisingly eager to make others suffer for their transgressions against us.

The Punishment Reflex

When faced with behaviour we find unwelcome, our minds don’t naturally drift towards curiosity. We don’t instinctively wonder what might have led someone to act that way. We don’t pause to consider whether our interpretation is even accurate.

Instead, we punish. Sometimes overtly—through confrontation, exclusion, or retaliation. More often subtly—through coldness, withdrawal, gossip, or that particular tone of voice designed to make someone feel small.

This isn’t a character flaw unique to certain people. It’s baked into us. Researchers studying cooperation have found that humans are ‘altruistic punishers’—we’re willing to incur personal costs just to see wrongdoers face consequences. We’ll sacrifice our own resources, time, and peace of mind to ensure someone ‘gets what they deserve’.

Why We’re Wired This Way

Evolutionary psychologists suggest this instinct served important social functions. In small tribal groups, punishment helped maintain cooperation. If freeloaders and cheaters could act without consequence, the whole social fabric would unravel. The threat of punishment—ostracism, violence, shame—kept people in line.

There’s also something deeply satisfying about punishment. Neuroimaging studies have shown that anticipating punishment for those who’ve wronged us activates the brain’s reward centres. We get a dopamine hit from imagining justice being served. Revenge, it turns out, really is sweet—at least in the moment.

The Problem With Our Default Setting

But here’s where things get complicated. Our ancestral environment was radically different from our current one. We now encounter thousands of people, most of whom we’ll never see again. We interact across cultures, contexts, and communication styles that make misunderstanding almost inevitable. We judge strangers based on thirty-second interactions and assign them to moral categories.

And our punishment instinct? It doesn’t adjust for any of this.

Consider what happens when someone cuts you off in traffic. Your immediate reaction likely involves anger, perhaps a flash of road rage. You might sound the horn aggressively, gesture, tailgate them in return. In that moment, they’re not a person who might be rushing to an emergency, or who simply made a mistake, or who is having the worst day of their life. They’re an offender deserving punishment.

Or think about social media. Someone posts an opinion you find foolish or offensive. The urge to pile on, to correct, to mock—it’s almost irresistible. We don’t see a complex human with a lifetime of experiences that shaped their view. We see a target.

This tendency to attribute others’ behaviour to their character rather than their circumstances is so pervasive that psychologists have given it a name: the fundamental attribution error. We assume people do bad things because they are bad, rather than because they’re responding to pressures we can’t see.

The Costs We Rarely Count

Our punitive instincts come with hidden costs.

We often punish the wrong people. Behaviour that looks intentional is frequently accidental. What seems like rudeness might be preoccupation or cultural difference or social anxiety. By defaulting to punishment, we regularly inflict harm on people who don’t deserve it.

We escalate rather than resolve. Punishment tends to breed resentment, not reflection. The person you punish rarely thinks, ‘They’re right, I should change.’ More often, they think, ‘What’s their problem?’ and the cycle continues.

We damage ourselves. Holding onto grievances, plotting revenge, maintaining anger—these states are exhausting. Research consistently shows that people who forgive are happier and healthier than those who nurse their resentments. Meta-analyses have found significant positive correlations between forgiveness and both physical and psychological well-being.

We miss opportunities for connection. Sometimes the person who behaved badly is struggling. Sometimes they simply don’t know better. A response rooted in curiosity rather than condemnation can transform a moment of conflict into one of understanding.

The Alternatives We Overlook

What would it look like to have a different default? Not naivety—there are genuine bad actors who require real consequences. But a willingness to consider other possibilities before reaching for punishment.

We might start with curiosity: What might explain this behaviour that doesn’t assume malicious intent?

We might try communication: Actually asking someone why they did something before deciding what they deserve.

We might practise proportionality: Matching our response to the actual severity of the offence, rather than the intensity of our initial emotional reaction.

We might extend grace: Remembering that we, too, have behaved badly at times. We’ve been thoughtless, rude, selfish, and hurtful—often without realising it. We’ve been the villain in someone else’s story without knowing it.

