What the oak knows about leading through change
The oak is June's tree. There is an old saying I keep returning to at this time of year: from small acorns, great oaks grow. It is the kind of phrase that can slip past you if you are not paying attention. But sit with it for a moment. Think about what it is really saying about patience, about depth, about the relationship between what you put down into the earth and what eventually rises.
I think about this a lot in my work with leaders. The most significant changes I have seen in teams rarely arrived dramatically. They came from small, consistent acts of curiosity, care and courage, accumulated over time. A conversation that someone was willing to have even when it was uncomfortable. A question asked in a meeting rather than a conclusion reached. A leader who chose to go slowly with a new team member rather than rushing them towards output.
These are the acorns. And they matter.
Strength is not the same as force
What strikes me most about the oak is that its strength is not brittle. A mature oak can lose a limb in a storm and continue to grow. It bends, absorbs, adapts. This is not weakness. This is a kind of intelligence built into the structure of the thing.
I have been thinking about this in the context of two conversations I had recently on the podcast. In my conversation with Yasmin O'Neal, Senior Director for Global Brand at DECIEM, she spoke about how you can love your team and love to win at the same time, and how kindness is not the same as niceness. There was something oak-like in what she was describing: a way of leading that is genuinely strong precisely because it is genuinely caring. Not soft. Not hard. Rooted.
And in my conversation with Erin Rogers, Founder of ERA Collective, she spoke about what her daughter's cancer journey taught her about presence, and about what it means to keep showing up when everything is shifting. That question she posed stayed with me long after we finished recording. Because that is exactly the question so many leaders are carrying right now.
Both conversations pointed to the same thing: that the leaders who navigate change well are not the ones who brace against it. They are the ones who have done the quieter work of knowing what they stand for, who have put roots down deep enough that they can hold their people steady even when the ground is moving.
Going outside to go inside
On 25th June Walking Partnerships will be at Horsell Common in Surrey. Walking Partnerships is a collaboration between Lucy Kidd, Natalie Shering and myself. We hold these days three times a year, coinciding with the shifts in the seasons, Spring, Summer and Autumn/Winter. The June date is close to the Summer Solstice, which marks the height of summer sun in the UK, and the longest day. A time of abundance and celebration.
There is something that happens when you take a conversation out of a building and into landscape. The pace changes. The quality of thinking changes. I have watched leaders say things on a walk that they have been circling for months in meetings. The oak canopy, the birdsong, the simple act of moving forward together: something in all of that creates permission to think more honestly.
We call it going outside to go inside. And June, when the trees are in full leaf and the common is at its most generous, is a particularly good time to do it.
If you are a leader carrying the weight of a team through change at the moment, and you are wondering what it would feel like to have some proper space to think, doconsider joining. The day will be led by Lucy Kidd and Ayesha Murray, one of our collaborators. Get in touch at anni@annitownend.com, and I will send you the details.
The question I keep coming back to
At this point in the year, I often encourage leaders and their teams with whom I work with to pause and take stock. To look back at the past six months and ask: what are we celebrating?
Not only achievements, but accomplishments too. I draw a distinction between the two, and it matters.
Achievements are the things we have done and delivered: the everyday things, and the bigger things. The completed projects, the targets met, and the conversations held.
Accomplishments are something different. They are the things we leaned into. The moments where we felt the pull of fear or resistance, and moved forward anyway. Where we said yes to something that asked something of us, or said a clear no to something we knew, in our hearts, was not right. Where courage showed up quietly in the middle of an ordinary week.
Both deserve to be named. Both deserve to be celebrated.
What are you celebrating in your life and leadership at this midpoint of the year?
What are you acknowledging in yourself and others?
Where could you acknowledge others, your team more?
With Warmth,
Anni
About Collaboration Equation
The work I do with leaders and their teams is shaped by a framework called Collaboration Equation, which Lucy Kidd and I created together. Built on the mindset and behaviours of, Curiosity, Care and Courage, it gives teams going through change a practical, relational way forward. If you are leading a team through transition and would like to explore what that could look like for you, please get in touch for a conversation.anni@annitownend.com or visit collaborationequation.com to find out more.