Leaders…Press Pause
This week, I have been reading Miracles of Love by Ram Dass while on vacation, and one idea keeps returning. He writes about what it means to lead when familiar reference points begin to shift. He calls it cultural drift, those moments when the old playbooks no longer apply and we are left navigating without clear precedent.
Leaders today know that feeling well. We operate in constant motion, reacting quickly to the pressure of urgency that surrounds us. The instinct to respond fast becomes the culture itself. Meetings speed up, listening narrows, and doing replaces understanding. I caught myself doing it this week.
The most effective leaders learn to pause inside that motion. They stay long enough in the conversation to truly hear and steady the tone of the room. Ram Dass compared it to learning to move with the ocean rather than trying to freeze a single wave. In business, that is the difference between leading by force and leading with flow. It is not passive. It is presence.
Next week, I will explore the other side of this pattern, what happens when uncertainty triggers the opposite instinct, the urge to tighten control. It is the subject of my recent TEDx talk, and I am looking forward to sharing it.
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Surrender to Lead is the book Joe Terry and I wrote to redefine what leadership really looks like. We have both seen how often leaders think strength means control, but it doesn’t. Real leadership starts when you let go. When you surrender your ego, your need to have all the answers, and your attachment to certainty, you create space for trust, accountability, and real results.
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