My Introduction to Leadership and Entrepreneurship
CIM418 approaches leadership not as a title or role, but as an ongoing practice. It examines how creative practitioners take responsibility, make decisions under uncertainty, and shape work that others will encounter, rely on, or be affected by. Rather than positioning leadership and entrepreneurship as purely business-focused concepts, this unit frames them as lived processes that unfold through creative work.
Through this unit, I want to better understand how leadership operates within creative practice, particularly in spaces where outcomes are not fixed and direction must be shaped over time. I’m interested in how leadership styles influence collaboration, how values translate into strategic decisions, and how creative work can remain ethical, thoughtful, and sustainable while operating within real constraints.
This journal documents my thinking as I move through the unit. It captures how ideas around leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, and design thinking intersect with my own practice as a designer. Rather than separating theory from practice, these reflections allow me to test concepts against lived experience and evolving project work.
My reflections are grounded primarily in The Space Between, a trauma-informed storytelling platform that sits at the intersection of design, ethics, and leadership. Developing this project places me in a position of responsibility, where decisions around pacing, structure, communication, and strategy directly shape how others encounter the work. It provides a concrete context for examining leadership, entrepreneurial thinking, and design-led problem solving.
By approaching this unit reflectively, I aim to clarify my leadership approach, strengthen my strategic and entrepreneurial thinking, and refine how I use design as a tool for navigating complexity. This journal is not about arriving at certainty, but about documenting judgement, responsibility, and learning as they unfold.
AI Use DeclarationChatGPT was used to assist with spell-checking, formatting, and structural clarity. All reflections and interpretations are my own.
Week 1 — Reading Reflection
I went into this report expecting big claims about AI taking jobs. That wasn’t what stayed with me.
What stayed with me was how the report quietly admits that a lot of work we’ve normalised was never very human to begin with. Repetitive roles. Output-heavy roles. Roles where people are expected to perform tasks rather than think.
When I saw graphic designers listed among declining roles, I paused. My first reaction wasn’t fear but recognition. I’ve seen this divide for years. Design that is treated as decoration or pure output is already under pressure, while design that asks questions, shapes systems, and carries responsibility feels like a different practice entirely, even though it uses the same job title (World Economic Forum [WEF], 2025, pp. 19–21).
The report keeps returning to skills like analytical thinking, resilience, flexibility, creative thinking, empathy, and self-awareness. What struck me is that these aren’t skills you perform like tasks. They’re capacities that matter most when situations stop being clear and decisions can’t be automated. They’re also the qualities that separate human judgement from machine efficiency (WEF, 2025, pp. 18–20).
The section on human–machine collaboration was far less dramatic than public conversations suggest. It wasn’t framed as humans versus technology, but as an ongoing negotiation between people and systems, where automation and augmentation sit side by side (WEF, 2025, pp. 26–27).
Reading this also made me check myself. The skills the report highlights are already the ones I rely on most: analytical thinking, creative judgement, empathy, and self-awareness. What I want to keep developing is how I hold those skills under pressure, staying thoughtful rather than reactive, and supporting complexity rather than trying to simplify it too quickly.
I didn’t finish this report feeling inspired or afraid. I finished it feeling quietly alert. Like something is already shifting, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
References
- World Economic Forum. (2025). The future of jobs report 2025. https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025
Week 2 — Reading Reflection
I didn’t connect with The Leadership Odyssey immediately. At first, it felt like it was speaking to a very specific kind of leader—executives, senior managers, people already inside formal authority. That distance made me slow down rather than lean in.
What changed was recognising that the article isn’t really about position. It’s about transition. Ibarra, Hildebrand, and Vinck describe leadership development as a long process of letting go of behaviours that once worked, before new ones have fully taken shape (2023, pp. 104–105). That idea of an unsettled middle felt familiar.
The authors describe this phase as uncomfortable and often invisible. Progress doesn’t look like progress while it’s happening. People feel less competent, not more, because the habits that previously brought success are no longer sufficient (Ibarra et al., 2023, p. 106). Reading this reframed why leadership growth so often feels like loss rather than advancement.
As a designer, this made me think differently about leadership in creative practice. Leadership is often confused with clarity and decisiveness. This article suggests something quieter. It suggests that leadership now requires patience, reflection, and the ability to stay present while identity catches up to context (Ibarra et al., 2023, p. 104).
