We suffer from too many solutions and too little understanding. Can we refrain from providing a solution before a problem is truly understood?

It’s understandable, of course. Leaders are expected to know what to do. When challenges arise, you are looked to for leadership. What now? This moment has tension and anxiety and expectation.

Much of what is written on leadership offers a variety of solutions to every sort of problem. A Google search of leadership reading material offers several worthy suggestions. Beyond this, contemporary leadership discourse is full with lists and easy steps and templates for action. Rarely are we advised to cultivate attentive presence, endure the tension of the uncertain moment, and allow the wisdom of understanding to gather.

Here’s a suggestion that has the power to be transformative: wait to understand before acting. There are very few situations that require immediate action.

Waiting in readiness to understand requires courage. While the chorus of demands rises in volume, you’ll need to stand fast: allowing information and intelligence to gather. The moment is tense. You feel the pull to act while you wait.

Choosing to a focus on understanding requires leadership presence. We choose to let the intelligence in a situation along with the demands and pressures of the moment to inform us. We can be awake and allow our hearts to be open. We allow the details and urgency of a challenge or problem touch us. We feel the complex interrelationship of everyone involved. Then with full heart, and our best intelligence, we act.

Taking this time to truly lead requires courage in our age of high-speed hyper connectivity. But in a world too full with solutions, we may stand out as we act with wisdom.