A Different Kind of Strength

There’s a misconception that punishment is strong and forgiveness is weak. That to let something go is to be a pushover.

But consider how much strength it takes to interrupt your own anger. To pause before reacting (cf. the Semantic Pause). To choose understanding when judgement is so much easier. To absorb an offence without passing it on.

This isn’t about being a doormat. It’s about recognising that our automatic responses aren’t always the wisest ones. That the visceral satisfaction of punishment is usually brief, while its consequences can linger.

Conclusion: The Verdict Is Never Final

We can’t entirely rewire ourselves. The punishment instinct will always be there, tugging at us when someone wrongs us. That’s fine. Acknowledging its presence is the first step to not being controlled by it.

What we can do is slow down. Create a space between stimulus and response. Ask ourselves: Is punishment really what this moment calls for? Will it actually make things better? Or am I just feeding an ancient impulse that no longer serves me?

The truth is, most unwelcome behaviours don’t require punishment. They require patience, or conversation, or boundaries, or simply moving on. They invite us to remember that the person in front of us is as complex and confused and imperfect as we are.

And that’s not a verdict. It’s just a fact.

Further Reading

de Quervain, D. J.-F., Fischbacher, U., Treyer, V., Schellhammer, M., Schnyder, U., Buck, A., & Fehr, E. (2004). The neural basis of altruistic punishment. Science, 305(5688), 1254–1258. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1100735

Du, E., & Chang, S. W. C. (2015). Neural components of altruistic punishment. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 9, Article 26. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2015.00026

Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415(6868), 137–140. https://doi.org/10.1038/415137a

Lee, Y.-R., & Enright, R. D. (2019). A meta-analysis of the association between forgiveness of others and physical health. Psychology & Health, 34(5), 626–643. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2018.1554185

Rasmussen, K. R., Stackhouse, M., Boon, S. D., Comstock, K., & Ross, R. (2019). Meta-analytic connections between forgiveness and health: The moderating effects of forgiveness-related distinctions. Psychology & Health, 34(5), 515–534. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2018.1545906

Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173–220). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60357-3

Wade, N. G., Hoyt, W. T., Kidwell, J. E. M., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2014). Efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions to promote forgiveness: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 82(1), 154–170. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035268

Beyond Leadership: Dismantling Humanity’s Most Toxic Organising Principle

June 3, 2025
Actionable Insights, Advice Process, Alien tech, Article, Fellowship, History, Leadership, Thinking tools, Toxic behaviours, Violence
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Beyond Leadership: Dismantling Humanity’s Most Toxic Organising Principle

It’s been a long time since I first wrote about the problems with the whole idea of leadership. So here’s an update, using the Five Patterns of Thinking Differently.

Leadership is toxic. Not just bad leadership, authoritarian leadership, or corrupt leadership—the very concept of leadership itself is fundamentally poisonous to human flourishing and organisational effectiveness.

This isn’t a critique of individual leaders or a call for better management training. It’s a recognition that leadership, as we understand it, is the modern manifestation of humanity’s most persistent and destructive organising principle: the Domination System that has shaped civilisation for thousands of years.

The statement ‘the only effective leadership is leading the obviation of leadership’ isn’t a management paradox—it’s a revolutionary call to dismantle the hierarchical structures that have held humanity back since the rise of kings and empires.

Designing Post-Leadership Systems

What does organisation look like beyond the Domination System? It requires fundamentally different principles. Here’s a Five Patterns of Thinking Differently (T-Squad / TSGDB) take:

(T)Transform Constraints into Advantages: The apparent constraint of “no one in charge” becomes the advantage. When there’s no single decision-maker bottleneck, decisions can happen faster, closer to the context where they’re needed. Instead of all decisions flowing through a manager, establish clear decision-making frameworks like the Advice Process, where anyone can make any decision after seeking advice from those affected and those with expertise. The “constraint” of not having managerial approval actually accelerates response time and reduces single points of failure.

