Not Every Ball Needs to Stay in the Air

What Fifteen Years in Business Has Taught Me About Growth, Resilience and Letting Go

For a long time I believed that good leadership meant keeping every ball in the air. Running a business, supporting a team, managing finances, serving clients, developing new opportunities, looking after family, maintaining relationships and somehow finding time to think about the future. Many business owners and leaders know this feeling well and most of us spend years believing it is just the price of ambition.

In the early years it is often necessary. There are moments when growth demands extraordinary effort. Long days, difficult decisions, learning new skills, solving problems that no one else can solve for you. I have experienced this first hand and I would not trade those years because of what they taught me, plus the fun we had along the way!

Over more than fifteen years of building businesses, leading teams, running a social enterprise and navigating significant change, there have been periods when sheer determination was the only thing that kept things moving. The Covid years brought their own particular weight. Cashflow pressures, changing business models, supporting staff through uncertainty and finding new ways to serve clients when everything familiar had shifted. Those experiences shaped me. They also taught me something that I wish I had understood much earlier.

Resilience is not about carrying everything forever. It is about knowing what to carry, when to carry it, what to share and what to release.

One of the biggest shifts that happens as we grow is a shift in judgement. In the beginning we often believe that being responsible means being involved in everything. Over time we learn that responsibility and control are not the same thing. Delegating is not letting standards slip. Training others is not giving away ownership. Creating systems is not stepping back from what matters. It is creating space for others to contribute while allowing yourself to focus on what only you can do.

This applies well beyond business. Many people are carrying responsibilities that nobody sees. Caring responsibilities, financial pressures, community commitments, expectations that others have placed on them or that they have placed on themselves. It is easy to believe that strength means continuing to hold it all. Yet some of the strongest people I know have learned when to pause, when to reassess and when to honestly ask whether every commitment still serves its purpose.

Over the years I have become less interested in pushing through for the sake of it and more interested in sustainable progress. Some seasons are for building. Some are for maintaining. Some are for recovery, reflection and recalibration and each of those serves a real purpose even when it does not feel like it at the time.

In our book Building Life Muscles, my co-author and I explored the idea that resilience is not a fixed trait. Like any muscle it develops through use, challenge, rest and recovery. The same is true in leadership and in business. Growth rarely happens in a straight line. We move forward, we make mistakes, we learn, we adjust and we move forward again. Not because everything goes according to plan but because we become more capable of responding when it does not.

I still believe in ambition. I still believe in setting goals and going after them with everything you have. But I also believe in paying attention to what a particular season is asking of you. Sometimes it is asking you to push forward. Sometimes it is asking you to build new capability. Sometimes it is asking you to let go of something that no longer fits who you are becoming. And sometimes it is simply asking you to stop long enough to notice what shows up in the space you create.

That, is not failure...it is how real growth works.

If you are navigating a season of change and would like a thinking partner who understands both the business and the human side of that journey, I would love to have a conversation.