970x125
I used to think my work was practical.
I teach leaders how to listen, really listen. I coach people to say the hard thing. I help teams slow down long enough to notice bias, power, and patterns before defensiveness takes over. I encourage people to take walks during the workday, to ask better questions than the ones they’ve been rewarded for asking, and to choose curiosity over certainty. For a long time, I thought of this as skill-building, leadership development, and even emotional intelligence.
Lately, I’ve come to see it differently. This work is subversive.
We live inside systems that prize speed, precision, efficiency, and control. Systems shaped by white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy teach us, explicitly and implicitly, that worth is measured by productivity, that authority flows from dominance, that emotions are liabilities, and that slowing down is a failure of discipline rather than an act of wisdom. And by the way, we cannot escape these systems. But, perhaps, we can resist them by being deeply human.
We Know What to Do, So Why Is It So Hard?
This, of course, is the real question. Most leaders already know that listening more deeply, asking better questions, and focusing on people rather than just problems leads to more collaborative, innovative, and resilient cultures. This isn’t radical knowledge. And yet, when it comes time to practice these skills, especially under pressure, they often fall away.
Why?
There are a few common reasons. First, old habits die hard (see Lewin, 1947). When stress is high, our nervous systems default to what is familiar: control, efficiency, certainty. Second, many leaders believe these skills take too long. And third, there is a pervasive focus on short-term solutions at the expense of long-term health, trust, and sustainability.
What’s happening psychologically is important. Skills like deep listening, curiosity, and presence invite a shift in what we value. They require us to prioritize emotional states such as gratitude, enthusiasm, courage, and trust over skepticism, toxic competition, and moral righteousness (Seligman, 2018). That shift can feel risky in environments that reward speed and precision over connection and meaning.
This is often the moment when leaders push back. They’ll say, “But those things take time,” or, “I don’t have the bandwidth,” or, as I heard at a session I led earlier this year, “There’s a tension between getting things done and taking the time to have a conversation.”
Ah, yes: the “I don’t have enough time” argument.
Here’s the paradox: These so-called “slow” skills are not only associated with better long-term business outcomes; they are also the very conditions that allow collective intelligence, creativity, and connection to emerge (Lande, Chopde, Kharche, 2025). When people feel seen, heard, and psychologically safe, work actually moves better, not just faster.
But more than that, this is where the subversion begins. Choosing to value connection, emotional attunement, and understanding in cultures biased towards productivity and accuracy isn’t inefficient; it’s quietly defiant. It challenges systems that have taught us to treat humanity as a distraction rather than the point. And it reframes leadership not as getting things done despite people, but through them. That shift—from urgency to intention and from control to curiosity—is not just good leadership. It is an act of resistance.
Courage Is Not Loud. It Is Disruptive
Psychologically, we tend to associate courage with boldness: speaking truth to power, taking visible risks, and standing alone. But much of the courage required today is quieter and far more destabilizing to the status quo.
It takes courage to listen without preparing your rebuttal; to ask a question you don’t already know the answer to; to pause instead of pushing; to stay present with discomfort rather than rushing to resolution.
Leadership Essential Reads
These acts disrupt systems that depend on hierarchy and speed to function smoothly. They interrupt the unspoken rule that leaders must always know, decide, and direct. From a psychological perspective, they challenge deeply conditioned threat responses, which often look like our need to get certainty, control, and superiority when we feel anxious or exposed.
Vulnerability, as we now understand, is not weakness (Brown, 2017). It is the willingness to remain emotionally open in the presence of uncertainty and risk. And vulnerability is profoundly subversive in cultures that reward armor.
Listening as Resistance
Listening—true listening—is one of the most radical things a leader can do.
When someone listens with openness, they flatten power, even temporarily. They signal that another person’s inner world matters. This directly counters systems that have historically decided whose voices count and whose experiences are dismissed, minimized, or erased.
According to Stephen Porges’ well-known polyvagal theory, being listened to regulates the nervous system (Porges, 1995). It reduces threat, increases trust, and creates the conditions for collaboration rather than competition. It allows people to move out of survival mode and into creativity.
That is not accidental. Systems of oppression rely on dysregulation and on people being too exhausted, divided, or afraid to imagine alternatives. Listening is not passive. It is a form of nonviolent resistance (CITE).
Asking Better Questions in a Culture of Certainty
We live in a culture obsessed with being right. Certainty is rewarded, and doubt is framed as incompetence. Yet psychologically, growth depends on curiosity, which is the capacity to stay open to new information even when it destabilizes our self-image.
Asking thoughtful, expansive questions can feel risky. It exposes what we don’t know. It invites complexity where simplicity is more comfortable. But curiosity is the antidote to defensiveness. It keeps the ego from hardening and allows learning without shame. In systems that prefer dominance over dialogue, curiosity is a quiet rebellion.
Rest, Slowness, and the Radical Act of Pausing
Going for a walk in the middle of the workday shouldn’t feel transgressive, but for many people, it does. Rest and slowness directly contradict capitalist narratives that equate constant output with moral worth. Psychologically, they restore cognitive flexibility, emotional regulation, and perspective (Oppezzo & Schwartz, 2014). They help us remember that we are bodies, not machines.
When leaders model rest, when they normalize boundaries, reflection, and recovery, they resist cultures of burnout that disproportionately harm marginalized communities. They create space for people to show up whole, rather than fractured by exhaustion.
Rest is not withdrawal from responsibility, but rather a commitment to sustainability, deeper knowledge, and shared potential.
Collaboration Over Control
Oppressive systems thrive on individualism: the myth of the lone genius, the heroic leader, the self-made success story. Collaboration, by contrast, requires humility. It asks us to share power, tolerate difference, and relinquish the illusion of total control.
Psychologically, collaboration builds collective efficacy, which is the belief that together we can navigate complexity better than we can alone (Bandura, 1997). It fosters belonging, which is a fundamental human need and a powerful buffer against fear-based leadership.
Choosing collaboration over control is not just a management preference; it is a statement of values.
You Are Already a Leader and Your Humanity Is the Point
You do not need a title to do this work. Like I tell my clients, “You are a leader, whether you like it or not. Get used to it.” What I mean by that is that people are taking note of the way you move, talk, and share. You’re in the metaphorical fishbowl, and that’s very, very powerful. Every time you choose to listen differently, every time you speak up with care, every time you slow down, rest, or invite others in, and every time you meet bias with curiosity instead of contempt, you are leading. And, you are resisting.
Leadership is not only about shaping outcomes. It is about shaping climates, especially the psychological and relational ones. The way you show up has ripple effects far beyond what you can plan for.
In a world that trains us to harden, choosing humanity is a courageous act. In a culture that is built on domination and hierarchy, building connections is revolutionary.
