The provided source is an essay by Michelle de Havilland, CEO of BlackGate and founding partner of MD Coach (www.MDCoach.co.uk), that explores the concept of parentification—the premature assignment of adult emotional and practical responsibilities to children. De Havilland argues that parentification is an insidious form of psychological damage, explaining that children's brains lack the neurological capacity to manage complex adult issues like emotional regulation or financial crises, citing research that the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until around age 25. The text thoroughly outlines both emotional and practical forms of parentification and details the lasting psychological impacts on adults, including anxiety, difficulty with boundaries, and impaired identity formation. Finally, the essay addresses the challenges parentified adults face when transitioning into appropriate elder care roles for their aging parents, providing coaching frameworks for establishing boundaries and separating past trauma from present adult responsibilities.

The MD Coach PlayBook article written by Michelle de Havilland and available to read for free on www.MDCoach.co.uk/Playbook provides an extensive analysis of "weaponised incompetence," which the author defines as the strategic claim of inability or the deliberate poor performance of a task to evade future responsibility. The text examines this phenomenon in both personal relationships, particularly marriages where it creates a parent-child dynamic and resentment, and professional settings, where it harms team performance and accountability. The author suggests that this behaviour is driven by factors including laziness, gender socialisation, ego protection, and power dynamics, and offers a coaching framework recommending readers stop rescuing and instead enforce clear boundaries and natural consequences to dismantle the manipulation. Ultimately, the piece argues that competence is a matter of dignity and choice, not just ability, and calls for societal changes to challenge the rewarding of helplessness.

Based on an extensive white paper titled "Bricks, Belonging, and Human Behaviour in Real Estate," written by Michelle de Havilland, CEO of BlackGate and founder of MD Coach, from her 25 years of global property development experience. The document argues that successful real estate development hinges on understanding fundamental human psychology, specifically the need for belonging and safety, rather than just focusing on architecture and finance. Michelle presents 27 lessons across three parts—Fundamentals, Contemporary Shifts, and Emerging Challenges—emphasising that developers must design for the actual, evolving needs of diverse occupants, such as single women, solo dwellers, single parents, and remote workers, often ignored by traditional, standardised building models. Crucially, the paper stresses that failing to account for cultural nuances, emotional sustainability, and ethical design practices leads to commercial failure and poorly performing communities.

The source- www.MDCoach.co.uk/PlayBook- provides a critical examination of the coaching profession, questioning whether it qualifies as a true science or is better understood as a science-informed craft. The author, an experienced coach preparing for advanced academic study at Cambridge, confesses uncertainty about coaching’s scientific foundation, noting the industry borrows heavily from established fields like psychology and neuroscience but lacks its own unified, predictive theory and faces significant challenges with replication and rigorous measurement.

Ultimately, MD Coach argues that while coaching generates real, measurable results for clients, its core mechanism—the inherently unreplicable human relationship and facilitated conversation—positions it as an applied, professional practice blending scientific principles with necessary intuition and art. The author emphasises the urgent need for greater professionalisation and ethical standards in the globally expanding coaching industry to protect consumers and establish legitimacy.

"Magical Thinking: The Delusion of False Hope" by Michelle de Havilland, thoroughly critiques the concept of magical thinking as a pervasive and harmful cognitive bias in modern culture. The author defines magical thinking as the false belief that thoughts or rituals can directly influence external events without a causal link, differentiating it from the necessary components of true hope, which require agency and practical planning according to Hope Theory. The source argues that this mindset, often marketed through social media and self-help coaching using terms like "manifestation" or "angel numbers," preys on vulnerable people by promising control while simultaneously blaming victims for failures by asserting they "co-created" negative outcomes. Ultimately, the article advocates for the psychological necessity of autonomy and reality-based action over passive waiting for cosmic intervention, referencing established research such as Self-Determination Theory and studies on the illusion of control.

The SpaceX mindset is one of the most important pieces of coaching work I’ve published in recent years. It dives into a set of psychological, behavioural, and strategic practices that I’ve refined over thousands of coaching hours — with CEOs, founders, creatives, diplomats, and leaders navigating extraordinary pressure.The article isn’t theoretical - it is a long form workbook.

