Leading from the clown

A one-day exploration of what the clown knows about leading when the script no longer works.

Most leadership development is additive. It identifies a gap and tries to fill it with another skill, framework, tool or technique. But what if some of those gaps are partly created by the very developmental logic designed to close them?

Clown work starts from almost the opposite assumption.

It is subtractive. It removes what has gotten in the way: control, habitual competence, polished performance, the need to know, the urge to fix too quickly. And underneath those layers, something surprising appears: capacities that were never missing in the first place.

The capacity to receive before judging. To wonder before naming. To desire openly without hiding behind strategy. To stay when something goes wrong instead of immediately correcting it. And beneath everything else: to be emotionally truthful no matter what happens in the encounter.

These are not tricks and they…