Leadership is complex, but not for the reasons we usually give.

It’s not complex because people are difficult.
It’s not complex because the work is unknowable.
It’s not even complex because the future is uncertain.

It’s complex because, as humans, we are carrying multiple systems at the same time and pretending they’re one.

1. Strategy.
2. Belief.
3. Hope.
4. Discipline.
5. Faith.
6. Economics.
7. Responsibility.
8. Timing.

We collapse them into a single expectation and then wonder why we feel strained.

I’m seeing now that this collapse is what made my own practice so heavy.

Everything I did had an invisible if–then attached to it.

If I show up.
If I do the work.
If I stay disciplined.
If I keep faith.
If I follow the right guidance.

Then something should happen. Soon. Preferably recognizably…in a way that settles the anxiety about what’s next. That expectation didn’t feel like pressure. It felt like virtue. Like devotion. Like patience.

But structurally, it was prediction.

And prediction, whether it comes from economists, algorithms, leadership theory, or spiritual language, does the same thing every time: it trades wonder and curiosity for certainty.

Once certainty enters, attention narrows.

You stop asking what is this revealing?
You stop noticing what’s subtle, slow, or still forming.

You start asking is this it? Is this the answer?
Did this work?

That’s when leadership becomes exhausting.

• Every invitation turns into a test.
• Every event becomes an audition.
• Every conversation quietly carries the weight of outcome.

Even our practices stop being places of return and start becoming places of hoping. Hoping they will unlock something. Prove something. Accelerate something.

That’s also where service gets distorted.

Service becomes instrumental, presence becomes performative and the work starts to feel transactional, even when our values are sound.

I see this pattern everywhere right now, especially in leadership spaces. So much instruction about how to show up:

• How to optimize.
• How to position.
• How to be visible.

Very little about serving. Very little about staying in right relationship with the work itself.

Today sharpened this for me.

I noticed how often I’ve been interpreting moments instead of meeting them. Treating inputs as answers. Assigning meaning too quickly. Letting expectation overwrite information. Even my rituals weren’t neutral. They were carrying hope with a timetable.

That’s the burden I’m releasing.

My practice now is simpler, but not easier.

My practice is to stop asking moments to resolve me. Stop needing invitations to explain themselves and to stop turning alignment work into a promise of outcome.

My practice is to stay curious instead of certain. To notice what’s actually shifting, not just what I predicted would and to let information accumulate before I interpret anything.

Strategy still matters. Of course it does.

• But strategy without curiosity becomes brittle.
• Practice without wonder becomes draining.
• Leadership without service becomes performance.

I want something sturdier than that. So I’m choosing to do the work for the sake of coherence. To show up without extracting guarantees and to serve well, pay attention deeply, and trust that this is not wasted effort.

Whatever emerges from that… I’ll meet it when it does.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

Where in your leadership practice have you quietly attached an if–then expectation… and what might shift if you treated that moment as information instead of an answer?

About Giselle

I’m Giselle Hudson — writer, musician, Organization & People Development Sensemaker™, and MCODE® Legacy Coach. I help leaders and independent professionals make sense of the deeper patterns shaping their work, identity, and results — especially when execution looks like a performance issue but the real problem is misalignment.

If something in your work feels off and you can’t name why, reach out. One conversation often brings language to what you’re already sensing — and clarity to what happens next.