Most leaders, once they accept the dark exists, want to illuminate everything immediately. Wide beam, full sweep, as much visibility as possible as fast as possible.
That instinct is understandable. It is also how you get lost.
We worked with a CFO transitioning into a broader executive role. Sharp, analytically precise, someone who had spent years making uncertainty legible through numbers. When the coaching began, he approached it the same way. More data, more angles, more light.
What we observed was a leader who was sweeping the beam so fast he could not actually see what it landed on. The motion itself became the work. The appearance of coverage replaced the discipline of looking.
There is a real craft to holding a flashlight in the dark. You learn to move slowly. You hold the beam still long enough to see what is actually there, not just what you expected to find. You resist pointing it only where you feel comfortable looking. And you develop a feel for when to sweep wide and when to narrow the focus to a single point.
That calibration does not come from intelligence. It comes from practice, discomfort, and someone beside you who has learned to read the dark.
The flashlight belongs to the leader. Always. But how to hold it, where to point it, and how long to stay with what it reveals, that is where the work lives.
This is part of our series: In the dark. On purpose. To be continued…