The new leadership gem: questioning what was never seen

Any business leader knows that making decisions, including inactions, based on assumptions is bad for results.

Yet we allow our societies to be run on assumptions we rarely dare to question.

Let’s address one of the biggest assumptions of the past 100 years or so: the nature of viral-based illness and how it spreads.

The dominant narrative says viruses are contagious enemies, microscopic invaders that jump from body to body, taking us down. But despite decades of belief, there is still no definitive, isolated, reproducible scientific proof that demonstrates viral contagion in the way we’ve been taught. Courts and researchers have asked for this evidence. What returns is theory layered upon assumption, but never a gold-standard demonstration.

I’m not speaking here of bacterial infections or chemical poisoning where real, identifiable invaders exist. I’m speaking about viral-based illnesses like flu, measles, where the ‘pathogen’ has never been directly proven to transmit in the way science claims.

I live from a different paradigm than most: viral illness is not something I catch, but a physical expression to my inner and outer environment. Symptoms aren’t signs of external invasion, they are intelligent responses to internal imbalance, toxicity, or unresolved emotional and energetic overload. This view is known as terrain theory, and once seen, it shifts everything.

Terrain theory doesn’t deny that illness can appear to “move” through groups. But it reframes what’s actually happening. Rather than particles being transmitted between people, it suggests we are responding - individually and uniquely - to shared conditions: environmental toxicity, emotional stress, energetic collapse. Illness isn’t something passed between us, it’s something expressed within us, based on the state of our inner condition.

And once you see that, it changes everything.

It shifts how we lead, how we organise, and how we respond to disruption.

This isn’t about attacking science, it’s about revealing its blind spots.
Because the biggest danger isn’t what we question. It’s what we never dare to.

Are you open to question something you believed in for so long?

Can you feel your resistance rise, even now? The thought: “But if that’s not true, how could so many believe it? Surely the medical world can’t all be wrong.” And yet… hasn’t history taught us exactly this?

We hide behind assumptions not because they’re true, but because they feel safer than admitting we don’t know. The phase of uncertainty - the void where no new belief that makes more sense has landed yet - is what we fear most. Often, questioning a long held belief means accepting the consequences of having holden on to it.

So we suppress the question.

But that fear - of uncertainty, of invisible threats, of losing control - drives more than just health narratives. It shapes the very systems we work in.

You install mechanisms of control,  in the body, in society, in organisations.

And that’s exactly how many organisations operate today. From health policies to leadership decisions, everything is designed to manage risk, control spread, and isolate perceived problems. It mirrors the same medical mindset: Diagnose. Treat. Suppress.

But what if burnout isn’t caused by individual fragility, but by an incoherent field no one wants to name? What if interpersonal conflict is not just drama, but the organisation trying to release what hasn’t been processed? What if underperformance of your teammembers is not a lack of capabilities but a fear of expressing what feels off within the organisation?

Just as viral illness may not be an attack from the outside - but a detox, an inner rebalancing - we must ask: what if organisations don’t collapse from outside changes, but slowly lose integrity through an unaddressed drift? Through subtle dissonance? Through repeated disconnection from their own living field?

Leadership, in this light, becomes fieldwork.

It means sensing what’s real beneath the surface.
It means learning to read the patterns behind performance.
It means catching early symptoms of misalignment, before collapse becomes visible.

This isn’t mysticism. This is the energetic climate your people breathe every day.

And like your physical body, your organisation is alive. It is a system of interrelated fields: each decision, interaction, and policy creating ripples. You don’t solve systemic incoherence by treating symptoms. You resolve it by restoring field clarity.

That requires more than metrics. It requires radical honesty.

Create cultures where truth isn’t punished but invited. Where masks drop, hierarchies soften, and emotional literacy becomes baseline, not a luxury. Where silence is not assumed as consent, but as signal. Notice when control is used to mask the answers that are not clear yet.

Learning to read that field is where the actually gem is.

Field clarity emerges through presence.
Through naming what’s unnameable.
Through slowing down until the distortion shows itself.
Through tools that restore inner alignment—before demanding outer performance.

So ask:
What assumptions have we built this system on?
What are we avoiding by pushing performance?
What are our policies actually communicating in the field?

If we stop believing that every disruption is an attack from the outside, we begin to reclaim our role as stewards of the field. We take responsibility for what we create, transmit, and perpetuate—not just as leaders, but as human beings.

Use tools that help people reconnect with their own alignment.

Invite reflection. Listen beyond words. Ask: what pattern keeps repeating—and what aren’t we willing to see?

If we stop believing every disruption is an attack from the outside, we begin to take full responsibility for what we create, hold, and transmit—as leaders, as teams, as organisations.

That’s the shift. From symptom suppression to pattern recognition. From reactive culture to regenerative presence. From managing what breaks to listening for what wants to evolve.

And this shift doesn’t require new strategies. It requires new self-responsibility.

Because just like our bodies, organisations stay healthy when the field is clear. And that clarity starts with those willing to see what’s really there.