Twenty years ago a friend gave me the Tao Of Leadership. By reading it again and again I got more used to the idea that it’s ok to approach tough issues in apparently contradictory ways. Sometimes being tough and resilient and at other times letting go. Leaders I come across though find this extremely difficult.

They want to reduce things to a solution, to take the behaviours they have just used and apply them to the next scenario. Instead take time to consider the role of being patient, being determined, to see what is happening. The nature of change means it is already happening, it’s something beyond you that you are also part of. You need to see what’s driving it, notice how you are interacting with it and from all these signals then decide on where you act. Do things in this way and you may help things evolve quicker. Act against what is happening and you’ll be tough when you should have been soft and vice versa.

Oliver Mack

I think it is at this point that you have to trust yourself as a leader, trust the work that you have done and take part in the fine art which is being patient.

This got me thinking about the speed at which I do things and I have to admit that my approach is very much to sprint until you can’t any more, which I am now beginning to realise may mean that I am missing out on something. This is particularly pertinent considering that I have spent the quiet summer months reminding myself that I must be patient because in fact not everyone is beavering away at their desks trying to meet my deadlines but are in fact, probably sunning themselves in Spain.

Whilst travelling across London to various meetings recently, spending time in cafes, schools, businesses, boardrooms and even Dorothy Perkins, I have been forced to trust that despite the fact that other people have other demands on their time, if I am patient, at some point, on the whole, they will make the time. It is then that I need to be ready to sprint and not to be in a heap on the floor out of breath and out of ideas. I have to allow time for the opportunities to appear and to materialise as much as to hunt them down and force a conclusion.

But, how do I ignore the overwhelming desire to get those ticks on my list and to instead allow things to develop, perhaps not on my timescale, in a way that could produce something that is beyond what I could have expected to get?

I think it is at this point that you have to trust yourself as a leader, trust the work that you have done and take part in the fine art which is being patient.

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