Escaping the Busyness Trap with Megan Reitz
Professor Megan Reitz
Megan is an associate fellow at Saïd Business School at Oxford University. She's also a professor of leadership and dialogue at Holt International Business School. Megan's research focuses on how we can create the conditions for transformative dialogue at work. And her research is at the intersection of leadership, change, dialogue, and mindfulness. Megan has written a number of brilliant books, including her most recent, Speak Out, Listen Up.
Busyness is killing productivity and harming workplace culture. Here's how to counter it for amazing results at individual, team and organizational levels.
The most common answer to 'how are you?' these days, is 'busy'.
Busyness is rife. But it's not making us happier, more productive or more successful. On the contrary.
In the latest episode of We Are Human Leaders, we sit down with author and expert Megan Reitz to discuss the dangers of busyness in modern leadership and the importance of spacious thinking and mindfulness.
Megan emphasizes the need for leaders to create environments that foster spaciousness, allowing for better decision-making, creativity, and well-being.
This warm, wide-ranging conversation covers practical steps to integrate mindfulness and spacious thinking into daily routines to future-proof your career and your leadership.
You’ll learn:
How busyness can lead to mental and physical health issues.
Why spacious thinking allows for creativity and insight.
The ways in which mindfulness is often misunderstood in corporate settings.
Why creating safety in the workplace is essential for spaciousness.
How our focus and attention can be trained and should not be left to chance.
Taking small pauses in the day can help create spaciousness.
Why healthy conflict can lead to new perspectives and insights.
The surprising ways the physical environment impacts our thinking and creativity.
Why leaders must adapt to the pace of technology by embracing spaciousness.
How mindfulness is a practice that requires ongoing effort – and, why it's worth it!
Professor Megan Reitz (MA (Cantab), MSc, MRes, PhD) is Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, Oxford University and Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School. She focuses on how we create the conditions for transformative dialogue at work and her research is at the intersection of leadership, change, dialogue and mindfulness. She is on the Thinkers50 ranking of global business thinkers and is ranked in HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers listing.
Megan has written Dialogue in Organizations and Mind Time and, most recently, Speak Out, Listen Up which is the second edition of her bestselling book Speak Up, with Financial Times Publishing. Speak Up was shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year 2020.
Megan is a contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. She has presented her research on the BBC, CNBC and Deutsche Welle and she writes for numerous academic and practice-based journals. Her research on employee activism was nominated for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award 2021 and her TED talk on the topic has been viewed more than one and a half million times.
Her latest research focuses on ‘spaciousness’; how, whilst attending to the task, we can also create, hold and value the space to innovate, reflect, learn and develop relationships, in workplaces that are increasingly experienced as instrumental and addicted to busyness.
She is mother to two wonderful teenage daughters who test her regularly on her powers of mindfulness and dialogue.
Examples of her work and contact details can be found at www.meganreitz.com and on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/meganreitz.
Resources
Website - www.meganreitz.com
Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Speak-Out-Listen-Megan-Reitz/dp/1292468092/
SMR featured article - https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/create-mental-space-to-be-a-wiser-leader/
HBR article - https://hbr.org/2025/02/how-to-give-yourself-more-space-to-think
TEDx – https://www.ted.com/talks/megan_reitz_how_to_lead_in_the_new_era_of_employee_activism
Prefer to watch the conversation? Find it on YouTube here:
Episode Transcript
Key Chapters
00:00 The Dangers of Busyness
07:50 Understanding Mindfulness in the Workplace
14:06 The Irony of Productivity and Spaciousness
16:29 Exploring Spacious Thinking
21:01 The Power of Spaciousness
29:19 Creating Space in Leadership
37:17 The Future of Work and Spacious Thinking
41:29 Practical Steps to Invite Spaciousness
Alexis Zahner (00:02.942)
Welcome to We Are Human Leaders. When you're here with us, you're part of the global community driving change. Each conversation is an invitation to grow, question, and co-create a future where people, business, and society flourish together. And we, myself, Alexis, and my co-host Sally Clark, are here to guide you on this journey, connecting you to big ideas, bold conversations, and brave questions that will help you live and lead more human every day. In today's conversation, we
have Megan Wrights who is an associate fellow at Said Business School at Oxford University and professor of leadership and dialogue at Holt International Business School.
Today's guest is Megan Wrights, an associate fellow at Said Business School at Oxford University. And she's a professor of leadership and dialogue at Holt International Business School. Megan's research focuses on how we can create the conditions for transformative dialogue at work. And her research is at the intersection of leadership, change, dialogue, and mindfulness. Megan has written a number of brilliant books, including her most recent, Speak Out, Listen Up.
which is a second edition of her bestselling book, Speak Up. Now this conversation was quite profound for Sally and I, and I'd love to hear from you, Sal. What was one of the key takeaways for you from this conversation with Megan?
