Early in my coaching career, I worked with a tech director — brilliant, driven, the kind of person who had a system for everything. Feedback frameworks. Decision matrices. A morning routine optimised down to the minute.
And yet, when he walked into a room, his team tensed up.
Not because he was unkind. Not because he was incompetent. But because something about the way he showed up told everyone: I’m here to fix things. His energy said “doing.” And everyone around him felt it.
We spent a lot of our time together exploring something that surprised him. It wasn’t about what he was doing — it was about how he was being while he was doing it.
The question nobody asks
If you’re a leader in tech, you’ve probably consumed more leadership advice than you can remember. Books, courses, podcasts, frameworks. You know about psychological safety, servant leadership, radical candour. You’ve got the theory covered.
And yet.
There are days when you walk into a meeting and everything flows. People open up. Ideas land. Decisions happen naturally. And there are other days — same team, same meeting room, same agenda — where everything feels like wading through treacle.
What’s different? It’s rarely the agenda. It’s rarely the people. It’s you — specifically, how you’re being when you show up.
Most leadership development asks: “What should I be doing?” It’s a reasonable question. But there’s a more powerful one sitting underneath it: “How should I be when I’m doing it?”
What “being” actually means
This isn’t about meditation apps or breathing exercises (though there’s nothing wrong with either). It’s simpler than that.
Think about the difference between listening to someone because you’re genuinely curious about what they’re saying, versus listening because you’re waiting for your turn to speak. The behaviour looks the same from the outside. You’re nodding. You’re making eye contact. You might even ask a follow-up question.
But the person on the other end knows. They always know.
That’s the difference between being and doing. Doing is going through the motions. Being is the quality of presence you bring to those motions. And it changes everything.
When you’re genuinely present — when you’re being rather than performing — something shifts in the room. People relax. They say what they actually think instead of what they think you want to hear. Problems that seemed intractable suddenly have obvious solutions. Not because you did anything clever, but because you created the conditions for clarity.
The trap of “doing more”
Here’s something I see a lot with the tech leaders I work with, especially those of us with busy minds (myself included): when things aren’t going well, our instinct is to do more.
The team isn’t aligned? Add a planning session. Morale is low? Roll out an engagement survey. Someone’s underperforming? Create a development plan.
None of these are bad ideas. But they’re all “doing” solutions to what might be a “being” problem.
I had a client once who was running three major initiatives simultaneously — restructuring her team, implementing a new platform, and trying to build a culture of innovation. She was working 60-hour weeks and couldn’t understand why nothing was landing. Her team seemed resistant to everything she proposed.
When we looked at it together, something interesting emerged. She wasn’t just busy — she was frantic. And that frenzy was the first thing her team experienced when she walked through the door each morning. Before she’d even opened her mouth, they’d already picked up on the signal: brace yourselves.
The shift didn’t come from her doing less. It came from her noticing the state she was in when she was doing things. That’s a subtle but crucial difference.
The snow globe
I often share this image with clients: imagine your mind is a snow globe. When you’re overthinking, planning, worrying, rehearsing — you’re shaking the globe. The more you shake, the less you can see. And the natural response to not being able to see clearly? Shake harder. Think more. Do more.
But clarity doesn’t come from more agitation. It comes from setting the globe down and letting the snow settle. You can’t force it to settle — that’s just more shaking in disguise. But if you simply stop adding to the agitation, settling happens on its own.
This is what I mean by “being.” It’s not a technique you apply. It’s what’s already there when you stop doing so much.
The good news? Your mind wants to settle. It’s designed to. Just like muddy water clears when you stop stirring it, your thinking clears when you stop churning through it. Every leader I’ve worked with has experienced this — the answer that arrives in the shower, or on the walk home, or in the middle of a conversation about something completely different.
That’s not luck. That’s your natural clarity showing up the moment you gave it space.
What this looks like in practice
I’m not suggesting you stop doing things. You’re a leader — there are decisions to make, people to support, fires that occasionally need attention. The question is: what state are you in while you’re doing all of that?
Here are some things I’ve noticed, both in my own experience and in working with clients:
The same conversation, two different states. You can give someone difficult feedback from a place of genuine care — present, connected, honestly wanting the best for them. Or you can deliver the exact same words from a place of anxiety — rehearsed, tight, bracing for their reaction. The words might be identical. The experience for both of you will be completely different.
The meeting you don’t need to prepare for. I worked with a leader who spent hours preparing for every significant meeting — scripting what he’d say, anticipating objections, planning his responses to hypothetical questions. He was exhausted before the meeting even started. When he experimented with showing up present rather than prepared, he was stunned by how much more naturally the conversations flowed. His thinking was clearer in the moment than it had ever been in his preparation.
The signal your state sends. Your team reads your state of mind faster than they read your emails. If you’re stressed, they’re on guard. If you’re settled, they exhale. This isn’t about performing calm — people see through that instantly. It’s about actually being in a settled state, which only happens when you understand where your experience is coming from.
A different kind of navigation
One of the simplest things I’ve found useful — both personally and with clients — is noticing the difference between feeling light and feeling heavy.
When you’re in a light state — curious, open, maybe even slightly amused by the absurdity of whatever you’re dealing with — you tend to make good decisions. You listen better. You respond rather than react. Ideas come to you.
When you’re in a heavy state — pressured, serious, certain that everything depends on getting this right — you tend to overthink. You grip tighter. You push rather than invite. The doing intensifies, and the being disappears.
The information is in the feeling. Lightness is a signal that you’re present. Heaviness is a signal that you’ve drifted into overthinking.
This isn’t about judging yourself for feeling heavy. Noticing is enough. Genuinely, just noticing. You don’t need to do anything about it — which, I realise, is a bit of a paradox when you’re reading an article about doing less. But that’s sort of the point.
The leadership evolution nobody talks about
Most leadership journeys follow a predictable arc: learn the skills, apply the frameworks, develop the competencies. And that’s valuable — up to a point.
But there’s a next chapter that nobody really talks about. It’s the shift from knowing how to lead to simply being a leader. From accumulating more tools to needing fewer of them. From trying to have the right answer to trusting that clarity will come when it’s needed.
It’s subtractive, not additive. You don’t become a better leader by piling on more techniques. You become a better leader by removing what’s getting in the way of the leader you already are.
If that sounds a bit counterintuitive — good. Sit with it for a moment. See what occurs to you.
Because that right there? That’s being.
