Not to judge it. Not to fix it. Not even to figure out what it means.

Just to notice what’s there, become curious about your participation, and see what the experience might have to show you.

You don’t need to arrive at an answer.

If you’d like a place to keep practicing this more intentionally, the Leadership Lab is a year-long space for self-study and experimentation, designed to help you become more capable of learning from yourself as you live and lead.

Learn more about the Leadership Lab

Stay curious and go live some more.

There was one rather important detail: I’m not a medical doctor.

I was the Medical Department Director, not the Medical Director. My job was to build the department pretty much from scratch. Define our capabilities, build the team’s capacity to deliver them, coordinate with other departments, and deepen our collective knowledge.

Ultimately, we needed to be able to deliver what was needed to communities experiencing some of their worst days.

I knew how to lead people. I knew how to build new things, navigate complexity, see across a system, build bridges, and bring people together.

But I was leading people who had expertise I didn’t have.

And not everyone thought I belonged there.

One peer told me so directly. I felt it in other ways too. I found myself explaining my role, justifying my contribution, trying to prove why I belonged in the room.

Early on, the Chief Medical Officer who hired me, who later became CEO, said something that stayed with me.

Meghan, I hired you because you aren’t a medical doctor. We don’t need another one. We need a leader. Someone who can build something from scratch. Someone who can listen and know when to ask questions.

I don’t remember his exact words anymore, but I remember what they gave me.

Permission to stand more fully in the role I was actually there to play.

My team members were the medical and disaster response subject-matter experts. My responsibility wasn’t to become a medical expert.

It was to create the conditions for their expertise to come together. To build the team, coordinate different perspectives, build relationships across departments, and help us collectively deliver what was needed.

That experience gave me a question I would keep returning to:

Where do I lead, and where do I let myself be led?

I wish I could say I figured that out and moved on.

I didn’t.

I would understand something about it, then find myself in a new situation where the question showed up differently. Expertise was part of it, but so were voice, responsibility, belonging, boundaries, and knowing what was actually mine to carry.

Sometimes I got it right. Sometimes I didn’t.

Sometimes I knew something and didn’t listen to myself. And sometimes I couldn’t see what an experience was showing me until much later.

I thought I was there to build something

At the time, I thought my job was to figure things out.

Not only within my department. I could see tension and mistrust across the organization too, and I wanted to help bridge it.

I wanted to fix it. Help people see what I could see.

That instinct had served me well before. I am good at seeing across boundaries and noticing connections and unique contributions. I’m good at stepping into complexity and helping make sense of it.

Those are real strengths.

They are also part of what made this experience complicated.

Because being able to see something didn’t necessarily make it mine to fix. And knowing that intellectually didn’t mean I always acted like I knew it.

At one point, I was asked to step toward a broader organizational leadership role. Later, I interviewed for that position and wasn’t selected.

There was disappointment in that. But there was information too.

Not necessarily information about whether I was capable of doing the role. Information about what I wanted.

I remember realizing that I didn’t want to be Chief of Staff simply to be Chief of Staff. I wanted the way of working I associated with it.

I wanted to work fluidly and strategically. To advise. To work closely with a person or group, help set something in motion, and then let them carry it forward. I wanted to see across boundaries and use more of what I knew I could contribute.

I didn’t have all of that language immediately.

Some of it emerged while I was there. Some came later. Some of it I’m probably still understanding differently now.

That’s one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about our experience.

We don’t always know what we’re learning while we’re learning it.

Some learning takes longer to become visible

I knew I was learning while I was there. In fact, at some point I made a bargain with myself:

As long as I’m still learning, I’ll stay.

The complicated part is that another part of me already knew I needed to leave.

I’ve written before about the condition I had placed around leaving. I could leave when I stopped learning. [see essay here]

Except I’m almost always learning. Curiosity can find something to learn almost anywhere.

So learning wasn’t actually going to tell me when it was time to go.

Looking back, I can see how many different things were true at the same time. I was learning. I was grateful for what the experience was teaching me. I was also frustrated and disappointed by parts of what was happening.

I knew there were things I wanted to be different. I knew there were things I couldn’t change. And somewhere underneath all of that, I was beginning to recognize something about what I wanted next.

Not in a clean, Oh, now I know exactly what I want kind of way.

It was messier than that.

Some things I could see while I was there. Others required distance.

Some became clearer through reflection and self-study. Some became visible because a coach, peer, or trusted person reflected something back to me that I couldn’t see on my own.

And some of it I can see differently even now.

For a while, I thought the experience was mostly helping me understand what I didn’t want.

And it did.

But looking back, I can see that it was also helping me understand what I wanted more of.

How I wanted to work and contribute. The kinds of relationships I wanted around me. The responsibility I wanted to hold...and the responsibility I didn’t.

The kind of impact I wanted to have. The way I wanted to use my voice.

I was developing capacities through that experience there that I would carry long after I left it.

I didn’t leave with a tidy list of lessons. I left with experience.

And over time, as I returned to that experience, I could see more of what had been happening.

That has changed how I think about leadership development.

What if the work itself is part of our development?

We often think about leadership development as something we step away from work to do. A workshop, a course, a book, a framework, a conversation with an advisor.

I’ve learned through all of those things. I still do.

But I’ve become increasingly interested in what we might miss when we treat development as something separate from the work itself.

What if some of the richest material for our development is already present in the leadership we’re living?

The conversation that didn’t go the way you expected. The decision you keep returning to. The responsibility you automatically picked up. The moment you didn’t say what you wanted to say.

But also...the meeting that went beautifully. The experiment that surprised you. The moment you trusted yourself. The thing you did almost instinctively and didn’t overthink. The contribution that energized you. The moment you let more of yourself be seen.

The contribution someone else recognized in you that you hadn’t quite recognized in yourself yet.

Our experience doesn’t have to be difficult to become developmental material.

I learned that in another leadership experience years earlier.

I was the program director for an organization that hosted a regional solar and storage conference. At the time, there was an undertone of disappointment and despair in the industry. The solar coaster.

I could feel our conversations narrowing around what wasn’t working.

Something in me knew we needed a different perspective. So I wrote down what I wanted to say and shared it at one of our member meetings a few months before the conference.

I pushed back on some of the prevailing woe is me narrative and offered another way of looking at what was happening.

I was nervous. I knew what I was saying might be unexpected. I said it anyway.

And people responded.

I was recognized for it. I think I surprised some people. I probably surprised myself a little too.

When I look back at that experience, what stays with me isn’t simply that the speech went well.

It’s that I trusted something I could see, and I gave it voice. It had an impact.

There was something to notice in what had gone right.

Something about my voice and what happened when I trusted my perspective. Something about my willingness to say what I saw even when I wasn’t sure how it would be received.

That’s developmental material too.

Our experience becomes a teacher when we learn how to be in relationship with it.

Come think alongside me.

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I don’t mean we need to analyze everything

I don’t want to turn leadership into an endless exercise in analyzing ourselves. And I don’t believe every experience arrives with some predetermined lesson we’re supposed to uncover.

Sometimes a meeting is just a meeting. Sometimes something doesn’t work. Sometimes we make a choice and don’t know what to make of what happened.

And sometimes we don’t understand the significance of an experience until much later.

The invitation, for me, is much simpler:

Pay attention. Become more of an Observer than a Judge of yourself.

A mentor once offered me something I still come back to when disappointment shows up: curious over defeated.

I don’t always get there immediately. Sometimes I’m disappointed first. Sometimes I’m angry. Sometimes I need distance before I’m interested in being curious about any of it.

But eventually, curiosity can change my relationship with what happened.

But eventually, curiosity can change my relationship with what happened.

Instead of only asking Why did this happen? or What went wrong?, Instead of turning uncertainty immediately toward myself, I can get curious about what else might be happening.

What am I noticing? What surprised me? What feels important here?

What did I do that I want to remember? What am I carrying that might not actually be mine? What do I know now that I didn’t know before?

