Leadership Spice

Recently, I spent two days facilitating a leadership programme for a group of experienced professionals. As I watched the conversations unfold, listened to the questions being asked and observed the expectations participants brought into the room, I found myself thinking about something completely unrelated to leadership. 

Marination.

Yes, marination.

Because the more I thought about it, the more I realised that perhaps leadership development has something important in common with cooking. We often expect transformation to happen while we are sitting in the workshop – much like expecting the flavour of a dish to develop the moment it hits the grill. But some of the most important work happens long before that, and much of it happens when we can’t immediately see it.

As a facilitator, I walked into the programme with the usual intention of creating a meaningful learning experience. There were frameworks to introduce, conversations to facilitate, activities to create insight and, hopefully, a few moments when participants would see something about themselves or their workplace from a slightly different perspective.

And there were those moments.

But I also found myself observing something that I have seen repeatedly in leadership development. People come into a programme with very real workplace challenges, and understandably, they want solutions. They want to know how to deal with the difficult stakeholders, how to manage a challenging team member, how to communicate more effectively, how to become more confident, how to influence without authority, or how to deal with conflict.

All of these are legitimate questions. But sometimes, beneath the question what we are asking lies another one that is much harder to confront:

What if the way I am looking at the problem is part of the problem?

We bring our own recipes into the room

Every one of us comes into the workplace carrying a personal recipe for how we believe things should work. That recipe is made up of our experiences, our successes and failures, the feedback we have received, the people who have influenced us, our values, our fears, our strengths and the many assumptions we have accumulated along the way.

The interesting thing is that we don’t usually experience these as assumptions. We experience them as facts.

If I believe that a good leader should always have the answer, I may find it difficult to say, “I don’t know.” If I have learnt that being assertive gets things done, I may not notice when my assertiveness starts being experienced by others as aggression. If I dislike conflict, I may tell myself that I am being diplomatic when I am actually avoiding a conversation that needs to happen. If I have built my career by being highly dependable and taking responsibility for everything, I may wonder why my team doesn’t take ownership without noticing that I may have inadvertently taught them to depend on me.

None of these behaviours are necessarily bad. In fact, many of them may have been strengths that helped us succeed. The problem occurs when a behaviour that works in one context becomes our automatic response in every context.

Over time, our behaviours become habits. Habits become patterns. Patterns become part of our identity. And eventually we say, “That’s just the way I am.”

That sentence can be one of the biggest barriers to development.

Because if something is simply “the way I am”, then there is very little reason to change it.

Knowing your personality is only the beginning

This is where self-awareness becomes so important, and also why personality assessments can be such powerful tools in leadership development.

An assessment can help us put a name to something we may have experienced but never quite understood. It can show us tendencies, preferences and behavioural patterns. It can help us understand why we may respond differently from the people around us and why certain situations energise us while others drain us.

But there is a significant difference between knowing your personality and understanding yourself.

It is easy to read a personality report and say, “Yes, that’s me.” The harder work begins when we ask, “So what does this mean for the way I lead?”

If I discover that I am highly analytical, do I recognise that I may sometimes overanalyse when a decision needs to be made? If I discover that I am highly people-oriented, can I see when my desire to maintain relationships stops me from having a difficult conversation? If I discover that I am naturally assertive, can I recognise when that strength is helping me move things forward and when it is unintentionally preventing someone else from being heard?

Self-awareness isn’t simply the ability to describe ourselves accurately. It is the ability to catch ourselves in action.

It is that moment when you hear yourself responding in exactly the way you always do and think, “There I go again.” It is noticing the defensive reaction, the need to control, the tendency to withdraw, the urge to interrupt, the assumption you have just made or the conversation you are once again avoiding.

That moment of recognition is valuable because it creates a choice.

And choice is where change begins.

The expectation of the two-day solution

One of the things I found myself reflecting on during these two days was our expectation that a programme should provide solutions to problems that may have taken years to develop.

I understand why we have this expectation. If we invest two days in a development programme, we naturally want something tangible in return. We want frameworks, tools, practical answers and perhaps even that wonderful feeling of having finally figured something out.

But leadership development is not quite that simple.

A two-day programme can create awareness. It can introduce a new way of looking at an old problem. It can challenge an assumption. It can give someone language for an experience they couldn’t previously articulate. It can create a safe space to practise a new behaviour and discover how difficult it actually is.

What it cannot do is undo years of conditioning in forty-eight hours.

It cannot change a deeply embedded mindset simply because we introduced a new model. It cannot turn an insight into a habit without repeated practice. And it certainly cannot do the inner work for us.

Perhaps this is where we need to change our expectations of leadership development. The purpose of a programme is not necessarily to leave the room with all the answers. Sometimes its real purpose is to leave the room with better questions.

The workshop is the grill, not the marinade

And this is where, inevitably, my mind went to food.

One of the things I love about cooking is that some of the most important work happens before the actual cooking begins. Think about a good Greek Chicken Souvlaki. The final cooking time is relatively short, but the chicken first spends time in a marinade of olive oil, lemon, garlic, oregano and seasoning. The flavours need time to work their way into the chicken before it reaches the grill.

The grill is important, of course. It cooks the chicken, gives it colour and creates that wonderful charred flavour.

But the grill isn’t where the flavour begins.

The flavour begins in the marinade.

And I think there is something rather beautiful about that as a metaphor for leadership development.

The workshop is the grill. It is the visible part of the experience: the two days of discussion, activities, frameworks, assessments, conversations and insights.