The emphasis on people skills stood out, particularly the claim that collaboration, influence, and self-awareness are stronger predictors of leadership effectiveness than technical expertise alone (Ibarra et al., 2023, pp. 109–110). That aligns closely with design work, where outcomes are shaped as much by relationships and trust as by skill.
This reading made me pause and check myself. Reflection and empathy are already part of how I work, especially in complex or sensitive projects. What I want to keep developing is how I stay with uncertainty without rushing to resolve it, and how I support others through that same discomfort rather than smoothing it over.
What stayed with me most is the idea that leadership change is not a moment but a process. One that unfolds unevenly, often without reassurance. That feels less polished than most leadership narratives, but far more honest.
References
- Ibarra, H., Hildebrand, C. A., & Vinck, S. (2023). The leadership odyssey: It’s not easy to become less directive and more empowering. Here’s how to navigate the challenges. Harvard Business Review, May–June, 102–110.
Week 2 — DISC Assessment Reflection
I didn’t approach the DISC assessment expecting to learn something new about myself. I expected confirmation.
What surprised me wasn’t the categories or the language of the report, but how accurately it described patterns I’ve lived with for a long time. The way I slow things down. The way I think before speaking. The way I prefer to understand a situation fully before acting, especially when other people are affected.
Reading my results felt less like a personality test and more like someone describing how I move through life. I recognised the emphasis on care, responsibility, and consistency. I recognised the discomfort with rushing decisions just to appear decisive. That isn’t hesitation for me. It’s caution shaped by experience.
The assessment also made me aware of a familiar trade-off. When pressure increases, my instinct is to retreat inward and think more, not speak more. That can look like disengagement from the outside, even though internally I’m working hard to make sense of things. Seeing that written down helped me understand why leadership hasn’t always felt natural in loud or performative forms.
What this activity gave me was language. Not to change who I am, but to recognise how my way of working shows up in collaborative and leadership contexts. I don’t lead by driving momentum. I lead by holding the quality of the work, noticing what might be missed, and protecting the integrity of decisions.
The area I want to develop isn’t becoming someone else. It’s learning how to make my thinking visible sooner, even when it feels unfinished. If leadership in the creative industries is moving toward complexity, care, and long-term thinking, then this feels like a place where my strengths can grow rather than be overridden.
References
- Robbins, T. (n.d.). DISC personality assessment. https://www.tonyrobbins.com/disc/
Week 2 — Decision Making and Intuition
I live in a world shaped by fear. Some of that fear is justified, the result of past experiences where my safety genuinely mattered. Some of it comes from a fight-or-flight system that no longer knows when to stand down. The difficult part is that, in the moment, those two things often feel the same.
Intuition has probably saved my life on more than one occasion. It has helped me read situations quickly, notice when something feels off, and step away before I could fully explain why. At the same time, I’ve learned that not every urgent thought deserves my trust. Intrusive thinking can arrive with the same intensity as intuition, especially when fear is already in the room.
This is why Wilding’s framing of intuition stood out to me. She describes it not as impulse or guesswork, but as a rapid synthesis of experience, memory, and emotional data that operates beneath conscious reasoning (Wilding, 2023, paras. 1–2). That helped me understand why intuition often arrives before language does, and why it can feel difficult to defend, even when it’s grounded in real experience.
What mattered most to me was her distinction between intuition and fear. Fear has a pushing quality. It demands immediate action and narrows your options. Intuition, by contrast, tends to feel quieter and more directional. It doesn’t rush, even when it points toward something uncomfortable or uncertain (Wilding, 2023, paras. 6–8). Seeing that difference written down helped me recognise why I’ve spent so long second-guessing myself.
In design and leadership, this distinction feels especially important. Decisions are rarely clear-cut, and waiting for perfect information often isn’t an option. At the same time, responding only to urgency can create systems that overwhelm people or ignore nuance. Intuition becomes a way of sensing misalignment early, before it turns into friction, failure, or harm.
What I’m still learning is that intuition doesn’t replace thinking. It asks to be listened to, then interpreted. For me, leadership isn’t about eliminating fear or acting on instinct alone. It’s about creating enough space to tell the difference between insight and panic, and having the discipline to respond rather than react.