What might I want to try next?

Not every question needs an immediate answer. Sometimes the question itself changes what becomes available to see.

And then I go live some more.

I try something. I have another conversation. I make another decision. I notice what happens.

Maybe I learn something new. Maybe I realize I misunderstood something. Maybe I come back to an experience I thought I understood and see something entirely different.

That’s part of it too.

Development isn’t particularly linear. At least mine hasn’t been.

I circle back. I recognize an old pattern in a new context. I understand something intellectually long before I’m able to live it consistently.

I trust myself one day and second-guess myself the next. I think I’ve learned something...and then life gives me another opportunity to practice it.

Over time, though, something deepens.

Not because I’ve finally figured myself out, but because I’ve become more capable of learning from what I’m actually living.

Experience can become developmental material when we become willing and able to learn from it.

The person working and the person developing are the same person

This is the part I’ve been thinking about more and more lately.

We spend so much of our lives working. And for many of us drawn to meaningful or mission-driven work, there can be another layer of pressure. We want our work to matter. We want to have an impact. Sometimes we want it to tell us something about our own value too.

We’re leading, making decisions, navigating relationships, responding to pressure, trying things, getting things wrong, creating things that work, and holding responsibility.

We’re working alongside people who see things differently than we do, carrying their own experiences, pressures, and strengths.

And yet we often treat development as something that happens somewhere else.

We leave work to attend the leadership program. We learn the framework. We have the insight. Then we go back to work to apply it, but then the next meeting happens. Projects and deadlines pile on.

There is value in stepping away. Sometimes distance is exactly what allows us to see.

But I don’t think development only happens there.

The person doing the work and the person developing are not two different people.

What if work itself can become one of the places where we notice, reflect, discern, experiment, and learn?

And those experiences don’t happen in isolation.

We’re having them in relationship with other people, inside teams, organizations, and systems. All of these have histories, expectations, structures, responsibilities, habits, and ways of working that shape what becomes possible.

Those conditions affect us.

And we participate in them too.

Which means learning from our leadership isn’t only about understanding ourselves better. It can change how we participate in the work around us.

How we listen and decide. How we share responsibility. How we use our voice.

What we question. What we continue. What we stop carrying. What we make possible for someone else.

I think there’s something important there that I’m still exploring.

What changes when learning from our experience becomes part of how we work?

So what are you already learning?

If I could sit beside the version of myself who was trying so hard to figure everything out in that medical department, I don’t think I’d give her the answers I have now.

Those answers belong to who I am now.

She still had experiences she would live. People she would meet. Things she would try that wouldn’t work, and things that would.

But I might ask her to remember something:

Meghan, remember what you really want.

No one else can articulate that for me. No one else can put it in motion for me.

And then I’d probably invite her to pay attention.

To what she was learning about her voice. To where she felt most alive. To what she kept trying to carry.

To what she knew before she could explain why she knew it. To where she was leading, and where she might let herself be led.

I can see now that I wasn’t only leading through that experience.

I was developing through my relationship with it.

And I’m still learning from it.

Maybe that’s the part I understand differently now.

Learning from our experience doesn’t mean we need to immediately make meaning from everything that happens. Sometimes we need to live it first.

Sometimes we need distance. Sometimes we need another person. Sometimes we need another experience entirely before we can connect something we couldn’t see before.

So think about the leadership you’ve been living lately.

Not only what’s difficult. Not only what needs to change.

What has stayed with you?

Maybe it’s a conversation or a decision. Something that went beautifully. Something that didn’t.

A moment you trusted yourself. A responsibility you picked up. A reaction that surprised you. Something you can’t quite stop thinking about.

You don’t need to explain it yet. You don’t need to decide what it means.

And you certainly don’t need to fix it.

Just notice.

What still has your attention?

And maybe stay with one more question:

What might become visible if you stayed in relationship with that experience a little longer?

Come think alongside me.

The Regenerative Edge™ is a place to read, listen, notice, try something, and come back to what your own experience is teaching you.

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Want somewhere to practice this?

The Leadership Lab is a year of intentional self-study and experimentation for women who want to understand and trust themselves more as leaders.

It’s a place to learn from the leadership you’re already living, experiment with what you’re noticing, and return as your experience changes.

Explore the Leadership Lab

We spent part of our time looking at some of the things that shape how we lead.

Expectations.

Definitions of success.

Responsibility.

Protection.

Not because any of these things are inherently bad.

In fact, many of the ways we lead developed for good reasons. They helped us succeed. Belong. Lead. Get things done. Navigate difficult situations.

Some are genuine strengths.

But something can serve us well without needing to remain unquestioned.

And sometimes we need enough space to notice what’s been operating quietly in the background.

As we reflected together, women began naming what they were seeing.

One named letting go of control.

Another reflected that identifying what made you “successful” may not serve you any longer.

Someone else noticed how illuminating it was to realize that her default “problem solver extraordinaire” way of leading wasn’t just something happening inside her own head.

There was recognition in the room.

And I think recognition matters.

Reflection helps us see. Awareness creates choice.

But then the workshop ends…and life happens.

The meeting starts, the email arrives. Someone asks something of us and the familiar responsibility appears. The person who activates an old pattern does exactly what they always do.

And suddenly, the thing we could see so clearly when we had space to reflect can become much harder to see when we’re standing inside the experience.

I’ve been thinking about that.

I can know I tend to take responsibility before anyone asks me to.

I can recognize that I look outside myself for reassurance when I’m uncertain.

I can understand that control helps me feel safer when I don’t know how something will turn out.

I can know that a strength I rely on has become so automatic that I’m no longer consciously choosing when or how to use it.

Insight matters.

But insight isn’t the same as practice.

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And perhaps that’s where some of our ideas about leadership development get a little tangled.

We can learn something about ourselves and assume the learning is complete.

We name the pattern.

Understand where it came from.

Write down what we want to do differently.

Maybe even feel genuinely clear about it.

And then Monday morning comes.

The conditions that shaped the familiar response are still there.

So are we.

What if the next question isn’t how to change it?

What if it’s simply: What do I want to practice the next time this shows up?

Not forever, nor perfectly.

Just the next time.

Toward the end of our time together, I asked the women to identify something they wanted to practice.

Their answers weren’t abstract leadership aspirations.

One wanted to ask for help earlier, and practice receiving help differently before fear took over.

Another wanted to notice whether she was believing in herself, using new skills, and actually noticing rather than moving through her leadership on autopilot.

Someone wanted to experiment more publicly with ideas she was developing.

Another wanted to become more curious about where her contribution was actually needed rather than assuming she already knew, and then pay attention to whether what she offered actually landed.

What struck me was that none of these women left knowing exactly what would happen when they tried.

That’s part of the point.

Because practice gives us new experience and new experience gives us something else to learn from.

We try something.

We notice what happens.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe we discover the thing we thought we were practicing isn’t actually the thing that needs our attention.

Maybe the familiar pattern shows up again before we even realize it.

That’s material too.

The point of practice isn’t to prove we’ve finally figured ourselves out.

It’s to become more able to learn from what happens when we try.

Maybe that’s part of what development asks of us

I'm increasingly convinced that leadership development isn't primarily about accumulating more information, tools, or experiences. It's about becoming more capable of learning from the experience we're already having.

It’s about developing our capacity to learn from the experience we’re already having.

To notice what’s shaping us, to reflect on what becomes visible. To discern what this moment actually asks of us and to choose something to practice. To learn from what happens, and to return.

Information may introduce us to a different way of leading.

Reflection may help us see something we couldn’t see before.

And returning matters because most of us won’t get it right the first time, nor do we need to.

Development isn’t a straight line from insight to changed behavior.

It’s something we inhabit over time, with intention.

So I’ve been thinking about what I want to carry forward from the women who gathered this week.

Maybe we don’t need to change everything we notice.

