Dear courageous leaders,
I have been sitting with an image all week.
A rippling pond.
This past week was Holy Week for me, the days leading into Easter Sunday. I have been working through the Pray 40 prayer challenge on Hallow, a 40-day Lenten journey that drew its daily inspiration from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. If you have not read it, I want to simply say: it is one of the most complex, demanding, and beautiful captures of the human condition I have ever encountered. I have so much to say about it. I will keep it short here.
A central message that stayed with me is about the power of love and the power of our values. Dostoyevsky shows us, through deeply flawed and deeply human characters, that our actions ripple. Every word. Every choice. Every moment of courage or avoidance. They move outward across the environments we inhabit and the relationships we hold, often in ways we do not see and cannot fully trace.
Small actions that we think are only about us create ripples.
Those ripples touch others in ways both small and profound.
This is not a burden. It is an invitation.
When we take action intentionally, anchored in our values, we give agency to our ripples. We do not eliminate unintended consequences. But we reduce them. We mitigate the reactive word sent in exhaustion, the avoidance that slowly erodes trust, the drift that accumulates quietly until it becomes distance.
And sometimes, the image of the rippling pond asks us to go deeper still. Not just to act from our values, but to examine them. Are the values we hold actually pointing us toward who we aspire to be? Or are some of them holding us in patterns that are unhelpful, even stifling? Inherited values, absorbed from systems and cultures and expectations that were never fully ours, can feel like values when they are actually constraints.
This is deep, important work. And it sits right at the heart of what I want to explore with you in this edition.
I am watching leaders I deeply respect move through a season that is genuinely hard. Not because they lack commitment or vision. These are some of the most quality-focused, purposeful people I know. But the velocity of everything around them has become relentless. Information arrives faster than it can be processed. Decisions that used to have a week now have a day. Change that used to unfold over a quarter arrives overnight. And underneath all of it, a quiet, persistent pressure: keep up, stay relevant, do not fall behind.
When everything feels urgent, it becomes very hard to choose.
And when we cannot choose from values, we choose from pressure. From habit. From fear of falling short or letting someone down.
That is not leadership failure. That is what happens to human beings inside systems moving faster than the human nervous system was designed to navigate.
The work, then, is not to move faster.
It is to stay anchored. To read the compass. To let our values choose for us when the noise becomes too loud to think clearly.
And to remember: every values-aligned step, no matter how small, creates a ripple.
The Lens: Walking Your Why, Part 2
In Susan David's Emotional Agility framework, this stage is called Walking Your Why. As I wrote in our last edition, values are not destinations. They are directions. A compass, not a finish line.
But a compass is only useful if you stop long enough to read it.
In Emotional Agility, David writes that values-based action is not about feeling ready or feeling certain. It is about choosing, again and again, to move in the direction of what matters, even when the path is unclear, even when discomfort is present, even when the outcome is not guaranteed.
This is where many quality-focused, deeply committed leaders get stuck. Not because they do not know their values. But because the pace of everything around them leaves no space to consult them.
Susan David offers a practical test for moments like this. She calls it the workability litmus test.
Workability asks a simple but powerful question: does this action reliably take me toward my values and purpose? And if repeated, does it continue to work over time, for me and the people around me?
Workability is not the same as what feels good. It is not the same as what feels true. A thought can feel completely true, such as "that was unfair," and still be unworkable if holding onto it keeps you from the leader you want to be.
This is a reframe that changes everything.
The question is not: is this the right decision? The question is: does this move take me toward my values or away from them?
And then, a deeper test: if I repeated this choice one hundred times, would it build the life, the team, and the culture I want?
When speed narrows the frame, workability restores it. Not by slowing everything down. By giving you a reliable place to stand.
And the ripple image stays with me here. Workability is not just a personal test. It is a relational one. Our choices do not stay contained within us. They move outward. Toward the people we lead. Toward the cultures we help create. Toward communities that need what only steady, values-anchored leadership can offer.
Clear Eyes. Full Hearts Practice
This edition offers three practices, each designed for a different amount of time and depth. Start where you are.
Practice One: The Workability Check (Two minutes)
Use this in the moment, before a decision, a conversation, or a response you are about to send.
Ask yourself two questions:
Does this move take me toward my values or away from them?
If I made this same choice one hundred times, would it build or erode the trust, energy, and culture I am trying to create?
You do not need certainty to answer these questions. You need honesty.
