You need colleagues

People often don’t need a leader, manager, consultant, mentor or coach. They don’t need a team. What they need is someone with whom they can talk honestly about what they see, think and feel.

They need someone who can help them think clearly about what they want to do – help them find that gut feeling that they know what they want to try and that they have enough of a plan to start trying it.

They need spaces and times to reclaim some of their human bandwidth (余裕/yoyuu in Japanese) to serve as each other’s “thinking and doing” partners…

People need colleagues.

A colleague is someone you can talk with honestly about work opportunities AND problems, successes AND failures, things that are comfortable AND things that are uncomfortable.

A colleague doesn’t have to become a close personal friend, though sometimes they do as an outgrowth of the collegial way they relate to you.

People need colleagues they can trust because the work they do together shapes the rhythms of their lives and the foundations of the lives of those who depend on them to do good work.

People need colleagues who can help them learn and achieve more than they would alone.

People need colleagues.

Explore・Define・Iterate・Transform

Context ・ Intention ・ Action ・ Outcome

Agency (主体性) + Purpose (志) + Growth (成長) + Connection (繋がり) + Contribution (貢献) = Meaning (意義)

In the space between you and me awaits all that will ever be.

人と人の間に全てのもと

Here is a link to a more detailed post I wrote on this topic about 20 years ago:

© Dana Cogan, 2026, all rights reserved.

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