References
- Wilding, M. (2023). How to stop overthinking and start trusting your gut. Harvard Business Review, 1–5.
Week 2 — Interview on leadership and innovation
What struck me immediately about this interview was how slow it was.
Not slow in a disengaged way, but slow compared to the interviews I usually watch. The pacing felt intentional. Questions weren’t layered or rushed, and Koplovitz was given enough time to finish a thought before the next question was introduced. There was no sense of the interviewer trying to move things along or steer the conversation toward a particular outcome.
Watching it as someone preparing to host an interview, this stood out. The questions themselves were quite simple, but the space around them did the real work. Because the interviewer didn’t interrupt or jump ahead, Koplovitz was able to expand on her answers naturally. The interview felt less like a performance and more like a conversation shaped by experience.
What became clear was how much pacing affects the quality of responses. Slower questions created room for context and reflection. It made me realise that strong interviews don’t necessarily come from complex or clever questions, but from allowing enough time for meaning to surface.
This has changed how I’m approaching my own interview preparation. Rather than trying to cover too much or over-engineer questions, this interview showed the value of restraint. Fewer questions, clearly framed, and space for silence if needed. The interviewer’s role wasn’t to extract information quickly, but to hold the structure steady and let the interviewee think out loud.
The key lesson I took from this was that pacing is a design choice. How slow or fast an interview moves shapes what kind of answers are possible. Going slower doesn’t mean losing control of the conversation. It can create better conditions for depth, clarity, and insight.
References
- Koplovitz, K. (n.d.). Interview on leadership and innovation. Video provided in CIM418 Leadership and Entrepreneurship in Creative Industries.
15 Questions to Ask an Entrepreneur If You Want to Become One
This article didn’t feel like a list of interview questions so much as a reminder of what interviews are actually for.
The questions suggested are intentionally open and reflective, designed to draw out experience rather than surface-level facts (Indeed Editorial Team, 2025). What stood out to me was how many of them focus on change over time — how priorities shift, what challenges emerged early, and how decisions evolved rather than whether they were right or wrong.
Reading this through the lens of someone preparing to host an interview, it reinforced that good questions don’t need to be complex. They need to be positioned in a way that invites storytelling. Questions about motivation, early mistakes, or changing priorities create space for entrepreneurs to reveal how they think, not just what they’ve achieved.
The article also highlighted the importance of sequencing. Starting with broader questions about inspiration before moving into practical challenges mirrors how trust develops in conversation. It made me reflect on how easily interviews can become transactional when questions are stacked too tightly or rushed.
What I took from this reading is that interviews are a form of design. The questions chosen shape the depth of the conversation, and the order and pacing determine whether insight is possible. This article has helped me refine how I structure my own interview questions — aiming for fewer prompts, clearer intent, and more space for reflection.
References
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Indeed Editorial Team. (2025, June 9). 15 questions to ask an entrepreneur if you want to become one. Indeed.
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/interviewing/questions-to-ask-entrepreneur
Innovation Through Visitor Experience
Passebois-Ducros (2019) explores how the Lascaux Caves innovated without altering the prehistoric cave paintings themselves. The paintings remained protected and unchanged. Instead, innovation occurred in how visitors encountered them.
The strategy focused on experience design across time. Lascaux considered anticipation before arrival, immersion during the visit, and reflection afterwards (Passebois-Ducros, 2019). Technology functioned as mediation rather than spectacle.
There is a tension within experiential innovation. When cultural heritage becomes optimised for engagement, it risks sliding toward spectacle. Through a trauma-informed lens, pacing, predictability, and user agency become essential. Innovation is not about intensity. It is about stewardship.
References
Passebois-Ducros, J. (2019). Innovation through visitor experience in museums: The case of the Lascaux Caves. John Wiley & Sons.
New Power, Institutional Authority, and The Space Between
This week introduced me to the New Power framework and the distinction between old and new power models. Heimans and Timms (2018) define power as the “ability to produce intended effects” (p. 2). They describe old power as something “held like a currency” (p. 7), while new power works “like a current” (p. 7). Old power is concentrated. New power is “made by many” (p. 9).
