Francis Egbuson

  At the recommendation of my classmate Andrew—a music teacher, bass player, and fellow scholar-practitioner in adult learning at Columbia Teachers College—I recently experienced something that has lingered with me far beyond the concert hall. We attended a performance by the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Semyon Bychkov, featuring Symphony No. 8 in C minor by Anton Bruckner. For nearly 90 minutes, without intermission, I sat in a kind of quiet awe—almost a trance—as the symphony unfolded. What struck me most was not only the music, but the leadership. Bychkov did not “command” the orchestra in any overtly forceful way. Instead, he seemed to invite the music into being. With a subtle interplay of baton and bare hands, he summoned sound from every corner of the ensemble—the violins, violas, cellos, basses, flutes, piccolo, oboes, English horn, clarinets, and beyond. Each section entered not as an isolated unit, but as part of an intricate, living whole. As I watched, I found m...

"In the most vital groups I studied, there was a recurring pattern — a kind of communal stillness. People paused. They waited. And in that waiting, something would open. Connection happened not despite the silence, but through it." — Daniel Coyle, Flourish I have sat across from clients in hundreds of coaching conversations and facilitation rooms across East and Central Africa. In every one of them, language has been the currency. We open with a check-in, contract the space, name the challenge, explore perspectives, and close with commitments. Words flow in, words flow out. And in that flow, we sometimes mistake productivity for transformation. But something has been quietly unsettling me. The practitioners whose work I most admire — and the scholars whose ideas have most stretched my own — keep arriving at the same unexpected threshold: silence. Joseph Jaworski, in Synchronicity, describes the moment of his deepest professional reorientation not in a boardroom or a seminar,...

By Francis E. Egbuson  ·  June 5, 2026  ·  Leadership · Purpose · Story I almost missed him. The first time our eyes met, I was standing in a ticket queue at Princeton Junction. A tall, grey-haired African American man — six feet at least — stood nearby, a manpack across one shoulder and what looked at first like a bullhorn, polished into the shape of a vuvuzela, resting casually in his hand. He had a presence that made you look twice without knowing exactly why. The kind of gravity that is earned, not performed. We crossed paths again on the platform, where the train to New York was running seven minutes late. I said hello. He smiled — the kind of smile that holds decades of hard-won grace. His name was Wayne Slappy. What followed was thirty-some minutes on a train that I did not want to end. "You must pursue that which is bigger than yourself." — Wayne Slappy Wayne was born into poverty in...

May 2026 · State College, Pennsylvania ✦   ✦   ✦ There are moments when the weight of where you have arrived can only be understood by remembering where you began. This weekend was one of those moments — watching our son David walk across the stage at Penn State University, his mother beside me, grace pressing quietly and powerfully against my chest. Grace is often spoken of in the abstract — a theological category, a doctrinal position, a term we affirm in creeds. But I have lived it in the concrete. In the specific. In the unrepeatable geography of a life that should not have turned out this way, and yet did. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." — 2 Corinthians 12:9 The Family That Grace Built David did not graduate alone. Our firstborn, Joshua, traveled from Los Angeles with his girlfriend Nytaunah — presence made costly, love made visible in the miles. Our second son, Jonathan, joined us from his base in New York City, his ...

  My wife Ayele and I were supposed to be somewhere over the Atlantic right now, somewhere between Nairobi and New York, hearts full of anticipation for our son's graduation from Penn State. Instead, I am seated in the Hyatt Regency in Westlands, Nairobi, nursing the residue of what can only be described as one of the most frustrating travel experiences of my adult life — and, if I am honest, one of the most instructive. Let me tell you what happened. The Boarding Pass That Wasn't Mine — Except That It Was Our journey began at Entebbe International Airport, where Kenya Airways issued my boarding pass for KQ002, Nairobi to John F. Kennedy. Everything was in order — or so we thought. It was only at the boarding gate here in Nairobi that an agent noticed something I had not: my boarding pass read Egbuson/Egbuson Fr instead of Egbuson Emebeleakpo Fr . My surname, printed twice. A clerical error — one that Kenya Airways had generated — and one that would cost us our flight, seventy...

  Guided by the Certainty of His Love A morning reflection | May 2, 2026 There is a noise to modern living that never quite stops. It is the noise of do more, be more, achieve more. The relentless concert of striving — where confidence is mistaken for competence, and sometimes even for character. Where worth is measured in accolades, visibility, and the size of the audience watching you perform. I have sat with that noise this morning. And my spirit has spoken back to it with a single phrase: Guided by the certainty of His love. This is not a slogan. It is a beacon. To be guided by the certainty of the love of God is to discover that the only audience that ultimately matters is the audience of One — the great I AM, who does not keep a ledger of deeds, but desires a relationship of love. The One who holds the universe in perfect balance, and yet wants kinship with us — not extracted through performance, but extended as invitation. A choice, not a contract. He does not want...