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My fourteen-year-old son and I wrapped our arms around a 3,500-year-old larch tree in Pumalin National Park in Chile. The park was made possible due to the visionary, Doug Tomkins, an American businessman and conservationist.

My wife and I and our two sons walked across the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina. The guide told us that it takes 500 years from the snow falling in the high Andes to when giant chunks of ice calve and fall into the milky blue glacial lake below.

These two encounters encapsulate our exploration of natural wonders in South America experienced during our family sabbatical from August 2023 until April 2024. When you touch a tree 3,500 years old you realise the short timescales we run our home and work lives on. How compressed life is and how little time there is for us to slow down and widen the aperture. Time seems different when you step away from day-to-day work and home life for a few months. You realize how much we rush, stress, and overwhelm ourselves with too many commitments, and projects at work and home. The result is exhausted kids, parents, employees and organizations. And exhausted minds are less able to do what they do best: focus and reflect.

The pressure to be busy, productive, outcome focussed, achieving KPIs, quarterly targets, hacks, time management techniques, cramming for exams leaves little time for stopping, pausing and reflecting.

The pressure to be busy, productive, outcome focussed, achieving KPIs, quarterly targets, hacks, time management techniques, cramming for exams leaves little time for stopping, pausing and reflecting.

In this article, I explore not why we stop, pause and reflect but how and what implications this has for our professional lives and particularly how we design and deliver leadership programmes. When you are away and have more time it becomes clear that the modern world of work regards rest, downtime, or simply going for a walk at lunchtime as obstacles to be removed.

Stressed out Leaders

It is an assumption embedded in leadership programmes that time to step away and think is the main benefit of attending a programme. Yet why are timetables so packed? White space is often unconsciously perceived as ‘dead time’ by both the buyers and providers of leadership programmes. But how often as leadership coaches do we hear the opposite when working with leaders? I regularly hear comments such as “I wish I had more time to just sit back, go for a walk, sit quietly on my own for an hour with no distraction, to be asked thoughtful questions I can mull over, to be liberated from the constant slew of work emails.” But these moments of insight and realization are snuffed out at the altar of productivity and busyness.

As experts in developing leaders our purpose is to enable busy, often distracted minds to cultivate the habit of reflection and to incorporate this into the day-to-day process of leadership.

This sabbatical has afforded me lots of ‘time to think’, especially during all the hours of driving in our truck (vital as so many roads here in Argentina and Chile are unpaved). Visiting the Tambopata Research Centre deep in the Peruvian Amazon, for instance, I have seen the swathes of land cleared for agriculture and the gold mining which pollutes the rivers.

Can any leadership programme be anything other than a climate, nature, and biodiversity programme? If the filesystems we all depend on are not at the centre then what is?

When we stop, pause and reflect we widen the aperture. Our future cannot only be based on quarterly growth targets determined by external stakeholders. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard memorably stated that the Earth is now our only shareholder. Yet despite all the talk of transformation, change, responsible business, ESG, and regeneration when a coachee enters the room for their coaching session, which is often crowbarred into an already packed schedule, it seems that they are gasping for breath like deep sea divers who have been in the sea too long. They need to decompress.

All of us need more oxygen to breathe, to stop and to see what is going on around us, on our watch, negatively impacting our children and their future. But where is the energy in the midst of our own, personal energy crisis? Where is the mental space to see the larger system and its contribution to our crisis?

Breaktime

Taking the kids out of school, homeschooling, turning down work, dealing with episodes of homesickness (we had to start watching The Grinch in October to get into the Christmas spirit!), bouts of sickness while couped up in a cabin no bigger than a chicken shed made us all think why on earth did we do this. But what opens up is time. Not always but more regularly. High-quality time enables us to see experiences in different ways which have the power to transform us and those around us. You also see the impact of beliefs and values that underpin not only the corporate world but also the world of education - kids are in a race and are either ahead or behind. Exams, pass or fail. But just consider what awaits our kids and how vital it will be for them to learn and apply reflective techniques essential to deal with ‘wicked problems’.

The Green Thread is the opposite of the Red Thread. The Green Thread binds each individual leader to a purpose that has a clear line of sight to all the circles. In the centre of these concentric circles is nature and all that sustains our life on earth.

Escape the city

Work and home life can often feel like a huge metropolis that never ends. To-dos multiply far off into the distance like a congested motorway. The city never sleeps. This perhaps explains why time in a natural place, whether that is our garden or on a glacier, revitalises our thinking. I felt this touching the 3,500-year-old larch tree which surges upwards into the clear Patagonian sky. It needed space, and light to stretch and grow. No wonder most of us feel overwhelmed. Even reflection can become yet another to-do that we never get around to because there is just, well, too much to do.

So why are so many leadership programmes packed with content like a dark, dense, regimented conifer plantation? Why is time to reflect and stop often seen as an add-on rather than integral to the purpose? Designing the content for a leadership programme is the easy bit. The tough bit is convincing a paying client that more time not doing anything pre-programmed is the most important part of a leadership programme.

The client is not always right

Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still for once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for a second, and not move our arms so much.

Light and space are required for the larch tree to grow. The same for leaders.

The client is not always right. Packing a leadership programme with content delivered by professors standing in lecture theatres is not a reflection.

