Holding the Space Until They Can: The Heart of Leadership

I have been sitting with what it really means to step inside my leadership.

Not becoming a leader as if it is something outside of me to chase, but recognizing the leader that already lives within me and choosing to embody her.

This season of my life has felt like a quiet initiation. An initiation into seeing myself more clearly, tending to my own patterns and responses, and learning how to hold space in a real and grounded way, especially when others cannot.

The Threshold of Holding Space

I have noticed that many people who are in leadership roles can hold space, but only to a certain point. There is usually a threshold where emotions become uncomfortable, where misunderstandings rise, or where old wounds are triggered. When that happens, there is often a pull to withdraw or shut down in the name of protecting peace.

I understand that place. I have been in that place. I still work through those moments.

There is a very fine line between honoring our peace and avoiding what feels too much. There is a difference between tending to ourselves and protecting ourselves from the growth that discomfort can bring.

True leadership requires discernment here.

It requires us to notice when emotion or past experience is shaping our response instead of presence. It requires us to stay open while also grounded. To remain connected even when the moment is complex.

I’m learning that real leadership isn’t just about how much space we can hold, it’s about how we stay when it gets messy. It’s how we breathe when the mirror gets close. Because the people who bring us the most discord are often the ones showing us where our work still exists.

The Mirror in Relationship

Every person who reflects something back within us. They show us where we are still learning, where we are still tender, where we are still growing our capacity to stay in connection when our instinct is to defend or disconnect.

The more I tend to myself, my triggers, my stories, and my patterns, the more capacity I have to sit with others in theirs. That has been the quiet transformation. Realizing that leadership isn’t about being above emotion or chaos, but about being able to stay grounded within it.

This is the edge I’m learning to walk, where boundaries and compassion meet, where I can still protect my peace without closing my heart. Where I can see every hard moment as a mirror, every rupture as a possibility.

Because maybe true leadership isn’t about holding space until it gets hard, maybe it’s about holding space through it.

This is often where leadership is tested most.
When we are holding space for someone who cannot yet hold space for others or for themselves.

It is easy to want to step away.
It is easy to cut off.

But leadership, in its highest form, is the ability to stay present, clear, and compassionate while honoring ourselves at the same time.

This does not mean abandoning our boundaries.
It means remaining in our truth while staying open to the truth of another person.

When the Leader Holds Until They Can

Leadership, to me, is relational.

It is not something we do alone or in isolation. It lives in the space between us.

This is often where leadership is tested most. When we are holding space for someone who cannot yet hold space for others or for themselves.

When we face those moments where someone’s pain, projections, or defensiveness bump up against our own, that is where our awareness makes the difference. When we know our own patterns and triggers, we can notice them as they rise instead of making them someone else’s fault.

Instead of cutting off or needing to prove our point, we can stay curious, stay in our body, and stay connected. Leadership in that sense is the practice of remaining steady in the presence of intensity. It is the ability to hear another person’s experience, even when it feels charged, without abandoning ourselves or blaming them.

Leadership guides the conversation toward understanding instead of reaction. It does not mean tolerating disrespect or forgetting boundaries. It means holding safety in a way that invites transformation instead of creating more distance.

Leadership is being able to stay grounded and self-aware, even in difficulty, to create a field of safety that allows others to eventually learn how to do the same.

Over time, those around strong leadership begin to develop the capacity to hold themselves with more awareness, more softness, and more responsibility.

This is how leadership transfers.

This is how community strengthens.

This is how growth spreads.

This Is Not Just About Leadership Roles

This is the part that matters most.
This is not just about leadership in business or formal roles.

This is leadership in yourself.
This is leadership in your relationships.
This is leadership in your family.
This is leadership in your community.
This is leadership in your business.
This is leadership in your everyday interactions.

We are all leading something.
We are all influencing something.
We are all shaping the spaces we walk into.

Leadership is not a title.
It is a way of being.

It is how we respond when things get hard.
It is how we choose to stay open while also anchored.
It is how we hold our own heart so we can hold others with care and clarity.

We are all leaders.
The question is simply whether we are leading from fear or from awareness.

Leadership begins with the relationship we have with ourselves.
It expands into how we show up with others.
And it becomes powerful when we hold space with presence, compassion, and responsibility.

When we tend to ourselves, we increase our capacity.
When we increase our capacity, we can meet others with more compassion and less reactivity.
When we meet others in that way, we create a ripple of emotional maturity and relational safety.

This is the kind of leadership that changes families.
This is the kind of leadership that transforms communities.
This is the kind of leadership that shapes culture.

Join the Conversation

If anything in this share resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you.
Maybe something opened a new perspective, reminded you of your own experience with leadership, or sparked an insight you want to share with me!