Maybe we begin by choosing one thing, something you want to notice sooner or a question you want to remember when things get noisy.

Maybe a response you want to experiment with, a responsibility you want to pause before automatically picking up, or a strength you want to use more intentionally.

Take it back into your actual life, see what happens, and pay attention to what your experience teaches you.

That’s enough to practice with.

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A reflection on transition as a developmental threshold, and what your life may already be asking you to practice.

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Other people can offer wisdom, experience, perspective, and possibility. But what changes when we include ourselves in the discernment, too?

In this reflection, I share a moment from my own career transition when I realized I had left myself out of the possibilities, and what began to change when I started paying attention to what I already knew.

An inquiry to carry with you:

What do I know? What don’t I know yet? And where might someone else’s perspective help me see more clearly, without asking them to know for me?

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When I decided to leave my last role, one of the questions people understandably asked was:

What are you going to do next?

I didn’t know.

I had ideas.

I knew I wanted to work differently.

I knew I wanted to bring what 20 years of working and leading had taught me to leaders working on climate and systems change.

There were things I’d seen about leadership, change, and the way we work together that I wanted to do something with.

I knew I wanted to create something of my own.

I just didn’t know what yet.

But I didn’t have a polished business plan or a new title and job scope waiting for me.

So I had to practice saying something that was surprisingly uncomfortable for someone who had spent much of her career being competent, prepared, and able to figure things out:

I’m not sure yet. But I trust I’ll figure it out.

Even writing that now makes me smile.

Because that sentence required something different from me.

I had already done the work of recognizing that something no longer fit.

Now I had to decide what I was going to do with what I knew.

I had to begin living like I believed myself.

And those are not the same thing.

At some point, what we recognize begins asking something of how we live.

For me, it meant walking away from a fabulous paycheck and mission and team.

A leadership role I’d worked hard to earn.

A professional identity I understood.

Communities where people knew me and knew what I did.

A version of success I knew how to explain.

And stepping into…

I don’t know yet.

That was uncomfortable.

Not only because I didn’t know.

Other people didn’t know either.

People I loved and respected questioned my decision.

Was I sure I wanted to leave?

Did I understand how hard the road ahead might be?

Was this really what I wanted to do?

Some didn’t quite understand the leadership development, coaching, and advisory work I was beginning to explore.

And sometimes their reactions stung.

But I don’t think they were trying to hurt me.

They cared about me.

They could see the risk.

They knew failure was a possibility.

And they were offering their perspective on what they believed was in my best interest.

The difficult part was learning that I could hear their concern without making it my answer.

Their perspective mattered. And so did mine.

I could let someone question my decision without immediately questioning myself.

Or, more accurately, without requiring my own questions to mean I was making the wrong choice.

Because I questioned myself, too.

I still do sometimes.

This is hard.

There are days when I think:

Oh shit. I’m actually doing this.

There are moments when I wonder whether I should have chosen an easier path.

There are things I am learning how to do that I used to have entire teams and organizations around me to support.

And there are things I’m doing that I’ve simply never done before.

There are professional communities and relationships I stepped away from for a while because I needed space to hear myself without feeling pressure to explain what I was becoming before I knew.

And there are new communities I intentionally joined because I knew I didn’t want to navigate the threshold alone.

Not because I wanted someone to tell me what to do.

Because I needed places where it was okay to be unfinished.

To be a beginner.

I think this is one of the things we don’t talk about enough when we talk about becoming more fully ourselves.

We talk about awareness.

Authenticity.

Trusting ourselves.

Following what feels true.

But eventually those things ask something of us.

They ask us to choose.

And choosing can have a cost.

We may disappoint someone.

Or perhaps, as I’ve had to recognize, we may need to become okay with the possibility that we’ve disappointed them.

We may be misunderstood.

We may have to relinquish an identity we’ve spent years building.

We may have to become a beginner at something after being highly competent at something else.

We may have to let people watch us try before we know whether it will work.

We may fail.

Learn from it.

And choose to try again.

That’s real.

And I don’t think the work is pretending those possibilities don’t scare us.

Fear can be information without becoming authority.

Fear can tell us:

This matters.

There is risk here.

You don’t know how this is going to turn out.

Pay attention.

But fear doesn’t necessarily get to decide.

Neither does someone else’s concern.

Neither does someone else’s definition of success.

Neither does the identity we’ve already built simply because we’ve invested years building it.

At some point, we have to choose.

Maybe that’s what courage actually looks like.

Not certainty.

Not fearlessness.

Sometimes courage is choosing while fear is still present.

I’ve been practicing that for the last few years.

And practicing really is the word.

Trusting myself didn’t suddenly become easy because I left my job.

I didn’t wake up the next morning completely confident in every decision.

I didn’t stop caring what other people thought.

I didn’t magically know how to build a business.

I still have moments when I wonder what the hell I’m doing.

But something has changed.

I’m learning to trust my own knowing differently.

I’m learning that I can listen to someone else’s perspective without abandoning my own.

I’m learning that uncertainty doesn’t mean I’m lost.

And I’m learning that I don’t need to know exactly who I’m becoming in order to participate in becoming her.

And perhaps that’s part of why this work feels so alive to me.

I’m not standing on the other side of becoming, showing someone else how to get here.

I’m in it, too.

There are also moments now when I get to see what has become possible because I chose to try.

A client sees something about herself or her work she hadn’t been able to see before.

Someone tells me what she’s been practicing and what changed because of it.

A woman recognizes an incredible strength she had learned to hide or make smaller.

A team says things to one another they haven’t said before.

One honest comment opens a completely different way of thinking.

A leader begins approaching her team differently because she understands something she couldn’t see before.

Those moments are incredible to me.

Not because I made those things happen.

Because I get to witness what becomes possible when people have the space to recognize something, work with it, and make a different choice.

We remind ourselves of our humanity.

And every once in a while, I have another:

Oh shit. I’m actually doing this.

Except now there’s some delight in it, too. :)

Maybe becoming more fully ourselves isn’t a moment of finally knowing exactly who we are.

Maybe it’s a willingness to keep participating in who we’re becoming.

To notice.

To listen.

To trust.

To choose.

To try.

To discover what happens.

And to choose again.

So this week, I’m holding a slightly different question than I was a few weeks ago.

Not only:

What am I recognizing?

But:

What is what I recognize asking of me?

Maybe you already know something.

Maybe you’ve known it for a while.

You don’t have to know where it leads to take what you know seriously.

The question may be: What is what you know asking of you now?

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I created this companion for those moments when something in your leadership, work, or life may still be working...but no longer feels quite right.

It’s a place to stay with what you’re noticing before rushing to explain it, fix it, or decide what comes next.

You don’t need to work through it all at once. Follow what catches your attention. Leave what doesn’t. Make notes if you want to. Come back when something shifts or a question asks for another look.

Your Reflection Companion

There’s no right way to move through it. Let your own experience lead. Use the questions that help you notice something, and leave the rest.

Download the companion below.

Download the Companion

I hope it gives you a place to listen a little more closely to what may already be taking shape.

- Meghan

Bring something to write with and make a little room to notice:

• What no longer fits?

• What might that be telling you?

• What are you becoming curious about instead?

Reflection helps us see. Awareness creates choice.

As you listen, I’d love to hear what comes up for you in the comments!

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If this happens, then I’ll know.
When I get to this point, then I’ll decide.
As long as this is still true, I’ll stay.

Those conditions can help us slow down and make thoughtful choices. But sometimes, they keep us waiting for external evidence to confirm something we may already know.

In this reflection, I share one of the conditions I created in my own life, and invite you to notice where you may be doing the same.

Not so you can rush toward a decision or make a plan.

Simply so you can ask:

What becomes visible when I remove the condition?

And perhaps, underneath it all:

What do I know now?

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Not vulnerability with other people.

Vulnerability with ourselves.

The willingness to become available to what we’re actually feeling. What we’re experiencing. What we may already know but haven’t quite allowed ourselves to say.

