Dear Whole Leader,
A few of you have written to me in the last week or two with a version of the same question.
Paula, what does it actually mean to lead well in a moment like this one? The pace is faster than it has ever been. The pressure is real. AI is changing the floor under our feet faster than we can read about it. What is the work that actually matters now?
It is a fair question. I have been sitting with it myself.
I want to give you my honest answer, and then I want to walk you into the territory I think it points us toward. This is the first of five editions over the next two months, and they are all going to live in this territory. So this issue is the door.
Here is the answer.
The work that matters now is not new. It is the work that has always mattered. AI is not changing what good leadership is. AI is changing the cost of skipping the work.
The work I mean is the work below the waterline. It is the steadiness you bring to a meeting when the room is anxious. It is the question you ask when the easier move is to nod. It is the discernment that lets you tell the difference between a relationship that needs your care and one that needs your courage. It is the willingness to be a recognizable self in every room you walk into, the cabinet table and the kitchen table both. It is the practice of leading from values rather than reacting from pressure.
None of it is new. Senior leaders have been doing this work, or skipping it, for as long as there have been senior leaders.
What is new is how quickly the skipping shows up now. AI is making the technical parts of leadership cheaper, faster, and more abundant. The drafting, the analysis, the synthesizing, the first pass at almost anything. That is real. It is also genuinely useful. I am not anti-AI. I use it every day in my own work.
But here is what AI is also doing. It is raising the relative value of the human capacities it cannot replicate. Presence. Judgment under ambiguity. The ability to read a room and choose your move from values rather than from the algorithm of your own pattern. The willingness to sit in a hard conversation long enough for the truth to surface. The trust people place in you when they can feel that you are actually here.
These are not soft skills. They never were. They are the capacities that make senior leadership possible at all, and the leaders who have built them are about to become more essential, not less.
The leaders who have not built them, who have been getting by on technical excellence and a careful career, are going to feel the floor shift. The skills that used to differentiate them are getting commoditized in real time. The capacities that would have set them apart are the ones they have not yet developed.
This is the moment to do that work.
I want to be careful here, because the cultural conversation about AI is full of urgency, and urgency is not a good teacher. I am not telling you to panic. I am not telling you to learn AI faster or pivot your practice or remake your leadership. I am telling you the opposite.
The work below the waterline does not happen in a sprint. It is not a skill you can acquire over a weekend or a quarter. It is a practice. It is built slowly, in real situations, with real reflection, often with a guide. It is closer to the work of a musician learning her instrument than the work of a leader adding a competency to a development plan.
What I want for you, in this moment, is the clarity to recognize that the work that has always mattered most is now the work that matters most visibly. The leaders who give themselves over to it, in the months and years ahead, are going to be the ones their organizations remember. The ones who reach for the next tool or the next framework as a substitute for the inner and relational work are going to find that the substitution does not hold.
Below the waterline is where the work is.
This is the territory the next four editions are walking into. Edition 26 takes up the gap between being right and being trusted. Edition 27 takes up the way our greatest strengths quietly become our biggest blind spots. Edition 28 takes up the altitude question, what it costs to lead from patterns that no longer serve the seat you are sitting in, and what becomes available when those patterns release. Edition 29 will hand you a longer piece I have been writing on this work, as a gift.
For today, I want to leave you with one small invitation.
Clear Eyes. Full Hearts Practices
Name What Is Here
This practice comes from Dr. Susan David's work in emotional agility. I use it constantly, with myself, with clients, and in teams. It is one of the cleanest tools I know for meeting a moment with presence rather than reaction. It is the work below the waterline, made specific.
What it is. You pause. You notice what is present. You name it. You do not fix it, dwell in it, or ask why. You let the answer unfold. Where it feels right, acknowledge with thank you.
When to use it. When you feel tension, confusion, or strong feelings rising in yourself. When someone in the room seems guarded or overwhelmed. When a group has gone silent, split, or started talking past each other. When you need a clean reset before continuing.
The questions below come in three layers. Use the layer that matches the moment.
Me. With yourself.
- Can I let this discomfort be here for one breath?
- What truth in me wants to be seen?
- What am I feeling, and where is it in my body?
- What would kindness toward this look like?
- What do I need to feel safe to stay?
We. With another person.
- What needs naming here?
- What do you need me to hear?
- What would make this easier to say?
- What discomfort can we allow right now?
- What would help you feel cared for as we stay with this?
Us. With a team or a group.
- Who is affected and not heard yet?
- What has been felt but not said?
- What discomfort can we acknowledge together?
- If this room had a voice, what would it name?
- What feels human about what is happening in the team?
Leadership translation. The leaders I work with often say their hardest moments do not need a strategy. They need a witness. Name what is here is how you become that witness, for yourself first, and then for the people you lead. You do not have to solve the moment to honor it. The naming is the work. The work is below the waterline.
For the next two months, we are going below the waterline together. I am glad you are here.
Invitation
Most senior leaders I work with are carrying one or two conversations they keep meaning to have and have not yet had. Or one or two relationships where the same misunderstanding keeps happening in slightly different clothes. The pattern is rarely about the other person. It is usually about something happening below the waterline, in both of you, that neither of you has named yet.
I would like to offer you an hour to make some of that visible.
Know Your Influence Code. Read Theirs. is a sixty-minute live virtual workshop for senior leaders who want a clearer read on themselves and on the people they lead. Thursday, May 28, at 12:30 PM Central. Free. Capped at twenty-five. I am running these every three weeks through September.
Email me at paula.shannon@wholeleaderlab.org to be added to the waitlist and receive additional information.
Clear eyes. Full hearts.
Paula
Inspired by Susan David, PhD, and her work on action, motivation, and meaningful change in Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life, and from the Emotional Agility practitioner training workbook.
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