(S)Enable Systems-Level Perception: Shift perception from “leader controls system” to “system creates conditions for emergence.” See the organisation as a living ecosystem where leadership functions are distributed properties of the whole, not concentrated in individuals. Rather than asking “Who should lead this project?” ask “What conditions would allow this project to self-organise effectively?”

(G)Generate Unexpected Connections: Study how leaderless systems work in nature (flocks, immune systems, mycorrhizal networks), in technology (internet protocols, blockchain consensus), and in successful human organisations (open source projects, Wikipedia, traditional indigenous governance). Apply principles from ant colony optimisation—where complex collective behaviour emerges from simple individual rules—to organisational design.

(D)Develop Metacognitive Awareness: Recognise that the very concept of “leadership” as we understand it is a mental model that shapes what we see as possible. Notice when you default to asking “Who’s responsible for this?” instead of “How can we design responsibility into the system?” Catch yourself when you assume someone needs to be “in charge” rather than considering how coordination might emerge naturally.

(B)Build Comprehensive Mental Models: Integrate insights from complexity science, evolutionary biology, game theory, network effects, and human psychology to understand how coordination and direction can emerge without centralised control. Build models that include how trust networks enable coordination without hierarchy, how shared mental models reduce need for explicit coordination, how feedback mechanisms enable self-correction, and how culture acts as distributed programming for human behaviour.

Leadership as Institutionalised Violence

Modern leadership, stripped of its empty rhetoric about ‘servant leadership’ and ’empowerment’, functions as a form of institutionalised violence. Not physical violence, but economic and psychological coercion. The power to hire and fire, to promote or demote, to reward or punish—these are the modern equivalents of the king’s sword.

This system perpetuates what Wink identified as the ‘myth of redemptive violence’—the belief that violence against those who do us wrong is not only justified but morally necessary and ultimately redemptive. In organisations, this manifests in the assumption that when people fail to perform, resist directives, or challenge authority, the appropriate response is punishment, discipline, or removal. The system justifies its violence against ‘wrongdoers’ as necessary for the greater good.

But this assumption is not only wrong—it actively creates the very problems it claims to solve. The toxicity isn’t accidental; it’s structural.

The Structural Toxicity of Hierarchical Control

Traditional leadership structures are inherently toxic because they are based on fundamental inequality. They create artificial scarcity of power, agency, and recognition. They establish winners and losers, insiders and outsiders, the worthy and the unworthy.

This toxicity manifests in multiple ways:

Learned Helplessness: When people are consistently told what to do and how to do it, they lose the capacity for independent thought and action. The system creates dependency whilst simultaneously criticising people for being dependent.

Psychological Splitting: Hierarchical systems force people to split themselves—to present an acceptable face to authority whilst suppressing their authentic selves. This creates internal conflict and prevents genuine human flourishing.

Systemic Gaslighting: The Domination System requires people to deny their own experience and accept the organisation’s version of reality. When this reality conflicts with lived experience, it creates cognitive dissonance and psychological distress.

Competitive Scarcity: By creating artificial hierarchies and limited advancement opportunities, traditional leadership systems pit people against each other rather than fostering collaboration and mutual support.

The Biological Fallacy and Economic Obsolescence

One of the most persistent justifications for hierarchical leadership is the claim that it’s ‘natural’—that dominance hierarchies exist throughout the animal kingdom. This argument conveniently ignores the vast diversity of organisational forms in nature, many of which operate through cooperation, symbiosis, and distributed intelligence.

Moreover, humans have evolved beyond simple dominance hierarchies. Our capacity for language, abstract thinking, and moral reasoning enables forms of social organisation that transcend the crude dynamics of alpha-beta relationships. Clinging to dominance-based leadership isn’t natural—it’s regressive.

The domination system also has profound economic implications. By concentrating decision-making power in the hands of a few, it dramatically underutilises human intelligence and creativity. Most people spend their working lives having their capabilities suppressed rather than expressed.

This isn’t just unfortunate for individuals—it’s economically inefficient. Organisations that tap into the full intelligence of their members consistently outperform those that rely on hierarchical command structures. The domination system isn’t just morally problematic; it’s also economically obsolete.