Sally Clarke (she/her) (01:44.642)
For me, Lex, I think it's the fact that there is a place in leadership and in our work lives for the concept of spacious thinking. So what we traditionally have contextualized as something that is sort of outside of, you we just should be doing, we need to be achieving, we need to be doing in order to be productive. Her research really flips that notion on its head. And this conversation just unpacked so clearly, not just why we should be.
Alexis Zahner (01:50.036)
Mm. Mm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (02:11.214)
embracing spacious thinking, but also how we can. That was a huge takeaway for me. How about you?
Alexis Zahner (02:17.276)
I love that. And I think for me, was also how spaciousness really is quite a courageous step right now. We've sort of been conditioned to believe that being always on hustle culture, busyness is the mode of being that we need to be in to reach success. And I think
Sally Clarke (she/her) (02:23.854)
Yeah.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (02:30.094)
you
Alexis Zahner (02:35.58)
Megan's conversation was really a call to action to say, actually, that's not what we need to be successful. There is an opportunity to be courageous and step outside that really small box that we've created for ourselves and what success looks like both in life and in leadership. So this conversation, as I said, for Sally and I was super profound. We cannot wait for you to hear it. Now let's dive in.
Alexis Zahner (00:03.302)
Welcome to We Are Human Leaders. Megan, it's such a privilege to have you here with us today. And we want to start by asking a question that we think many leaders in the modern work environment are struggling with. And that is the concept of busyness. Can you help us understand what are the dangers of busyness and what should we be aiming for instead?
Megan (00:27.244)
Right, that's a very relevant question at the moment. think whenever I'm with, whenever I'm with groups, organisational groups now, the level of busyness, it even comes through into the classroom, you you can see that people are trying to multitask, they're trying to do multiple things at the same time. Probably best, in order to answer that question, and I'll do it succinctly, it's probably best just to introduce these two modes of attention. I'll tell you why in a second.
Megan (01:23.702)
looked at what we pay attention to and there are these two modes and I know we'll go into more detail on them but we have a mode that we call the doing mode and this is where busyness belongs. The doing mode is instrumental, we have goals that we're looking to achieve, we want to control things, we want to predict things, we want to get stuff done at pace and there's also another mode called the spacious mode which is
Megan (01:52.328)
unhurried, which is more expansive, which looks at possibilities and insight. Now the problem in many organisational systems, but it's much bigger than organisational world, it's also present very much in healthcare, in education, is that we have become what we call in our research pathologically busy. We've overdone the doing mode. We've become so attached to doing.
Alexis Zahner (02:13.998)
Hmm.
Megan (02:20.578)
We've become so sure that activity is the sign of success. We are so focused on short-term tangible targets that many of us now are forgetting that there even is a spacious mode and we certainly can't find one. So in terms of the dangers of busyness, obviously there's a pile of health, mental and physical health.
issues when we're so busy and we don't pause and we don't allow ourselves to pause. You know, yes, of course, let's find the business case because of course we've got to do that. The business case around busyness is eventually a reduction in productivity, which is ironic because that's the very thing we're trying to improve. But, you know, in terms of what I'm really interested in, you know, if we're living this life,
Sally Clarke (she/her) (03:08.208)
Mm.
Megan (03:19.928)
pathologically busy. You know, if we are permanently in doing mode, looking at achievement, where on earth is the space to be human? Where is the space to be creative, to find joy, those sorts of things? So that's the case against busyness for me.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (03:40.954)
Incredible, Megan. And I think it resonates for so many people listening this concept of doing as being sort of the sole metric by which we measure our value as humans, particularly in the work environment. You know, we're all sort of addicted to our to do lists, ticking things off. You know, it makes me think of my time as a lawyer being, you know, measured by the billable hour. It's all about doing and sort of any, any time you lift your foot off of the accelerator, it's like, well, why would you do that when we can
Alexis Zahner (03:51.415)
Hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (04:08.722)
we could be more productive. And the irony being, I think it really is quite a counter intuitive point for us to understand is that the spacious mode also gives rise to higher productivity. think it's something that leaders are really grappling with right now. see, you know, a number of countries around the world where productivity really is a big pressing issue at this moment. And yet we're still sort of leaning on these old modalities of like, just do more somehow, do more with less, do more with less. And I think it's...
really interesting to think of these different options available to us as individuals. We're going to delve deeper into this concept of the of the spacious mode shortly, Megan, but I know some of your research also touches on mindfulness, which is a topic a lot of our listeners are very much interested in. There was kind of historically, I think quite a lot of pushback against mindfulness in the workplace, sort of seen more as a...
sort of a woo woo thing or perhaps a bit spiritual, you what role does that have for our sort of careers as well? What do you think is the power of mindfulness for leaders and does that actually connect back into that productivity question as well?
