Fire That Gathers

🔥 How do we spark connection toward shared action?

Think about an introduction that changed your work.

David Hodgson is a technologist, with patents on how social media spreads across networks, and an introvert who has been making those introductions across regeneration and sustainability for fifteen years. He did it one at a time at first, then through the Global Regeneration Colab, and now with Mycelial, an AI he built to do it for whole networks. I've been on the receiving end, and I love the intention and serendipity of who shows up.

What I love about David is that he's gone deep on both sides, the technology and the human work of holding community. What emerges is our conversation on what it takes to spark connection, and how his work with AI is stretching his own capacity too.

We discuss the following:

🔥 Many networks make their money on the introductions. Why David chose to remove the friction instead,

🔥 The three filters behind an introduction worth thirty minutes, and the one only a human can test for

🔥 Why more calls built a more alive network than one monthly meeting and the mindset he borrowed from Open Space to fuel his network’s virtual meetings. 

🔥The value lives in the ecotones. Why the most productive places in nature are where biomes meet, and how that model informs Mycelial's AI introduction engine and my leadership cohort Collective Counsel.

🔥 What technology can do and where we still need humans, because otherwise, as David says, "it's just a collection of individuals in a database somewhere."

🔥 What training AI can teach us about delegation, trust and how to collaborate.

Where do you see two worlds that should meet, and who could you connect across them?

Drop it in the comments — I'd love to hear.

More information and to connect with David:
Global Regeneration Colab — https://www.grc.earth/
Mycelial — https://www.mycelial.earth/home
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhodgson/

The Network Leadership Series — eight live sessions with practitioners coordinating networks, coalitions, and collective action, with a focus on building trust across difference. Fall cohort runs October 14 – December 9. Sliding scale and scholarships available. https://www.weavingfutures.org/training-nls

Learn more about working with me and Collective Counsel:
Collective Counsel — www.onpurposetogether.com/collective-counsel
On Purpose Together — www.onpurposetogether.com
LinkedIn — www.linkedin.com/in/beckerjeanine
Book a call — www.onpurposetogether.com/call

🔥 Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: Catching the Lie

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

That line from the Queen in Through the Looking-Glass has been on my wall for twenty years.

In our last episode, Gabriel Grant talked about holding the impossible as inevitable. He grew up around it, with a dad working on early electric vehicles and a mentor who turned a hacky-sack town into a global arts destination. I didn't grow up seeing impossible things as inevitable. Maybe you did. For those of us who didn't, I wonder where we build this capacity.

The practice isn't repeating what's possible. It starts with catching the lie.

I discuss the following:

🔥 What the lie always sounds like, and why the most insidious version is the one we don't notice we've said to ourselves

🔥 A torn hamstring, six years of fertility treatments, and how I knew anyway

🔥 Catching the lie at four scales: a moment, an hour, a year, and a decade

🔥 In a moment: a funder came in asking how to move a million dollars fast. The question that changed the number.

🔥 In an hour: a siloed leadership team, a two-day offsite, and an outburst that had people screaming. What I chose to believe before there was any evidence, and what the CFO said two months later.

🔥 Over a year: a founder who wanted seven figures, six weeks off, and a leadership team that could lean in, a mix that felt impossible.

🔥 Over fourteen years: how Gabriel watched a hacky-sack town become a renowned arts and design district

In Gabriel's episode, I asked what’s your arts festival for something you can't yet build. Here's the step before that: where are you carrying impossibility as fact?

For me, the truth feels like cold, clear blue water. That's how I know. What does it feel like for you?

Drop it in the comments — I'd love to hear.

Listen to the pair: How Do We Gather Toward an Impossible Future? with Gabriel Grant — [link]

The Network Leadership Series — where we dig in deep, with Gabriel Grant as one of our facilitators. Eight live sessions over eight weeks for leaders coordinating networks, coalitions, and collective action, grounded in the 5Cs of impact networks, self-determination theory, and the science of trust. Fall cohort runs October 14 – December 9. Sliding scale and scholarships available. https://www.weavingfutures.org/training-nls

Learn more about working with me and Collective Counsel:
Collective Counsel — www.onpurposetogether.com/collective-counsel
On Purpose Together — www.onpurposetogether.com
LinkedIn — www.linkedin.com/in/beckerjeanine
Book a call — www.onpurposetogether.com/call

How do we gather toward an impossible future?