So how can we incorporate more stopping, pausing and reflecting if we can agree that it is in the interest that transformation might be found? We must try and turn an intangible into a value-creating activity.

But first, let’s count to twelve. This is a simple ritual I have adopted here in South America thanks to a poem by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. As experts in developing leaders, our purpose is to enable busy, often distracted minds to cultivate the habit of reflection and to incorporate this into the day-to-day process of leadership. But the habit rarely sticks. A New York lawyer I coached told me that he gets up at 04.30 am six days a week to answer emails from clients who all consider their cases the most urgent. He runs to buy a sandwich and gobbles it down without chewing to save time. He would like to talk to his colleagues during his 10-minute lunch but does not have time. How is the system he is in adding or enhancing life systems?

It starts with counting to twelve with clients as well. When an HR Director briefs a provider about the needs of the business, we who provide learning and development services might encourage them to take twelve breaths. If we don’t we get drawn into the whirlpool of busyness and sidestep the purpose of developing a leader in the first place - to put purpose, and by purpose, I mean nature, climate and a regenerative economy ahead of profit. If not this then what, more profit? To achieve our own personal aims and ambitions? To change the direction of the business? To win? To launch new products and services?

Our role is to enable the leader to clear their own windscreen so they can see what is already there: systems breakdown. How we reflect is the starting point for any leadership programme.

Green thread

Leadership development surely can no longer be about our own purpose but the purpose of our times. And this calls for what I call a Green Thread running through all leadership programmes. The Red Thread, metrics, profit, KPIs etc, is easy and often needs little thinking. Leaders are likely to know this and feel comfortable when hearing a professor cover strategy finance or technology. The Green Thread is different. It is possibly not front of mind for the HR or L&D Director. The Green Thread is the opposite of the Red Thread. The Green Thread binds each individual leader to a purpose that has a clear line of sight to all the circles.

In the centre of these concentric circles is nature and all that sustains our life on earth.

We know a Red Thread without a Green Thread. Let me share a short example. I coached leaders attending a business school programme. The organisation ran Duty-Free shops at airports. The CEO was clear that the one objective of the Programme was to teach the 30 leaders to better manage and grow their P&L. Neat. Simple. Measurable. And guaranteeing little learning. The Programme was packed. Coffee breaks, and lunch were to be kept short so that minds could be filled with what the CEO deemed important. Attendees sat through hundreds of slides, over 50 models. They put together their Action Plans, left, and returned to their desks the same as when they had left. At no point was their thinking stretched and challenged.

The HR Director was happy as she had the metrics and feedback forms to show the CEO that his goal had been achieved. The Action Plans were forgotten as was the Programme. Coaching was easy as it was based on have you have you not increased profits six months after the programme.

What lessons can be drawn out?

1. Coaching was a waste of time: my belief as a coach is that telling me what you want to use the session for leadership coaching is damaging. A leadership coach must enable the coachee to see what they did not see: the beliefs and values that constitute their mindset and the principles under which they act. Coaching is not about me but about us and is not about our own awareness but about awareness of our times and what is required in order to ensure life systems on earth continue to function and then flourish

2. The organization would continue as is. Business As Usual. The existing mindset and principles of the CEO and the culture would remain short-term, self-interest.

3. A short-term, self-interested organization will fill a leadership programme with content and won’t see the importance of the white as well as the black squares on a chessboard. Light and space are required for the larch tree to grow. The same for leaders.

As a freelance leadership coach, I rely on a flow of work. If a nice juicy opportunity arises with a large bank I say ‘yes’ in two seconds which is why twelve seconds are needed. Then I can ask a very simple question prompted by the Neruda poem.

If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with Death.

What is the reason for this leadership programme? How do you want leaders to see things differently from how they currently see them? What would you like them to tell others about their experience when they return? What is the green thread running through the programme?

Power cut

We have had several since being here. You stop doing what you were doing and realize at that moment how driven we are by being constantly busy. But as Neruda says, the danger is that of never understanding ourselves. Leadership programmes should also be a version of a power cut. Yet most crowd out the white spaces on the chessboard with the black spaces. But why is it that participants will so often feedback that it was the moments outside the lecture theatre and away from the PowerPoint slides that were the most meaningful? Pausing and stopping is a skill. It is a skill I believe to be the most valuable skill any leader can cultivate. It is a paradox then that attending a content-heavy leadership programme often stops the very process that is most needed: pausing, stopping and stepping back using a structure that is conducive to deeper critical thinking about our role as leaders in organizations and in the wider world.

One of the challenges is that we are still trapped by the illusion of knowledge. Effective leaders, so it goes, are those with the answers, the expert knowledge, and the ability to fix and solve. This same thinking is not a reflection and is not the basis for a leadership programme.

Ditch sustainability programmes

Good business, sustainability, and ESG all appear in leadership conferences and programmes at some point, usually at the end! Yet, rather like coaching, all these words would be redundant if we reframed the process of leadership. Frameworks, reports, books, and conferences are redundant when we ask a simple question - how do we each enhance life systems on earth? Not by increasing busyness. But by reducing it. And replacing it with chunks of time for reflection. Once you stop and look around you cannot unsee what is happening. Our role is to enable the leader to clear their own windscreen so they can see what is already there: systems breakdown. How we reflect is the starting point for any leadership programme. This is the green thread that must run through all leadership programmes.