I think we can become surprisingly disconnected from those parts of ourselves. And there are lots of reasons…

Sometimes because we’re busy - life asks a lot of us - and when we’re in survival or burnout mode we many not even realize it.

Sometimes because looking closely feels like it will take more time than we have - it becomes a future-self problem…maybe stays a future-self problem for years.

And sometimes, I suspect, because we aren’t entirely sure we want to know what we’ll find.

I’ve been noticing this in my own life.

For a long time, I carried a condition I hadn’t really recognized as a condition I’d made.

I was in a leadership role that had become increasingly difficult for me. I was burned out. I could see problems I desperately wanted to help solve. And I was beginning to feel a growing distance between what I believed about leadership, what mattered to me, and what I was experiencing around me.

I had been sacrificing a lot of what I loved.

Still, I had an answer whenever I wondered whether it was time to leave:

As long as I’m still learning, I’ll stay.

It sounded reasonable to me.

Maybe even wise. Honorable.

I value learning. I believe our experiences have something to teach us. I don’t want to leave simply because something becomes difficult.

I love a good challenge.

And I was still learning.

What I wasn’t asking was whether learning was enough reason to stay.

Because we can learn almost anywhere.

We can continue learning in places we’ve outgrown.

We can learn while compromising something that matters to us.

We can learn while carrying responsibilities that no longer belong to us.

We can learn while becoming increasingly disconnected from ourselves.

So I’ve started asking different questions.

What am I outgrowing?

What am I no longer learning here?

What values am I compromising in order to stay?

Those questions feel different.

Not because they immediately give me an answer.

They don’t.

But because they require a different kind of honesty from me.

They ask me to become vulnerable enough with myself to listen to what I may already be sensing. To notice and name more of my actual experience.

And I’m beginning to wonder whether this is one of the things that keeps us where we are.

Not simply fear.

Not simply resistance to change (I thrive in change, honestly.).

Sometimes it’s the conditions we’ve quietly placed around our own permission to change.

As long as I’m learning...

When this happens, then I’ll...

If they do this, then I’ll know...

As long as this line isn’t crossed…

We create these little if/then agreements with ourselves.

And perhaps they give us a sense of certainty in something that isn’t particularly certain.

Because life doesn’t actually unfold in neat if/then statements.

Neither does leadership.

Neither does becoming.

The questions we ask shape what we’re able to see

I’ve experienced another version of this through years of knee surgeries, rehabilitation, and healing.

I’ve worked with extraordinary people along the way - orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and others who brought knowledge and expertise I didn’t have.

I needed them.

And for a long time, without realizing it, I also gave them authority over something they couldn’t actually hold for me.

I wanted them to heal me, fix me. Take my chronic pain away.

Tell me what came next.

And I’ve had to learn, more than once, that their expertise and my own knowing aren’t in competition.

A surgeon can repair damaged cartilage.

A physical therapist can see something in my movement and strength imbalances that I can’t.

Someone can give me an exercise, an interpretation, a possibility.

But ultimately, I am the one living in this body.

I am responsible for listening to it.

Caring for it.

Learning from it.

Trusting when something feels right, and becoming curious when it doesn’t.

That lesson of self-responsibility has apparently needed to find me more than once!

And lately I’ve been noticing how much it has to do with leadership.

We can lose contact with our own authority there, too.

We look to the person above us to tell us whether we’re doing it right.

We leave a conversation and make meaning from a comment before asking what was actually meant, or becoming curious about the meaning we made from it.

We silence a question because we think we’re supposed to know.

We override something we’re sensing because someone else has more expertise, seniority, or certainty.

Or we collect more information when perhaps what we need is enough quiet to hear what we already know.

This isn’t an argument against expertise, quite the opposite.

I’ve needed the wisdom and expertise of other people throughout my life, I value it deeply.

I’m suggesting that perhaps the practice is learning to be in relationship with that wisdom without abandoning our relationship with ourselves.

To listen.

Ask.

Experiment.

Notice.

Try something.

Learn what happened.

Try again.

That’s different from believing we need to know everything ourselves, or think that’s what everyone expects from us.

And it’s different from believing someone else can know for us.

Perhaps, this is where change actually begins.

We’ve all heard about the gap between knowing and doing or awareness and action.

It’s so real! We can know something intellectually for years and still find ourselves living the same pattern, the same reality.

Maybe part of bridging that gap isn’t acquiring more information.

Maybe it’s becoming willing to trust what we’re noticing enough to practice something different.

And before even that, perhaps we have to become available enough to ourselves to notice.

To hear the answer we might not have been ready to hear.

Not because noticing requires us to act immediately.

But because we can’t make a discerning choice about something we aren’t yet willing to see.

So that’s what I’m practicing this week.

Not rushing toward an answer.

Not demanding that I know what’s next.

Just becoming available to a different question:

What am I outgrowing?

And I’m curious what happens when you ask yourself the same thing.

Not What should I change?

Not What should I do next?

Just:

What no longer fits?

And what might that be telling you?

Notice what comes up, and don’t rush to act immediately, but sit with it, see if you can go a little deeper.

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That contradiction has opened a much larger inquiry:

We can’t separate ourselves from the systems we’re trying to change.

In this conversation with my friend Mindy, we explore some of the questions underneath The Regenerative Edge—regenerative leadership, creating conditions for change, why awareness isn’t enough, and what becomes possible when we begin learning from our own lives, relationships, and the systems we’re part of.

Ways to Engage With the Work

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I had built a career doing meaningful work in climate and systems change. I had increasing responsibility. A strong network. Interesting challenges. A good paycheck. People trusted me to figure things out.

And I usually did.

I could see around corners. I noticed the gaps. I thought several steps ahead. I built bridges between people and ideas. When something wasn’t working, I stepped in.

I was competent, capable, and trusted.

And increasingly, carrying too much.

I was over-functioning. Trying to solve problems that weren’t mine to solve alone. Believing that if I could just find the right approach, build the right bridge, make the right case, I could move something much larger than myself.

From the outside, and on paper, much of this looked like leadership.

For a while, I thought it was, too.

Sometimes misalignment doesn’t look like failure.

It looks like competence.

There was a moment when I recognized something wasn’t right.

It was a feeling at first, like a twist in my gut.

And then it became an ache in my bones.

But nothing was obviously wrong enough to make the decision for me.

There was always another reason to stay.

The paycheck.

The network.

The status.

The opportunity.

The challenge.

The things I was still learning.

I remember telling myself:

If I stop learning, that’s when I’ll know it’s time to leave.

There was only one problem with that logic.

I’m almost always learning.

I’m deeply curious. I love trying new things and considering different perspectives. Give me a good challenge and I’ll usually move toward it. Tell me something can’t be done and some part of me hears that as an invitation.

I had accidentally created a condition for leaving that I might never meet (and I think, deep down, I knew that).

I mean, have you ever made a bargain with yourself like that?

When X happens, I’ll know.

After this project.

Once I get promoted.

If it gets worse.

As long as I’m still learning...

Meanwhile, that bargain I made with myself allowed me to avoid the simpler and much more confronting question:

Do I still want this?

If I don’t want this, what do I want? ← yikes, why does that one feel so difficult?

At some point, I realized I had become very good at describing why my life made sense on paper.

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But, I’ve never loved working on my résumé….because it never felt like me.

The roles I’d held were real. The accomplishments mattered. The experience was mine. I don’t mean to diminish or look down on anything I’ve done. It’s all shaped me.

But somewhere along the way, I had confused the evidence of my success with the definition of it.

What I was identifying as success was, at least in part, someone else’s version of success.

That distinction changed something for me.

Because when I stopped working for the résumé and started listening to myself, I realized I wasn’t even sure what my markers of success were anymore.

If I’m being honest, they’d been bulldozed over a while back.

Buried beneath responsibility.

Expectation.

Achievement.

Being useful.

Being capable.