The Ancient Poison: From Kings to CEOs

Theologian Walter Wink’s analysis of what he called the ‘Domination System’ reveals the deep historical roots of our leadership obsession. This system, which emerged with the rise of kings and empires thousands of years ago, operates on a simple premise: some people are meant to rule, others to be ruled. Violence, or the threat of it, maintains this order.

The Domination System didn’t disappear with the fall of monarchies—it simply evolved. Corporate hierarchies, with their elaborate chains of command, performance reviews, and punishment systems, are direct descendants of royal courts and slave plantations. The language may have changed from ‘subjects’ and ‘chattels’ to ’employees’, from ‘divine right’ to ‘shareholder value’, but the underlying structure remains remarkably similar.

We celebrate charismatic CEOs, write endless books about leadership principles, and chase after the latest management philosophies, never questioning whether the entire edifice is built on rotten foundations. What we call ‘leadership’ is simply the latest incarnation of an ancient system of domination that has outlived its usefulness and now actively harms the very organisations it claims to serve.

Beyond the Myth of Indispensability

Traditional leaders often derive their power from being indispensable—from being the bottleneck through which all important decisions must flow. This creates a perverse incentive structure where leaders benefit from organisational dysfunction and dependency.

The most effective leaders—those working towards the obviation of leadership—actively work against this dynamic. They distribute knowledge, capabilities, and decision-making authority. They make themselves dispensable not through neglect but through systematic empowerment of others.

But this requires recognising that the goal isn’t better leadership—it’s the elimination of leadership as we have come to understand it.

The Spiritual Dimension: Consciousness Beyond Domination

Wink emphasised that the Domination System isn’t just a political or economic arrangement—it’s a spiritual reality that shapes how we understand ourselves and our relationships. The Domination System indoctrinates us from a very early age to believe that power over others is desirable, that competition is natural, and that hierarchy is inevitable.

Dismantling the Domination System requires not just new organisational structures but a fundamental shift in consciousness. It requires recognising the inherent worth and dignity of every person, not as an abstract principle but as a lived reality that shapes how we organise ourselves.

This is why leadership reform and leadership training never works. You cannot fix a fundamentally toxic system by making it more humane. You can only transcend it entirely.

The Revolutionary Path Forward

Leading the obviation of leadership isn’t about better management techniques—it’s about participating in humanity’s evolution beyond the Domination System. It’s about creating islands of post-domination reality within a world still largely organised around hierarchical control.

This work is inherently subversive. It challenges some of the deepest assumptions of our economic and political systems. It suggests that the emperor of traditional leadership has no clothes—that what we’ve been told is necessary for order and productivity is actually the source of much disorder and waste. Putin’s Russia offers a topical example: a system built around strongman leadership that produces chaos, inefficiency, and catastrophic decision-making whilst claiming to provide order and strength.

Inevitable Resistance, Inevitable Transformation

The Domination System doesn’t give up easily. It has thousands of years of momentum behind it and sophisticated mechanisms for perpetuating itself. People who have benefited from hierarchical privilege will resist changes that threaten their position. Those who have internalised domination dynamics may struggle to imagine alternatives.

But transformation is possible. Throughout history, humans have repeatedly transcended seemingly permanent systems of oppression. Slavery was once considered economically necessary and divinely ordained. Monarchy was thought to be the natural order of government. These systems seemed permanent until they weren’t.

The Courage to Abandon Leadership

Perhaps the most radical act today is refusing to lead in the traditional sense—refusing to participate in the Domination System even when it would be personally advantageous to do so. It’s choosing to build power with others rather than power over them.

This requires tremendous courage because it means giving up the seductive benefits of traditional leadership: the ego gratification, the social status, the financial rewards. It means being willing to be misunderstood by those who equate leadership with dominance.

It means recognising that the very desire to be a leader may itself be a symptom of the disease we’re trying to cure.

Conclusion: The End of Leadership as We Know It

The Domination System has had a remarkable run—several thousand years of shaping human civilisation. But like all historical systems, it’s not permanent. Its toxicity is becoming increasingly apparent, its inefficiencies more costly, and its moral bankruptcy harder to ignore.

