There's an old story about a farmer whose horse runs away. His neighbours rush to console him. Bad luck, surely. He shrugs: maybe. The horse returns with three wild ones. His neighbours celebrate. Good luck, obviously. Maybe. His son breaks his leg taming one. Maybe. The army arrives and conscripts every able-bodied young man in the village. His son stays home.
The farmer never once claims to know how the story ends. He doesn't perform certainty for the benefit of the crowd. He holds each event lightly, not from indifference, but from a deep trust that time will tell what today cannot.
I've been thinking about what it would cost most leaders to live like that.
The performance of knowing
Leadership culture has a complicated relationship with uncertainty. We promote people who project confidence. We reward those who speak first and decisively. We read hesitation as weakness and composure as competence, even when the two have nothing to do with each other.
So we learn, over time, to perform certainty. To have an answer ready. To never be caught not knowing. And quietly, the performance becomes a pressure, one that follows us into every room, even when the room demands something else entirely.
The farmer's neighbours always had an answer. The farmer had something rarer: the discipline not to need one.
From the room last week
Last week I led a workshop for people leaders on something that doesn't get enough honest airtime: the rising cost, complexity, and shifting dynamics of Australian workplaces in the wake of significant industrial reforms.
I made a deliberate decision about how to show up to it. I lead a team of four experienced HR managers, team members I've invested in, stretched, and trusted with the complexity of this work. Two of them joined me in the room. Not as support, but as proof. Between the three of us, we carried close to 65 years of experience, and I wanted the people leaders in that room to feel the full weight of what that means when it's working in their corner.
One of the things I've worked hardest to build in my team is a genuine belief that people must feel safe to speak. A room where no one asks the difficult question isn't a room that's working. We took that into the design of this workshop together. Every choice we made, how we opened, how we listened, how we responded when the real questions finally surfaced, was shaped by that belief. I'm proud of how we held it. The leaders in the room felt it, and they rose to meet it.
Because here is the reality they're navigating. The industrial reforms that have strengthened union rights and worker protections have fundamentally reshaped how the Fair Work system in Australia operates; what it decides, what it expects of employers, and what is now at stake in situations that once felt routine. A misstep in this environment isn't just uncomfortable. It can be costly in ways that are hard to undo: financially, legally, and in the trust of the very people a leader is responsible for.
That weight was present in the room. These leaders carry it every day, often without anyone acknowledging how much they're holding, or how isolating it can be to hold it while still being expected to project certainty.
What shifted when the room felt safe was not that the weight disappeared. It was that they could finally set it down long enough to ask what they actually needed to ask.
How do I know when I'm getting this right?
What happens if I've already got something wrong?
Is it okay that I find this as complex as it actually is?
I want those leaders to be seen for what it takes to ask those questions. It's not easy to walk into a room as a senior leader, capable, experienced, accountable, and say out loud that you're uncertain. That takes its own kind of courage. And every person who paused before they responded, who resisted the pull to perform and chose honesty instead, was doing something the farmer would recognise. Not performing. Just present. Trusting that thinking carefully before you act is not a weakness. In this landscape, this is a strength and it is the most underrated capability.
The conversation you're circling
The industrial relations reforms have made certain conversations more charged than they used to be around performance, consultation, flexibility, change. The human dynamics were always complex. Now there are legislative ones layered on top, and the weight of both can make an already difficult conversation feel almost impossible to begin.
But here's what I notice: the leaders who avoid these conversations aren't doing it because they don't care. They're doing it because they haven't yet found the version of themselves that can hold the conversation without needing to control how it ends.
The farmer didn't know how any of it would end either. He just stayed present for what was actually in front of him.
If there's a conversation you've been circling, I'd gently ask: are you waiting until you're certain or until you're ready? Because those are different things, and only one of them is coming.
When preparation meets its moment
I want to tell you something about this workshop that the recap above doesn't fully capture.
It took 18 months to build that room.
Not because the logistics were complicated, but because meaningful work rarely moves fast. There were conversations that went nowhere. Weeks where the vision felt further away than it did the week before. Moments of real doubt about whether this would ever come together at all. And through all of it, I kept showing up, without knowing how it would land, without certainty about what the room would give back.
The farmer, I think, would understand that.
Because here's what I've learned about sustainable leadership: it asks you to keep investing before you can see the return. To build the thing before the room exists. To hold the vision through the weeks when it feels like nothing is moving, trusting, as the farmer trusts, that time will tell what today cannot.
Preparation is its own act of faith. You do the work not knowing if the moment will come. And then one day, it does.
When I walked into that room last week, I was grateful not just for what was about to happen, but for the 18 months that made it possible. For the people who said yes when it mattered. For the two members of my team who showed up not just as facilitators but as confident and resilient HR managers. And for the 25 people leaders who were willing to do the work, not just on their teams, but on themselves.
That is the kind of leadership this newsletter has always been about. Not the performance of having it together. The practice of staying in it, even through the maybe.
If you're in your own 18 months right now, building something that isn't visible yet, holding a vision that hasn't found its room, I want you to know: the preparation counts. Even when you can't see it. Especially then.
If this edition landed somewhere specific for you; a situation you're in, a conversation you're holding, something you're not sure how to navigate, hit reply. I read every one, and I'm always glad to think it through with you.
Till next week,
Mary
ICF Certified Coach · Author, Burn Bright Not Out · HR Director