External validation

Being the person who could handle it.

So deeply buried that I wasn’t sure how to find my markers of success.

We tend to recognize transition when something changes externally.

The job ends.

The restructure happens.

We get promoted.

We quit.

We burn out.

Our body gets sick.

(Note: A few of those were true in my case.)

Something visible changes, and we say:

I’m in transition.

But I’m increasingly interested in what happens before that.

Because I think transition often begins much earlier, internally.

It begins in our knowing.

A feeling in the gut.

A quiet voice.

Something in the heart.

Or, as I experienced it, knowing something in my bones before my mind was willing to agree.

I knew I needed to move on.

And then my mind got very busy explaining why I didn’t.

Fear is remarkably persuasive, isn’t it?

It doesn’t always sound like:

I’m afraid.

Sometimes it sounds perfectly reasonable, practical even.

This isn’t the right time.

You’re lucky to have this.

What would you even do instead?

You have too much invested.

Maybe you’re the problem.

Try harder.

Be patient.

You can make this work.

Whoa. Our inner critic can get loud and mighty when we’re contemplating stepping away from something that still looks good from the outside, is actually quite uncomfortable, but there’s comfort in the familiar.

For a while, I listened.

Eventually I had to become willing to recognize what was already there. There were too many signs and signals.

I recognized this wasn’t the culture in which I wanted to continue growing and being mentored.

I recognized that my voice wasn’t going to move the needle in the way I kept hoping it would.

I recognized I was carrying responsibility that only I knew I was carrying.

I recognized the toll that fighting to remain in a room I no longer wanted to belong in was taking on me (I realized I had outgrown the experience!).

And maybe most importantly:

I recognized that I didn’t need to know exactly what came next in order to tell myself the truth about what was happening now.

What I’ve learned since is that,

We don’t have to quit tomorrow.

We don’t have to have the five-year plan.

We don’t have to know what comes next.

We don’t even have to decide that what we have is “bad” in order to acknowledge that something has changed.

We can appreciate what something has given us and still recognize that we may have outgrown it.

That’s regeneration.

You’re not rejecting or discarding the previous season. You’re metabolizing it.

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves in a transition is honesty without urgency.

The honesty to recognize:

This doesn’t fit the way it once did.

And enough space not to immediately turn that recognition into another problem we have to solve.

Instead, we can get curious.

What has changed?

What matters to me now?

What am I carrying that isn’t mine?

What have I outgrown?

What does success actually mean to me in this season?

What might I hear if I stopped trying to talk myself out of what I already know?

Honesty without urgency. Honesty without problem-solving.

Maybe you’ve experienced this, too. Or, maybe you have a friend.

Something in your life or leadership still looks perfectly fine from the outside.

Maybe you’re even very good at it.

But somewhere underneath the competence, achievement, responsibility, or momentum, something has changed.

You don’t have to know what to do about it yet.

Maybe recognition is enough for today.

So I’ll leave you with two questions I’m holding:

What have you outgrown that still looks successful from the outside?

What becomes possible when you allow yourself to recognize it without immediately needing to know what comes next?

I’m spending this season exploring what happens in these moments—the space between what has worked and what wants to emerge—and how we continue leading while becoming more fully ourselves.

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For years, I thought recovery had a destination: get my strength back, trust my body again, run again, get back to normal.

After multiple injuries, five surgeries, and years of rehabilitation, I’m beginning to question the premise underneath that goal.

What exactly am I trying to get back to?

In this companion audio reflection to my essay, What If Regeneration Isn’t About Getting Back to Normal?, I explore what my physical recovery is teaching me about regenerative leadership and living systems.

What if recovery isn’t simply the restoration of a previous state? What if it’s also a developmental process—one that asks us to build new capacities to sense, respond, choose, and flourish within the conditions that exist now?

I explore what changed when I stopped treating my knee as an isolated problem to fix and began asking what my whole system needed. I reflect on pain and compensation as feedback, the difference between adaptation and regeneration, and why a system’s ability to keep functioning doesn’t necessarily mean it’s healthy.

And I explore a question that has become increasingly important in both my recovery and my work with leaders:

How do we bring different forms of knowing into relationship without surrendering our own agency?

My surgeon has knowledge I don’t have. My physical therapist has knowledge I don’t have. My body is providing information they don’t have. And I hold knowledge of my history, goals, fears, values, and lived experience.

No one holds the whole picture.

Perhaps that’s true of the systems we lead, too.

I’m not sharing this because I’ve figured out regenerative recovery. I’m sharing it because I’m practicing it—and because regenerative leadership is giving me new language and new questions for understanding an experience I’ve been living for decades.

I leave you with the question I’m asking myself:

Given what is true now, what does this system need in order to flourish from here?

I’m a lifelong athlete. I played team sports growing up, and as an adult, I’ve trail run, big hiking skied, cycled, occasionally rock and mountain climbed, loved HIIT and strength training workouts, wielded chainsaws, power tools, and done plenty of manual labor.

I just like to move.

And movement has also become one of the places where I’m learning some of my deepest lessons about myself.

And recently, I realized I’ve been carrying a sentence around with me for over twelve years.

About twelve years ago, I joined an indoor soccer league with a friend and colleague.

I’d torn my ACL and MCL playing soccer in high school and had two surgeries, but by then I’d been active for years. I hiked. I trail ran. I cycled. I felt recovered. I’d moved a lot since then.

One night, I arrived late to a game. No warm-up. I went straight onto the field.

Halfway through, something in my quad didn’t feel right. I finished the game, but it continued bothering me, so eventually I went to see a doctor.

I told him my history.

As he examined me, moving my hips and knees, he said:

“Wow, you’re so out of balance. If you don’t fix this, you’re going to continue to injure yourself.”

Twelve years later, I can still hear those words like it was yesterday.

At the time, I don’t think I realized the meaning I had made from them.

This is my fault.

My body is broken because I didn’t fix it.

And if I don’t get this right, I’m going to hurt myself again.

The complicated part is that since then, I’ve accumulated evidence.

I eventually needed hip surgery after an impingement and shredded labrum. There was significant bone growth on the head and neck of my femur that had damaged the cartilage in my hip.

Then came another bone spur - this time in my knee - which grew through cartilage and tore my meniscus.

That required two more surgeries, including cartilage repair.

My surgeon told me recovery would take at least a year before I ran again.

I thought, I’ll do it faster.

Of course I did.

I’ll be really good at PT.

I’ll address my sleep.

My nutrition.

My stress.

I’ll do the work.

And somewhere underneath all of that was a belief I didn’t recognize at the time:

If I do everything right, I will recover.

And if I don’t?

Maybe I’ve failed.

I’m now just over two years post-op.

I’m still seeing my physical therapist.

I could probably have started running again a year ago. But when I tried, I developed Achilles pain on my non-surgical side. Then lower back pain. Then shoulder pain.

My body had adapted.

It had become incredibly good at adapting, actually.

Maybe too good.

And now I’m asking it to adapt again.

Not simply so I can run.

So I can find a new kind of balance, my new ‘normal’.

Over the last year, I’ve started bringing other perspectives into my recovery.

I worked with a hypnotherapist because I sensed something was keeping me from trusting myself in movement.

I’ve started EMDR because I realized this wasn’t only about muscle strength or mobility.

There were experiences I hadn’t processed.

The original injury.

The doctor telling me I was so out of balance that I’d keep injuring myself.

Another practitioner telling me my hips looked so bad I should never do certain movements.

And, more recently, seeing an X-ray and hearing my surgeon casually point out another bone spur at the end of my femur.

The last time a bone spur grew there, I needed two surgeries.

We moved on with the appointment.

I’m not sure my nervous system did.

I’ve begun exploring neurofeedback, too, because I’m realizing just how well my nervous system has learned to scan for pain.

To anticipate injury.

To protect me.

And I’m beginning to understand that my recovery isn’t only about getting stronger.

