Know who you are working with.

Not everyone at the table wants the same thing. Naming a stance helps you decide how to work with someone. Use it to read a situation, never to label a person. A stance is behaviour, and behaviour can change.

• Builder

  Serves the community and opens the way for others. Shares credit, develops successors, welcomes scrutiny.

• Guardian or gatekeeper

  Means well, but closes the way. A guardian protects principles and gives reasons. A gatekeeper holds the same seat for years and blocks without reasons.

• Self-server

  Serves their own standing, and still adds value while interests line up. Visible when the cameras are, and quiet when the payoff fades.

• Underminer

  Serves a faction or an outside agenda, and damages trust. Look for rumours, procedural obstruction and opaque money.

• Bystander

  Benign, but absent. Attends and never joins. A large reserve of goodwill that is still waiting to be asked.

Adapted from The Emerging Model by Zahed Ahmed of Purpose Partners. It is advice that sits alongside the framework and is not part of it.