Leading In The Fallow Seasons

In the rural farming area of North Suffolk, UK, where I live, this winter has seen unrelenting rain that has brought flooding across the fields, flattening and uprooting the newly planted crops, that should be showing promise about now. The bare areas are stark evidence of the flood patches from this wettest of years. And now, as the spring is slowly arriving, you would expect the tractors to be back on the land, quickly resuscitating the soggy fields and planting the spring crops.  

At last, as we enter April, the rush has begun and fields are now being ploughed, sown and harrowed at breakneck speed. The tractors are on the move from sunrise to sunset and sometimes beyond. As I walk these fields, day after day, I’ve noticed that at least two vast acreage of fields around us are still not being worked on and time is running out. What I’ve noticed over the time has been a growing anxiety for the farmers to get on with it and complete the job on all of the fields before it’s too late for this season. 

Too late for what? 

Too late to avoid a year of fallowness.

It was with a sudden flash of the painful, but blindingly obvious, that I saw the real cause of my anxiety over the dormant land. I realised it was a pure projection of my own personal anxiety about how I fear the experience of being fallow, within myself. 

How, as a leader, do I deal with the fallow periods within myself and how do I lead others through the fallow seasons at work? The nations are facing an enforced fallowness at this unprecedented time. No one can go out, no one can meet, nothing can be made that isn’t essential, little can be traded and workers are being ‘furloughed’, or simply laid off completely. 

What is a fallow period? In farming terms it’s generally an intentional, but sometimes enforced, period of not farming a field. To leave it fallow is to leave it alone. To do nothing with it. To leave it unproductive. To let it be, for a year. There are two sides to fallow. What it looks like and what it actually is. What it looks like is…. Nothing!! There is nothing happening outwardly; no one is working, no activity is seen; neglect seems an appropriate description. You could even say that the land is being lazy. The appearance is one of being ignored, uncared for, dying off, uncared for and rough. 

What is actually going on within the ‘nothing’ is something very important. Overused land, like overused people, just get increasingly unproductive. You have to do more to achieve less. The fallow years are when the land restores itself, renews, refreshes, becomes re-sourced and recoups its potential. You can see how a farmer, or a leader, might say, “we can’t afford to take this time off!!!”,  but the wise voice from the field says, “you can’t afford not to honour the fallow period, if you want to be productive for the long haul”.

So, what does it mean for a leader to lead through the fallow seasons at work? Firstly, how does the leader, lead themselves through their own fallow periods and then how does the leader lead others through such times?

The first challenge to myself, as a leader, is accepting that fallow is ok, even good. I see in myself that I have to challenge the belief that fallow is actually bad. The typical narratives are, ‘Leaders are activists’; ‘Leaders do things’; ‘Leaders make things happen’;  ‘Leaders are productive’; ‘Leaders expend energy, burn up the rubber and make the miles’.  Alongside of these beliefs is that, as a leader, I must never be caught doing nothing, never caught standing still.  Being known as reflective, intuitive, mindful, peaceful, measured and still, are not going to be seen at the top of most people’s CV’s if they want that top job. Being known as someone who can run at a pace that they can continue, isn’t as impressive as being known as a ‘top performer’.  I certainly witness this challenge and the need to value fallowness within myself.  

How do I do that?

§  I need to embrace the anxiety I feel when I’m doing nothing. I need to let the anxiety do its inner, deepening work within me, to shine a light on the roots of my own identity. Am I a human-doing, or a human-being? It sounds easy to say it, but sitting with this kind of anxiety is painful surgery, believe me. Everything within you wants to escape the silence and rush for some activity, any activity, to affirm to myself that I’m busy and therefore important. What does the fallowness reveal about our beliefs regarding ourselves and our work?  I haven’t met a truly great leader who hasn’t done deep work on themselves and these seasons open a door for all of us to learn. 