It’s about developing a different relationship with my body.

With myself

And with what’s possible.

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This is where my physical recovery unexpectedly intersects with the work I do with leaders.

For a long time, I placed a tremendous amount of authority outside myself.

A doctor would fix me.

A physical therapist would tell me what I should be able to do.

Someone else would determine whether I was recovered.

I needed their expertise - and I still do.

But needing expertise isn’t the same as giving away my authority.

That’s the distinction I’m learning.

Today, when I work with a practitioner, I tell them what my goals are.

I don’t wait for them to define recovery for me.

I ask questions.

I notice what my body is telling me.

I bring in their expertise.

I decide what fits, where I still have questions.

We work together.

I can be my own authority and still need other people.

Maybe that’s what partnership actually is.

I see this with leaders all the time.

Especially when we’re in transition.

Something changes and suddenly we’re looking everywhere for the answer.

The book.

The podcast.

The expert.

The consultant.

The next framework, the next role, a new company.

Someone who can tell us what we’re supposed to do.

I’ve done this, too.

But perhaps the work isn’t finding someone who has the answer for us.

Perhaps it’s finding people who can help us hear ourselves again.

A guide.

A practitioner.

A thought partner.

A mirror.

Someone who can bring experience and perspective without asking us to hand over our own authority.

I’m also realizing how much one experience can shape the way we relate to ourselves long after the experience is over.

A sentence.

A diagnosis.

A piece of feedback.

A decision someone made about us.

Something a boss or colleague said.

Something a doctor said.

Something we interpreted as evidence that we weren’t enough, weren’t capable, weren’t ready, weren’t doing it right.

And sometimes the experience isn’t what’s still leading us.

The meaning we made from it is.

That’s what I’m recognizing in myself.

I made meaning from that doctor’s words.

And because life subsequently gave me plenty of injuries and surgeries, I could keep finding evidence that the meaning was true.

See? You’re going to hurt yourself again.

That’s a powerful loop.

And recognizing it doesn’t magically make it disappear.

It gives me the opportunity to relate to it differently.

And that changes where I locate my power.

That’s the practice I’m in now.

When I notice myself slipping into shame or feeling like a victim of the circumstances of my body, I try to notice it.

Not perfectly.

I come back to myself.

What’s happening here?

What am I learning?

What do I want?

What can I choose now?

Then I practice.

And inevitably I don’t get it right.

So I notice again.

What did I learn?

What might I do differently next time?

And I practice again.

That’s why it’s called a practice.

And I’m discovering there is a kind of freedom in this.

Not freedom because everything turns out the way I want it to.

My body may still hurt. I may still get injured. Something I try may not work. I don’t get to control all of that.

The freedom comes from knowing I don’t have to make those experiences mean something about who I am.

I can name what’s happening out loud.

I can get curious instead of defeated - something a mentor has reminded me to practice when things don’t turn out the way I hoped.

I can ask: What is this showing me? What do I need now? What might I try next?

And I can choose again.

There’s something incredibly liberating about maintaining our own authority this way.

It gives us permission to be ourselves.

To be messy.

To be brilliant and imperfect.

To need help without believing we need to be fixed - or giving away our authority in the process.

To practice with all of who we are as we move through this one life.

Maybe that’s part of what becoming more fully ourselves actually looks like.

There’s another reason I wanted to share this story.

Freedom doesn’t mean doing it alone.

Recovery can be lonely.

Transition can be lonely.

Leadership can be lonely.

We can convince ourselves we’re the only person experiencing whatever we’re experiencing.

And we don’t have to carry all of it alone.

Sometimes we need someone who feels safe enough that we can finally say the thing out loud.

Someone who can be a mirror.

Someone who can help us see what has become difficult to see alone.

I’ve found some of those people in this season.

And I know I’ll continue finding different people throughout my life.

Not because I’m giving them the power to heal me.

Because I’ve chosen to have partners in my healing and growth while remaining an active participant in it.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what regenerative leadership means in practice.

I’m beginning to think part of it is this.

Not returning ourselves to some previous version of who we were.

Not fixing ourselves so we can get back to “normal.”

But developing a different relationship with ourselves and our experiences - one that leaves us with greater capacity, choice, and freedom than we had before.

Maybe regeneration isn’t about returning to what was. Maybe it’s asking:

How do we leave something - an environment, a relationship, a system, our minds, even our bodies - with greater capacity for life than it had before?

Today, for me, perhaps leaving something better simply means saying this out loud.

Putting it into the world.

Opening a little more surface area for a conversation someone else might need, too.

Maybe you recognize yourself in some part of this.

Maybe you know someone who would.

Maybe you’re navigating a transition in your leadership, your career, your body, or another part of your life and realizing how much you’ve been carrying alone.

I don’t think the invitation is to stop asking for help.

Quite the opposite.

Maybe it’s to consider what it would feel like to receive support without giving yourself away.

To work with someone who respects your goals.

Who offers perspective without claiming authority over your experience.

Who helps you recognize what you already know but haven’t quite been able to see.

To be supported - and still belong to yourself.

If you’re navigating a transition and this brought something up for you, you’re welcome to reply. I read every note.

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Workshops.
Coaching.
Facilitation.
Writing.

Looking back, I realize I was doing something much deeper.

In this reflection, I share what the first fifteen months of business have taught me about experimentation, courage, cultivating conditions for change, and why I believe meaningful development cannot be forced—it can only be cultivated.

In this episode

• Why I’ve been rethinking what “scale” really means

• What planting seeds taught me about building a business

• The difference between growing bigger and growing deeper

• Why individual work still matters, and why I’m now feeling called toward more systemic work

• The conviction that has quietly become the foundation of everything I do:

Reflection

Where are you feeling called to expand, not because you should, but because something larger is asking for your attention?

I’d love to hear what comes up for you.

This reflection marks a quiet shift in how I understand my work. For a long time, I described it by what I did. Recently, I’ve begun to understand it by the conditions I’m trying to create.

If you prefer listening, I’ve included the audio reflection below.

For the past year, I’ve described my work by what I do.

Leadership development.

Facilitation.

Decision-making.

Advisory.

Workshops.

Those descriptions weren’t wrong.

They just weren’t the whole story.

Over the past few months, and especially over the past few weeks, something has become much clearer.

Whether I’m writing an essay, sitting with a client, facilitating a workshop, or working with a leadership team, I’m rarely trying to give someone an answer.

I’m trying to create the conditions where something becomes visible.

Sometimes it’s a pattern they’ve been living inside without recognizing.

Sometimes it’s a strength they’ve quietly stopped trusting.

Sometimes it’s a question they’ve never given themselves permission to ask.

Sometimes it’s simply enough space to hear themselves again.

That realization has changed how I think about my work.

For a long time, I thought I was helping people become better leaders.

Now I’m beginning to think my work is something different.

Not by telling them who they are.

Not by giving them another framework to master.

But by creating the conditions where they can begin to recognize themselves more clearly.

The more I pay attention, the more I see this reflected in nature.

A forest doesn’t force growth.

A clearing doesn’t make anything happen.

It simply creates enough light.

Enough space.

Enough relationship.

And life responds.

I’m beginning to wonder if leadership works the same way.

Perhaps our role isn’t to force change.

Perhaps it’s to create the conditions where change can emerge…in ourselves, in others, in the space around us…the world even.

That realization is influencing far more than my work with clients.

It’s changing how I write.

How I facilitate.

How I build my business.

Even how I think about leadership itself.

If creating the conditions is the work, then I want every part of my work to reflect that.

I want my writing to create space for reflection.

I want my workshops to create space for recognition.

I want my advisory work to create space for practice.

I want my business to create the conditions for becoming.

Not because becoming has an endpoint.

But because every day offers another opportunity to become more fully ourselves.

Not the person we were.

Not the person we think we’re supposed to become.

The person we’re becoming now.

A Practice

As you move through your own week, I leave you with two questions to sit with:

I invite you to take a few moments to notice what comes up.