In this episode, I sit down with Gabriel Grant — catalyst, researcher, and network builder, working with people shifting systems from inside impact networks, organizations, and families. He's currently building Shareholder Democracy and partnering with Weaving Futures, and his work with the Clean Electronics Production Network and The Impact are two of the stories we get into.

His PhD at Yale asked when and how purposeful work actually contributes to the flourishing of leaders and organizations. His pedagogy for change agents is taught at Cambridge, Cornell, MIT and universities worldwide. Over fifteen years he's coached and trained more than a thousand purpose-led leaders and world-class change agents — founders, board members, and C-suites across 150+ major brands.

I've had the chance to work alongside Gabriel for seven years, through Converge and now Weaving Futures. What I've watched in that time is a commitment to creating impossible things.

We anchored this conversation in a quote that's been on my office wall for two decades, from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass: When Alice says – I can’t believe impossible things and the white Queen replies – "I daresay you haven't had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Gabriel doesn't call the future he's building impossible. He calls it inevitable and then takes the next step.

This episode is a MUST LISTEN!

We discuss the following:

🔥"But we could start an arts festival." The move at the heart of every impossible thing Gabriel has helped build — finding what's buildable now, with who's already here

🔥 What it took to transform a hacky-sack town into a renowned arts and design district — and the four years before anything could begin, spent getting the right people into the right seats

🔥From a supply chain 23 layers deep, where workers were arrested for learning what chemicals they were handling, to a commitment program written into the CHIPS Act — how the Clean Electronics Production Network built trust where there was none

🔥Vision was not the driver. What Gabriel expected to find at Patagonia and New Belgium, what he actually found, and the three flavors of self-determined motivation

🔥The cleaner, more renewable fuel — why we start the Network Leadership Series with your real why for the work, not obligation and not grit, and why that matters most on a long arc

🔥Six months inside one question: how can love flow through markets?

 Why your shares may be voted to undo the work you do all day — and what it means that you're told it isn't your job to care

🔥Calling as the place where what we have is needed in the world and it's there to grow us — the question I bring to every leader I work with

🔥The growing edge: what it's like to be back at ground zero, playing the day-to-day role you once coached others to play

What is your arts festival – the buildable step toward your impossible future?

More information and to connect with Gabriel: 

Shareholder Democracy www.shareholderdemocracy.org
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielgrant/
The Network Leadership Series — eight weeks with practitioners building coalitions, movements, and impact networks. Next cohort begins October 14th. https://www.weavingfutures.org/training-nls

Weaving Futures — www.weavingfutures.org

Learn more about working with me and Collective Counsel: 

Collective Counsel — www.onpurposetogether.com/collective-counsel 

LinkedIn — www.linkedin.com/in/beckerjeanine

Book a call — www.onpurposetogether.com/call

At the Edge

❤️‍🔥 What might we gain if we disagree well?

I carried Kirthi Jayakumar's question out of our conversation and into a week of my own work.

It showed up on the cover of Harvard Business Review at an airport newsstand. In a boardroom on day two of a leadership offsite. And on a curb at Disneyland, five minutes before the parade, with my eight-year-old.

For two decades I've partnered with leaders at the intersection of vision, responsibility, and systems change — foundation presidents distributing millions annually, CEOs of social enterprises reshaping cities and reimagining health systems, executives at companies designing how millions communicate.

I taught negotiation at Stanford for a decade — and learned interdependence solo-parenting, needing and really receiving support.

The parenting, the caregiving, the life you're holding alongside the work isn't separate from your leadership. It may be the source of your deepest why. And it's often the invisible practice ground for the skills we need most to meet this moment.

This episode is about how we shape conversations so collaboration truly leverages difference — in perspective, in information, in resource. Meetings used not just for updates, but to create the conditions to move shared outcomes.

