Across the African plains, a solitary cheetah moves with a grace that belies its power. Capable of astonishing velocity, a blur of muscle and momentum. And yet, it does not live in constant motion. The world’s fastest land animal is, in fact, a master of slowing down. It spends long stretches in quiet observation, gathering information, conserving strength, preparing its body and mind for the moment when action becomes necessary.
You’ve got to love Sir David Attenborough! The humble cheetah’s performance is a dance between stillness and speed that inspired this month's edition. The arrival of September brings along a season of fresh starts and renewed intentions and the cheetah’s dance made me think about the transitions I’ve been observing over the past few weeks. As humans, we too, need a period of slowing down before we accelerate.
In my LinkedIn feed, I’ve noticed people moving countries, starting new roles and launching new businesses. These transitions are the obvious ones. Equally, I’ve noticed softer transitions, in client conversations, involving a change in ambitions, values, orientation. Big or small, these transitions tend to touch on one, all of the following dimensions: identity, capacity and presence.
Identity: who you are becoming
Transitions that challenge identity force you to re-evaluate who you are and how you see yourself. You may be the expert, who is reliable, respected, credible but now, you are being asked to demonstrate your value differently. Or perhaps you’ve been recognised as the ‘doer/fixer’ and you no longer want to wear this hat. Instead you want to shape decisions, not just execute them. Identity transitions ask you to let go of an old version of yourself so that a new one can emerge.
Capacity: what you can carry
Understanding how much you can carry is central to transitions that test your capacity. Beyond your ability to handle complexity or volume, it extends to how you sit with ambiguity, how you balance your ambitions with personal responsibilities and how you manage yourself under pressure. You may be the founder/self-employed professional who expected to work hard, but underestimated how hard it would be to find clients, negotiate fees, manage cash flow or handle rejection. The demands of this new chapter exceed the bandwidth of your old one.
Presence: how you show up
Transitions that test your presence are those that illuminate how others experience you or your leadership. It requires self-awareness and a real willingness to look at how congruent your intentions and impact are. You may have been the high-performing leader previously, whose competency was never in question. Now, having moved to a new organisation in a new country, walking into the room feels different. You may have noticed yourself choosing your words carefully, waiting for permission to speak, shrinking slightly when challenged or over-explaining your decisions. Cultural cues, stakeholder expectations and pace have all changed. You are still competent, but your context is different.
Good endings that make good beginnings
These three dimensions of identity, capacity and presence tend to surface in the middle of a transition but transitions don’t begin in the middle. They begin with an ending. And endings are rarely clean. John Whittington, in his work on systems, argues that organisations are notorious for handling endings rather clumsily. A lot of energy is spent on recruitment and new joiners, but when it comes to resignations or exits, they choose to rush, avoid, minimise or bypass them altogether. We often do the same in our personal lives, we lead into a new chapter without acknowledging what has actually ended.
This is where the act of slowing down comes in.
Slowing down feels uncomfortable. It interrupts momentum and exposes uncertainty. It prevents us from hiding behind the ‘busyness’ that protects us from asking deeper questions. It also doesn’t give our brains the same dopamine hit that action, reward or progress does. At the same time, our brains love novelty! A new beginning creates an openness and receptiveness to change and a willingness to reset ourselves in some way. But novelty without the pause misses the opportunity to acknowledge and understand how our old ways have shaped us so that we can create space for new commitments to take form.
When we think about slowing down, our natural inclination is to imagine taking a breather before a project or taking a break from work. But what I’m referring to is the act that honours an ending, where we ask ourselves: What has ended? What no longer fits? What am I carrying that I want to let go of in the next chapter?
The work of ending well is the part that most of us skip and it is the part that determines whether the next chapter begins with clarity or residue. When this work is left undone, you end up carrying old patterns into a new context.
When we take on a new venture, most of us are tempted to jump to questions around presence: how do I make a strong start? How do I prove myself? How do I show up confidently? Presence is an essential quality that matters in leadership and in life. However, I’ve also learnt that presence becomes more available to you when work around identity and capacity have been tended to.
Slowing down is more than a moment of rest. It’s a way of clearing the soil before you plant something new. Slowing down is about acknowledging what has really ended, even if you didn’t choose it. It’s about letting go of an old identity, especially those parts that kept you safe. It’s about letting go of old habits that once served you, but are now limiting you. It’s about the boundaries you set around managing your energy, so that you enter the new phase with steadiness instead of strain.
This is the real act of slowing down. The ending that makes a new beginning possible.
What do you need to clear, close or complete so that the next chapter doesn’t need to fight for space?
