At The Talent Set, we’re passionate about spotlighting the voices of inspiring women who are driving change across the charity and not-for-profit sectors. Ahead of our Women in Leadership: Championing the Next Generation event on 17th September, we’re sharing a series of Q&As with our panel
This week, we’re delighted to feature Esther Kwaku, founder of The Nerve Network and a facilitator who thrives in the “messy bits” of leadership and strategy. Esther has worked with organisations ranging from UNICEF and The Guardian to grassroots charities, helping leaders navigate brave conversations, unlock creativity and embrace the power of psychological safety
Read on as Esther shares her perspective on leadership, presence and why getting comfortable with the uncomfortable is often where transformation begin
In my work observing conversations and dialogue, people sometimes want to skip straight to the ‘nice’ solutions… but that's where all the magic gets lost. The messy bits - those uncomfortable pauses in meetings where someone's really struggling to articulate what they actually need - that's where transformation actually happens.
Early in my career, I'd sit in meeting after meeting thinking "this conversation is going absolutely nowhere". I was frustrated because I could sense there was something important trying to emerge, but we kept dancing around it with polite-speak.
This drove me to train as a facilitator and coach - and dig deep into what unleashes powerful dialogue, especially around leadership tables. Now, when I'm in those spaces, I can feel the undercurrents. I can sense when someone's body language is saying something completely different from their words. I can spot the moment when a team is avoiding the real conversation they need to have.
My leadership facilitation is to wade straight into the mess! If there's an elephant in the room, I'll point it out. If someone's energy has shifted during our conversation, I help them notice and name it. If a strategic plan sounds impressive on paper but nobody's actually excited about implementing it, we're going to talk about why.
This perspective has shaped everything about how I lead and facilitate. I don’t facilitate tidiness; I facilitate for truth. When you have that psychological safety and space to be authentic about what's actually happening - the fears, the excitement, the resistance, the genuine enthusiasm - that's when the leadership stops being performative and gets really bloody exciting.
The joy is watching shoulders drop when people realise they can finally voice what they’ve been holding back. It’s a privilege to hold that space — messy, raw, and utterly worth it.
What I see across both the corporate and non-profit sectors is a fundamental shift from leadership as performance to leadership as presence. While many frameworks exist, teams are moving beyond this to ask: "What does it actually feel like to work here? What behaviours do we need to embody, not just espouse?"
Three themes surfacing:
Psychological safety as the foundation. I'm seeing organisations genuinely grapple with creating spaces where people can say "I'm struggling" or "This isn't working" without fear. Not just the policy version of psychological safety but the lived experience of it. I see leaders trying to learn and model vulnerability first - admitting when they don't have answers (which is empowering in itself) and sharing their own learning edges. It's less "here's our wellbeing strategy" and more "how do we actually care for each other in practice?"
Collective leadership taking root. The days of the heroic individual leader? We need to take stock of this. I'm seeing teams experiment with shared accountability, rotating leadership based on expertise rather than hierarchy, and decision-making processes that genuinely include diverse voices. There is a long way to go…it can be messy and sometimes slower but the innovation that emerges from this way of leadership is extraordinary.
Culture as lived behaviour, not aspiration. This is where it gets interesting. I see some teams I work with moving beyond their beautifully crafted values statements to actually showing up and demonstrating them. They're asking uncomfortable questions: "We say we value collaboration, but where is that working?" "Do we really know who we are at our best - where do we see that?" They're getting honest about the gap between stated culture and experienced culture.
What excites me most is seeing leaders who are willing to get uncomfortable in service of something better. Choosing courage over comfort.
I started Nerve out of a curiosity to explore narratives in international development: "What if we could be a conduit for people to tell their own stories, while unlocking and growing their business ideas along the way?" I kept seeing incredible talent in communities - passionate individuals pushed to the margins who just needed space to voice what they really needed (spoiler: it’s not always money). Often, the brilliance was already there - uncovered in a single conversation.
