If we want a civilized and ethical way of living and working, we must accept the responsibilities and perils that come from being authentic as individuals. We cannot hide behind the norms and notions of the herd. Humans collectively have a lot of bad beliefs and assumptions in their heads, placed there by cultural and tribal forces and ancient survival instincts. Seeking the safety of the herd comes with a heavy price: all herd thinking is ultimately a loss of human freedom, authenticity and creativity. Besides, you can hardly call yourself a leader if all you do is follow the herd.

The Prussian general Von Moltke famously said that no plan survives contact with the enemy. There doesn’t need to be a literal enemy for this to be true of other sectors also. The real challenge for an organization is how it deals with the unexpected, bearing in mind that the unexpected is the one thing that always happens. These days, most organizations, with their cultures of central command and micro-management, don’t deal with it very well. John Fletcher explains one reason why.

Instead of standing back and making long-term decisions based on seeking sustainable differences, businesses have mechanically worked to do the same as everyone else, only bigger and more efficiently. ‘Making the numbers’ has overtaken making sound judgments. Conventional management thinking and analysis aren’t the answer, they’re the problems that got us into this mess. The only true answer is to think deeply about the full nature and extent of the problems we face, free from any preconceptions. Analysis won’t save us, but creativity just might.

Each leader must chart her own course, but as we can see from Nelson Mandela’s example, a determined focus on a clear outcome helps guide all decisions and tactics along the way. A recent interview with Nelson Mandela provides an open-minded and insightful view of leadership from someone who has both known great power and also been bereft of influence at different times in his 90 years. The interview provides eight leadership lessons we should all take to heart.

Why do some people constantly put things off? Most often, something is operating “underneath” their procrastination — some conflicting commitment or fear that explains why they are resisting what they know needs to be done. Peter Vajda takes you through questions that can help you probe beneath the symptom of procrastination to get at the root causes. By staying with your responses and inquiring deeply into them, you can raise your level of awareness about the true nature of your resistance.

Gresham’s Law explains why the ‘good coinage’ of ethical business is constantly under threat from sharp practice and dishonesty. We want to believe that corporations and executives are honest, just as we want to believe in the value of the currency. So long as we take both on trust, forgers and cheats will seek to exploit our gullibility.

Kath Lockett tells the tangled story of going it alone as a self-employed writer — along with the problems of facing panhandlers, admitting to a flirtation with Feng Shui, and sundry other sources of uncomfortable self-realization.

People, especially in relationships and in jobs, recreate the same old story, over and over again. They are held in the vice-like grip of old patterns of behavior and broken dreams. Only when we realize that to change our world we have to change ourselves will something different occur. Once you face that reality, you can change the way you react and begin a new adventure of learning from mistakes and building on successes.

Power in the workplace exists in many forms and can be used in all kinds of ways. That’s why the question of the correct use of power is at the heart of leadership. Can ‘might’ also be made ‘right’? Do we use whatever power we have ethically? Since ethics come from what is within us, not from externals, exploring how power is being used or abused is a facet of all civilized approaches to leadership.

Many managers, supervisors and employees have become conflict-averse. The corporate culture demands an environment where all are in agreement, always smiling and saying “yes”. Yet all leaders have a responsibility to foster dissent in the organization, since conflict is the genesis of creativity. It’s also how you get people engaged. No conflict, no passion; all that ‘niceness’ leaves people feeling little or no interest in the outcome.