The Architecture of Refuge

Have you ever noticed that when things get stressful, everyone in the office suddenly starts acting like they’re in a high-stakes game of The Floor is Lava?

When uncertainty spikes, whether it’s a market shift, a reorg, or just a Tuesday that feels particularly "unprecedented", people don’t usually get louder. They get quieter. They start checking their emails three times before hitting send. They wait for permission on things they’ve been doing for years. They line up for YOUR permission.

In my work, we don’t look at this as a lack of motivation or a sudden case of laziness. We see it as bracing. Your team isn't disengaged; they are spending a massive amount of their mental capacity on self-protection. They are trying to stay off the radar because the ground is feeling…shaky. Unstable. Well… Lava.

If you try to "performance manage" a bracing team, you’re just adding more heat to the fire. Instead, we use a different stance: Stewardship. Here is how you can stop gripping the wheel and start restoring the conditions where people can actually think again.

1. Close the Door on Certainty

There is a specific kind of leadership reflex where we feel like we have to be absolutely certain to keep everyone calm. Calm. Unflustered. Nonchalant. The problem is that your team has excellent "signal detection" they sense every bit of it, and then we're adding… why can't we trust you to tell us?

When your words say "everything is fine" but the reality says "everything is shifting," it creates a trust gap. Stewardship means having the restraint to be honest about the mess.

• The Move: Name what is changing and what is staying the same.

• The Result: When you're real about the terrain, people stop spending energy wondering what you’re hiding and start focusing on the work.

2. Build a Few "Refugia"

In ecology, refugia are small, protected pockets where life can persist and recover while a wildfire, drought, or other event passes by. A refuge. A moment of sanctuary. In your culture, a refugium is a space might be where the "blame hunt" is officially turned off.

If folks are reticent to be wrong, it’s because the system signal has told them that a mistake is a target. You can’t just tell them to be "brave." You have to design a container where being wrong is just useful data.

• The Move: Create a 20-minute "WIP Huddle" where the only rule is that nothing is under evaluation. It’s a space for unfinished thoughts and "off" feelings. Resist the urge to diagnosis, de-construct, or other need to fix. Just allow it some room in the world.

• The Humor: If you see a leader start to "fix" an idea during this meeting, gently remind them they’re out of bounds. This is a safe haven, not a boardroom. If it's you being reminded, have the good sense to smile and realize you're busted.

3. Clear the Decision Lanes

When people are scared, decision rights tend to collapse upward. Suddenly, you’re approving lunch orders and editing slide decks at midnight, while your team is waiting for a "yes" on a routine email. This is how a system becomes brittle.

Stewardship is about distributing agency back to the edges. People feel safer when they know exactly where their lane ends and yours begins.

• The Move: Use the Decision Lane exercise below to clarify who holds the ball. Is it easy to use? Yes. Could it be common sense? Could be. Are people struggling with simple things right now? Also, yes.

• The Goal: To make the system "legible" again so good judgment can live closer to the work.

4. Treat Silence as Data, Not a Grudge

If your meetings have become a wall of "no comments," your relational infrastructure is probably thinning out. Instead of getting frustrated with the silence, treat it as signal intelligence. It’s telling you that the "cost" of speaking up currently feels higher than the "benefit" of staying quiet.

• The Move: Ask "clean questions" that surface constraints without sounding like an interrogation. Try: "What is taking more energy than it should right now?" I tend to be a bit more blunt and the humor is disarming, "What's the dumbest thing you spent energy on this week?"

• The Repair: If you’ve been a bit of a "force substitute" lately (we all do it under pressure, you know, hustle grind, for something to be good, it has to be hard, #discipline, etc.) just name it. Making repair normal is the fastest way to bring trust back online.

Try This: The Decision Lane Audit

To help your team stop bracing and start moving, take 15 minutes to sort your current projects into these three lanes:

• Green Lane (Just Do It): Decisions the team makes entirely on their own. No "checking in" required. Behold your own stress and need to be in control may show up here and surprise you.

  
  

• Yellow Lane (Consult & Act): The team makes the call, but they gather data or insightl from you first to ensure alignment. A great place to set guardrails in motion and then trust them.

  
  

• Red Lane (Escalate & Align): Decisions that stay with you because they impact the whole system's stability.

The Stewardship Challenge: Find two things currently in your "Red Lane" and intentionally move them to "Green" this week. Watch the capacity of your team come back online when they realize they’re allowed to hold the ball again.

Resist the urge to hover while smiling and exclaiming, "Just checking in!" I'll be resisting it with you.

Beginning June 2026

An Exploration Practice for Stewarding Tension and Uncertainty

In seasons like this, leadership development is not about motivation. It is about stewardship and protecting the conditions that allow good work to happen. I’m convening a series of leadership cohorts for leaders navigating exactly that terrain. Our conversations together will explore themes such as: 

• Making high-stakes decisions without reliable playbooks 

• Reframing constraint as a design parameter rather than a deficit 

• Restoring trust inside complex systems 

• Strengthening discernment when the right path isn’t obvious 

• Designing culture for expanded capacity rather than extraction 

These are contained, cross-industry rooms. Application-based. Built for leaders who are ready to engage real tensions, not because they were sent, but because the work requires it. 

 Stay in touch by subscribing to the Field Notes. If you are leading inside sustained pressure and want a contained space to practice these concepts, reach out to talk about it.