Nerve became my experiment and incubator: an agency that helped people in remote places thrive and fuel change in their own communities. The biggest surprise? How quickly people rise and straighten their shoulders when they’re trusted. Give someone a real brief, real ownership, and a platform to tell their story? The results are breathtaking and transformative
So…here’s an admission. Probably half of the “brave conversations” I facilitate aren’t really that brave at all. They are conversations that should have happened years ago but got buried under politeness, fear, policies and inboxes. My job is to tease that out…and to be fair, it‘s a journey, especially when the underlying culture hasn’t supported that.
Psychological safety isn’t “say whatever you want, no consequences.” Rather, it means people can bring their full thinking to work - discomfort, sticky issues, genuine concerns and feedback…and all without fear of being embarrassed, marginalised, or humiliated. It’s about dismantling the rusty habits that keep us silent about what’s really not working.
In practice, it’s not a half-day workshop but the daily signals that say, you’re safe here. I hope that anyone reading this has experienced the vibes and energy of feeling safe in your work squad. But here are some principles…
Real Inclusion that’s not token, where everyone in the room feels like they belong and their voice matters.
Learning without shame - where mistakes, gaps and vulnerabilities are treated as part of the process.
Setting and maintaining proper boundaries. Do we really know how to say ‘no’ with care and clarity?
Radical candour when giving and receiving feedback - honest, direct, empathic and compassionate.
Accountability - not as a buzzword but modelling it with integrity. Apologising, owning your missteps and really listening to what people are expressing.
There’s so much I can say about this, it’s one of my favourite topics to teach on! I think Psychological Safety needs to go beyond teams doing the training and writing it into their values…etc. Also, a big barrier isn’t necessarily that we don’t know what it is - it’s when we say we want honesty but get twitchy the moment the truth comes out. We’ve got to learn how to really hold it. #realtalk
Last thing on this: It really matters because if we don’t sort this out as a foundational piece of org culture, we’ll keep building strategies on half-truths. After all, we want to work in places that are a delicious melting pot of diverse thinking, smart decisions, clever pivots and innovation, right? That’s when we do our best thinking, not just our safest thinking
For me, that moment was the first time I did a strengths assessment. It sounds small, but it flipped everything for me. To have that language for what I naturally did best concentrated into a bundle of superpowers made me more focused than I had ever been before. It gave me permission to stop apologising for things that I sucked at (lol). It also unleashed me to lean harder into what lights me up, and to stop wasting energy trying to be everything I’m not because…burnout.
Since then, I’ve made it a practice to stay close to my strengths so I can pour my energy where it has the biggest impact. When I’m deflated, I’m acutely aware that others around me can feel it, so I’m more intentional about saying where I’m at and I trust others to lead where they are brilliant and I don’t have to be. That’s been one of the most freeing things about leadership for me: Showing up in my best light and ripping that out so that everyone can dazzle, dahling.
And while I often resist putting “women” before “leader” - because we are simply leaders - I do think there’s something powerful about women fully claiming their strengths. Being all things to all people? Nah. Let’s own who we uniquely and beautifully are and lead from there.
When you’re stuck, don’t go hunting for the “perfect plan” — go hunting for the spark. The clue to your next move is already in your body: The conversations that make you sit forward, the work or projects that make time disappear, the moments when you realise “I genuinely think I smashed that” and you light up. Follow that. It doesn’t need to be polished or even permanent. Just follow the energy. Movement creates momentum, and clarity always comes faster in motion than in overthinking. What you want is inspired action!
Finally, I would actually recommend you sit with this, sometimes we think asking lots of people for advice will help - and it does, for example working with a coach can do wonders. But first, instead of asking “what do you think I need to do next?” start asking “who do I want to become next?” Careers aren’t ladders anymore, they’re constellations - a collection of experiences that can form a beautiful story of you only when you zoom out. So give yourself permission to zig, zag, experiment, get some shit wrong, and learn. We never get it completely ‘done’ anyway because there is always more that emerges that we want. Your job is to keep becoming
We’re so excited to hear more from Esther and our panel during the session on 17th September. Keep an eye on our blog as we share the third and final Q&A in the series, featuring Laurie Boult, former Executive Director of Fundraising & Engagement at Age UK
If you’re joining us at the Women in Leadership: Championing the Next Generation event, we can’t wait to continue these conversations in person. If you’d like to join the waiting list or hear about future events, please send an email to: jael@thetalentset.co.uk
