Why Do Women Often Play Smaller Than They Know Themselves To Be?
Why shrinking can feel sensible long before we recognise what it is costing us.
Read on SubstackJames' Writing
James' Writing
Essays and reflections on the hidden patterns shaping women's lives, relationships, leadership and power.
James writes to expose the hidden rules that keep women playing smaller than they know themselves to be and to help women become impossible for insecure men to diminish.
He also writes to help men recognise and step out of the patterns they grew up believing were normal, because they keep everyone smaller.
FEATURED ESSAY
How I learned to be loved instead of needed
Why so many men spend their lives trying to earn the love they never believed they deserved and how women can recognise the difference before they mistake insecurity for love.
Explore By Topic
Understanding Yourself
Identity, self-awareness and the patterns that keep you small.
Understanding Insecure Men
The hidden behaviours that keep women doubting themselves and men stuck repeating the same patterns.
Relationships & Power
Love, boundaries, emotional labour and the hidden power dynamics inside relationships.
Confidence & Self-Trust
Self-worth, presence, courage and taking up space.
Leadership & Culture
Workplaces, power, visibility and the systems that shape how we lead.
The Bigger Picture
Personal essays, reflections and observations beyond the book.
Selected Writing
Evergreen essays from James' Substack, alongside selected book excerpts.
Understanding Insecure Men
Understanding Yourself
Is It Me? Probably Not.
How insecure behaviour has a way of making the wrong person question themselves.
Read on Substack
Leadership & Culture
Good Leaders Can Still Get This Wrong
How even exceptional leaders can unintentionally reinforce the cultures they want to change.
Read on Substack
Understanding Yourself
What if it isn't your personality?
How the survival behaviours we learn can become the story we tell ourselves about who we are.
Read on substack
Relationships & Power
When did being in a relationship become better than being happily single?
How women's independence is changing what men need to bring to a relationship.
Read on Substack
Relationships & Power
Why Don't We Teach Our Sons What We Teach Our Daughters?
How teaching girls to recognise danger isn't the same as teaching them to recognise safety.
Read on Substack
Confidence & Self-Trust
Why Do Brilliant Women Apologise Before They Speak?
How an apology can reveal far more about a culture than the woman making it.
Read on Substack
Leadership & Culture
The most dangerous leaders I've met weren't the ones with bad intentions
Why leaders who think they've finished learning can become the reason their organisation stops growing.
Read on Linkedin
Leadership & Culture
Most insecure leaders have absolutely no idea they're insecure
How insecurity disguises itself as good leadership.
Read on Linkedin
Leadership & Culture
If your organisation makes talented women smaller instead of bigger, what exactly are you building?
How every talented woman who makes herself smaller makes the organisation smaller too.
Read on Linkedin
Leadership & Culture
The Cost of Mistaking Insecurity for Confidence
Why mistaking certainty for confidence changes everything that follows.
Read on Linkedin
Leadership & Culture
When Did Capable People Start Becoming Smaller Versions of Themselves?
Why the biggest threat to your organisation isn't losing talented people. It's them becoming smaller while they stay.
Read on Linkedin
Leadership & Culture
Your best people don't leave because they stop caring
How your people quietly decide whether telling you the truth is worth the risk.
Read on Linkedin
Leadership & Culture
Insecurity: the hidden cost for leadership, culture and performance
How insecurity destroys the conditions high performance depends upon from the inside out.
Read on LinkedinRecent Notes
Selected recent thoughts from Substack and LinkedIn.
The Book
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