§  I need to face up to my own operating model of leadership and challenge it. Am I subtly bought in to the driven, Type A model? It’s too easy to assume that how we lead is good and how others behave isn’t as good as us. But based on what evidence? I knew a manager who thought they were friendly, but everyone experienced them as shy to the point of rudeness. I knew a leader who thought they were a brilliant team leader, but interviews with all of their team revealed that they had distanced them all. 

It is hard to look in the mirror. Very hard. Facing the bulldozer tendency in myself hasn’t been easy, but the fallow days have forced me to face up to it, because when a bulldozer no longer has anything to push forwards, then you are left with having to face your own noisy engine. 

§  I need to embrace the existential loneliness within, that the fallow seasons reveal at the heart of my leadership-self. At the very core of all our dis-ease within, is relationship, or lack of it, maybe at a very deep and formative level. When I am fallow, when the noise has had to stop, when there is no one to push/tell/motivate, then I am left with…..myself. Who I am? Me. Just me. This maybe the toughest invitation you will ever receive as a leader, but to answer it may resource you for future challenges in a way that nothing else could do. The big buildings of our cities only hold their impressive heights, because they have foundations that go incredibly deep. The ones with the shallow foundations don’t last the storms.

§  I need to allow for the fact that my doing has probably been supressing unwanted aspects of myself. Maybe I have supressed the fact that I hate my job, but I didn’t want to stop and face it; maybe I feel overwhelmed, or bored, maybe I don’t feel woman enough, or man enough; maybe I feel an imposter, who is terrified of being exposed? Maybe I always dreamt of doing something totally different (my friend is now sailing round the world), or maybe I got scooped up at University by an obscene salary and I’m now in my midlife and wondering who on earth I really am. 

Why is any of this important? Because, just like the suckers that grow at the base of plants, these unowned emotions drain us of energy and joy and resourcefulness, where being fallow allows us to release their growth potential back into our wider life. 

If we cannot see and have not experienced, the fallow seasons within ourselves, then we will not be equipped to lead others through it. We will project our own frustrations and anxieties onto our team and stir up these unnecessary emotions in them.  Projection is probably the most common behaviour practiced by leaders, but one of the least understood. When I don’t own and make friends with what difficult emotions are going on inside of me - motivations, uncomfortable feelings and beliefs - then I project them on to others. I readily see the speck in their eyes, because I have failed to look at the plank on my own.  

So, what are a few helpful tips for leading my teams during the fallow seasons in the organisation, the market or personally? 

Firstly, call it what it is. It’s a fallow period. We need to give it a name and make it ok, not shame and punish the people.  We need to make it ok by framing it in a positive way that can usher in depth and growth for the longer game. We need to talk about the challenges of rushing to create the appearance of busyness, activity and productivity.  We need to reframe this season around the law of the farm, where fallow is essential. It is a time for review, renew, refresh, re-source, stillness and fostering the deeper belief that new things will emerge when we make the space to do nothing but wait. 

Secondly, we need to focus on process, not action. Processes like, honestly reviewing the effectiveness of our team, honestly reviewing the effectiveness of our strategy, honestly reviewing everyone’s level of joy and engagement in the mission. There are other processes to look at, such as, how are we ensuring everyone is emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually topped up. Or processes like, how are we continuing as a team in way that ensures that we all, individually and together, are in a constant learning-refuelling strategy. What is everyone reading right now? What is the team reading together? How are everyone’s levels of joy and what would increase them?

Thirdly, in her book Eat Pray Love, author Elizabeth Gilbert introduces the Italian art of Dolce far niente – the sweet joy of enjoying doing absolutely nothing. Walk, smell the flowers, look at the birds. Allow your deeper self to speak to you, allow it to give you new creativity. Salman Rushdie once wrote, 

“Those who do not have the power of the story that dominates their lives – power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it and change it as times may change – truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts”

Fallowness is a leadership season that offers us the gift to get power over the story that is dominating our lives, by learning to think new thoughts, to feel new feelings, to have new perspectives, to regain new resources, in a way that the “Oh, we don’t have time for all that fallow nonsense’, brigade of leaders, never discovers.