At the heart of my partnership with leaders is the courage they bring to focus on their interior self. A leader’s ability to grow themselves, their team, and their organization is not dependent on their strategy or skill set. It is reflective of their awareness of, and relationship to, the interior of themselves.
A leader’s orientation feels a bit like a weather system. There are states that move through them, shaped by what they believe is at stake, by what they fear losing, and by what they have and haven’t yet explored within themselves. Weather patterns begin early in life as something genuinely useful - a self-reliance learned when family life was turbulent; an ability to be in control and hold things together amidst chaos; or a sharpness under pressure. In my sessions with leaders, we explore the patterns that have served them well and how those same patterns have begun to limit them. Leaders often uncover events or people they haven’t thought about in years, surprised to discover how much they contributed to their world view. I invite leaders into this discovery not to dwell in the past, but to notice whether those early patterns have outlived their usefulness. Once something is recognized, there is an opportunity to consider that the very way of being that got them here is now the thing quietly limiting what becomes possible next.
It’s at this point where leaders experience a generative tension, the gap between where they currently are and who they sense they are becoming. Rather than treat the gap as a problem to solve or a deficit to close, I work with leaders to try to stay in the gap, even if temporarily, rather than try to escape it. It’s here where the conditions for growth are most often found. This generative tension shows up in the things that leaders say when they trust the space enough to allow their professional composure to soften so that their deeper truth can come through:
I don’t know anything different and I feel stuck
I care a lot about what people think, and I hate that I care so much about this
I’m trying so hard to keep it all together and then sometimes I just want to start from scratch
I am so structured and I wish I could lead differently in all this ambiguity and uncertainty
And sometimes, when they’ve sat with it a little longer, they might say:
I know what I used to do here, but I'm not sure that's right anymore
I feel like I’m supposed to have this figured out by now
What sounds like confusion is actually an inner knowing to something already shifting within them, a discovery of the space between where an old response no longer fits and a new one hasn’t yet formed. This is that space of generative tension. While it is often not a comfortable place to be, it is a creative one. My experience is that the pressure to close the gap, to resolve the tension, is enormous. Our natural response is to escape with an answer, a plan, a tool or a strategy. This isn’t surprising since ‘not knowing’ is usually not celebrated. What tends to be celebrated is people who decide confidently, who move quickly, and who project certainty even when they don’t feel it.
Closing the gap prematurely has a cost. When we reach back for what we already know, we lose out on the growth that is only available when we are willing to not-yet-know. Our most meaningful development happens not in acquiring new skills, but in remaining in honest and curious relationship with the gap. A leader who can model this is also inviting those around them to do the same.
There is courage in a leader who trusts that uncertainty is not the same as inadequacy. Being in this tension demands presence and it rewards the willingness to slow down enough to feel what is happening rather than default to action.
I often think of it like trail running where the most demanding terrain is the technical ground, the uneven footing that asks me to stay present to every step. I can't zone out, I have to be alert to what's underfoot and to trust my body to find its way across ground it hasn't crossed before. There is something exhilarating about this and I chalk it up to being fully present in the tension of the moment.
If you are in a place right now where something feels unresolved, where your familiar way of leading no longer quite fits but a new way hasn't yet arrived, it’s useful to know that you are not behind or failing to figure it out. The discomfort is not a signal to move faster, to fix, or to decide. It is an invitation to pay attention and to ask, with genuine curiosity: What is this tension trying to show me? What is it that I'm being asked to grow into, not just as a leader, but as a person?
Growing as a leader, in the deepest sense, is about becoming someone whose interior life has grown large enough to hold the complexity that leadership at this level asks of you. That growth does not happen in moments of certainty. It happens in the in-between spaces with your willingness to stay present to the not-knowing and your trust that something is forming even when you can’t yet see it. This, in my experience, is where the most real and lasting change begins.
Photo taken by Abby Malan - Sahara Desert, Morocco