It’s a distillation of practical tools I’ve used in the real world: inside mergers, restructures, hyper-growth environments, family businesses, and leadership teams on the edge of burnout. It explores the inner mechanics of resilience, clarity, decision-making and execution — and why so many high-performers get stuck in patterns that quietly sabotage their trajectory.

You’ll find the core concepts, the psychological foundation behind them, and the specific habits that make the difference between stagnation and momentum. This isn’t vague “motivation.” It’s operational coaching — grounded in behavioural science, anthropology, neurology, and lived experience.

If you take the time to absorb it fully and actually work the practices, you will shift your thinking. You will sharpen your strategy.You will feel more in control of your path. Most people never carve out that time. But those who do — the ones who sit down, read deeply, reflect and apply — are the ones who transform fastest.

This issue is the product of years of coaching leaders through complexity. It’s designed to give you a sense of clarity about your capability and what is possible, and a new set of tools for the year ahead.

There are nearly 200 other FREE articles and coaching tools on the website:www.MDCoach.co.uk/PlayBook

In this episode we strip away the noise, the mythology, and the outdated assumptions surrounding investment in Africa — one of the most misunderstood yet high-potential regions on the planet.

This podcast accompanies our latest BlackGate white paper, Investment in Africa: Intelligence, Integrity, and Influence, a comprehensive exploration of the geopolitical, economic, cultural, and ecological forces shaping the continent’s investment landscape. In a world where headlines sensationalise risk and downplay opportunity, our mission is simple: to bring clarity, truth, and strategic depth to investors who refuse to make decisions in the dark.

Africa is not a monolith — it is 54 countries, thousands of cultures, dynamic political environments, layered governance systems, and some of the fastest-growing urban and consumer markets in the world. But success here requires more than capital. It requires cultural fluency, local intelligence, ethical navigation, and an ability to read the invisible architecture — the networks of tribes, families, politics, and power that shape outcomes far more than spreadsheets ever will.

In this podcast, we draw from decades of BlackGate’s global experience — from navigating the complexities of UK planning for Dalian Wanda, to advising royal families, sovereign wealth funds, and private investors on politically sensitive hospitality, real estate, infrastructure, and conservation projects across the continent. We analyse what works, what fails, and why. We examine case studies, including the recent Marriott controversies in the Maasai Mara, which reveal how catastrophic the cost of “getting it wrong” can be when cultural intelligence is absent.

This series is for serious investors: family offices, private equity, hotel operators, developers, sovereign funds, and political stakeholders who understand that money alone doesn’t open doors — relationships, knowledge, and credibility do.

If you want to invest in Africa intelligently, sustainably, and successfully, you’re in the right place.

Let’s begin.

28 years. 35+ buildings. One extraordinary city.I've just published the third instalment of my "Around the World in Projects" series, and this one is deeply personal: it's about LONDON —the city that made me, and the city that courses through my blood.From arriving back in 1999 during the Y2K chaos, through working with visionaries like Irvine Sellar on The Shard, to collaborating with architects like RPBW Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Rafael Viñoly Architects, to shaping London's skyline with Landsec, working alongside mavericks like Harry Handelsman Manhattan Loft Corporation, and navigating the complexities of international development with partners like Dalian Wanda and KPF Architects—this is the unvarnished story of what it actually takes to build in one of the world's most challenging, rewarding, and resilient cities.I write about the 2008 recession and how the State of Qatar saved not just The Shard, but hundreds of jobs and ultimately helped deliver the 2012 Olympic Stadium. I share the absurdity of trying to explain to Beijing why we couldn't add a neon Mandarin sign to a 67-storey tower on the Thames. I remember standing in a synagogue as a Muslim Sheikh wept for his lost friend, Irvine Sellar, and understanding what real estate can do when it transcends borders and beliefs.This isn't a love letter to nostalgia. It's a testament to resilience—mine, and London's.This city has endured fires, famine, disease, economic collapses, wars, and countless predictions of its demise. And yet it keeps building. It keeps evolving. It keeps becoming.If you want to understand what it actually takes to build in London—the poetry and the pragmatism, the global capital and the local expertise, the audacity required and the humility demanded—read this.And if you've ever doubted London's future, remember this: never write off London. And never, ever write off Londoners.You. can read this and 200 other articles on the MD Coach PlayBook (www.MDCoach.co.uk/PlayBook)