So mindfulness is something that has been, had a little bit of poor press as you say. I think that's the two main reasons. One is there's a misunderstanding around what mindfulness means. I mean, if you go into a bookshop, there'll be a massive bookcase on mindfulness and it will have everything from mindful eating to mindful.
dog walking to mindful knitting. It'll have absolutely everything. You've got mindful bath salts, for goodness sake. So there is a very blurry understanding of what we mean in mindfulness. And of course, that means it's not taken seriously in the doing world of the corporate environment that wants to seek credibility. Also, just to say that one of the problems as well with mindfulness in the workplace is that it has
Megan (06:43.903)
historically focused primarily on individual mindfulness. So how can you look after your mental health? Meanwhile, we'll create a completely toxic environment and we'll work the hell out of you, but it's your responsibility to be mindful and then we'll all be fine. So there's been this kind of sticking plaster approach, which also means that it hasn't really hit home the value of it in the corporate world.
Alexis Zahner (07:02.371)
Yeah, yeah.
Megan (07:13.439)
In my research with Michael Chaskelson, we look at mindfulness as our capacity to create some space in our mind where we can choose our response. mindfulness, yes, mindfulness is our capacity to pay attention in the present moment. It's our capacity for something that we call meta awareness. So we're able to know what we're thinking and what we're feeling, what we're sensing.
Megan (07:41.875)
in this present moment and what that allows us to do when we're all so curious and when we're also allowing our current experience to be as it is when we've got those three kind of things present our research showed that it creates this little space for people so when we're looking at things like habit change
You can't change any habit unless you notice what you're doing in the moment that you're about to do it. So no habit change can happen unless you spot that you're about to do what you've always done and then choose something different. And that's what mindfulness gives us the capacity to do it. It gives us the capacity to go, hang on a second. Let me just pause. Let me think about this bit. I'm going to choose to do something different. That is at the...
Alexis Zahner (08:14.777)
Mm-hmm.
Alexis Zahner (08:22.787)
Hmm.
Megan (08:35.785)
utter heart of all leadership development processes. It's at the heart of our capacity to build successful relationships. It's at the heart of our ability to be creative, but also to make wise strategic decisions. So that space in our mind where we consider and we choose rather than go on autopilot is at the heart of why it's so valuable in the workplace. But that's not a common understanding.
Alexis Zahner (08:40.899)
Hmm.
Megan (09:03.657)
of mindfulness, as I said, there's a sort of blurriness about it that doesn't help.
Alexis Zahner (09:10.349)
It's an interesting point, Megan, because I feel mindfulness much like the word well-being in organizations. People seem to think it's something that you do. It's not necessarily an outcome of other things that you do, if that makes sense. we, Sally and I so often talk with organizational leaders around how do we create a workplace of well-being? it's like, well,
Well-being is an outcome of the right systems in place to promote human beings flourishing in the workplace. That well-being is an outcome. And I feel like we hear mindfulness spoken about a little bit in that way as well. Like how do we just use mindfulness in our organization as something to drive outcomes? But I think in the same way, mindfulness is something we move towards.
as a trait like way of being that kind of to me feels like how you've explained it here. It's something that with intention and practice over time, we actually build into a way of being. Does that feel like it kind of resonates for you and what you're seeing in the research as well?
Megan (10:11.445)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and if you go back to these ideas of doing in spacious mode, of course, we really like to do stuff. We like to and you know, there's no difference there in terms of mindfulness. It's right. Okay, how do we do that? What do I have to do in order to create this outcome? And you know, this part
We do.
Alexis Zahner (10:28.047)
How do we do it? Yeah.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (10:28.37)
Yeah. How can I execute on mindfulness?
Megan (10:33.927)
Exactly. you know, part of that is really relevant, valid and useful and helpful because we do know actually that you practice mindfulness. So there is a practice and a habit that can be really helpful there. But as I said, when it's when it's instrumentally understood, particularly in learning and development situations where it's like, I mean, the amount of times I've been asked to do
Megan (11:02.185)
an hour and a half on mindfulness with a corporate group on a leadership development program. Again, that's helpful if it instigates a kind of interest and a curiosity that is then taken on. But it's not going to suddenly make 24 people mindful. It is much more something that we work at each day. And it is not only a cognitive
Megan (11:29.501)
experience. It's also very much an embodied experience as well and yes that gets lost in our desire to be instrumental and efficient in our mindfulness practice.
Alexis Zahner (11:35.512)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (11:44.043)
It's interesting, isn't it? Because I feel as well the idea sort of of concepts like rest and spaciousness, as you've mentioned, they're also being kind of weaponized in that way in the workplace, because we know that when we can be in those states, we can come become more productive as a result. So we're almost trying to force ourselves into those states as a way of being more productive rather than just to be in those states.
