“There are leaders that always have time.
And then there are leaders that never have time.”
Does that ring true to you and your experience? This is what a senior leader recently observed to me and a group of their peers during a recent workshop. Since then, this comment has stuck in my mind. Because all around me I hear of the current busyness in organisations, and not in a ‘this is great there is so much happening’ way but rather in a ‘it’s too much we are all close to burnout’ way.
So what distinguishes those two groups of leaders mentioned above, if of course we all have the same hours in a day and a to-do list, which is never ending?
My hypothesis – we’re back to courage. Courage to make space, take time, be strategic and deliberate in our activities and interactions. Imagine the two groups:
- A hustle and busyness culture: You stick with a command and control style of leadership, reactively fighting fires and resisting any change.
- A strategic, deliberate culture: You make the space to invest in delegating power, allow for strategic thought and getting collaborative and curious in the face of change.
Does this mean if you lead with daring leadership everything will get real slow? I doubt it, even if I also believe it may not be the worst thing if there was more focus rather than worrying about speed. Anyway, if you look at it closely, removing the busyness may not be a contradiction to enabling speed. In the last years, McKinsey published work showing that speed can be a business advantage (McKinsey, The need for speed in the post-COVID-19 era—and how to achieve it), yet they also published that leaders report a lot of busyness with little effectiveness (McKinsey, If we’re all so busy why isn’t anything getting done? ).
I don’t have their underlying data, yet when McKinsey talks about an advantage for speed, if you dig into their report, you will find that the barriers reported as getting in the way of speed are silos, slow decision-making and lack of strategic clarity. So, this supports my hypothesis about being intentionally focused and calm with a clear strategy, and with a culture that enables employees to take bold business decisions at the right moment and right level, with the right amount of information and with an appropriate amount of risk. This enables the speed we are looking for – as the right activities and decisions get focused on and delivered upon – or as McKinsey says it themselves in an older 2018 article “Slowing down to speed up”.
What also backs this hypothesis up for me regarding busyness actually getting in the way of strategic work is the work by Business Professor Dorie Clark, who has written and spoken about the fact that busyness is often a mask to avoid facing uncertainty. You can go watch her TED Talk on the topic here.
So this busyness is asking us to have the courage to lean heavily into the discomfort of slowing down. That is making space. Space..
- … for strategic, deliberate thinking, ideas and reflection, versus rushed firefighting and action bias.
- … to take the time to align accountability and responsibilities for activities, versus blame and shaming over unclear responsibilities and deliverables.
- … to allow for providing guidance on work that has been delegated with power to and power with models, versus a quicker ‘power over’ decision or solution,
- … to respond with empathy to a situation going on with a colleague, versus brushing over it with a sympathetic gesture,
- … to breath when you notice an emotional hook and get curious, versus letting our eager minds make up a false story.
And for many more examples of showing up with daring leadership behaviours.
As all of you reading this know, leaning into daring leadership is a tough choice, requiring persistence and practice. And yet we can build our courage skills to handle the vulnerability of making that space.
And this is where my activities tie to this work and you are welcome to get in touch with me about:
- Providing consulting and facilitation services to build those courage skills within your organisation that enable your leadership team to make and hold space
- As an open mindset facilitator certified by OMind support organisations in developing the mindset regarding collaboration
- Bringing the dialogue method to you and/or your organisation to create a wide space for strategic thinking and curiosity outside of structured processes and frameworks
I’d love to hear what you do to create and hold space as a leader so we can share and learn from each other around this.
Image credit: Picture by Adam Thomas on Unsplash
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