The Silent Leader – Why Stillness Creates Great Leaders
There’s a particular type of leadership energy that’s quietly disappearing. It’s quiet, understated, and it commanded respect automatically. It was kind, and it didn’t need to shout to be heard. It’s being replaced with loud, aggressive, authoritarian ‘leadership’.
We’re in a climate where loud opinions are mistaken for intelligence, speed is mistaken for strategy, and putting others down is mistaken for power and leadership. It’s crazy, because this is the leadership we have just spent decades moving away from, and we were starting to see the calming and cohesive effects of better leadership.
I get that some leaders feel they are under pressure to respond, to react, to prove they’re not falling behind—especially when the world is shifting on what feels like a weekly basis.
But the truth is that the leaders who will win the hearts of their teams, the leaders who will make better decisions, the leaders who will create truly healthy change, are the ones who’ve learned how to be still in the chaos. Still enough to think, to feel, and to choose their moves consciously rather than compulsively. As a leadership coach and executive therapist, I see this change in my clients. Life goes from chaos to calm. It’s not that life gets less stressful, or their workload eases. It’s that they manage that chaos and workload very differently—organisationally, personally, and emotionally—so it feels much easier. They are in control.
Stillness is not passivity. It’s intentional and purposeful.
Most people confuse stillness with inaction, but it’s the very epitome of action. In stillness we are aware, problem-solving, assessing, and working through consequence. We are more present. Most people can’t do this because they can’t sit inside discomfort without panicking—a clear sign to me that they have unresolved traumas. They just respond and want to be seen to be in control, when actually this does the reverse. One of my business coaching and therapy clients said to me last week: “Our boss always needs to be talking and be seen to solve everything. We always wait a few days before actioning anything, because most often when he’s thought it through he will change his mind.” This business leader is being managed up by his team.
Stillness, calm, presence—they come from an internal calmness. Someone who has cleared their baggage and come to peace. They are confident, happy, and living intentionally. This presence they have is magnetic. In chaos, these people are like a lighthouse for everyone around them. They communicate depth, stability, and self-trust. Their team feels it. Their investors feel it. And they feel it.
Most leadership decisions are actually reactions to old childhood triggers and beliefs that they believe are correct and true. When you do the inner therapy work, these disappear, and you make decisions from a calm and happy space where you are more strategic, efficient, and productive.
Which leader are you?