Megan (12:10.615)
There's a bit of an irony, well, more than a bit of an irony, in both my mindfulness research and my research on spaciousness. you, in order to be heard and understood, these ideas need to land credibly inside systems that are pretty much obsessed with productivity and a very narrow view of that. So,
Megan (12:38.925)
part of what we're doing in our research on spaciousness and with mindfulness really, but especially recently, is to come up with a language that's acceptable, that's credible, that's understood inside systems that are very much of the doing mode. So it's, the problem is, is if you go too far with that, yeah, it gets very quickly turned into the next instrumental tool.
Megan (13:07.425)
that's going to be rolled out. You can hear the language, rolled out and cascaded in the next development programme. ironically, that's where people's heads go to when there isn't space to just pause and experience, you know, and really reflect on the kind of things that we're talking about. So it's this rush, rush, rush. And as a researcher, I'm...
Megan (13:36.951)
playing this game, suppose, of kind of meeting a system and using credible language, but also making sure that the whole idea doesn't suddenly run away and become yet another thing that we do.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (13:54.886)
It's such a tough one, isn't it, Megan? Because I think we are so often we end up with quite a diluted concept at the end because we've had to of repackage and repackage and sort of squish it into a form that is actually sort of tolerated when I think it's quite some magic to be able to find that sort of balance of retaining the essence of what the spaciousness and spacious thinking. I think this is the moment in the conversation where we really need to hold some space for that because I'd love to understand
Megan (18:36.525)
So just before I answer that with a nice neat definition for everybody, I would like to just pause and ask the people that are listening to just take a moment and recall a time when they experienced a sense of spaciousness. So I'd love to ask both of you actually. So just pause and you know.
Alexis Zahner (19:01.766)
Hmm.
Megan (19:02.679)
doesn't have to be something out of this world. I'm not talking about anything massive, but just an experience when you had a sense of more spaciousness than normal, put it that way. I wonder what occasions or what that experience was like. I'd love to hear just a couple of things from you and I'd love the listeners to be thinking about this for themselves as well.
Alexis Zahner (19:14.052)
Hmm. Hmm.
Alexis Zahner (19:30.266)
Yeah, it's a great question. I think the last time for me where I experienced spaciousness would have been maybe a few days ago on the weekend when I was enjoying a walk at sunset down at the beach. So for me, I think it often is in the moments where I'm doing a lot less and I'm in an environment that sort of gets me out of the four walls of my office and off a screen where I can sort of feel the expansiveness of nature and things like that around me as well. So I think that's probably the last time for me. What about you, Sal?
Sally Clarke (she/her) (20:08.338)
It's such a great question. The one that brings to mind is actually quite similar to your legs. And that was a few weeks ago, I was walking here on the surf coast and I saw whales out in the ocean and I had this immediate sense of kind of an awareness of the height of the cliffs and the depth of the water and this sort of zooming out experience in my body that made me feel both small and special at the same time. It was a really...
Alexis Zahner (20:34.267)
Hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (20:37.066)
really lovely, very in the moment sort of experience and quite visceral in my body. That would be the last time that I experienced I think that's sent so profoundly for certain.
Megan (20:46.855)
I think I'm just going to have to move to Australia, aren't I? It just sounds so lovely. So very specifically in our research, we've always asked people just to consider their own experience. And this is another irony in the research is that as soon as you give somebody a definition, it already narrows there.
Alexis Zahner (20:50.226)
Have we sold you?
Megan (21:16.621)
perspective and their experience because it's like, okay, how can I fit to Megan's expert definition on what spaciousness is? And actually the more valuable work really genuinely is in inviting others to consider, what does it mean for you? What opens up space? What role does it have in your life? And how might you, if you need to, how might you invite a bit more of that in?
Megan (21:42.669)
Having said that, of course, we've, you know, we've asked hundreds of people now about their experiences of spaciousness. There's a few things that crop up very frequently. One is it's an expansive, as you mentioned, it's expansive awareness. When we're focused on our to-do list, we tend to have a narrow attention on a particular thing. And, you know, it's it's instrumental. We see the goal is separate to ourselves.
Megan (22:11.199)
and it's something that we do. In the spacious mode, we are much more open and aware. We're looking up, we're looking around. And we're also, rather than seeing things as separate and us as separate, we're paying attention to interdependencies, interrelationships, emergence systems. So rather than seeing the world as static and fixed, we're seeing the world in flow.
Megan (22:41.195)
So we are actually seeing that. And of course, when we see the world in that way, we make very different choices about how to be and how to behave in it and how to act in it than when we're kind of seeing ourselves as separate and moving things around a chessboard. So there's this expansiveness. There's something around interrelationships, interconnections. There's something around being unhurried. So...
