Slowing Down to Lead Well
Why Leading to Fast Can Damage Your Organization
Speed is a virtue in most organizations I have encountered. Fast decisions. Quick pivots. Rapid deployment. Teams are encouraged to make crucial decisions, move quickly, and not delay.
There is something legitimate there. Organizational momentum is real, and the ability to move decisively matters.
But there is a shadow side to speed that does not show up when we are measuring success.
When leaders operate at a pace that precludes reflection, several things happen quietly. They stop noticing patterns, they start reacting rather than responding and they lose the long view in favor of the urgent. Leaders begin making decisions that are technically efficient but relationally blind.
Leaders begin making decisions that are technically efficient but relationally blind.
Research on leadership effectiveness finds that reflective practice, the habit of pausing to think about how you are thinking, is one of the most reliable predictors of sustained leadership quality. Not speed. Not decisiveness. Reflection.
Some of the best leaders I have met maintain a regular practice of what one researcher called “balcony time,” stepping off the dance floor and up to the balcony to observe what is actually happening below. Not to avoid the action, but to see it more clearly before re-entering it.
This does not require a sabbatical or a retreat. It requires a weekly appointment with yourself, a journal, a walk, a conversation with someone who will ask hard questions.
Speed without reflection produces confident mistakes.
Where in your leadership rhythms are you making space to slow down enough to actually see what is happening?
Source: The Work of Leadership — Ronald Heifetz and Donald Laurie, Harvard Business Review