The statement that ‘the only effective leadership is leading the obviation of leadership’ points towards something much more profound than organisational reform. It points towards the possibility of human societies organised around fellowship rather than domination, creativity rather than control, and love rather than fear.

This isn’t utopian thinking—it’s evolutionary thinking. Just as humanity has evolved beyond many of its earlier organising principles, we can evolve beyond the Domination System. The question isn’t whether this will happen, but how quickly and whether we’ll lead the transition or be dragged through it, and whether the species will survive the Domination System at all.

But perhaps we should reframe that final question: Are we willing to abandon leadership entirely and discover what becomes possible when no one needs to be in charge?

Further Reading

Walter Wink’s Domination System Analysis:

Wink, W. (1984). Naming the powers: The language of power in the New Testament. Fortress Press.

Wink, W. (1986). Unmasking the powers: The invisible forces that determine human existence. Fortress Press.

Wink, W. (1992). Engaging the powers: Discernment and resistance in a world of domination. Fortress Press.

Wink, W. (1998). The powers that be: Theology for a new millennium. Doubleday.

Alternative Organizational Models:

Brafman, O., & Beckstrom, R. A. (2006). The starfish and the spider: The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations. Portfolio.

Buck, J., & Villines, S. (2017). We the people: Consenting to a deeper democracy. Sociocracy For All.

de Blok, J. (2011). Buurtzorg Nederland: A new perspective on elder care in the Netherlands. Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Hamel, G., & Zanini, M. (2020). Humanocracy: Creating organizations as amazing as the people inside them. Harvard Business Review Press.

Laloux, F. (2014). Reinventing organizations: A guide to creating organizations inspired by the next stage of human consciousness. Nelson Parker.

Decision-Making and Governance:

Brown, J. (2018). The technology of participation: A handbook of group process. Institute of Cultural Affairs.

Rough, J. (2002). Society’s breakthrough!: Releasing essential wisdom and virtue in all the people. AuthorHouse.

Susskind, L., McKearnan, S., & Thomas-Larmer, J. (Eds.). (1999). The consensus building handbook: A comprehensive guide to reaching agreement. Sage Publications.

Systems Thinking and Complexity:

Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. Doubleday.

Wheatley, M. J. (2006). Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world (3rd ed.). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Historical and Anthropological Perspectives:

Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Scott, J. C. (2017). Against the grain: A deep history of the earliest states. Yale University Press.

Korten, D. C. (2015). When corporations rule the world (3rd ed.). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Indigenous Governance Models:

Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Clear Light Publishers.

LaDuke, W. (1999). All our relations: Native struggles for land and life. South End Press.

Wildcat, D. (2009). Red alert!: Saving the planet with indigenous knowledge. Fulcrum Publishing.

On Solving Tough Problems

Kahane, A. (2007). Solving tough problems: An open way of talking, listening, and creating new realities. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Kahane, A. (2009). Power and love: A theory and practice of social change. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Kahane, A. (2012). Transformative scenario planning: Working together to change the future. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Kahane, A. (2017). Collaborating with the enemy: How to work with people you don’t agree with or like or trust. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

November 10, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Careers, Improvement, Innovation, Lamentation, Management, Organisational behaviour, Psychology, Quintessence, Toxic behaviours, Violence
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Do As I Say, Not As I Do

The Morning Meeting That Says It All

Nine AM, Monday. Sarah presents her team’s findings: a novel approach that could save the department 30% of its budget. As she speaks, her manager’s expression shifts from surprise to disapproval. The innovation isn’t the problem—it’s that she didn’t seek permission to innovate. By 10 AM, she’s been quietly reminded about “proper channels” and “established procedures.”

Welcome to the modern workplace, where the unwritten rule trumps all others: conformity is king.

What Is Workplace Compliance?