Megan (23:10.445)
A lot of our lives, I speak for myself, I spend a lot of my life kind of thinking, somewhere in my narrative brain, there's a little voice saying, oh, I must, oh, I should, oh, I need to, oh, I can't, I have to, you know, there's constantly something going on. And in the expansive mode, that pauses. So we don't, we're not.
grasping for what's coming next. We are very here and present in this moment. And we have an attitude of openness and curiosity. So there's this sort of looking for, but not grasping for, but being open to possibilities and insight. So that's the spacious mode. And as you can imagine, it is experienced in very different ways.
Megan (24:02.891)
And it leads to action when we then turn to the doing mode. We tend to do different things than we would if we'd been attending and experiencing the world in that mode only.
Alexis Zahner (24:15.834)
Hmm. An interesting point that you mentioned there, Megan, was this idea of the sort of interconnectedness of things around us. For me, I really didn't come to concepts like mindfulness until my mid to late twenties and really from a place of need, from a place of trying to explain things like grief and dissatisfaction in my life. And prior to that, I would have considered myself a pretty selfish person, but I
and didn't have the hindsight to really see that until after I'd had these experiences. And I can honestly say that now I feel like I have a capacity to more deeply care for other people and experience empathy at a deeper level than I did previously. And I think it is for me, part of this feeling of the interconnectedness to everything around me and not just other human beings, but, know, in Sally's example with the whales in the ocean,
we're so fortunate to have those experiences and think, wow, like we're sharing this earth with creatures in such an incredible and magnificent way. And I think for me, that was one of the most profound.
opportunities gifted to me through like a practice of mindfulness or the experience of spaciousness and to link that to an organization, I think your decisions around your team and your relationships and even the vision of a company gets drastically different when you have this kind of metacognitive viewpoint. Would you say that that's the experience that you see with some of the leaders you maybe work with as well?
Megan (25:50.231)
Mm.
Megan (25:55.693)
Yeah, think, you know, take the example of, I don't know, emotional intelligence. you know, emotional intelligence and empathy gets taught and very often in business schools, gets taught as a, you know, this helps productivity. You know, you must empathise. This is how you do. And it's good for business. that, you know, that has a play. Look, that
Megan (26:23.531)
has a place, but you can see how that is framing the world in that doing mode. It's such an instrumental way of doing things and looking at things. In the spacious mode, it's kind of like a no-brainer. Rather than thinking, have to now do this EQ empathy thing in order to get productivity, in the spacious mode,
Sally Clarke (she/her) (26:34.86)
Mm. Mm.
Megan (26:49.897)
it becomes very apparent that how we show up is affecting the other person's voice, how they are showing us is affecting ourselves. We're much more attuned to how connected we are. And therefore it sort of becomes slightly inevitable that we care more because we see it. And so kind of with this research, we're trying to, you know, without, you know, without making it
Sally Clarke (she/her) (26:58.034)
Mmm.
Alexis Zahner (27:12.27)
Absolutely.
Megan (27:18.637)
a bit confusing for people. This is the utter fundamental nature of how we encounter and see the world. In the educational academic world, it's our ontology. It's the way that we see the world around us. And that then infuses everything that we do. And we have come to see the world in a particular way.
Alexis Zahner (27:29.222)
Mmm.
Megan (27:44.991)
And whilst we can then try and shift things in the same mode, what we're trying to do is question the very way that we're paying attention in the first place, if that makes sense.
Alexis Zahner (27:56.066)
Hmm, it does make so much sense.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (27:59.314)
Absolutely. And it reminds me of, I think there's just so many sort of interconnected components to it from a psychology perspective, from a sociology perspective, and certainly from a leadership development perspective. And just one thing that I'm thinking, Megan, is this kind of, a lot of what we're taught is, and not everyone, if you're listening, you can't see me, my palms facing down and my fingers clenched, it's this really sort of controlling model and this clenching, this tightening, this gripping.
Alexis Zahner (28:10.77)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (28:25.67)
and
Sally Clarke (she/her) (28:28.11)
in order to control and to sort of squeeze out an outcome. And what I feel like with spaciousness is this flipping of the palms up so that our palms are open, our hands are relaxed and we're in a receptive mode. Does that resonate for you in terms of that kind of, you know, almost a visualisation of what that shift is like and what that gives rise to?
Alexis Zahner (28:38.427)
Hmm.
Megan (28:48.949)
Yes, that's a nice metaphor. This desire to control and predict leads us into a place of anxiety very often. And when we're anxious, it's very difficult to have expansive, spacious thinking. Having said that, I wouldn't want anybody to get the impression that this spaciousness is kind of...
Sally Clarke (she/her) (29:00.721)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (29:00.902)
Hmm.
Megan (29:10.581)
lovely and, you know, rosy and with slightly soft edges and this is a, you know, beautiful place to be. There are very good reasons why most of us are avoiding the spacious mode. So we are, you know, as somebody in our research just put it so well, somebody said, if you open up space, you let doubt in. And who wants that? Which I thought was just a fabulous quote.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (29:15.452)
hehe
Alexis Zahner (29:22.971)
Mm-hmm.
