Recently I was on a panel speaking with an audience of leadership development professionals. One of the best questions asked of the panel was ‘What should we be doing differently?’

Here’s how I responded: “Create more space for sense-making.” 

Most leaders have all the leadership tools they need. We don’t need more tools. We need more space and time to make sense of the complexity we’re navigating. To turn the firehose off, and to breathe. To connect, and to get perspective. To share stories about what we’re experiencing, what we’re experimenting with, and what we’re learning.

We need to shift easily and seamlessly from exertion to reflection. That’s where the opportunity for new insights and ways forward exists.

Creating that shift doesn’t need to be a big logistical exercise. All it requires is a few core skills, artfully blended.

Those skills are Listening, Asking, and Voicing.

Listening: paying attention when others are speaking

Asking: putting a question mark at the end of whatever you’re saying

Voicing: sharing your perspective

Shift the Balance

In the majority of leadership settings that I encounter, the balance of those three looks something like this:

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For high-quality sense-making, we need a balance that looks more like this:

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In other words, speak less, ask more, and listen well.

Shift the Quality

Beyond getting the balance right, it’s even more important to ensure those three skills are finely tuned:

Over the past few years, a large part of my work has been about creating space for leaders and leadership teams to make sense of their environment and how they’re responding to it. I’m also teaching leaders how to create that space for themselves and others, and use it well.

By far, the most effective leaders and leadership teams I work with deliberately create space for sense-making. Regardless of what’s happening in their immediate context, they’ll have non-negotiable rituals and schedules that build in the time and space for slowing down and making sense of things. 

For an individual, this might look like daily journaling or a daily walk. For the past two months, I’ve been doing Morning Pages (first thing in the morning, write three pages of stream of consciousness without stopping). It’s incredible what that does for my clarity of mind.

At a larger scale, it might be a weekly team meeting and/or quarterly offsite dedicated not to sharing operational matters, but to stop and make sense of what’s happening. For two years, I coached an executive team where every quarter they came together to ask three questions of themselves: How am I going as a leader? How are we leading as a team? What collective leadership do our people need from us now? Those simple questions guided their decisions and strengthened their resilience during some turbulent times.

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Empty Space is Valuable Space

It’s all too easy to see a blank space on the calendar and fill it with ‘stuff’, right?

I keep my Fridays clear. I’ve told my mind, and my team, to see that time not as ‘available time’ for booking meetings or busywork. It’s free space for sense-making. Don’t book anything in there.

When we fill the space, there’s no room left to breathe, to see, or to think.

Empty space is valuable space. Use it well.

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For more like this, check out:

Four Questions to Keep You Moving

Five Reasons We Can’t Slow Down

Fresh Insights on Unhurried Productivity

Five Reasons to Take a Sabbatical

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