From eye-roll to essential leadership skill

Written By Madeleine Shaw

When I was a cynical lawyer and first came across the term “holding space”, I – in my ignorance - was sure it was some kind of waffly, new-age, eye-roll inducing thing with no application in the “real world”, where I thought I lived.

Turns out, it’s one of the most useful leadership practices I know.

Holding space isn’t about doing nothing. It’s about resisting the urge to rush in with fixes, judgments, or with your own clever ideas. Instead, it’s about creating the conditions for others to think, speak, or process.

In practice, it can look surprisingly un-fluffy:

  • Letting a team wrestle with a complex issue without filling every silence with your solution.

  • Listening to tough feedback without leaping to defend yourself.

  • Allowing quiet voices in a meeting the time they need to enter the conversation.

  • Providing a calm presence while someone is going through a difficult time, without prioritising jumping in “helping” with your own perspective.

The older (and hopefully wiser) me has learned that holding space is not indulgence. It’s actually discipline. It takes more strength to sit in discomfort than to jump in and control it.

So if you catch yourself rushing to fill the silence, ask yourself: what might happen if I held the space instead?

Until next week,

Madeleine

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Madeleine Shaw https://madeleineshaw.com.au
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When your job is who you are