The New Power Compass separates values from models (Heimans & Timms, n.d.). An organisation may hold participatory values while still operating through a centralised model. This distinction prompted me to reconsider how authority functions within cultural institutions, particularly museums.
To understand how power operates in museum design, I turned to Nina Simon’s The Participatory Museum (2010). Simon explains that in traditional exhibits, “the institution provides content for visitors to consume” (p. 20). Interpretation is stabilised before visitors enter. Authority rests with curators and experts.
In contrast, Simon (2010) defines a participatory institution as one created and managed “with visitors” rather than “for visitors” (pp. iii–iv). Visitors can act as creators, critics, collaborators, and distributors (p. 20). Authority becomes distributed rather than centralised.
When I examined my original design for The Space Between, I realised it leaned closer to a Castle model than a Crowd model. I was defining categories and structuring interpretation. Even with ethical intent, I remained the architectural centre.
Through trauma-informed research, I understand that harm can be embedded in structure. Trauma often involves loss of agency. If contributors must fit within predefined interpretive frameworks, authority remains centralised. Even protective design can replicate control if authorship and governance are not genuinely shared.
This week clarified that power is not only about intention but about architecture. If I retain structural authority, I retain power. If contributors shape categories, language, and governance, power redistributes.
References
- Heimans, J., & Timms, H. (2018). New power. Doubleday.
- Heimans, J., & Timms, H. (n.d.). The new power compass.
- Simon, N. (2010). The participatory museum. Museum 2.0.
Startup, Scaleup, Screwup and The Space Between
This week’s reading of Appelo’s (2019) Startup, Scaleup, Screwup reframed how I think about The Space Between—not as a finished platform, but as a temporary organisation searching for a scalable and repeatable business model.
Appelo (2019) defines a startup as an entity that exists to test and validate a business model before it can responsibly scale. That definition matters. The Space Between is not yet a scaleup. It is still searching. It is testing structure, governance, audience fit, and sustainability. Treating it as something ready for acceleration would be strategically premature.
The Shiftup Business Lifecycle outlines stages from Initiation and Expedition through Validation and Stabilisation before Acceleration can responsibly occur (Appelo, 2019). Exploration dominates early phases. Execution dominates later ones. Confusion happens when those behaviours are mixed.
I recognised immediately that The Space Between is still in Expedition. The concept is strong. The ethical framework is developing. But Product/Market Fit has not yet been validated (Appelo, 2019). Who is it for? How do contributors engage? What value do institutions see? These are startup-stage questions, not scaleup questions.
Appelo (2019) argues that scaling before validation creates fragility. Without Product/Market Fit and Business/Market Fit, growth becomes unstable. That warning lands clearly in my own work. There is a temptation in creative practice to build infrastructure early—to formalise governance, to construct complex platforms, to polish identity. But if the underlying model is not validated, those systems become expensive assumptions.
The reading clarified that The Space Between must be treated as its own business model with its own lifecycle. It requires validation before acceleration and experimentation before optimisation. Conflating early-stage exploration with late-stage execution would introduce structural fragility.
This reframing reduces emotional reactivity. A slow phase does not indicate failure. It may indicate proper Validation. A pause in development may reflect necessary Stabilisation rather than collapse (Appelo, 2019). The lifecycle becomes a diagnostic lens rather than a judgment.
Strategically, the implication is direct. I must protect The Space Between from premature scaling. I must gather evidence before building infrastructure. And when validation is achieved, I must be willing to shift from exploratory founder to structured leader.
This reading did not provide inspiration in a motivational sense. It provided strategic clarity. It named a mistake that often undermines creative founders: mistaking momentum for readiness (Appelo, 2019). For The Space Between, timing is not cosmetic. It is structural.
References
- Appelo, J. (2019). Startup, scaleup, screwup: 42 tools to accelerate lean and agile business growth. John Wiley & Sons.
What Resources Exist to Support Entrepreneurs?
AusTrade provides export advisory, international market insights, and global connection pathways for Australian businesses (Austrade, n.d.). While The Space Between is currently focused on validation and structural development, AusTrade could become relevant if the platform expands into international research collaborations or cultural partnerships.
In Perth, Spacecubed operates coworking hubs such as Riff, FLUX, and Fern alongside structured startup programs and community events (Spacecubed, n.d.). Business Station provides government-subsidised advisory and training services for small businesses across Western Australia (Business Station, n.d.). Innovation Cluster supports regional innovation and sector-based growth programs (Innovation Cluster, n.d.).
