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Letting the Dust Settle to Lead with Clarity
A recall, a room full of pressure, and the hour that changed the decision
Years ago, I sat in a room where a product recall was on the table. If you have never been in one of those rooms, let me tell you what it feels like. Every phone is buzzing. Legal has a position; operations has a different one. The data is still coming in, incomplete and contradictory, and everyone is looking at the person at the head of the table wanting one thing above all else: an answer, right now.
The pull in that moment is almost physical, as if speed itself were the same thing as leadership. And I remember feeling it in my own body — the quickening, the heat, the narrowing. What I did not have language for then, but understand clearly now, is that this is exactly the moment when we are least equipped to decide well.
When our bodies and minds are under stress, we can slip into a fight-or-flight response. The cortisol and adrenaline that flood our system are doing an ancient job, designed to keep us alive in the face of danger. But they come at a cost. They narrow our thinking and can limit our access to the executive functioning of our brain — the very capacities for judgment, perspective, and nuance that a decision like this one demands most.
So we did something that, in that room, felt almost unreasonable. There were three of us — the team of leaders charged with this decision — and we agreed we would stop. Not for a day, and not to avoid the decision; for an hour, maybe two. What made that possible is that each of us, through our mindful leadership training, had learned how to pay attention: how to notice what was happening in the room and in ourselves, and how to recognize when it is time to pause and reflect. Long enough to let everyone be heard, and then long enough to let the dust settle. We wanted to take in everything, every factor and every fear, and then to stop the urge to react, and let the best answer arise in response to all we had heard.
It is worth being honest about how uncomfortable that pause is. Holding ambiguity does not feel like leadership when you are in it. It feels like a failure to act. Everything around us, and often everything in our own nervous system, is asking us to resolve the tension quickly so the discomfort will end. But I have come to believe that the ability to hold ambiguity — to sit in the not-yet-knowing without collapsing it into a reactive answer — is one of the most important skills a leader can develop.
The ability to hold ambiguity — to sit in the not-yet-knowing without collapsing it into a reactive answer — is one of the most important skills a leader can develop.
And here is what I want to offer you this month: the pause does not have to be long. We tend to imagine that space means a retreat, a week away, a grand clearing of the calendar. Sometimes ten minutes is enough. It is the decision to say, out loud, "Let me sit with this and come back to you." What matters is not the length of the pause but the shift it creates — from reacting to responding.
So much of this is a practice of noticing: learning to feel, in real time, when the pulls to react are present, and to recognize the quickening in our own chest as information rather than instruction. When we notice that we are being asked to react, we can choose, instead, to allow for the space. And in that space — even a small one — the dust settles, our fuller intelligence returns, and we are able to respond with clarity.
The recall decision we eventually made was, I believe, the right one. But what has stayed with me is not the decision itself. It is the hour we gave ourselves to arrive at it. That hour did not weaken us. It was the thing that let us hear what we already, together, knew.
This month, I invite you to experiment with your own version of that hour. Notice the next time you feel the pull to answer immediately, and see if you can name it. Then give yourself even ten minutes before you respond. Let the dust settle, and see what clarity is waiting for you on the other side.
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