If the answer is unclear, that is information too. Pause before proceeding.
Practice Two: Read Your Compass (Five minutes)
Use this when you feel adrift, depleted, or unsure of what matters most. Use it at the start of a difficult week, before a high-stakes conversation, or whenever you notice you have been running on pressure rather than purpose.
Ask yourself three grounding questions:
What am I moving toward today?
What am I moving away from that might still matter?
What small step would realign me with my chosen direction?
These questions do not require long answers. A sentence or two is enough. The act of asking them is itself a return to values.
You can also bring these questions to a team conversation, especially when urgency has narrowed the room. Asking "what are we moving toward together?" can shift the energy from reactive to intentional in minutes.
Practice Three: The Courage Lab (Fifteen to twenty minutes)
Use this when you have more space, when a situation feels genuinely challenging, uncomfortable, or uncertain. This is the deeper work.
Step one: Name the situation. Think of something you are navigating right now, personally or as a leader of a team or community. It does not have to be a crisis. It can simply be something that feels heavier than it should, or something you have been circling without resolution.
Step two: Name one or two values that matter most to you in this situation. Not the values you think you should have. The ones that are actually alive for you here.
Step three: Write freely for a few minutes in response to these questions:
Why does this value matter to you, or to the group you are leading?
How does it show up when you are at your best?
How might it help you approach this challenge differently?
How could this value steady or guide you, or your team, through this uncertainty?
Step four: Choose one value and apply the If-Then-Because sentence stem to a real situation this week.
If I feel ____________, then I will ____________ (a small, workable action), because ____________ (the value that matters to me).
I am choosing this value to lead my next step, and I remember that ____________ and ____________ still support me.
Then run a workability check on that step. Does it take you toward your values? If repeated one hundred times, would it build or erode what matters? If it feels too large, ask: what is a smaller step that still honors this value?
Journal Prompts
Choose one.
Where have I been choosing from pressure rather than purpose this week? What value would I be living from instead if I trusted myself to slow down?
What is one situation I have been avoiding or circling? What value does it point toward? What is the smallest workable step I could take in that direction today?
When I examine the values I am currently living from, are they ones I have chosen? Or are some of them inherited, absorbed, or performed? Which ones are pointing me toward who I aspire to be?
Leadership Translation
The Courage Lab is not only for individual reflection. It is one of the most powerful conversations you can bring to a team navigating change, pressure, or uncertainty.
Before a major decision or during a period of significant transition, try this: invite your team to name one or two values that matter most to them in this moment. Then ask together, does our proposed path take us toward those values? If we made this choice one hundred times, would it build or erode the culture we are trying to create?
When teams make decisions from shared values rather than shared urgency, something shifts. Disagreement becomes less personal. Commitment becomes more durable. And the work, even when hard, feels like it means something.
Think of it as tending to your collective ripple. Every values-aligned decision your team makes together moves outward in ways you will not always see immediately. But they accumulate. They shape the culture. They shape the people inside it.
As Susan David writes in Emotional Agility, every act of values-based courage, no matter how small, strengthens the bridge between who we are and how we show up. This shapes not just our own lives, but the cultures we help to create.
When we choose courage, we stop being authored by fear or circumstance. We begin to author the environment.
Invitation
This week, I am sitting with the ripple image still.
What values are guiding your ripples right now? And are they the ones you would choose?
If something in this edition landed for you, I would love to hear it. You can simply reply with a sentence. I read every one.
And if you are in a season where the pace feels relentless and your values feel further away than you would like, a complimentary Clarity and Alignment Consultation is always available. It is simply 45 minutes to slow down, read your compass, and identify one workable next step. You do not have to navigate it alone.
In our next edition, we will move into the final stage of the arc, exploring what it means to take meaningful action, not from pressure or obligation, but from the values and clarity you have been building.
Clear eyes. Full hearts.
Paula
Inspired by Susan David, PhD, and her work on values, workability, and courageous action in Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life, and from the Emotional Agility practitioner training workbook. And by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, whose vision of the human condition continues to ripple.
P.S. If you are in a leadership moment where coherence feels far away, where you know what matters but cannot quite find your footing, a complimentary Clarity and Alignment Consultation is always available. It is simply 45 minutes to slow down, name what is here, and identify one values-aligned next step. You do not have to carry it alone.
If you would like to learn more about Ignite Personalized Leadership Coaching and how this work unfolds more deeply, click the button below. You do not have to carry it alone.
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