Everyone talks about August as though it’s the month to slow down, switch off and recharge so I’m fairly sure my calendar missed that memo.
This month my eldest son turns 18. My husband turns 60 and somewhere between the birthday cake and the celebrations sits another birthday that will be different than the way I’d imagined.
This year, August feels more like a turning point and less like a holiday.
The other week, I was delivering a section on Ram Charan’s Leadership Pipeline as part of a three-day programme and one idea has been following me around ever since.
Every successful leadership transition asks us to think differently, not simply work harder.
Perhaps that’s why we overthink during life’s biggest transitions and the more I sat with that thought, the more I realised it was true of life, not just leadership.
The transitions nobody sends flowers for
We celebrate the milestones everyone can see. Promotions, birthdays, graduations, weddings, retirement… They arrive with flowers, cards and cake because everyone understands what they mean.
It’s the quieter transitions that tend to catch us by surprise. The ones nobody sends flowers for:
- The first day your child no longer reaches for your hand.
- The moment you realise you’re now the oldest generation in your family.
- The promotion you’ve worked years for, followed by the uncomfortable feeling that everyone else seems to know what they’re doing except you.
- The day you realise you’ve outgrown a version of yourself that once fitted perfectly.
Nobody really prepares us for those moments because, from the outside, everything looks fine. Inside can feel rather different.
The hardest transitions quietly prove we’ve succeeded
I’ve been grieving my son leaving for university for years.
That probably sounds ridiculous seeing as he’s still at home, currently asleep upstairs if I’m honest, and there’s every chance I’ll have to remind him for the third time to hang his wet towel up before the day’s out.
The thing is, I’m not grieving because I don’t want him to go. I’m grieving because I do.
I’m devastated that he’s leaving and at the same time insanely proud that he can.
Those two truths have somehow learnt to sit alongside each other.
He’s grown into a confident, independent and ambitious young man. Even when he’s scared, he’s willing to put himself forward. He’s prepared to have a go, to take opportunities and to create a life that reaches far beyond ours.
If that’s who he’s becoming, then somewhere over the last eighteen years I’ve done my job.
And that’s the part nobody warned me about.
The hardest transitions are the ones that quietly prove we’ve succeeded
If we’ve done our job well, people leave. And in helping them become more themselves, we quietly become someone new too.
For me, parenting is and has been a massive part of my life, and I get that’s not everyone’s experience. The more I think about it, the more I realise this story isn’t only about parenting. It’s about all the relationships where our role is to help someone become more capable than they believed possible.
Leadership. Coaching. Parenting. Perhaps they’re all asking the same thing of us in the end.
That’s the bittersweet paradox. We spend years nurturing someone else’s growth and independence, only to discover we’ve been growing too.
Great leaders build teams that think for themselves, not ones that will depend on them forever.
Great coaches help people develop enough confidence, awareness and perspective that they can navigate challenges without needing someone beside them every step of the way.
Parenting is trying to do the same thing (I don’t pretend I’m “great” – like everyone else, just doing the best we can, every single day). The goal was always to give them the confidence to leave, knowing they’ll always have somewhere safe to return to. My Dad always used to tell me, “it’s not the leaving that’s a problem, it’s the fact they keep coming back”. He didn’t mean it, he was in his element when we came home.
So this week I was caught completely off guard: I’ve spent eighteen years helping my son become independent and nobody mentioned I’d have to practise becoming independent too.
That, I suspect, is the transition nobody sends flowers for.
What your brain does when life changes
I’ve noticed that sometimes life softly asks us to let go of one thing that used to work brilliantly.
That’s why I love Ram Charan’s work. In The Leadership Pipeline, he explains that every step into leadership requires us to let go of habits that made us successful in our previous role. The problem is, success can be a terrible teacher. It whispers, “Do that again.” Life, on the other hand, has a habit of replying, “Not this time.”
Sometimes we keep working harder because that’s what always brought us success.
Sometimes we keep proving ourselves because that’s how we built our reputation.
Sometimes we hold tightly to a story about who we are because, for a long time, it served us well.
Then life asks something different of us because the next chapter needs something the last one didn’t.
The habits that helped us arrive are often the very habits we need to thank before we leave them behind.
Why we overthink during life’s biggest transitions
Every new chapter asks us for a new mindset and that’s usually the point where overthinking arrives.
We replay conversations and second-guess decisions. We wonder why something that used to feel straightforward suddenly feels so much harder. Whilst it’s tempting to assume something has gone wrong, again it’s our brain, doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett describes the brain as a prediction machine. It constantly uses our past experience to anticipate what’s coming next and to keep us safe.
That’s incredibly useful if you’re crossing a busy road. And rather less useful when you’re trying to challenge your boss without sounding like you’ve completely lost the plot.
What is different about today that yesterday’s experience can’t prepare us for?
Whether it’s stepping into a new leadership role, watching a child leave home, navigating the end of a relationship, caring for an ageing parent or changing direction completely, our brains don’t have an existing map to follow.
Of course it feels uncomfortable.
For me, that changes everything because the meaning we give an experience shapes what we do next.
Instead of asking, “ What’s wrong with me?”, I find myself asking, “ What is this transition asking of me that the last chapter didn’t?”
They’re very different questions: One assumes our capability is still there and asks how we can access more of it. The other assumes something is wrong with us or something is missing and that can chip away at our self-belief.
That’s a much kinder place to begin with the former.
Perhaps August is teaching me about trust
As I’ve sat with all of this over the past few weeks, I’ve realised August is teaching me about trust, not about letting go.
Trust that the little boy who once reached for my hand is still there somewhere inside the six-foot teenager who now communicates largely in grunts.
Trust that the values we’ve tried to give him will keep him safe on his travels and take him further than I ever can.
Trust that love doesn’t disappear just because its shape changes.
And when I’m honest, trust that I’ll find my feet in this next chapter too.
I suspect that’s true of leadership as well.
Every promotion asks us to trust ourselves before we’ve collected all the evidence that we can do it.
Every difficult conversation asks us to trust our judgement before we know how the other person will respond.
Every new beginning asks us to take a step before certainty arrives.
That’s why these moments feel so exposing because we’re standing on unfamiliar ground, trying to become someone we’ve never been before.
If you’re navigating a transition at the moment, whether it’s a promotion, a career change, an empty nest, caring for ageing parents or simply a feeling that life is asking something different of you, I’d love you to remember one thing.
Your capability is still here and waiting for your mindset to catch up with the chapter you’re stepping into.
Because perhaps the biggest transitions are the ones that change who we become, not the ones everyone else can see.
And perhaps the hardest transitions are the ones that gently whisper:
“You’ve succeeded. Now it’s time to grow again.”
If this resonates with you, I’d love to know what transition you’re navigating.
And if you’re finding that change is bringing more overthinking than clarity, Steady Under Pressure is exactly where we explore how to access more of your capability when life, leadership and the conversations that matter most ask something new of you.
Every new chapter invites us to become a little more of ourselves