But the real development happens in the marination that follows.

It happens when you go back to work and encounter exactly the situation you were discussing in the workshop. Your colleague challenges your idea. Your stakeholder pushes back. Your team member misses a commitment. Someone becomes defensive when you give feedback. Your instinct is to respond exactly as you have always responded.

And then you remember the conversation from the programme.

You pause.

Perhaps you listen for a little longer. Perhaps you ask a question instead of making an assumption. Perhaps you don’t immediately take over. Perhaps you say what you would previously have avoided saying. Perhaps you recognise that the other person’s behaviour is only one part of the story and that your own response is another.

It may not work perfectly the first time. In fact, it probably won’t.

But you notice. You reflect. You try again.

That is the marination.

What goes into the leadership marinade?

If I were to create a Leadership Spice marinade, I wouldn’t need to look very far for the ingredients. They are already at the heart of the SPICE™ model I use in my leadership work: Self-awareness, Presence, Influence, Clarity and Evolution.

It begins with Self-awareness, because we cannot change what we don’t notice. Without understanding our own patterns, triggers, preferences and assumptions, we can very easily keep repeating behaviours without recognising the impact they have on the people and situations around us. Self-awareness helps us notice, “This is how I usually respond.” And once we can see the pattern, we have a choice about whether we want to continue it.

But awareness alone isn’t enough. We also need Presence which is nothing but the ability to notice what is happening in the moment rather than operating entirely on autopilot. Presence creates that small but important space between what happens and how we respond. It allows us to pause, listen, regulate our emotions and make a more conscious choice about how we want to show up.

Then comes Influence, because leadership is ultimately about our impact on others. It asks us to look beyond what we intended and consider what actually landed. How do people experience me? What happens in the room when I speak? Am I creating ownership or dependence? Am I bringing people with me or simply expecting them to follow? Influence reminds us that leadership isn’t only about what we do; it is also about the effect our behaviour has on others.

Clarity is the next ingredient. Once we become more aware and intentional about our presence and influence, we need to communicate what matters – our thinking, our expectations, our decisions and sometimes the difficult messages that need to be said. Clarity isn’t simply about speaking well. It is about knowing what you want to say, why it matters and making sure the message lands in the way you intended.

And then comes Evolution – the willingness to keep learning, experimenting and changing. It is recognising that what worked for us yesterday may not necessarily work for us tomorrow, and that leadership isn’t a destination at which we eventually arrive. It is an ongoing process of becoming more effective, more intentional and, hopefully, more authentic.

But eventually, for the marinade to transform the ingredients, it needs heat, and to me, that heat is discomfort.

Real development isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes the mirror shows us something we would rather not see. Sometimes we discover that a strength we are proud of has a downside. Sometimes we realise that the behaviour we complain about in others is one we also display under pressure. And sometimes we have to question a belief that has been part of our identity for years.

That discomfort is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It may actually be a sign that something important is happening.

The final ingredient is the one that cannot be substituted: time.

Self-awareness needs time to deepen. Presence needs time to practise. Influence needs time to observe and adjust. Clarity needs time to develop. And Evolution, by its very nature, needs time – because leadership is a continuous journey, not something we ever truly finish.

That is why I think of SPICE™ not as five competencies to be ticked off, but as ingredients that need to work together along with a little discomfort to activate them and enough time for them to penetrate.

A two-day programme can introduce the ingredients. It can help you recognise what might be missing from your recipe. It can create the discomfort of seeing yourself differently. It can give you the first taste of what might be possible.

But the real flavour develops afterwards.

It develops when you go back to work and catch yourself responding in an old way. When you notice a familiar trigger. When you pause before speaking. When you choose curiosity instead of assumption. When you have the conversation you would previously have avoided. When you experiment with a different way of leading and discover that it works or doesn’t, and you learn from that too.

Don’t put the recipe card away

Perhaps that is the biggest reflection I took away from those two days.

You can leave a programme with ten pages of notes, a personality report, three new frameworks and several powerful insights. You can feel energised and motivated and genuinely believe that something has shifted.

But then Monday morning arrives. And suddenly it becomes very easy to go back to the same old recipe.

This is why the real test of a development programme isn’t what you remember when you leave the room. It is what you do when you encounter the same old situation again. So, please allow yourself time to marinade. And because every Leadership Spice story needs an actual recipe, here is the one that inspired this reflection.

Greek Chicken Souvlaki

PREP TIME: 15 mins
MARINATION: 1 hour–overnight
COOKING TIME: 10–15 mins
SERVES: 4

INGREDIENTS

For the Marinade

• 500 g boneless chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 3–4 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp paprika
• Salt, to taste
• Freshly ground black pepper

To Serve

• Warm pita bread
• Greek yoghurt or tzatziki
• Cucumber
• Lemon wedges
• Fresh oregano or parsley, optional

METHOD

1. Make the marinade
In a bowl, combine the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, paprika, salt and pepper.

2. Add the chicken
Add the chicken pieces and toss well, making sure every piece is coated with the marinade.

3. Let it marinate
Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour. If you have the time, leave it overnight. This is where the magic happens — the flavours have time to work their way in.

4. Grill
Thread the chicken onto skewers and grill or cook over high heat until beautifully browned and cooked through.

5. Serve
Serve hot with warm pita, tzatziki or Greek yoghurt, cucumber and a squeeze of fresh lemon.

And as you enjoy it, think about what the marinade is doing.