“When we awaken to our own agency, we participate in the unfolding of something larger.”
John O’Donohue
Emerging Insights, 18 November 2025
Leadership as Stewardship: An Invitation to Look a Little Closer
We often think of leadership as making decisions, hitting targets, and staying in control.
But look a little closer and you can see the world shifting faster than any plan can keep up. The people we lead are feeling it too. They are juggling moving priorities, sudden changes, and pressures that sit beneath the surface. Their energy shifts, their focus wavers, and their confidence can falter under strain.
How they show up directly affects the organisation’s ability to adapt, perform, and find its way through uncertainty.
In moments like these, what people need isn’t tighter rules or more direction. They need a leader who notices what is already trying to grow. Someone who creates space for potential to emerge and respects the agency others bring into the room.
This piece invites you to pause, watch closely, and explore what it might mean to lead with care and attention rather than control.
Decisions to make. Targets to hit. Results to deliver.
We often define leadership by what we do, by the action we take.
Yet beneath all the busyness there is a quieter current, like a river flowing beneath the surface of a rushing stream. It does not demand attention… but it rewards noticing.
Pause for a moment and consider this: what we hold – people, purpose, potential – is not truly ours to own. It passes through us like sunlight through leaves, shifting, changing, and transforming as it moves.
A Garden of Possibility
Imagine leadership not as control, but as care. Not as dominance, but as mindful tending, like a gardener wandering through an unruly garden, noticing what wants to grow, giving it light, space, and gentle encouragement.
A steward-leader does not clutch or command. They notice. They tend. They create conditions for what is entrusted to flourish, without forcing it to dance to a personal tune.
Within this quiet tending, agency naturally appears. When people are trusted and given space, they act, choose, and respond from their own sense of responsibility. Leadership in this sense is not about granting agency. It is about revealing it.
There is a subtle intelligence in this approach, a rhythm that underlies living systems, human and otherwise. It is the intelligence that binds us, the unseen currents that give energy to growth, connection, and resilience.
The Art of Noticing
This intelligence shows up everywhere: how people respond when they are trusted, how systems recover when given space, how communities thrive when care comes before control.
Stewardship is not about doing more or proving anything. It is about being present enough to notice what already wants to grow… and attentive enough to support it without stepping on its toes.
It asks nothing of the ego. It asks everything of awareness and attentiveness. It asks us to notice the choices we make, the influence we carry, and the space we create for others to act from their own agency.
Here is a small invitation, if you dare: this week, pick something in your team, your organisation, or your own work that is quietly trying to grow. Do not fix it. Do not direct it. Simply watch. Let it reveal what life is already moving through your world, and see what it teaches you about leading differently.
Quiet Rewards
Through this lens, the world shifts gently. Decisions are informed not only by immediate returns, but by a sense of what endures.
We notice potential rather than mere utility, life rather than transactions, relationships rather than resources.
The outcomes – resilient teams, healthy organisations, regenerative systems – are a delightful side effect, not the aim. The aim is to tune in, to notice, and to align with the flow of life that animates and connects us all.
Leadership in this way becomes less about doing and more about seeing.
It becomes a practice of attentiveness, care, and presence… a gentle invitation to notice the wisdom that is always present, the agency that is always moving, and the quiet intelligence that offers guidance if we take the time to watch it unfold.
If this resonates, consider sharing a moment of what you notice in your own context… or reach out to explore these ideas in conversation. Sometimes noticing together opens doors we cannot see alone.
What Is Quietly Growing?
This is your invitation to pause and notice.
What is quietly trying to grow in your team, your organisation, or even in your own work? 🌱
Step back. Watch. Listen. Let yourself be surprised by what appears when control loosens its grip.
It is often in these small reflections that a completely new way of leading begins to show itself.
With gratitude,
Mike
P.S. If something in this stirred a curiosity, take a moment this week to look beneath the noise of your day. Notice one thing that is already moving in a healthy direction. Let it reveal something about how life leads when we give it room.
“Mike Schwarzer’s book, ‘VANTAGE POINT: cutting through the bullsh*t of a complex world,’ serves as both the torch and compass that illuminate the way and guide us as we step into uncharted territory, embark on new explorations, and pioneer innovative paths.
”Gabriella Sprott, Director & Co-Founder @ Yardner, Australia
VANTAGE POINT’s essence lies in preparing leaders for the unfolding challenges and future developments, not just in the realm of AI, but also in all the contributing factors that shape our complex world. It’s about elevating human consciousness, transcending the limitations of our ego-minds, and giving us hope to make our world a better place.
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About Mike Schwarzer
Mike is a Transformation Facilitator and Learning Leader who is passionate about helping leaders and organisations to solve the problems that they have not been able to solve elsewhere.
He works with the underlying mental, behavioural and deeper innate dynamics that drive people’s and organisations’ thinking and actions. He creates and holds the space where they learn how to tap into their inner and outer capabilities in transformational ways and lift their perceptual abilities to see their world, its problems and emerging solutions with fresh eyes.
At the organisational level, Mike’s approach challenges the status quo and hierarchical thinking. He takes you into the world of living ‘open & adaptive’ systems and their self-organising nature. From there you will be able to create a workplace culture that naturally draws from the collective wisdom of all its people and that is highly adaptable to the changing winds of a complex world.
For more information about Mike visit www.mikeschwarzer.com.