Thinking that lasts.

In this article for Tijdschrift voor Coaching, Sonja Wekema reports on her research into psychological safety in leadership teams that operate in neglected organisational contexts — organisations where, over a long period, direction and care for people have been lacking.

The central question is what team coaching can contribute in such a context: how a leadership team can move from neglect towards a situation in which people dare to speak up, disagree and learn together.

Read the full research article at the source; the PDF is available below.

Boardrooms tend to reward agreement. The people around the table share a language, a history and often a way of looking at risk, and that comfort quietly narrows the range of options a board considers.

Daphne Laan and Sonja Wekema argue for making the invitation of different thinkers a deliberate priority rather than an occasional gesture: giving dissenting perspectives a real seat, a real moment and a real hearing.

The point is not friction for its own sake, but surfacing what remains unsaid before a decision hardens — the fastest way to keep groupthink out of the boardroom.

Making sense of a complex situation asks for more than analysis alone. Data and experience matter, but so do what you sense in a room and what your intuition tells you before the argument is complete. Intelligent intuition is the deliberate combination of the two.

The article works this out through five practices: purposeful patience, zoom in to zoom out, play with polarities, connect visible and invisible dots, and expect the unexpected.

Most strategies do not fail on the page; they fail in the space between the plan and the people who have to live it. Daphne Laan and Sonja Wekema look at the rules of the game organisations use, and which of those rules actually help leaders.

Their answer connects strategy with culture, with the people inside the organisation and with the stakeholders around it — so that direction, behaviour and relationships reinforce each other instead of pulling apart, and intention becomes inspired action.