🌳 Wake up the curious leader within you

Dear leaders,

First, let me wish you a wonderful new year - filled with inspiration, impact, and kindness. May 2025 bring you joy and a renewed sense of purpose!

For those of you who are new here: I’m Anita Cassagne from The Laughing Willow - at the start of every month, I drop by your inbox with Inspiring Connections - a simple and pragmatic one-pager to support you on your never-ending leadership journey.

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Here’s an opportunity for you this year: develop the authentic, curious, and enabling leader within you. Why? Because these three qualities will fuel both inspired and inspiring leadership.

This month, let’s focus on curiosity, the cornerstone of growth and innovation!

How can you develop the curious leader within you?

There isn’t just one definition of a curious leader, but here are a few traits I’d like to share with you..

💭 How will you cultivate curiosity this year? Where will you look for something new?

Inclusivity, for real

I recently had the privilege of contributing to HEC Paris’ programme, Leader as a Coach, talking about inclusivity. This experience brought me back to my days at Nestlé and reminded me of a leadership dimension we cannot overlook today: embracing diversity as a strength and truly understanding what inclusivity means.

Two fundamental aspects of inclusive leadership:

1. Listening and asking better questions: what does each individual need in order to feel valued and trusted?

2. Empathy: taking the time to really understand who’s on your team, their experiences, and their perspectives.

Inclusive leadership starts with humility - questioning ourselves, letting go of assumptions, and committing to change from within.

💭 So, let me ask you: how are you adopting an inclusive leadership posture?

Feel free to reach out if you’d like to explore practical methods to improve active listening and awareness-building.

Meet Charlotte David

I met Charlotte David when I was at Nestlé. Among the leaders of the management committee, Charlotte, at the time General Manager for Nestlé Infant Nutrition, impressed me by the way she listened, through the quality of her questioning and her personal investment in social justice.  The successful roll out of the market’s Diversity and Inclusion strategy required leadership at Management level. I was very grateful Charlotte immediately said “YES” to lead the LGBT+ employee resource group. Inspired and supported by her leadership, we raised awareness and implemented actions so that each employee concerned could come to work feeling fully accepted to be themselves.

When recognised for her investment, Charlotte often replied very humbly saying that what was achieved was thanks to the group effort. →Connecting with Charlotte is a great way to start the year.