Centering
As I mature in years I am really trying to explore new things hobbies etc and a friend recommended I try pottery as an outlet to manage stress and channel my creativity.
They suggested the book Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person as a starting point.
It is not a loud book. It does not try to convince you of anything. It simply stays with you.
And the longer I sat with it, the more I found myself thinking about leadership. Not in theory, but in the day-to-day reality of holding an things together when things feel stretched.
Because that is where most of us are working now. Not in ideal conditions. In pressure.
What does it mean to be centred?
In pottery, centring is the first act. You place the clay on the wheel and bring it into balance. Hands firm, steady, patient. Too soft and it drifts. Too hard and it collapses.
You cannot rush it. You cannot fake it.
That felt uncomfortably familiar.
Leadership often asks you to do the same thing. You are holding people, performance, expectation, and constraint, all at once. And if you are not steady, the organisation starts to show it.
You see it in the small things first. Decisions take longer. Conversations lose clarity. Energy starts to scatter.
Then it builds.
So the question becomes less about what you are doing, and more about how you are holding it.
Are you centred enough to lead through it?
The organisational parallel
When an organisation is centred, you can feel it straight away.
There is a sense of direction. Not everything is perfect, but things move with intent. People understand what matters.
When it is not, it is harder to pin down, but just as obvious.
Things feel off. Teams pull slightly away from each other. Priorities shift depending on who is speaking. You spend more time managing noise than making progress.
It is rarely because people do not care. In fact, it is often the opposite. People care a great deal, but they are not aligned.
And once that happens, you start compensating. More meetings. More papers. More reassurance.
But none of that recentres the organisation.
It just masks the drift.
The discipline of steady hands
Centring is not something you declare. It is something you practise.
And it requires a level of discipline that is easy to talk about and harder to maintain.
You need clarity. Not long documents, but a shared understanding of why the organisation exists and what it is trying to do. If that is not clear, everything else starts to move.
You need honesty. A proper understanding of your financial position, your capacity, and your limits. Not the version you wish was true, but the one you are actually dealing with.
You need consistency. Decisions taken in one room need to hold in the next. If they do not, people lose trust in the direction of travel.
And you need alignment at the top. Not agreement on everything, but a shared commitment to move together once a decision is made.
None of this is complicated. But it does take effort. And it does need attention.
Because the moment you ease off, the wheel starts to wobble again.
Where we see organisations struggle
If I am honest, most of the challenge sits here.
Not in capability, but in willingness.
There is often a hesitation to apply pressure.
Leaders want to keep things comfortable. They want to avoid difficult conversations. They hope things will settle on their own.
But they rarely do.
Instead, issues sit just below the surface. People work around them. Narratives start to form. And before long, you are dealing with something far more entrenched.
Centring asks something different of you.
It asks you to be clear, even when it is uncomfortable. To address what is there, rather than what you would prefer to be there.
That might be about performance. It might be about behaviour. It might be about decisions that have been left too long.
Whatever it is, avoiding it only moves you further off centre.
Commerciality without compromise
There is a particular tension I see often,
A concern that focusing on income or commercial activity somehow shifts you away from your purpose.
I understand where that comes from. But in practice, the opposite tends to be true.
When an organisation is centred, commercial thinking becomes part of how it operates, not something separate or bolted on.
It is simply about being clear on what things cost, what they are worth, and how they are sustained.
Without that clarity, decisions become hesitant. Pricing becomes inconsistent. Opportunities are either missed or pursued for the wrong reasons.
And over time, that creates more pressure, not less.
Being centred allows you to make these decisions with confidence. Not because they are easy, but because they are grounded.
The role of the leader
At its core, this comes back to you.
Not in a grand sense, but in the way you show up each day.
Your role is not to have all the answers. It is to hold the organisation steady enough for good work to happen.
That means being consistent, especially when things are busy. It means staying calm when others are not. It means being prepared to say what needs to be said, even if it lands awkwardly.
It also means knowing when you are off centre yourself.
Because that happens. To all of us.
The work is in noticing it early, and bringing yourself back before it starts to affect everything else.
Summing up …
So it is worth asking yourself, properly and without rushing it.
Where does your organisation feel slightly off at the moment?
What are you working around rather than dealing with?
And what would it take, practically, to bring it back into line?
The thing I took from Richards’ writing is this.
Centring is not a one-off act. It is something you return to, again and again.
That feels right.
Because leadership is not about getting it perfect. It is about staying close enough to the centre that the organisation can keep moving, even when the conditions are not ideal.
And if you can hold that, steadily and without fuss, most things become possible.
