Create A clearing
What if the chaos you're feeling right now isn't a sign that you're failing...
…but a wake-up call that learning is about to begin?
This week, I’ve been in three different rooms—with three very different groups:
Scientists navigating the shockwaves of federal funding shifts
Fellows wrestling with the future of economic mobility
Government professionals confronted with policy shifts, AI, and uncertainty
Different sectors. Different stories. But the same feeling in the air: heat.
We’re in a moment where multiple systems are in flux—funding, policy, geopolitics, and of course, the ongoing transformation being catalyzed by AI. There’s no clear playbook. And no easy answers.
But what’s been landing with people the most this week is this:
When adaptive challenges hit—when you’re asked to respond to complex problems with no known solution—the result is disequilibrium. Heat.
And when the heat rises, people react.
We either:
Retreat into the comfort zone (business as usual)
Or spiral into the panic zone (overwhelm, freezing, over-functioning)
But between those extremes? That’s where the learning zone lives. That’s where we can actually grow. That’s where we get strategic—not reactive.
And it’s hard to get there. Especially now.
So how do we lead ourselves—and our people—into that space?
Three practices have come into focus for me this week:
1. Get yourself into the learning zone.
This one’s personal. I haven’t been sleeping well—sometimes waking up at 4:30am with anxiety and spiraling thoughts. The heat isn’t theoretical. It’s real.
So I’ve been leaning hard into my three grounding rituals:
12 minutes of meditation in the morning
Journaling to offload the mental noise
And full digital detox weekends—yoga studio, garden, no phone
These aren’t luxuries. They’re lifelines. And they’re what allow me to step off the dance floor, get up to the balcony, and begin to see clearly again.
We all have our own version of these practices. Use them. Trust them. This is how we regulate our own heat—so we can lead others with presence.
2. Preserve what matters. Don’t rush to fix or adapt.
We often say people resist change. But it’s more accurate to say people resist loss. And right now, there's immense pressure to innovate, to pivot, to do more with less.
But here's a harder—and more strategic—question:
What’s worth preserving?
Sometimes, the real work of leadership isn’t fixing what’s broken. It’s protecting what’s essential.
And that means asking the even harder question:
How do we do less with less?
That kind of prioritization brings its own grief. We may disappoint our teams. We may say no to work we care deeply about. But the adaptive task is clear: preserving something is better than preserving nothing. Especially when the systems around us are under strain.
3. Attend to the little things.
The small moments carry the big meanings.
Photo by John-Paul Dörf on Unsplash
Leadership isn’t always grand gestures or big decisions. Sometimes it’s one move—one choice—one conversation at a time. It’s checking in. It’s showing up. It’s offering a word when it’s needed most.
Stay in your realm of influence. Keep making your moves from the center of who you are.
As I’ve been reflecting on this, this poem from Martha Postlethwaite’s has been living with me:
Do not try to save the whole world
or do anything grandiose.Instead, create a clearing
in the dense forest of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue.
We’re in the heat. But the heat might not be the end. It might be the signal that real learning—real leadership—is just beginning.
Let’s stay with it. Together.