Julia Middleton's Thoughts on Leadership

With everyone (colleagues, media, stakeholders, customers) asking you for leadership – can you drown in it? So that you become only a reflection of what others want of you? I sat with some students on an MBA last week and the big thing they seemed to be asking me was how not to drown? They hadn’t experienced it yet but they had seen it in many of the leaders they had met. Their curriculum was enviable, full of skills I need and would like to have. But they needed more on how to avoid drowning.

The patt response they had been given was that you had to learn to delegate, but they are not stupid. Even if you delegate you still risk drowning from the things you can’t delegate. We ended up talking about how to make space for quiet moments. My father used to tell me that I should never trust a leader whom you didn’t occasionally find with their feet on the table, staring at the ceiling, thinking, maybe dreaming – but not asleep.