Self Leadership and
The New Leadership Playbook
Blog by Andrew Bryant

I don’t usually get requests for articles or blog posts, but I have had so many messages asking how and why I moved from Singapore to Portugal during a pandemic, so here goes.

Digital Nomad is not a term I would apply to myself, but digitization has certainly enabled me to be geographically independent. Openness to experience is, I think, the personality trait that is essential to change countries or circumstances. Thankfully I score high on this, and life experience has reinforced it.

Leaving home for university at 18, was my first big test. Then, at 25, I left, London and the country of my birth. I lived in Australia (W.A and N.S.W) for 18 years before moving to Singapore.

Singapore, the gateway to Asia, was where I really put down roots. This island nation was where my children were born, and from where I established a Global business, but I never intended it to be my final stop. The questions were when and how to leave, where to go next, and why?

In decision-making, the...

Leading change with and through stories is a key leadership competency and so should be a key focus of any leader's development.

Stories create a space for the listener to 'step back' from a current perspective and consider an alternative view. This new awareness creates the flexibility required for a change in attitude and behavior.

A Story for Change of Perspective

On December 24th, 1968, fueled by fears of Russian space supremacy, and guided by President Kennedy’s vision, Apollo 8 comes around the moon for the first time.

The astronauts are greeted with the most amazing spectacle – Earth Rise.

From the Dawn of Time, man has spoken and sung of our god’s looking down on the earth from above, and now for the first time, we humans get a god’s eye view of our blue-green planet spinning against the vast backdrop of space.

Vicariously, through the eyes and cameras of those brave astronauts, we had escaped the cultural frames of race, religion, nationality,...

In our 2012 book 'Self-leadership' my co-author, Ana Kazan Ph.D. and I make the following statement:

"There are no fairy godmothers - If you want to be transformed, to be free, you must do the work; you are the hero, you are your own savior."

It is a truism that life is not fair. We are not all born with parents who validate our self-esteem and provide opportunities for us to learn and grow; sometimes circumstances are downright cruel. But success is measured not by what you have but by how much you have grown inside, and this comes by motivating yourself to overcome obstacles and live with purpose.

In fact, those that have ‘moved the dial’ or ‘achieved the delta’ by going from a D grade to a C, and a C to a B are much more resilient than those who have always gotten A’s.

The Hero’s Journey

Mythologist Joseph Campbell tracked the hero's journey, a common theme in all cultures (and Hollywood), which is the process by which...