Leadership often feels like it’s about the people sitting around the table.

The board. The leadership team. The shareholders. The customers.

But some of the most important people are the ones who aren’t in the room.

The employee whose future depends on today’s decision.

The customer who will experience the consequences months from now.

The supplier waiting for certainty.

The family who will feel the impact when someone carries the weight of work home.

C2S have always liked the idea of the empty chair.

Not as a symbol of absence, but as a reminder to pause and ask:

Who isn’t represented in this conversation?

This morning, during our visit to Commercial, we were reminded that the empty chair isn’t just a leadership concept.

Listening to Simone Hindmarch share the story behind the Commercial Foundation, and also hearing from Premier Forest Products Ltd about their Corporate Parenting programme, supporting young people with care experience into employment and helping them develop valuable workplace skills, we realised they were both talking about the same thing.

Both organisations have made a conscious decision to think beyond the people already around the table.

They’ve recognised that businesses have the power to create opportunities for those who may not yet have a voice, a network or even a seat in the room.

Perhaps this is what social value looks like at its best.

Not simply a policy, a report or a procurement requirement, but leaders choosing to consider the people whose lives may be shaped by the decisions they make today.

The best leaders we meet don’t always have the right answers.

But they ask better questions.

Who will this decision affect?

Who might we be overlooking?

Who deserves an opportunity?

Because leadership isn’t just about making decisions.

It’s about understanding who lives with them afterwards.

The empty chair isn’t always reserved for another executive.

Sometimes it belongs to someone who doesn’t yet have a seat at the table.

And perhaps the role of leadership is to remember them anyway.

These are exactly the kinds of conversations we enjoy exploring at C2S. People recognising that business has the power to create lasting value—for the people in the room and for those who aren’t there yet.