Growth doesn’t need an audience. It needs intention.

Becoming doesn’t always look like progress.

Sometimes it looks like staring into space and calling it strategy.

It can look like quiet.

Like not knowing what to say when someone asks, ‘What’s next for you?’

Like wondering if the thing you need to let go of is the very thing holding you up.

LinkedIn is full of people celebrating the spring seasons: the promotions, the launches, the big reveals.

‘Delighted to announce…’ ‘Thrilled to share…’

We all do it.

But the real work, the real leadership, the real changes often happen in the pauses.

In the untangling, in the underground.

Hidden from view, and often hidden by us, in the bits we can’t yet find a way to name or craft into a LinkedIn-friendly post or a motivational team talk.

There are so many other seasons.

The autumn seasons. The delight when the trees throw their leaves at us like confetti, carpeting the ground in debris. 🍁

When the low sun, if it appears, blinds our driving and leaves too early, drawing the nights and the curtains sooner than we’d like.

We don’t usually post about being thrilled by this.

Just like we don’t post about those internal seasons, when our inner metronome of certainty falters, when our confidence wavers, when we can’t quite see beyond the now.

Is it because we think when the leaves fall, we need to tidy them up quickly so people don’t judge our dishevelled-ness?

Because we believe we have to be the ones holding it all together, or we won’t be trusted by our teams?

Or because we can’t yet trust anyone to hold the space for us while we work out whether the fallen leaves are actually paving the way to something we can’t yet see?

We don’t need to be delighted or thrilled with everything.

Growth doesn’t need an audience. It needs intention.

Sometimes that’s space. Sometimes support. Sometimes just a quiet breeze to nudge the leaves to fall.

If this season resonates, you don’t need to like this post. You might even want to dislike it, because it’s uncomfortable.

And if you’re in a season that feels more compost than confetti, I have a couple of coaching spaces if you choose to reach out for support in finding clarity without the ‘thrilled to announce’ energy.

Full disclosure: my leaves aren’t getting tidied up. I like where they’ve fallen, it’s like a warm blanket for the grass. 🍁