Cultivating Higher Stage Leadership: Going Slow in Times of Uncertainty.

My children are at school. For 6 long months this has been the beacon on my horizon. The day when…. The sign that….. The moment of…… errrrr…… WHAT? 

What exactly is it that I have been so longingly anticipating, holding out for, even grasping after? A Release? A Return? Something new? 

I notice that something has shifted for me during these long 6 months.  I don’t actually WANT whatever it was I had been longing to “get back”. Now, don’t get me wrong. The space to think, be an adult, breathe and give my attention to something other than the delights of parenting is joyously replenishing, but rather than rushing head long into mindless productivity and a strategic business recovery plan my intuition is guiding me in a different direction. I even find myself playing with the word ‘business’ ….is that really what I want? To run a ‘busy’ness?

Apparently, we live in “an age of disruption.” A phrase that for me is like a super-charged adrenaline shot that kicks my 20th century educated, institutionalised brain into overdrive. It stimulates the need to rationally analyse, respond, fix, bring to order. Surely, if we just THINK hard enough, we can SOLVE the disruption? The world is poised on the edge of disaster! There’s no time to waste! We must act! Fast!

But, hang on.

If we rush, if we continue to apply the same old principles of busy-ness, won’t we just get the same old results? Or worse still, maybe we just continue adding to the mixing pot of disaster that the old paradigm has cooked up? As Nancy Kline so beautifully puts it; Ease creates. Urgency Destroys. Indeed, we have only to look around us and see the destruction caused by Dis-ease.

My intuition is calling me to something else. In the words of a brilliant sports psychologist I once worked with; not trying harder but “trying softer.” 

 I am drawn to slow down, to exhale, to pause, to wait.

 I can feel a sense of something stirring, arising, emerging.

Otto Scharmer calls it “Presencing” – a process of tuning into what is here, both inwardly and outwardly, of letting go and letting come, of allowing the future that is waiting to emerge to lead us. 

To slow down when the pace of change is accelerating, to let go when uncertainty is all around, to trust in emergence and act from a place of integrated mind, heart and will is truly courageous, higher stage leadership.

This is the calling of our times.  

These are the leaders we need to nurture.

And, in order to lead others, we must start with ourselves…. I’m noticing, when you slow down…..the stillness is deliciously productive!

What are these times calling for in YOU?