Creative Australia provides national arts funding, fellowships, and sector development initiatives under the Creative Australia Act 2023 (Creative Australia, n.d.). Creative Plus Business focuses specifically on strengthening business capability within the creative industries (Creative Plus Business, n.d.).
Plus Eight, powered by Spacecubed, offers a structured accelerator pathway including seed funding, mentoring, and investor access (Plus Eight, n.d.). Participation would depend on lifecycle stage and strategic direction.
Government support includes Creative Australia grants, Business Station advisory programs, and ecosystem partnerships facilitated through Spacecubed initiatives (Creative Australia, n.d.; Business Station, n.d.).
Austrade. (n.d.). Australian Trade and Investment Commission. https://www.austrade.gov.au
Business Station. (n.d.). Business advisory and training services. https://www.businessstation.com.au
Creative Australia. (n.d.). About Creative Australia. https://creative.gov.au
Creative Plus Business. (n.d.). About us. https://creativeplusbusiness.com
Innovation Cluster. (n.d.). About Innovation Cluster. https://innovationcluster.com.au
Plus Eight. (n.d.). Plus Eight Accelerator. https://pluseight.spacecubed.com
Spacecubed. (n.d.). Innovation and coworking hubs. https://spacecubed.com
Jack Conte: Epic Fails
What I appreciated most about this talk is that Jack Conte does not perform success. He slows down and walks us through the parts no one usually shares. The albums that didn’t sell. The tours that barely broke even. The weekly projects that quietly stopped. He speaks about failure as if it is ordinary, not dramatic. That honesty changes the tone immediately.
His main point is simple but important. Most creative work does not work. Not occasionally. Most of it. We just rarely see that part because the public story is usually built around the highlight reel. Listening to him speak about years of effort that seemed to go nowhere felt grounding rather than discouraging. It reframes what “normal” actually looks like.
The idea that stayed with me was what he calls “smoothing the emotional curve.” When something fails, the body reacts as if something serious has happened. It feels personal. It feels urgent. He explains that the real work is not eliminating failure, but learning to regulate the response to it. That feels less like resilience in the motivational sense, and more like maturity. It is about perspective.
For me, this talk softens the narrative around progress. If failure is baseline rather than interruption, then volatility becomes something to plan for instead of something to fear. It invites a longer horizon. It asks for steadiness rather than urgency. And that feels far more sustainable.
Conte, J. (2016). Jack Conte shares his most epic fails [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf5rKTCMNnU
The Five Stages of Small Business Growth
Churchill and Lewis describe five stages of small business growth: Existence, Survival, Success, Take-off, and Resource Maturity. What I appreciate about this model is that it doesn’t assume every business wants to scale aggressively. It recognises that different stages come with different priorities, and that growth is not just about size, but about complexity, delegation, systems, and the changing role of the owner.
In the early stages, the business revolves almost entirely around the founder. In Existence, the main concern is simply: can we get customers and deliver the product? In Survival, the question becomes: can we generate enough cash to stay viable? These stages are intense and personal. The owner is doing everything. The business and the person are almost indistinguishable.
The Success stage is where things become more interesting. At this point, the owner faces a decision: remain stable and profitable, or pursue growth. That distinction feels important. Not every business must become large. Some can remain intentionally small and sustainable. That reframes success as choice rather than pressure.
As the business moves into Take-off and Resource Maturity, delegation becomes critical. The owner must let go of control and build systems. The model suggests that many businesses struggle not because the idea is weak, but because the founder cannot adapt to the changing demands of leadership. The skills that make someone effective at the beginning are not the same skills required later.
What stands out to me is how human this model is. It recognises that growth is not linear. There are setbacks. There are retreats. There are choices to stay small. For a project like The Space Between, this encourages careful reflection about stage, capacity, and intention. Growth might mean expansion, but it might also mean consolidation and strengthening foundations. Sustainable development depends on clarity about systems and role evolution, not just ambition.
Churchill, N. C., & Lewis, V. L. (1983). The five stages of small business growth. Harvard Business Review, 61(3), 30–50.
