Leadership Isn't Complicated...
It's Complex
Many approaches to leadership are built for complicated problems. Complicated problems have many components and moving parts but they also have right answers. Given enough time and expertise, you can find the solution and fix it. Cause leads to effect. Solutions hold.
But leading people is different. It's complex.
When you're leading a school, a team, or a community, the challenge shifts as you engage with it. What looks like a morale problem turns out to be a trust problem. What looks like a trust problem turns out to be about how feedback is given and received. And the moment you intervene, you've changed the conditions. There is no single right answer, no guaranteed fix, no moment when the system stays still long enough to solve.
And because the system keeps shifting, solutions can't be designed in advance. They have to emerge. Leaders learn their way toward them through small experiments, the ability to pause and a willingness to adjust.
What complexity asks of a leader isn't more expertise. It's a different set of practices. My framework is built around four of them, designed to shift leaders from simply trying harder to leading from presence.
PAY ATTENTION
Paying attention enables us to lead from curiosity and continuous learning rather than judgmental certainty. This begins with developing the habit of paying attention not only to what is happening around us but also to what is happening inside of us and considering the ways in which the two are connected.
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FIND STILLNESS
Even brief moments of stillness can have a profound effect on our ability to be more fully present in any situation. By slowing down, we are able to access inner resources like clarity, creativity and patience that help us envision what is possible amidst the complexity.
ORIENT
From stillness and presence, we are able to identify what quality the situation is calling forth in us as leaders (e.g. openness, resilience, clarity). This quality becomes our “direction” as we move into the final dimension of the practice.
EXPERIMENT
Once we've identified the quality the situation is calling for, we design small experiments to embody that quality more fully in our leadership. For example, a leader orienting toward curiosity might commit to asking twice as many questions as they make statements in an upcoming meeting. These experiments are low-stakes by design. What matters isn't getting it right the first time. It's building the habit of learning your way toward emergent solutions.