As a leader, your role is to help others make sense of the world. It’s about filtering the noise, choosing what really matters, learning how to adapt to external shifts, and then sharing those insights in a meaningful and engaging ways. Your ability to create clarity and purpose shapes how you, your team, and others succeed.

https://swiy.co/go-leadership-is-sense-making

As we start a new year, and you reflect on your role as a leader, what do you think is your most important role?

I’m not talking about making New Year’s Resolutions, setting goals for the year ahead, or creating a 2026 strategic plan. What about YOUR role as a leader?

As a futurist, I know one of my most important roles is to be a sense-maker.

Whether I’m speaking on a conference stage to a large audience, running a workshop with a smaller group, or facilitating a group of senior leaders in a boardroom, everybody’s looking to me to help them make more sense of the world.

They want to understand what’s going on, and want me to help them filter it and choose what’s most relevant for them. Then, they figure out how they can learn, adapt, and adjust what they do to fit with what’s happening externally. And finally, they want me to share that in engaging and meaningful ways — for themselves, the team, and the organisation.

And you know what?

This is not just a crucial role for me. This role — which is the skill of sense-making — is essential for everybody. Especially for leaders and managers, but for everybody else as well.

To summarise the three parts:

1. Choose: Understand what’s happening in the world and filter it to choose what matters most.

2. Learn: Based on what’s happening externally, determine what we need to do internally to be able to operate effectively in that world.

3. Share: Communicate what you have learned in meaningful and engaging ways, so that they inspire action.

If you want to know more about this, I’m running an online presentation very soon. It’s my first one for the year, and it’s about sense-making. I’ll share with you some practical, useful things you can do to understand more about the world, to learn how to adapt, and most importantly, to share it with your team and other stakeholders.

If you’re interested, it’s free, it’s public, it’s open to everybody — so you’ll find a link to register here. And feel free to share it with your team and network as well.

Register for the virtual masterclass:

https://swiy.co/go-leadership-is-sense-making

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