Startup, Scaleup, Screwup
This reading explores the lifecycle of a business from early formation through to scale and potential decline. Appelo (2019) provides practical tools designed to help founders apply the right strategies at the right stage of growth. The following five tools are particularly relevant to The Space Between.
The lifecycle framework maps businesses across stages from Initiation through to Acceleration. This tool is useful because it forces clarity about what stage a venture is actually in. The Space Between may feel intellectually advanced, but structurally it is still moving from Formation toward Validation. This tool prevents premature scaling and encourages disciplined sequencing.
Appelo distinguishes between validating demand for an idea and validating the sustainability of the business model behind it. While the conceptual foundation of The Space Between shows resonance, the operational container that sustains it long term still requires testing. This distinction prevents conflating intellectual validation with structural readiness.
In early stages, Appelo argues that founders must be willing to work manually and directly with users. For this project, that translates to small cohorts, direct dialogue, and careful experimentation with mediation structures. In a trauma-informed space, depth and integrity matter more than rapid expansion.
Applying growth-stage tools too early can destabilise a venture. For The Space Between, premature acceleration would mean building large-scale digital infrastructure before engagement patterns and governance structures are validated. This tool acts as a strategic safeguard.
Appelo highlights that different initiatives within one venture can exist at different stages simultaneously. The academic publishing stream, platform design, and community pilots of The Space Between are not aligned in stage. Mapping them separately allows for clearer decision-making and staged development.
Appelo, J. (2019). Startup, scaleup, screwup: 42 tools to accelerate lean and agile business growth. John Wiley & Sons.
Influence Is Built, Not Claimed
This reading is basically saying something I feel like people forget all the time. Influence is not a title you give yourself. It is something other people hand you, slowly, when you have earned enough trust that your presence actually carries weight. Not because you are loud, but because you are reliable.
What I appreciated is that it keeps pulling influence away from vanity metrics. It does not treat influence like a follower count problem. It treats it like a credibility problem, and that shift matters. Because if your real goal is to influence your workplace, your local community, or the people who would actually work with you, then chasing the wrong audience is just wasted energy and emotional labour.
The strongest thread through the advice is trust. Not trust as a fluffy concept, but trust as an operating system. The kind of trust that comes from consistency, from being clear about what you stand for, and from making people feel respected when they interact with you. I had a quiet “uhuh” moment there, because that is exactly how good brands work too. The brand is not the logo. The brand is the pattern people can predict.
Another thing that landed is how much influence is about emotional safety, even when people do not call it that. The reading points out self-awareness, empathy, and emotional intelligence as influence-builders, and it made me think: people do not follow someone who makes them feel small. They might comply, but they will not trust. And in leadership, trust is the asset. It is the long-term value, not the short-term performance.
I also notice how this reading quietly rejects shortcut culture. There is no “hack” here that does not cost your integrity. Most of the suggestions are long-game strategies. Get clear. Communicate with intention. Be present in the right rooms. Deliver value consistently. Act in people’s best interest, not just your own brand narrative. It is simple, but it is not easy, and I think that is why it is real.
When I think about what is most relevant to my creative practice, the strongest influencing approaches are the ones that build trust without forcing it. That includes showing proof of work through case studies and clear outcomes, communicating consistently in a way that feels human, and building relationships where people feel safe to ask questions and be honest about what they need. For me, influence looks like clarity, steadiness, and follow-through, not performance.
I do think some ways of influencing are more effective than others, but it depends on what kind of influence you want. Quick visibility tactics can create attention, but attention is not the same as trust, and it can disappear fast. The most effective influence, especially for leaders and creative practitioners, seems to come from credibility signals that compound over time: consistent quality, clear positioning, social proof that is earned, and relationships that are maintained, not mined. That is slower, but it is stable. That is the kind of influence that actually turns into work, partnerships, and long-term impact.
For me, the deeper question underneath the reading is this: what kind of influence do I actually want? Because influence can be used to dominate a space, or it can be used to stabilise it. I am not interested in influence that performs. I am interested in influence that helps people breathe easier, decide faster, and feel like someone competent and kind is holding the frame.
The tension I am still sitting with is sustainability. Consistency is necessary, but consistency without boundaries becomes pressure. So the real growth edge for me is building influence in a way that is aligned with capacity, values, and longevity. Not just being visible, but being steady.
