The one place you don’t have to have the answer

At every level of leadership, there is an unspoken expectation: you are the person who brings clarity to the room.

Others come to us with problems, half-formed ideas, competing priorities. Our job is to receive all of that and return something useful, perhaps a direction, a decision, a pathway through. We do this all day, in every meeting, every conversation.

Which makes it harder to admit, or even recognise, that our own thinking is sometimes just as unresolved.

“Sorry, I’m a bit scattered today.”

“I’m jumping around all over the place.”

These are among the most consistent opening patterns in coaching sessions. Leaders join, take a breath, and apologise for the state of their thinking before they’ve said anything of substance.