Here’s my reductive claim to start your morning: There’s only really two ways to lead. Let’s give ‘em cool Daoist-sounding names so it feels official.

Planning is to team leaders what a horseshoe above the door is to a medieval European. It’s a symbolic gesture, a ritual, or a summoning. It’s a séance on an Excel Spreadsheet. A wish on a whiteboard. Video games help us explain why we still do this.

Back in my University days, I was a dirty behaviourist. Think Pavlov’s Dogs & Skinner’s Boxes. Behaviourism was the most hard-nosed and hard-hearted of approaches to Psychology.

There’s an old Slavoj Žižek joke I quite enjoy. A man is driving a woman home after a first date (swap or change genders as you like). The woman, smitten, says to the man: “Would you like to come up and join me for some tea?”

How do you manage people who are resistant, reluctant, or cynical of a new and potentially embarassing approach to training?

When I talk about seriousness, I don’t mean the kind of grim-faced seriousness that ruins dinner parties. I mean seriousness that ensures a few small, carefully selected things actually matter. We can be playful about the rest.