Forbes Coaches Council. (2022, May 4). 15 effective ways to gain more influence in your space. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/2022/05/04/15-effective-ways-to-gain-more-influence-in-your-space/
Key Person of Influence Survey
A key person of influence is someone whose voice carries weight in a specific space because they’ve built trust, credibility, and relevance with the right people over time. The KPI website frames this as becoming highly visible, valuable, and connected in your industry, which makes influence feel less like hype and more like something you can build deliberately.
What makes them “key” is leverage. They influence behaviour, thinking, or direction. Their insight is seen as valuable, not just interesting. And they shape conversations and outcomes, not just engagement.
What I learned about myself is that I’m not chasing influence for attention, I’m chasing influence for alignment and impact. I want to be trusted, not followed. I care more about being seen as steady, capable, and safe than being seen as impressive. And if I’m honest, I can slip into thinking influence is something I have to earn by performing more, posting more, proving more.
The KPI framework helped me see influence as a set of buildable focus areas rather than a personality trait. It breaks the approach down into five skills: being able to explain what you do clearly, publishing consistently, turning skills into products, raising your profile so you’re recognisable, and creating opportunities through partnerships rather than trying to do everything alone.
Yes, I will change things in my creative practice based on the website information, but not in a dramatic rebrand way. More in a systems and positioning way. It’s a reminder to tighten clarity, build consistent visibility with intention, and make sure my value isn’t trapped inside one-to-one service delivery.
Net result: less performative marketing, more strategic presence. More long-term brand equity. Less noise. More signal.
Key Person of Influence. (n.d.). Home. https://www.keypersonofinfluence.com/
Key Person of Influence. (n.d.). KPI Method. https://www.keypersonofinfluence.com/kpi-method/
Key Person of Influence. (n.d.). About. https://www.keypersonofinfluence.com/about/
How to Win Friends and Influence People
This video summary of How to Win Friends and Influence People landed in a way I didn’t expect. I’ve heard versions of these ideas before, but seeing them grouped together made the pattern obvious: influence is rarely about being impressive. It’s usually about how safe, seen, and respected you make people feel in your presence.
The core message I took from the summary is that influence is built through everyday relationship behaviours that compound over time. Things like listening properly, showing genuine interest, using appreciation instead of criticism, and guiding people through their priorities instead of forcing your own. It’s simple, but it’s also a bit confronting, because it means influence is a practice, not a personality.
The video also reinforced that “winning” people is not about manipulation. It’s about removing friction in relationships. When someone feels understood, they become open. When they feel judged, they shut down. So the practical lever here is emotional intelligence, and the outcome is trust.
It’s funny, this video made me think about my interview with Richard Price. I can see he has used these techniques on me, and it’s made his influence feel really strong, but not in a fake way. More in a steady leadership way. He listens carefully, stays calm, and makes space for the other person to speak properly. That makes you feel respected and capable, which is probably why his influence sticks. It’s not theatre. It’s consistency.
Looking back, I think the most effective part of his influence is that he guided without pushing. He didn’t pressure or dominate the conversation. He framed ideas, asked good questions, and let me arrive at my own clarity. That creates autonomy, and autonomy creates trust. It reminded me that the strongest influence often looks quiet from the outside.
When I think about which approaches I already use from the book, I can see I naturally lean into the relationship side of influence. I listen properly, I try to understand what people mean (especially when they struggle to explain it), and I’m careful with tone because I know people remember how you made them feel. If I make a mistake, I’d rather repair it quickly than defend it, because I value clean relationships over being “right”.
The approaches I want to grow are the ones that turn my natural empathy into clearer leadership. I want to be more intentional with small trust signals that matter, like using people’s names more, giving sincere and specific appreciation (not flattery), and speaking more directly to the other person’s priorities. I also want to hold a clearer frame while staying warm. Sometimes I soften too much to keep things comfortable, but influence needs clarity, not just kindness.
For my creative practice, this is a useful reminder that influence does not come from pushing a brand story harder. It comes from being steady, clear, and respectful. If clients feel safe with me, they tell the truth. If they tell the truth, I can design better solutions. So in a way, these “people skills” are not separate from my work. They are part of the infrastructure of good creative leadership.