Alexis Zahner (29:36.878)
Hmm.
Megan (29:38.809)
and is appropriate in our workplaces and our teams. If we pause and we look up and we look around, we tend to be a hop, skip and a jump away from some quite serious questions. invites us to go, so what are we doing? Why are we doing it? What mistakes have we made in the past? What courage do I now need to alter things because I'm facing up to what's happening?
Alexis Zahner (29:52.271)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (29:56.644)
Yeah. Yep.
Alexis Zahner (30:06.981)
Yep.
Megan (30:07.085)
Can't I control? What will I never control? So these very fundamental philosophical questions actually are very close when we open up the spaciousness mode. for that very reason, many of us spend a lot of time just being as busy as possible. So then we don't have to actually consider them.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (30:10.588)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (30:24.614)
Yep.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (30:27.171)
Relatable, yeah.
Alexis Zahner (30:27.832)
Yeah, I totally relate to that, Megan, because I think for me, especially as a young leader, the more I could hurry in the busier I was, the less time I had to think about whether or not what I was doing was even useful, whether I was even useful, whether I was any bloody good at this or not. And it's much easier to avoid that discomfort just by living life at a sprint, which is what I did until my early 30s. Sal has a burnout story of her own from doing living
life of the sprint as well. So I think for many of us, it's kind of the lesser of two evils, if that makes sense. But I'd love to ask a question because I do feel like I genuinely have experienced a sort of before and after of this experience. And I'm sure there are a lot of leaders now who are listening and conceptually are grasping what we're saying, but thinking to themselves, well, what the heck does that mean? Like, how do I go about creating spaciousness? Can you help us?
Megan with that, where do we begin if this is something that we want to invite into our lives and into our leadership?
Megan (31:35.703)
Yeah. So the very first thing to say is that nothing happens unless there's a level of awareness that there are these different modes of attention in the first place. So the very first thing and the thing that we're really aiming at with our research is to allow people to notice the busyness pattern, to notice the obsession with doing.
Alexis Zahner (31:43.536)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Megan (31:58.635)
to realise what kind of else is there and what else is possible and what they might be missing with the spacious mode and to give it language. So to give it language that's credible enough to survive in the corporate settings. So that's the very first thing is like, pause, what's happening here. And very often that, as I said, that is quite a scary question. So it can be quite helpful to have somebody else help you.
with that. But in our research, again, with full irony acknowledged about the spacious and the doing mode, we've come up with an acronym that spells space, which is for those people saying, okay, Megan, enough of this, what do I do? What do I have to do to create space? So we have got some of that. So do I. do I. So in, you know, we
Sally Clarke (she/her) (32:36.178)
You
Alexis Zahner (32:41.399)
Yes, this is so us. We love an acronym.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (32:42.95)
you
Megan (32:51.521)
These are some of the things that have come up again in our research. So S stands for safety. So I guess this is particularly relevant, you know, in our team setting at work, but also from an individual perspective. When we feel unsafe, we narrow our perceptions. So our attention goes much more narrow. So how do we create a sense of safety at work? That's most of my research the last 10 years is in something called Speaking Truth to Power.
Alexis Zahner (32:55.558)
Mm-hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (32:58.619)
Hmm.
Megan (33:21.481)
And it's how we examine things like power and status and authority and how that creates situations where we're often quite fearful and then we can't enter this spacious mode. So there are and please do ask me some more detail in some of these, but I'll briefly go over the acronym. So there's stuff around physical, personal, mental safety. P stands for people. So as I've mentioned a couple of times,
When we open up space, can be a little bit disorientating, bit anxiety provoking, but there are people that can help us. We all know people that are somehow able to help us to pause, look up, look around in a way that we can still be engaged. And in the workplace, of course, that might be facilitators, coaches, mentors, therapists, colleagues, friends. So these people in our lives that just help us.
get into this sort of more spacious mode. Make sure we hang around with them. Try not to hang around so much, especially on social media with groups that narrow our attention. So that's the people one. A stands for attention. We can train this, you'll know as mindfulness practitioners, there is a lot we can do with training our attention and yet we don't. We leave it up to chance, which is still one of the most remarkable things I can.
I just don't understand why we all leave our attention up to chance. But there's also things in that block, which is around metrics. You know, what do we measure? Because what we measure tends to sort of shine a torch light in a particular direction and then everyone's attention goes there. So we need to examine, know, what are we measuring? What are we setting for ourselves? Is that the wisest thing?
Alexis Zahner (34:50.532)
Right? Yeah.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (34:51.762)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (35:01.083)
Okay.
Hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (35:05.202)
Mm.
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (35:11.628)
Hmm.