If this reflection resonated with you, I’d love to hear what it stirred.

What became visible as you read?

👇 Leave a comment below.

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An interesting series of events happened recently - This past weekend, I got to see an artist and human I admire. I didn’t just get to see her perform her music and gifts. I was invited to join a group of women for a weekend of camping, connecting, and music for the soul in The Gorge Amphitheatre in eastern Washington.

We had the pleasure of witnessing Brandi Carlile, Indigo Girls, I’m with Her, Sara Bareilles, Bonnie Raitt, and The Highwomen across two stunning evenings in late May.

The love for their craft, the creativity of their collaboration, and the support and admiration for one another were visceral. The experience was a warm hug, a reminder of what happens when we do things that scare us and show up with our humanity.

There was magic and grace being with friends and strangers outside, gathering to support one another, experience masters of their craft, and advocate for a greater good.

It was touching and a little overwhelming at times. It brought tears to my eyes as I looked up at the starry sky and was reminded of the vastness and the smallness and how connected and similar we really are.

A few days later, I was interviewed by Sarah Kent with The Dreamworks Project. She is a curious soul wanting to build deeper connections with and amongst women to grow into their dreams. She began the short interview with a simple question, “What dream would you like to share in our time together today?”

In my work, I start with a similar question: “What do you want?” If I’m working individually with a client, I ask a more intimate version that begins with their vision for their life. If I’m working with a team or organization, I ask a similar question: “What are you working toward?”

Often, the answer can be quite difficult to articulate.

We condition ourselves to look outside ourselves for what we want. That answer is, at first, often about making others happy, not rocking the boat, fitting in with the crowd. It takes time to reconnect with their inner, deeper desires, and that’s ok. It’s completely normal.

I myself began exploring and articulating my big vision and goals a few years ago. It was an iterative process to begin and reflect, then adjust. I’ll admit, it had been a few months since I visited my Vision and Goals (I always have a personal and professional goal that feels big and scary, and I have no idea how I’m going to make it happen so it fuels me, my actions, my work…). So, as this interview neared, I began reflecting and iterating.

During the conversation, I became aware of something that has been quietly maturing within me for months.

What I feel now is a responsibility to bring my gifts, experience, and perspective more fully to those who are ready to receive them.

The leaders, teams, and organizations who can feel themselves at an edge.

The ones sensing that what is breaking down is not themselves, but the assumptions, structures, and leadership models they’ve outgrown.

The ones realizing they no longer want their resume or their to-do list driving their decisions.

The people willing to move beyond fear-based leadership, fear-based belonging, and fear-based decision-making.

The people willing to reclaim their authority, trust their own knowing, and participate in a more conscious and regenerative future.

The people ready to become who they are, not who they’ve been conditioned to be.

And as I gave voice to that truth, I realized my dream had evolved.

It was no longer about building a business or achieving a goal. It had become a clear vision.

A vision of people reclaiming the authority they unknowingly surrendered to expectations, institutions, titles, and old ways of leading.

A vision of helping people become free enough to be fully themselves.

And from that place, they can help create healthier leadership, healthier organizations, healthier communities, and a healthier relationship with the living world itself.

This is something I witness often in my work. Whether with an individual leader, a team, or an organization, there is a moment when what was once an idea becomes something more embodied.

They stop talking about the vision and begin feeling it…and living from it.

There is something that happens when our dreams are witnessed and shared.

It is incredible to witness, to observe the change in body language, the resonance in the tone of voice.

That happened for me in this interview. I didn’t want the conversation to end. Sarah asked questions that brought my dream out in a deeper way and I still didn’t feel like I shared everything I wanted to and it felt so good.

What a gift it was to be asked “What dream would you like to share…?” I encourage you to ask yourself this simple question, what is it you want? And see where it takes you.

A few days later, life offered its own reminder about why these questions matter.

This morning I woke up to a message from my mom. The kind of message you never want to receive. My brother lost a friend and colleague while at work.

If any of you reading have been on a mountain with glaciers, you may have crossed paths with my brother or one of his colleagues - a small community of climbing rangers and mountain guides. It’s alpine climbing season in the United States and due to a low snow winter and stormy spring, the season is only recently picking up. The mountains are crowded with a pressure to climb toward the summits of our glaciated peaks.

I did not meet this colleague of my brothers; however, the news shocked me to my core. I had just had a wonderful video call with him to catch up as he’s often in the wilderness without service for weeks this time of year. He was tired and grateful for a day of rest.

He has an incredible demeanor for work that brings him to some of the most remote and untouched places in the world. It inspires and humbles him. He has a gift for being a light in a very stressful situation, the calm like the eye of a storm.

Today, he and his colleagues had to recover a colleague and friend from the glacier. Other climbing rangers from parks are on their way to provide support and allow for rest and processing of this tragic loss.

The community is showing up for one another. They, and so many others, are offering a warm hug and a reminder of what happens when we do things that scare us and show up with our humanity. In the end, isn’t that what life is about?

I share all of this because it is a reminder that we never know how much time we have, even though we know we only have one life to live.

Over the last few weeks, I have been reminded of three things.

• We need spaces where people can fully express their gifts.

• We need conversations that invite us to speak our dreams aloud.

• And we need reminders that our time here is not unlimited.

They become real when they are spoken.

Witnessed.

Shared.

Not because they are guaranteed to happen, but because they begin to shape how we live.

So I’ll leave you with the same question Sarah asked me:

What dream would you like to share?

And perhaps even more importantly:

What are you waiting for?

I’d love to hear your answer.

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If you're standing at a threshold and sensing that the way you've been leading, deciding, or navigating change no longer fits, I'd love to support you.

Whether you're an individual leader, a team, or an organization, my work helps people move beyond fear-based leadership and decision-making toward greater clarity, trust, and alignment. You can schedule a conversation here:

https://calendly.com/meghan-meghanbcraig/decision-conversation

Sarah’s question— “What dream would you like to share?”—sparked much of this reflection.

If you’d like to explore your own dream with Sarah through The Dreamworks Project, you can learn more or schedule an interview here:

https://www.sarahlkent.com/thedreamworksproject

You can also read the growing collection of dream stories from others and subscribe for free.

A Field of Dreams

🌸 A growing collection of the stories of the dreams and aspirations of women from all over the world 🌸 Visit for inspiration, reflection, and to reconnect with your own dreams 🌸

By Sarah L Kent

I’ve seen leadership teams spend weeks revisiting the same decision. Not because they lacked strategy or intelligence, but because ownership was unclear, responsibility was over-carried, and trust in the decision-making process had broken down.

Decisions don’t get stuck because they’re hard. They get stuck because of how leadership and decision-making is functioning under pressure.

When was the last time you were responsible for a big decision? What was that experience like for you personally? Consider what it was like for you in your leadership role and for your team or peers.

For me, one particular decision that comes to mind was which role to prioritize hiring to fill one of the many gaps we had on our growing team. I was the final decision maker who would send the materials to finance and HR for approval to start the process; however, I couldn’t make that decision on my own, without input from those closer to the work.

At first, I held that decision close. I thought about it, quite a bit - which role would make the biggest difference, now? I knew pretty quickly that I needed to bring in my team members as their work and day-to-day would be most affected by a new hire.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the pressure of being the final decision-maker was quietly pulling me toward over-responsibility. I could feel the temptation to carry the entire weight of the decision myself, to protect the team from the risk of making the “wrong” call, and to solve too many steps ahead.

If I wasn’t aware, I could have easily gotten stuck in over-responsibility, over-carrying or over-thinking what decision to make and how to do it. In my work, I’ve found those are very common realities for leaders who are making decisions under pressure, change, and greater responsibility - team growth or reduction, organizational expansion or change, new roles, etc. This can disguise itself but if you look closely, you’ve likely experienced it yourself or in a team setting.

