I was asked this week by someone working in HR in a large organisation why I keep referring to “practice” in the newsletters and articles I write about the Lead Always Forum. She wanted to understand what I mean by it.

She was concerned that if practice meant asking people to give even more of their time, they would be unlikely to accommodate it or want to become part of the Forum.

I told her I would explain in a moment. But first, I was curious.

“What made you reach out about the Lead Always Forum? What is happening in your organisation that is particularly difficult to work with and has caused you to get in touch?”

The problem behind the question

Her response began with a deep sigh. Even online, her exhaustion was obvious.

She spoke about the relentless pace and chronic overload. Her organisation needed people to stop treating everything as urgent and become more structured and strategic in their approach.

She mentioned the ego and status issues that still get in the way. There was fear about AI and the threat people believed it presented, which was causing them to behave and work differently.

I found myself wondering what “working differently” meant.

Then she added that old-school command-and-control management continued to show up. They found themselves dealing with it from both sides, across top and middle management. There was resistance to this behaviour and general unhappiness with what it created.

People were avoiding risk, which caused conflict, yet they were also avoiding the conversations that might resolve it. Accountability was often missing.

These were just some of the issues she named, and it is my understanding that she is not alone in seeing them.

She described a tension many organisations will recognise: some people are more nimble and adaptable, while others remain set in their ways or unwilling to understand what is needed to future-proof the business.

This creates friction at every level. Too many people who are meant to be leading are instead self-protecting.

When every second counts

Practice can be one of the most difficult things we ask people to do. Let me tell you why.

We live in a world of deadlines and pressure, where every second seems to count. Our response is usually to deliver more, add more and work harder.

Yet the answer may lie in doing something that feels counterintuitive: creating enough spaciousness to breathe and see clearly. This means stepping away for a moment rather than running straight into the next thing.

Many of the behaviours this HR manager described are rooted in fear. People are frightened about job security and willing to put in more and more, which leads to exhaustion and eventually burnout.

At that point, people are no longer responding from clarity. They are being run by fear, and this may sit beneath the relentless pace, urgency, anxiety, control, avoidance and missing accountability she described.

The brain under threat

The amygdala is part of the brain involved in detecting threat and protecting us. When it is continually activated, the prefrontal cortex cannot operate at its best.

The prefrontal cortex supports critical thinking, decision-making, creativity, problem-solving, openness to learning and our ability to consider different perspectives. When we feel constantly under threat, our access to these capacities becomes limited.

This does not mean people are consciously deciding to be difficult, resist change, push back or say and do things they later regret. We need to understand that this is physiology. Their nervous systems may be permanently on alert.

It does not remove responsibility for how we behave, but a little self-compassion in the moment we recognise what is happening to us can go a long way. That understanding may create enough space for us to interrupt the reaction and respond differently.

Fight, flight, freeze or fawn

When we experience ongoing threat, we often fall into one of four familiar responses.

We fight. We tackle the situation head-on, perhaps with anger, defensiveness or greater control, and often create even more conflict.

We flee. We avoid the issue, pretend it does not exist or fail to deal with it. HR sees this in missed deadlines, sick notes and the conversations people repeatedly put off.

We freeze. People become so overwhelmed that they struggle to complete work they may once have handled easily. Fear of getting it wrong, failing or even losing their job begins to erode their confidence and ability to act.

We may also fawn. This can look like enthusiastic agreement, compliments and promises to do whatever has been asked. The person may sense the frustration or anger in someone else and believe that keeping them happy is the safest response.

They say, “Of course. What a good idea. I’ll do that for you.”

They say yes when they should say no, but ultimately the work may still not get done.

What lies beneath the workplace problem?

The Lead Always Forum is a place where we work with the issues people are facing in their organisations. But whatever the topic, we also need to explore what lies beneath it.

What is causing the disruption, conflict, lack of performance, missed delivery or shift towards an increasingly unhappy culture?

The answer is not always another disciplinary procedure, team-building intervention, training course or day away from work.