Megan (35:15.853)
to connect with success. And the final thing in attention is quite a lot of attention. There's things that we call speed bumps. So in a very packed and busy day, what are the small little speed bumps that we can initiate, whether they're a quick walk outside, whether they're a stare out the window, if you don't even have time to walk outside, that little occasions that are just enough.
Megan (35:43.265)
to pause and help us to reorientate. C stands for conflict, which is a really interesting one. And by this, we don't mean relationship conflict. We mean dissonance. So something that kind of wakes us up because it's different. And that could be the environment. That could be a person. That could be reading a book. That could be suddenly going on a sabbatical or spending time with a customer or a stakeholder that's enough for us to kind of go,
Megan (36:13.197)
hang on a second. Things are a little bit different than I had experienced in my narrow perspective. And the final one is environment. As you mentioned in your examples earlier on, the physical environment has a huge impact on the way that we think and the way that we feel. And so we are still remarkably uncreative at work in terms of where and how we run our meetings.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (36:33.766)
Hmm.
Megan (36:42.817)
So the difference, for example, between sitting in our office, if we're lucky enough to have one, and having a conversation versus going for a walk outside for 45 minutes and having the conversation with somebody that way. The difference it makes between face-to-face or virtual. All these little decisions around environment affect the conversation that we have and affect the attention that we can give it. And yet, as I said, ironically, we don't.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (36:43.473)
Mm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (37:07.068)
Mm.
Megan (37:12.361)
actually pay attention much to the environment that we're in. So those are five things that we've written about in much more kind of detail with examples, but they are some stuff that I hope will keep those of us that are wanting to do stuff busy for a little while.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (37:30.576)
It's so powerful, Megan, and thank you so much for sharing some very practical ways of starting to sort of lean into this more spacious way of thinking. And one through line that I heard there was really this sort of just really shifting our perspective, seeking to shift our perspective to change it to like, as you said, whether it's different environments, different people, just really making sure that we're not getting stuck in a bubble. And I do think it's also a little bit this
because of the busyness which can so easily give rise to a sense of chronic stress, as you mentioned, that kind of narrowing of vision, we get sort of stuck in a rut. We don't even see it anymore because we're so sort of in that mode. And I think this is a real call to action for all of us to really reevaluate how we are, you know, creating perspective for ourselves, the kind of conversations we're having, where we're putting ourselves in the way of different thinking, different ideas, different places, different people.
So I really appreciate that very sort of strong, I think, call to action for all of us. How are we looking after our attention? How are we taking ownership of it, as you alluded to as well? Because I think all too often it's kind of just left up to devices, more or less, to drive that. So some really powerful insights there. I'm so excited for your book to eventuate, but also to sort of, you know,
delve more deeply into the articles, I think, to understand what we can be doing as individuals and as teams. Because one thing I wanted to put to you is I just get the sense also that so many of the leadership capacities that people are talking about as being sort of essential for the future of work, I wonder if they're actually, know, spacious thinking becomes essential in this context, that those leaders who are really stuck in that busyness and doing mode are actually gonna get left behind. And I'm curious if there's any...
research that you've done or seen that sort of speaks to that need, that imperative, as it were, for spacious thinking for, you know, sort of meet the future of work.
Megan (39:27.541)
Yeah, and it would be unsurprising to say that I completely agree with you there that the space, given that this is my research, that spaciousness is going to become more and more in the spotlight and more and more essential. And there is research, again, watch this, no joke, watch this space without a pun intended. We're looking at that at the moment. Our research doesn't examine that.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (39:42.863)
Mmm.
Megan (39:56.097)
Certainly quantitatively, examines it qualitatively more at the moment. There is lots of research that indicates, you know, pausing benefits things like creativity, levels of innovation and also relational strength. So there's stuff around pausing. There's also work that, you know, as you slow down, you can go faster. You know, you'll know these sorts of phrases as well. But
Sally Clarke (she/her) (40:23.282)
Mmm.
Megan (40:24.845)
You know, we're in a world where the pace, particularly in technology, is at a level that we, you know, we will, we can't keep up actually. We can't possibly keep up at that level. And we shouldn't be trying to because then we're just busy fools. We wrote an article last year on AI and it was about
Alexis Zahner (40:44.174)
Hmm. Yeah.
Megan (40:54.603)
the urgent need to be able to just step back into that spacious attention and say, okay, so what are we trying to do with AI? What is that purpose here? What does it, and that demands us to consider what it means to be human. So what is it to live life? What is it to flourish in life as a human being? And to me that,
Alexis Zahner (41:01.125)
Hmm.
Alexis Zahner (41:06.694)
Mm-hmm.
Alexis Zahner (41:14.65)
Hmm.
Megan (41:23.881)
necessarily involves aspects of creativity, of imagination, of relationship. And therefore that needs to have consequences on, you know, so therefore what role does AI have in our lives? Perhaps, you know, arguably don't take away the bits that are making us human, you know, are making us flourish. Rather create ease.