In its purest form, workplace compliance means following orders exactly as given, without deviation – even when those orders conflict with:

  • Common sense
  • Business efficiency
  • Proven best practices
  • Your own expertise
  • Previous contradictory orders
  • The company’s stated values
  • The manager’s own behaviour

The Golden Rule of Compliance

The fundamental principle is simple: When a manager issues an instruction, your role is to execute it precisely as specified, regardless of:

  • Whether you know a better way
  • If it contradicts yesterday’s instruction
  • How the manager themselves would handle it
  • Whether it will actually solve the problem
  • If it creates new problems
  • The existence of more efficient alternatives
  • Your professional judgment

Measuring Perfect Compliance

How do managers evaluate compliance? Here are the key metrics:

  1. Speed of execution (how quickly you say “yes”)
  2. Absence of questions or suggestions
  3. Exact replication of specified approach
  4. No unauthorised improvements
  5. No reference to contradictions with other instructions
  6. Silence about obvious flaws
  7. Willingness to abandon your own ways of doing things

The Only Metric That Matters: Compliance

Beneath the inspirational posters and values statements, past the buzzwords about disruption and innovation, lies an uncomfortable truth: what truly matters isn’t your ability to create value, but your willingness to colour within the lines.

Consider the typical hiring process. That revolutionary problem-solver who increased their last company’s efficiency by 40%? Passed over for someone who “better fits our culture”—corporate speak for “follows instructions without question.”

The Psychology Behind the Paradox

What drives this contradiction between proclaimed values and actual rewards? Several factors converge:

  1. Status: Managers feel they must appear to be in control. Especially, in control of their employees.
  2. Risk Aversion: In most organisations, the potential downside of unauthorised innovation far outweighs the upside. A failed process followed correctly is safer than a successful deviation.
  3. Control Systems: Traditional management structures are built around predictability and measurement. Innovation, by definition, disrupts both.
  4. The Peter Principle in Action: Managers promoted for their conformity naturally select for the same trait, creating a self-reinforcing cycle.

The Annual Review Theatre: A Case Study in Doublethink

Scene One: The Metrics Matrix

Picture the standard performance review form, with its ambitious categories:

  • Innovation and Creative Thinking
  • Leadership Potential
  • Problem-Solving Ability
  • Strategic Vision

Yet beneath these lofty metrics lies the actual evaluation criterion: “Did they do exactly as they were told?“

Scene Two: The Compliance Paradox

James automated a manual process, saving his department countless hours and dollars. His review? “Shows difficulty adhering to established procedures.”

Meanwhile, Linda meticulously followed an obsolete protocol that everyone knows wastes time and money. Her review? “Demonstrates strong process adherence and reliability.”

The Management Mythology

The supreme irony? Many managers achieved their positions through past acts of controlled rebellion. Now safely ensconced in authority, they:

  • Reminisce about their “game-changing” career moves
  • Share LinkedIn posts about “challenging conventional wisdom”
  • Give speeches about “thinking differently”

While simultaneously ensuring their teams do anything but.

The Way Forward

While the conformity paradox may never fully disappear, awareness is the first step toward change. Progressive organisations are beginning to implement:

  • Innovation sandboxes with different rule sets
  • Reverse mentoring programs where junior staff can safely challenge norms
  • Performance metrics that explicitly highlight valuable deviations

Conclusion: Navigating the Paradox

Until organisational cultures truly evolve – if that ever happens – success requires a delicate balance: knowing when to conform and when (and how) to challenge the status quo. The real skill isn’t blind obedience or reckless innovation, but rather understanding how to navigate between them.

Perhaps the ultimate irony is this: true organisational change will come not from dramatic rebellion, but from the patient, persistent efforts of those who learn to work within the system to gradually transform it.

The next time you hear a call for “disruptive thinking,” remember: the art lies not in the disruption itself, but in making that disruption acceptable to those who unconsciously fear it most.