I once experienced the same decision (with different language) being made repeatedly across different departments over several years. On the surface, it sounded productive, but underneath it were layers of over-responsibility, misidentified ownership, and fear of making the wrong call.

The wrong problem was being solved over and over.

I’ve seen these patterns show up in all kinds of ways:

• leaders privately carrying anxiety while publicly presenting calm

• teams revisiting the same conversation across multiple meetings

• endless “collaboration” without clarity on who actually decides

• people waiting for permission instead of contributing directly

• decisions slowing down because no one wants to make the wrong call

What looks productive on the surface is often hesitation, over-responsibility, or fear moving underneath the system.

Have you experienced a decision that kept getting revisited without actually moving forward?

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A mentor recently reflected something to me that completely shifted how I think about leadership decisions: we act as though there’s only one optimal decision. Especially under pressure, we imagine there is one perfect decision waiting to be discovered. The truth is, there’s no such thing.

Life and leadership rarely work that way.

Most decisions are not about finding the optimal path.

They’re about making the clearest decision possible with the information available - then learning, adjusting, and continuing forward.

In times of pressure, change, and high-stress, most teams default to adding more:

• more analysis

• more conversation

• more urgency

• more opinions

But more input without clear ownership rarely creates more clarity.

More often, it creates hesitation and confusion.

The way decisions are being made is revealing how leadership is actually functioning in a team or organization.

If you’re navigating leadership, pressure, or complex decisions inside your team or organization, subscribe to receive future reflections and insights from Edge of Change Leadership.

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Even with well-meaning leaders, a conventional leadership model and organizational structure often leads to confusion and a culture of invisible permission-based structures. Teams defer upward. Leaders over-function. Responsibility concentrates upward toward a few people expected to carry certainty for the whole system. And under pressure, those patterns intensify - often causing delay, frustration, and confusion throughout the system.

If you’re feeling any parts of this in your team- if you’re stuck, feeling bogged down by change and high-pressure - there are things you can do to begin to break down the bottlenecks and shift the decision-making process and culture.

The first shift I introduce with teams is deceptively simple: clarify ownership and clarify the actual decision. I’m often surprised by how many teams are trying to solve problems they haven’t fully defined or making decisions without clear ownership of who actually makes the decision.

Many teams spend enormous time and energy solving the wrong problem simply because they never clarified the actual decision.

Another shift is learning to interrupt the default reaction under pressure. Most teams already have predictable habits:

• rushing

• over-holding

• over-carrying

• over-thinking

Awareness can begin to change the default pattern.

Then we involve the right inputs - introduce a sense of shared responsibility to the process of decision-making. This is where clarity of ownership vs. input is key. I’ve watched teams and groups transform simply by distinguishing between:

• who owns the decision,

• who informs the decision

• who/what needs visibility

Shared responsibility is often the most uncomfortable shift for leaders. Many assume involving others means consensus or democratic decision-making. It doesn’t.

Clear distributed decision-making depends on clarifying:

• Who owns the decision

• What input is needed

• And where visibility matters

That distinction changes everything. It’s about building collective clarity, and that builds trust.

And finally, decide on the right move for this moment. Ultimately, there are three ways to respond in moments of decision-making:

• hold

• shift

• act

Our default is always to action, usually driven by urgency and the pressure to solve too many steps ahead.

This is a moment and part of the process that calls for discernment. As I’ve worked with leaders, opening up the options - to hold and to shift - can bring such relief. Permitting ourselves to open up a decision to be more than always taking action is empowering and important.

If any of this feels familiar, the next step isn’t more.

It’s looking honestly at how you relate to decision-making and how decisions are being made inside your team.

Then:

• clarify ownership

• interrupt default patterns

• involve intentionally

• reflect and adjust

This is how teams build collective clarity under pressure.

The goal isn’t perfect optimal decision-making. That doesn’t exist.

The goal is building the capacity to move through pressure, uncertainty, and change without collapsing into over-control, over-responsibility, or disconnection.

Because the way a team makes decisions under pressure doesn’t just shape outcomes.

It shapes trust.

Ownership.

Leadership.

And ultimately, the future culture of the organization itself.

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If you prefer to listen, the full video is above.

If you want to listen, check out Edge of Change Leadership Podcast.
If you prefer to read (or want the distilled version), keep scrolling.

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Every Earth Day, we talk about what needs to change out there…from policy, to systems, to behavior, to industry.

Because if we’re honest, many of us are trying to create a radically different future using the same leadership patterns that created the current one.

And nowhere is that more visible than in the sustainability and social change space.

We are doing incredibly important work.
And we are leading it in ways that are not actually sustainable.

Over-responsibility.
Urgency as the default.
Burnout as normalized.
Pressure to perform….the list goes on.

We say we want long-term, more sustainable outcomes, but we are making decisions from short-term, depleted states.

And that doesn’t just impact us.

It shapes the systems we are building.

The Leadership Problem We’re Not Naming

If we aren’t doing the inner work leadership requires, it shows up in our leadership and in the systems we create.

Because how you lead under pressure isn’t strategy, it’s pattern.

And most of us have been conditioned into patterns that prioritize:

• speed over discernment

• control over trust

• individual performance over collective capacity

• comfort over innovation and growth

So even as we try to build more collaborative, equitable, and innovative systems, we unintentionally recreate the very dynamics we’re trying to change.

What’s Being Asked of Us Now

What’s required right now isn’t just better strategy.

It’s a different way of leading.

Not just sustainability in what we build, but sustainability in how we think, decide, relate, and lead under pressure.

This is where regenerative leadership begins.

It asks a different question:

Can the way we lead actually sustain the future we’re trying to create?

We Are at a Leadership Threshold

Right now, we are in a moment of disruption.

Industries are shifting.
Structures are being challenged.
Certainty is dissolving.

Most leaders respond to this by trying to move faster, to fix, control, or stabilize what’s happening.

But what if this moment isn’t something to manage?

What if it’s something to listen to?

Because these moments are not breakdowns.

They are thresholds.

And most leaders don’t fail at thresholds, they exit them too early.

The Shift: From Reaction to Recalibration

When we stay in a threshold long enough, something different becomes possible.

We begin to see more clearly what is actually needed.

This is where leadership evolves.

Not through urgency but through discernment.

Not through doing more, but through recalibrating how we lead.

Because if we don’t pause long enough to recalibrate, we end up recreating the same patterns in new situations.

So the real question is no longer:

How do I respond faster?

It becomes:

What is actually being asked of me as a leader right now?

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Why This Is Bigger Than the Individual

This isn’t just about individual leadership.

It’s a systems issue.

Because we cannot build regenerative systems with extractive leadership patterns.

Right now, many organizations are in a transition:

Moving from centralized, top-down leadership into something that looks more collaborative.

But here’s the tension:

Even as we invite more voices, more collaboration, and more shared thinking…we are often still operating inside the same underlying structures.

Decision-making remains permission-based.
Power remains concentrated.
Responsibility remains unevenly held.

So what we get is a model that feels better, but doesn’t actually function differently.

The Real Work of Leadership Evolution

Real change isn’t just about adding more voices.

It’s about changing how we relate to:

• power

• responsibility

• decision-making

It’s relational.
It’s structural.
It’s internal.

And it requires us to lead in ways most of us were never taught.

Because there is a kind of wisdom we’ve moved away from:
in how we understand systems,
in how we work with rhythm instead of urgency,
and in how we build in relationship, not just in structure.

These aren’t new ideas.

But they are new to how most of us have been taught to lead.

An Invitation

This moment we’re in is not just disruption.

It’s an opportunity.

Not to react to what’s changing, but to lead differently because of it.

To build differently.
To decide differently.
To stop recreating the same systems in new language.

This is the work I’m exploring in real time—
the future of leadership, regenerative leadership, and what it actually looks like in practice.

If you’re in this work, I’d love to have you in the conversation.

What got us here won’t sustain what’s next.
And that includes how we lead.

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