Alexis Zahner (41:29.751)
Hmm.
Alexis Zahner (41:38.436)
Hmm.
Alexis Zahner (41:47.258)
Hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (41:47.409)
you
Megan (41:53.139)
in our doing mode where we can create space to be and allow ourselves to be more human. So I think, you know, that the spacious mode may well become more and more urgent and examined over the next few years. I sincerely hope it will. have now is the time to make wise choices and we don't make wise choices if we are under
Alexis Zahner (42:08.53)
Hmm.
Alexis Zahner (42:19.505)
Yeah.
Megan (42:22.733)
and trying to keep up and stressed and anxious. So therefore it has to have a big role, I think.
Alexis Zahner (42:31.406)
I agree with you there, Megan, and the pace of technology, especially in the world of work right now does feel dizzying. And I think when we speak about AI, it's almost framing it as though what do we need to do as human beings to stay ahead of it, to make sure that we're still relevant in our jobs. know certainly in creative industries, that's how a lot of people are feeling is what is the human USP? You know, when we are now
fighting for our job against something that can compute trillions of times faster than we can. So it's an interesting call to action that you've given us there too, rather than...
stay in that kind of rushing river to sort of step out and have a look at it from a different perspective. And I wonder if you might leave our listeners with a piece of parting advice, Megan, for those who maybe are feeling really overwhelmed, both at work or in the world at large right now. What's something we can do differently when we wake up tomorrow to invite more spaciousness into our life?
Megan (43:44.875)
Gosh, I could answer that in so many different ways. I'll just revert back to my mindfulness research. In the mindfulness research, again, I'm going to do an acronym. We like our acronyms. We call it AIM. A stands for allowing. So that's that first bit where, you know, and it's quite a, it's such a fundamental and can be quite a scary step when we step back and kind of go, you know what, actually, I don't feel like I'm coping.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (43:48.444)
you
Sally Clarke (she/her) (43:56.913)
Hey.
Alexis Zahner (44:01.722)
Hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (44:09.788)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (44:10.066)
and
Megan (44:13.685)
You know what, I'm close to burnout. I'm feeling really stressed that allowing that capacity to go, okay, here it is. This, it is what it is. Let me just look at it. Let me acknowledge it. Let me allow it to be here. Let me know that I'm not alone because there's so many of us feeling that way. that's the, know, gosh, that's the very first thing.
Alexis Zahner (44:14.418)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (44:18.88)
Yeah.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (44:33.457)
Mm.
Megan (44:40.429)
I in AIM stands for inquiry. So that I think often is done really well with someone, you know, who is somebody that you might just, if you think that you could do with some more space, who is somebody in your life that actually will sit down with you and allow you that space to discover and explore and also will be with you? Because as I said, it can be a little bit unsettling.
And the is for meta awareness. So it's our ability to notice what we are experiencing. And so for people waking up tomorrow, you know, to go to the very, very practical and pragmatic, see whether you can cut down the noise. So if you're one of these people that, and I will put my hand up to say that, you know, with all my mindfulness research, I can be one of these people that looks at their phone as soon as they wake up or very shortly afterwards.
and immediately fills, you know, I fill my mind with noise from the second that I wake up. And then I, you know, I interact with emails, with the news, with WhatsApp, with whatever it might be. I think one of the really key things we could do for ourselves as a very small first step.
is to commit in a small way to reduce the noise. So whether that means don't look at your phone straight away, God have breakfast first for goodness sake. Look out the window or have a little walk or whatever it might be just to have a walk without a podcast or apart from this one obviously. reduce the noise is a sort of pragmatic thing that I'll come out with after.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (46:12.006)
Mm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (46:23.826)
Hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (46:29.283)
Ha ha ha!
Sally Clarke (she/her) (46:36.922)
Amazing. Aim, space and reduce the noise. In addition to so many other amazing messages that you've shared with us, Megan, I do feel personally very validated because just before we started, I was telling Lex that I have, as of yesterday, reinstigated my flight mode until after breakfast policy in my morning routine after noticing very similarly that it was kind of just...
Alexis Zahner (46:59.378)
That's a good one.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (47:00.912)
Yeah, so definitely a really great one for all of us. There's so much we can do and you've given us so many really beautiful, I think like inspiring ways, but also practical ways to start to integrate this into our lives and our leadership. Megan, thank you so much for being with us on We Are Human Leaders today. It's been a true delight.
Alexis Zahner (47:09.734)
Mm. Mm
Megan (47:20.306)
absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me.
As Human Leaders we’re seeking to lead better, living truer, and being the change we want to see in the world. This is how we recreate workplaces, and the world into a place where people flourish and thrive. Human first, leader second. Thanks for listening to the episode!
