What Do Great Leaders And A Full-Bodied Red Have In Common? (How To Reduce Stress & Overwhelm) By Dolly Waddell

Imagine this: you’ve been given an expensive bottle of red wine. It has a beautiful label, has been lovingly matured over many years, and is truly a wine to savour and enjoy.

Would you drink it straight from the bottle?

I’m hoping that most people reading this would answer with a resounding no. 

Drinking it straight from the bottle means you don’t get to experience the fullness and richness of the wine.

Instead, we can decant it into carafes or wine glasses to “let it breathe”.

There’s something about giving things space to breathe that allows development, maturity, and complexity.

In a leadership context, giving ourselves space to breathe – or aerate – allows all the less favourable emotions to evaporate so that we can focus on the more favourable components of our leadership and show up as our best, most extra-ordinary selves.

The benefit of aerating

When we are overwhelmed and seeking balance, having space to aerate is key. 

It’s about giving ourselves space to think – to hit pause on the treadmill. We are all running at a million miles an hour trying to lead a business, let alone the personal and home lives we’re trying to lead too! 

It is for this reason that I think coaching has become so popular in recent years – because sometimes, the best coach will step in as a great thinking partner. Or, as I would call it in this example, an aeration partner. Someone who offers us a place to be decanted, to get some air, to take a breath, and to think effectively.

This allows us to go back to our life, or the situation we are trying to manage, with a more rounded, developed perspective. It allows us to have a bigger peripheral view over our business and how we’re showing up as leaders. 

It’s also worth noting that aeration might look different for the introvert and the extrovert.

The extrovert will need aeration time that allows them to talk freely, to discharge built up stress. They will benefit from a thinking partner (or coach) who can ring fence their talking and turn it into something productive.

The introvert might need more encouragement. They will benefit from a thinking partner or coach who can ask the right questions and dig deeper to draw out the hidden depths of thought.

Doers be warned!

It can be hard as leaders to know when we are not incorporating enough thinking time into our routine.

If there is an absence of this aeration – space to think and breathe – we risk going into survival mode. We might say things like “I don't have time to think, I've got too much to do, I just need to get on with it.”

Now, I'm a doer. I know many leaders will relate to that – in a generalised sense, leaders and entrepreneurs are commonly “doers”, meaning thinking time is lower down on our priority list. 

But my business case for valuing thinking time is that if we don’t, our doing time might be compromised.

If there is not enough aeration in our routine, we might find ourselves saying things like “I’m overwhelmed, my work-life balance is off, I’m just too busy to think.”

Without adequate aeration time, we’ll constantly feel like we are chasing our tails. Too much adrenaline and cortisol in our system can create an addictive cycle that keeps us addicted to doing more, more, more. But when our adrenaline inevitably dips – which it will, because we cannot sustain a million miles an hour forever – we go into a state of feeling static and flat, and even end up burning out. 

Let your mind wander

Resting is aerating. Resting is not crashing out in front of the TV. It’s giving yourself time and space to think. I like to think of it as letting a dog off a lead to roam around wherever it likes, to follow its nose, and to explore what interests it.

When we’re not giving ourselves time to aerate, we’re essentially chaining ourselves to the same day-to-day restrictions, repeating the same cycles over and over. 

So as we move into the new year, make sure you’re setting some time aside. Think about what habits you can prioritise and what time you can carve out in your diary to give yourself the space to think. Work with a coach – someone who can act as a thinking partner and ask the right questions. See where it takes you!

Giving yourself space to aerate will allow the less favourable feelings to evaporate, meaning you can show up as your best self. And crucially, you never know what brilliant ideas you might come up with for 2024 and beyond. 

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The full episode is available to listen to here.

If you’d  benefit from having an aeration partner and working with a coach to enable your extra-ordinary leadership to shine, contact me at info@dollywaddell.com or find me on LinkedIn.

Extra-Ordinary Leaders releases new episodes every week.