INsight/ Rediscovering Basic Trust

Amsterdam, 27 August 2025 — How can leaders find confidence when fear and overwhelm seem everywhere?

Story

Many people today struggle with anxiety, overload, and a sense that the ground under them is shifting. Leaders are not immune to this. In fact, because so much depends on their decisions, leaders often feel they must project certainty even when they don’t feel it inside.

In Facets of Unity, A.H. Almaas offers a helpful concept called Basic Trust—a quiet inner belief and confidence that things are workable. It’s not naïve optimism, but a settled inner assurance that reduces overreacting to fear, stress, or overwhelm. Leaders with this kind of trust are less rattled by uncertainty, more open to possibilities, and more effective in guiding others through change.

Each of us has Basic Trust in life from when we were a baby. However, life experiences and conditioning usually cloud and obscure it as we grow up. That’s why leaders will work on rediscovering Basic Trust through self-cultivation and leadership development to regain our wholeness of Being.

Challenge

Both fear and overwhelm can obscure Basic Trust. Fear narrows attention—leaders may overcontrol, lose sight of the bigger picture, and unintentionally erode trust with their teams.

Overwhelm scatters attention—leaders feel flooded with too much to handle and risk withdrawing or becoming paralyzed. Without realizing it, they amplify the very insecurity they’re trying to contain.

The good news is that Basic Trust can be rediscovered and cultivated: for example, by remembering times you and your team have faced challenges successfully, by focusing on what’s within your influence rather than obsessing over what’s not, and by choosing calm presence over anxious reactivity.

Question

As a leader, how do you remind yourself—and show your team—that even in times of fear and overwhelm, things are fundamentally workable? What practice helps you return to that quiet confidence that builds both effectiveness and trust?

Here are three small practices you can take up this week to grow your Basic Trust. First, ground yourself in past evidence: recall three times you and your team handled uncertainty successfully. Two, shift the frame of uncertainty: when unsure, ask: “What possibility might this open up?” Three, practice calm presence: in your next meeting, slow down your pace and notice how it steadies the group.

Rediscovering Basic Trust is part of deeper transformation in our executive coaching and our group coaching in the Grow3Leaders community of practice. You are welcome to join us and reach out to get your questions answered.

INsight/ Magic of Repetition

Prague, 20 August 2025 — What becomes possible when leaders treat repetition not as monotony, but as discovery?

Story

It happened last week. When I visited Karel Martens’ Unbound exhibition, I was struck by how he works with repetition. Martens repeats the same gestures—shapes, colors, impressions—yet each time, something subtly new appears. He says: “It might sound repetitive, but it somehow never repeats.” What looks like sameness opens into difference.

This principle is not limited to art. It speaks to how growth happens in any domain: not in the dramatic, one-time breakthrough, but in the quiet act of returning again and again to the same practice. Repetition, far from being mechanical, becomes the path of discovery.

As I reflected on Martens’ words, I realized this applies powerfully to leadership development. Just as in art (and sports), repetition in leadership is not about copying yesterday. It’s about showing up again today, practicing the same behaviors, and meeting the moment freshly.

Challenge

Leadership behaviors often seem ordinary: listening attentively, giving feedback, asking questions, aligning around purpose, and showing care. Yet the challenge is to repeat them daily, sometimes several times a day, without sliding into autopilot.

At first, repetition can feel awkward, even tedious. But when leaders keep practicing, the consistency builds trust, and subtle variations reveal new nuance. Every team member, every conversation, every decision is never exactly the same. The “same gesture” of a leadership behavior is always slightly different.

The challenge, then, is to embrace repetition of effective leadership behaviors as a creative practice. To resist the idea that it is monotonous, and instead recognize it as the ground where transformation takes root.

Question

So how can leaders learn from Martens and see repetition not as dull routine, but as the space where something new is always emerging? The photo of the rowers reminds us how essential the repetition of movements is to advancing and getting results. The same holds for the practice of leadership.

What becomes possible when leadership behaviors are practiced daily with the same gestures, yet each time alive to the unique moment?

My question to you this week is: What becomes possible when leaders treat repetition not as monotony, but as discovery?