This is where personal growth meets strategy.

This episode is a MUST LISTEN! 🎙️❤️‍🔥🔥

We discuss the following:

🔥 Generative, not just kind — the three questions I asked a leadership team to explore so their offsites could shift from quiet report outs of a stoplight chart to actively wrestling with what required everyone in the room

❤️‍🔥 The HBR cover I picked up at the airport on my way to that offsite, and how it set the context for disagreeing well before we even introduced the questions

🔥 The three pillars of collaborative leadership: agency — knowing what you want and naming it, genuine curiosity about what matters to another, and the willingness to sit in the unknown long enough for something new to emerge

❤️‍🔥 Fireworks and butterflies: how a last-minute negotiation with my eight-year-old at Disneyland became the perfect practice of collaborative leadership

🔥 Where personal growth meets strategy: the inside move I had to make before we could generate an outcome that met both of our desires — and how these small family decisions train the capacity to collaborate that our purpose requires

& more…

Where are you shaping a conversation so that differences become generative?

Drop it in the comments — I'd love to hear.

Listen to the conversation with Kirthi Jayakumar that sparked this reflection HERE

Learn more about working with me and Collective Counsel:

Collective Counsel — a curated circle of purpose-led founders, funders, and executives — www.onpurposetogether.com/collective-counsel

On Purpose Together — www.onpurposetogether.com

LinkedIn — www.linkedin.com/in/beckerjeanine

Book a call — www.onpurposetogether.com/call

In this episode, Jeanine sits down with Kirthi Jayakumar, co-founder and researcher with Connected Power, a global team co-creating actionable blueprints — recommendations and policy frameworks to unlock the creative power and prosperity of feminist digital movements and guide $100M+ in future investments.

Together Jeanine and Kirthi explore creating generative spaces for systems transformation and the alchemical question at the heart of this episode: what might we gain if we disagree well?

Based in Chennai, Kirthi is a tech-geopolitics expert and a future of work practitioner focusing on emerging technology, and her work examines the intersection of technology, power and social movements. She also runs Civitatem Resolutions and is completing her PhD at Utrecht University on feminist approaches to governing AI.

Drawing from 200+ conversations with feminists, funders, and technologists across the globe — and from the grandmothers, mothers, and aunties whose movements taught her that change never arrives with a single hero — Kirthi shares what becomes possible when we treat disagreement as a friend we invite into the room.

This episode is a MUST LISTEN!  🎙️❤️‍🔥🔥

We discuss the following:

🔥The CEO who said "we never disagree" — and the one brave person willing to question it

🔥Pluriverses — why we don't need a single universe where everyone bends to belong

🔥Jeanine's three pillars of collaborative leadership: agency – knowing what you want and naming it, genuine curiosity about what matters to another, and the willingness to sit in the unknown long enough for something new to emerge

🔥Am I curating an echo chamber? Kirthi’s potent question that emerged during our discussion of Curating the People in the Network Leadership Series (NLS)

🔥Why too uniform a room costs us something, and how that shaped Collective Counsel as a cross-sector circle

🔥What a thousand-year-old Sanskrit text can teach us about alignment in AI

🔥Jugalbandi: what if AI responded like a dancer to a singer — reflecting back, asking what more it needs to know — instead of rushing to answer?

🔥What changes when you make people co-architects rather than sources and data points — and how Connected Power moved away from the extractive interview model

🔥The 5Cs as GPS: how the core lessons from NLS became Kirthi's anchor for where to put her attention next

🔥How this work is a catalyst for Kirthi’s own growth and where she's finding an expansive appetite for hope

Where have you seen disagreement become fuel in your work? Drop it in the comments -- I'd love to hear.

More information and to connect with Kirthi:

Connected Power: https://www.connectedpower-blueprint.net

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirthijayakumar/

Learn more about working with Jeanine and Collective Counsel:

Collective Counsel: https://www.onpurposetogether.com/collective-counsel
On Purpose Together: https://www.onpurposetogether.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckerjeanine/
To Book A Call: https://www.onpurposetogether.com/call