Sometimes what is missing is an understanding that each of us has a responsibility to create the inner capacity to respond differently.

This is what practice helps us to do.

What practices do

Practices help us recognise our typical reactions and understand when they may not be useful. They allow us to notice what is happening inside us before we fall automatically into fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

It sounds simple, which is perhaps half the problem.

People would often rather be given another task or asked to climb a mountain with a boulder on their backs than sit quietly for five or ten minutes, journal their thoughts or reflect on what happened.

What was that about?

What happened inside me?

What could I do differently?

Yet this is where change begins.

The pause

The first practice is the pause. It is a deliberate moment in which we stop, breathe and notice.

Sometimes the pause is five seconds. At other times, it may need to be five days.

An email, an overheard conversation or a phone call from a child’s school can trigger us. We may have to respond, but our ability to lead ourselves lies in how we respond.

The pause creates space between what is happening and our immediate reaction. It gives the nervous system an opportunity to settle and helps us regain the clarity needed to make a better decision.

Our bodies do not always distinguish between genuine danger and a mistake at work. A missed deadline, unexpected task or critical email can be experienced as a threat. When something similar happens again, the old response appears.

The pause interrupts that pattern.

Meditation

Many people believe meditation is too difficult.

It feels difficult because we are being asked to sit still, focus on our breath or another anchor point, and move our attention away from the issues and lists that fill our days.

We notice what comes up and, when the mind wanders, bring it back to the breath. Our minds are so overloaded that creating this spaciousness may be one of the most supportive things we can do for ourselves.

I also questioned meditation because it felt hard. The hardest part was that I could no longer do what I had trained myself to do all my life: remain busy.

You can meditate anywhere. If you have never tried it, light a candle and spend a few minutes watching the flame. When your mind wanders, gently bring your attention back.

Simply notice what happens.

Journaling and movement

Journaling is a powerful way of getting thoughts out of your head and onto paper.

People may be reluctant to write because they fear someone else might read it. Perhaps they are also afraid of seeing for themselves what is happening inside them.

Putting something on paper allows us to reflect on it and see it more clearly. We can become curious about something we saw, did or felt and ask:

What is this really about?

Movement is often the practice people are most comfortable with because it is physical and offers a more immediate reward.

Its deeper value comes through consistency. Like every practice, it requires a conscious decision to step away from the to-do list and move towards something that may not appear as urgent.

Preparing for the moment

Practices do not always promise an immediate reward. What they offer is the opportunity to build capacity within ourselves.

With repetition, a practice can become as natural as brushing our teeth or driving a car. Over time, when we are triggered, the nervous system begins to recognise the moment.

It is almost as though something inside us says:

Hold on. This is the moment I have been preparing for.

Instead of allowing fear to take over, we may recognise that there is space available to us.

A line often used to capture Viktor Frankl’s thinking says:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lie our growth and our freedom.”

In creating that space, we recognise that we have a choice about what to do next. Within that choice lie our freedom and our power.

The practices workbook

There are two more practices that I am not going to explore here. If you would like to receive my short workbook on practices, I would be happy to send it to you.

For each practice, it outlines:

• What it is about.
• What it builds within you.
• Why we find it difficult.
• How to set yourself up.
• A reflective question to use as a journaling prompt.

I have seen the changes regular practices can bring. Honestly, I believe they are one of the only ways we genuinely change our behaviour because the change comes from the inside out.

Workplace issues do not disappear. But dealing with them becomes a completely different ball game when people develop self-awareness, create pauses and take responsibility for how they respond.

The more people who create this spaciousness for themselves and think before they speak, the better.

Want to get lucky?

I close the workbook with a quote from Gary Player. He recalled responding to a comment about a lucky shot by saying:

“The harder I practise, the luckier I get.”

It sounds obvious for something that is actually a deep and meaningful process.

But if you are not feeling particularly lucky right now, let me know. I will send you the workbook, and perhaps you can begin practising your way towards becoming a little luckier.