Out of Season: Leadership, Pace and Reading the Season

Out of Season

When I returned to Brazil in 2006, I had a plan and a timeline. Both were sensible. Both were mine.

I’d lived in the Southeast before and thought I knew the culture. But this time I was in the Northeast, and it caught me out again.

Some differences are obvious. Others are quieter, like the unspoken rhythms and pace. I remember hitting the new year with a “let’s go” attitude, frustrated by the pushback on the timing of new initiatives. I had not accounted for Carnival. As Brazilians say, the year doesn’t really begin until it’s over.

I pushed. I chased, followed up, and tried to compress what didn’t want to be compressed. For a while, some things moved, but I grew tired in a way I didn’t recognise at first.

It wasn’t the tiredness of hard work. It was the tiredness of working against something.

Slowly it dawned on me that life there had a rhythm of its own, and it wasn’t waiting for mine. Relationships came before tasks. Trust came before pace. The timeline I was holding so tightly belonged to somewhere else. I had been measuring progress by how quickly things moved.

I have been reminded of that experience recently, as the season turns here and similar conversations keep coming up with leaders I work with. Most of us have a favourite season, and a quiet preference for living in it all year.

But the seasons aren’t ours to choose. They’re ours to read, even when we think we’ve read them before.

So perhaps the question isn’t how to keep going at the pace we prefer, but whether we’ve noticed what season we’re in.

Paul

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If something here is live for you or your team, I’d be glad to talk it through.

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