Lydia Slaby – Soft Leadership Learned the Hard Way

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“Take time to pay attention. Not everything can be solved in 15 minutes, let it take the time it takes”

“Stay in the hard and uncomfortable conversations”

Lydia Slaby learned the hard way that to live a life that is worthwhile, you need to find space for the heart and the brain. At the end of a long-list of achievements, and on a trajectory towards immense corporate success, Lydia suffered a cancer diagnosis that shifted her understanding of achievement. Moving from the corporate lawyer world, toward community based leadership, she found the beauty in letting a person be fully human, all the time.

You, or your colleagues, will go through things in your lives that forces you to change. Life is, and will be messy and humans are and will continue to be imperfect, and as leaders you need to let them be just that. You won’t always be able to receive total clarity from someone, because sometimes it just isn’t there. Instead of viewing people and workers as machines of productivity, listen, learn, and see the whole of them. This will take time, but in the end letting the emotional, intuitive instincts blend with the rational, and controlling, will create leadership that lets people be people.