One of the disciplines I’ve developed in my coaching practice is setting aside time each week to reflect on what has emerged across my conversations. I’m not looking for obvious patterns, but to make sense of what leaders are grappling with, where organisations get stuck, and what might be useful to bring into future conversations. Over time, I’ve found that this reflection helps me synthesise what I’m hearing and, hopefully, bring greater value to each client.

This week, as I reviewed my notes and reflected on a range of individual and team engagements, I noticed that initially the challenges felt quite different.

One leader was frustrated that they were being held accountable for outcomes without feeling they had the authority to make the decisions required to achieve them. Another executive was concerned that decisions were taking too long and wondered why their team wasn’t ‘stepping up’ and showing greater ownership. In an executive team workshop, several people described feeling unclear about who was responsible for what, despite agreeing they had discussed it in the previous meeting.

On reflection, what struck me was that none of these situations was really about a lack of capability, commitment, experience or effort. Nor were they things you could put down to poor communication.

Instead, they seemed to sit in the space between.

The space between accountability and authority.

The space between delegation and trust.

The space between enterprise priorities and functional responsibilities.