OPEN: Why Making Space is a Leadership Skill

This is the third article in a series introducing SOFT Leadership. If you missed the previous ones, start here: What is SOFT Leadership?

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from working too hard, but from never stopping. From moving so continuously, so relentlessly, that you lose the ability to tell the difference between momentum and avoidance. Between drive and fear. Between leading well and simply not allowing yourself to pause long enough to find out.

I lived in that exhaustion for years. And I called it commitment.

Open is the second phase of SOFT Leadership. And it is, in my experience, the one most leaders resist the hardest.

What Open actually means

Open is not about slowing down for the sake of it. It is not a wellness practice you bolt on to an already overcrowded schedule. It is something more fundamental than that.

Open is the practice of making space. For rest. For genuine connection. For the kind of presence that allows you to actually lead, rather than just perform leadership at the people around you.

In many traditions, both Eastern and Western, there is an understanding that creation requires space. That the pause between notes is what makes music. That the space between breaths is where the body regenerates. Nature does not produce without resting. Seasons do not skip from summer straight back to summer. There is always a rest period. A winter. A necessary emptiness before the next bloom.

We are part of that same nature. And yet we have built workplaces and leadership cultures that pretend otherwise.

What closing yourself off actually costs

I went four years without a real pause. Not a holiday, not a proper weekend, not a morning that wasn't already spoken for before it began. I told myself this was what leadership required. That if I stopped, things would fall apart. That my team needed me constantly available to feel confident and directed.

What I didn't see then was how much my closed-off, depleted state was costing the people around me. When you are running on empty, you cannot truly connect. You can manage, you can direct, you can push things forward. But you cannot be genuinely present. And people feel that absence, even when they cannot name it.

The decisions I made from that depleted place almost never held. The hires I rushed, the strategies I forced, the partnerships I pushed through because I didn't have the energy to sit with the discomfort of not knowing yet. They cost me far more than the pause I was afraid to take would have.

The connection that comes from Open

There is something that happens when you create real space, both in yourself and in the culture you lead, that cannot be manufactured any other way.

People open when you open. Teams breathe when their leader breathes. When you model rest, when you protect time for reflection, when you allow a team member to speak their mind rather than always providing the answer, you give everyone around you permission to be human too.

I have seen this happen in teams I have led. The moment I stopped leading from the front and started creating space for others to step forward, something shifted. People brought me problems earlier, before they became crises. They shared ideas they would previously have kept to themselves. They trusted the culture enough to share their ideas.

That trust did not come from a policy or a framework. It came from a felt sense of spaciousness. From knowing it was safe for them.

The practice of Open

Open does not require a retreat or a complete restructuring of how you work. It starts small.

A walk before a difficult conversation, without your phone. Twenty unscheduled minutes before a decision that matters. A meeting that ends five minutes early so everyone can breathe before the next one. A weekly practice of asking your team how they are, and actually waiting for the answer.

These are not indulgences. They are the infrastructure underneath every meaningful connection you will make as a leader.

Rest is not the reward at the end of the quarter or when the target is hit. It is the foundation that makes the quarter worth something.

Where to start

This week, find one place in your schedule where you can build in a genuine pause. Not a coffee break. Not a scroll. A real stop. Ten minutes of quiet, a slow walk, a few conscious breaths before something that matters. Notice what arrives in that space. Maybe it will surprise you.

Because business is human. And the future of leadership is SOFT.

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Next in this series: Flow — what it actually means to lead from alignment.