The main “uhuh” moment for me is this: the techniques that feel the most powerful are the ones that protect dignity. The ones that create trust instead of tension. That’s the kind of influence I want. Not attention. Not performance. Just the kind of credibility that makes people breathe easier and move forward.
Carnegie, D. (1936). How to win friends and influence people. Simon & Schuster.
Video #2. (n.d.). How to win friends and influence people (full summary) [Video]. (Add the platform/channel and URL your class provided.)
Corporate Innovation Framework
This piece gave me a weird sense of relief, because it names something that is usually left vague on purpose. Corporates love the word “innovation”, but half the time nobody can explain what type of innovation they mean, what it is for, or how they’ll know if it worked. The opening frames the reality: organisations are investing in hubs, hackathons, agile training and design thinking because they are trying to become more agile, customer-centred, profitable, efficient, or disruptive, all at once (Vetter, n.d., para. 1).
The main value of the framework is clarity. Vetter explains that innovation managers often struggle to describe what methodology they follow and why, and that the sheer number of tools and frameworks adds to confusion (Vetter, n.d., para. 2). So this model works like a decision map. It forces you to choose what kind of innovation you are actually doing, instead of using “innovation” as a catch-all label (Vetter, n.d., para. 2).
The framework sits on two dimensions. One is focus area: are you mainly looking inward at the organisation, or outward toward the market and customers (Vetter, n.d., para. 2; para. 4). The other is innovation creation: are you solving problems to improve what exists, or creating something new through an opportunity lens (Vetter, n.d., para. 2; para. 10).
The internal versus external focus becomes concrete through the examples. Internal focus is described as improving efficiency by optimising processes and operations, with references to Lean and quality programs and the more recent shift toward digital transformation, automation, and AI (Vetter, n.d., para. 5). External focus is described as improving customer experience or creating products and services that increase revenue, with customer journey mapping and service design named as common approaches (Vetter, n.d., para. 7).
The difference between “improving” and “creating” is where the stakes shift. Vetter makes the point that original product, service, or business model innovations are harder, require long-term orientation, and are not something most organisations are willing to do (Vetter, n.d., para. 8). The Xerox example is blunt too: long timeframes to ROI, but innovation programs get shut down early and replaced before they can mature (Vetter, n.d., para. 9).
The article shifts from the framework into method fit in a way that feels like a reality check. It argues that teams often choose a methodology and then try to retrofit it to a problem, when the methodology should depend on what type of innovation you are actually doing (Vetter, n.d., para. 12). If a problem is well defined, optimisation toolkits like Six Sigma and Lean make sense, and if it’s ill-defined and people are impacted, a human-centred design approach may be more appropriate (Vetter, n.d., para. 13).
The quadrant breakdown clarifies the limits of design thinking too. For customer experience improvement, an iterative HCD approach makes sense (Vetter, n.d., para. 14). But for “Create”, where you are building value from scratch and may not have clear pain points to guide you, HCD methods are described as being of limited value. The suggested tools shift to foresight, futures thinking, radical reframing, and innovation of meaning (Vetter, n.d., para. 15).
“Reinvent” is described as uncomfortable and disruptive, and the methods listed are the kind that challenge dominant industry logic (Vetter, n.d., para. 16). That resonated because it names why so many organisations stay trapped in optimisation and incremental improvement. Reinvention requires leaders to tolerate discomfort, uncertainty, and the idea of challenging what everyone takes for granted (Vetter, n.d., para. 6; para. 16).
For my creative practice, I can see how useful this is as a language tool. It helps me ask sharper discovery questions and define what type of change a client is actually trying to make. It also sets expectations. If you pick the wrong quadrant, you pick the wrong success metrics, budget approach, team setup, and ways of working (Vetter, n.d., para. 18). That mismatch can make a team feel like they’re failing when they’re actually just misaligned (Vetter, n.d., para. 18).
Overall, I see this as a translation layer that reduces “innovation theatre”. It supports communicating a clear purpose and direction, helps with course correction, and acts as a north star during strategic shifts (Vetter, n.d., para. 17). It’s not flashy, but it’s strong infrastructure, and I respect that.
Vetter, S. (n.d.). Corporate innovation: A framework for defining innovation initiatives. Innovate Strategy. (Week 5 material excerpt.)