With the Labor Day weekend behind us, summer comes to its unofficial close. While that’s a calendar milestone, in reality, summer fades and fall emerges. The warmer days begin to thin and cooler days subtly appear. Good seasons of our lives are similar. They don’t start with a trumpet sounding that something new is here. Instead, they might begin with a Tuesday that’s quietly easier than the Tuesdays before it. Or your shoulders drop in the car, and you hadn’t realized how long they had been up.
When you’re in a good season, the question isn’t, “When did this start?” but “How long have I been here without seeing it?” Crises and challenges are loud and clear. Progress often isn’t. Part of leadership is developing an ear for the quiet and an ability to embrace peace.
Some leaders are so used to leading in a crisis that when the calm arrives, they invent one. A good season shows whether you can lead without adrenaline. Life is often difficult. We can get so accustomed to navigating hardships that we lose our ability to notice and enjoy good seasons.
Here are ways to recognize and embrace better times:
Look for signs of relief. It can be difficult to realize that pressure is easing. Pay attention to when you feel unburdened. Lean into it. And name it for your team. Share that you’ve noticed you’ve made it through a key milestone, challenge, or dynamic time.
Leverage gratitude as a leadership practice. Sweet seasons are easy to spend and hard to steward. The leader’s job is to notice them early enough to invest some of the surplus: let people recover, build slack, repair what got neglected when you were in survival mode.
Realize that lightness doesn’t need permission. Grace is often unearned and unscheduled. Part of evolving as a leader is accepting a good stretch without needing to know what you did to deserve it.
Slow your rate of consumption. Good seasons can be spent on ambition. Deliberately choose to savor the goodness by leaving some of the surplus unspent, unproductive, or unoptimized. Just be.
Resist the urge to treat good seasons as lulls between storms. The more we recognize and embrace seasons when more is going well than not, the more we can appreciate what we made it through and enjoy where we are now.
Founded in 2004, Lead Star is the company behind the best-selling books SPARK, Leading from the Front, and Bet on You. Lead Star helps professionals reach new levels of success through its innovative leadership development programs.
