🔥 5 Minutes of Leadership Fuel
✉️ This post is part of The 5-Minute Mentor — my weekly leadership newsletter. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, click here to subscribe.
Welcome to The 5-Minute Mentor — your weekly dose of leadership inspiration, curated resources, and practical action. All in under 5 minutes.
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🫶 A Dose of Inspiration
“Strong relationships don’t need agreement. They need alignment. Agreement is having identical opinions. Alignment is having shared values. Agreement is taking the same path. Alignment is heading in the same direction. Closeness is a matter of commitment, not consensus.”
— Adam Grant
It is all too easy to mistake consensus for connection.
We assume that if everyone agrees, the team is healthy. That if there’s no conflict, there’s trust. That if people are going along, they must be on board.
But alignment is something deeper. It’s the shared belief that we’re heading somewhere meaningful together… even when we take different paths to get there. It’s what allows a team to hold tension, navigate disagreement, and still move forward with purpose.
It’s the kind of culture woven with the belief that we need each other, every unique genius in the room, to build something none of us could create alone.
Closeness is a matter of commitment. Not consensus.
And that kind of commitment starts with how we lead.
📥 Download the quote graphic to use in your next staff email or meeting.
🤓 A Dose of Learning
I recently listened to Helen Bevan on The Change Signal podcast, and one question she raised still has me thinking:
Is your belonging actually just assimilation?
Helen has spent decades leading large-scale transformation inside the NHS, one of the most complex organizations in the world. And what she’s learned about what actually moves people and systems forward is not what most of us might expect.
It’s not strategy. It’s not resources. It’s not even expertise.
It’s the relational fabric that holds a team together.
Here are three ideas from this conversation that I think every leader would be wise to sit with:
🧩 Belonging vs. Assimilation: Most leaders want to create belonging. But belonging and assimilation are not the same thing. Belonging says: you are valued as you are. Assimilation says: you are valued when you fit in. The difference isn’t always visible from the outside… but the people on your team feel it every single day. True belonging makes space for people to show up fully, celebrating their unique genius. Assimilation quietly asks them to leave parts of themselves at the door.
🤝 Relationships Are Your Strategy: Helen shares findings from a major five-year transformation study where social capital, the quality of relationships and trust within an organization, predicted which teams and organizations actually moved forward. Not the ones with the best plans. Not the ones with the most resources. The ones with the strongest relational fabric. As leaders, we spend a lot of time on strategy. This research is a reminder that how we relate to our people and how they relate with each other is itself a strategy… and often the most powerful one.
⚡️ Agency: You Can’t Give It: One of the most interesting ideas in this conversation is about agency. You cannot give people agency. They have to build it themselves. But leaders? We create the conditions (the clarity, the safety, the invitation) that make it possible for people to step into their own power. That’s a meaningful reframe. Our job isn’t to empower people in the traditional sense. It’s to create the environment where they can activate their own genius.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation here: The Change Signal with Helen Bevan: What Really Moves/Changes a System?
💭 A Dose of Reflection
The relational fabric of your team is always being woven… by the culture you create, the conditions you set, and the choices you make every day.
This week, take a few minutes to sit with these questions:
🧩 Belonging vs. Assimilation: Is your culture genuinely making space for people to show up fully, or are people quietly learning to blend in? Think about your quietest team member. Do you know what they actually think… or only what they’re willing to say?
🤝 Relationships Are Your Strategy: How well do your team members truly know and trust each other, beyond their roles and responsibilities? When you’re not in the room, does your team function better, the same, or does everything slow down? If strategy and resources stayed the same but trust and connection across your team deepened, what would change?
⚡ Agency: Are your team members expanding or contracting because they’re on your team? Think about someone on your team who seems disengaged or stuck. What conditions might be missing for them? What’s one routine, conversation, or invitation you could offer this week to help them step into their own power?
You don’t have to answer all three at once. Start with the one that feels most urgent… because that’s probably the one your team needs most right now.
You got this. Let’s lead with belief.
In your corner,
Melody
Founder, Culture of Belief
PS: Talk about a party pooper… 🪩🚽💃🏽
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