The Evolving Face of Abuse: Two Centuries of Shifting Perspectives

October 8, 2024
Article, Conflict, Fear, Management, Nonviolence, Organisational behaviour, Violence
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The Evolving Face of Abuse: Two Centuries of Shifting Perspectives

[Tl;Dr: Management is much like rape]

The Unseen Scars: A Journey Through Time

Imagine a world where a manager’s abuse of his or her employees is considered a private matter, where children toil in factories without protection, and where stress and emotional trauma are dismissed as weaknesses. This was the reality just two centuries ago. Our understanding of abuse has undergone a radical transformation since then, reflecting profound changes in our social, legal, and cultural landscape.

The Victorian Era: When Silence Spoke Volumes

The Brutality Behind Closed Doors

In the 19th century, the concept of abuse was narrow and often invisible. Domestic violence was seen as a man’s right to ‘discipline’ his wife, only acknowledged in cases of extreme brutality. Children, viewed as parental property, suffered in silence, their mistreatment often also disguised as discipline.

The Unseen Victims of Industrial Progress

As the Industrial Revolution roared on, another form of abuse flourished in plain sight. Children as young as five worked gruelling hours in dangerous conditions, their exploitation justified in the name of economic progress.

The Dawn of a New Century: Cracks in the Façade

The Whisper of Psychology

The early 1900s saw the rise of psychology, bringing with it a nascent understanding of emotional and psychological harm. Yet, these invisible wounds were still largely dismissed, a mere footnote in the definition of abuse.

A Child’s Right to Childhood

The introduction of child labour laws marked a pivotal moment. Society began to recognise that exploitation of the vulnerable was indeed a form of abuse, setting the stage for broader protections.

Mid-20th Century: The Personal Becomes Political

Breaking the Silence on Domestic Abuse

The women’s rights movement of the 1960s and 70s shattered the notion that domestic abuse was a private matter. It invited society to confront the dark reality lurking behind neat picket fences and forced smiles.

Redefining Intimacy and Consent

The recognition of marital rape as a crime in the late 20th century marked a seismic shift. It acknowledged that abuse could exist even in the most intimate and sanctioned of relationships, challenging long-held notions of marital rights.

The Late 20th Century: Unveiling Hidden Horrors

The Innocence Lost

As the silence around child sexual abuse began to break, society was forced to confront a horrifying reality. This recognition led to sweeping changes in law, social services, and our very understanding of both childhood vulnerability and predatory paedophiles.

From Water Cooler to Courtroom

The workplace, once a realm where power dynamics went unchallenged, became a battleground for dignity. Sexual harassment laws emerged, redefining professional boundaries and holding power to account.

The 21st Century: The Complexities of Modern Abuse

The Scars You Can’t See

Recent years have seen a growing recognition of emotional abuse and coercive control. These invisible chains, once dismissed, are now acknowledged as deeply damaging forms of abuse.

The Digital Battlefield

In the age of smartphones and social media, abuse has found new frontiers. Cyberbullying and online harassment have emerged as serious issues, blurring the lines between virtual and real-world harm.

The System as the Abuser

From religious institutions to care homes, we’ve been forced to confront the chilling reality of systemic abuse. This recognition has sparked a re-evaluation of power structures and the potential for harm within our most trusted institutions.

The Toxic Ladder: When Management Becomes Abuse

In a striking shift, many management practices are now being scrutinised as forms of abuse. The use of fear, obligation, guilt, and shame (FOGS) as tools of control and abuse in the workplace has come under the spotlight, challenging traditional notions of leadership, management, and power dynamics.

The Path Forward: Empathy, Awareness, and Action

As we stand at the crossroads of this evolving understanding, we must ask ourselves: What forms of abuse remain hidden in plain sight? How can we cultivate a society that not only recognises harm but actively works to prevent it?

The journey from the Victorian era to today reveals a profound truth: our definition of abuse is not static. It evolves as our empathy grows, as our awareness expands, and as we dare to challenge the status quo.

As we move forward, let us carry this lesson with us. Let us remain vigilant, compassionate, and willing to confront uncomfortable truths. For in doing so, we pave the way for a future where dignity and respect are not privileges, but rights accorded to all.

Further Reading

Marshall, R.W., (2012). What is Violence? Think Different blog post. Falling Blossoms.