It seems like just yesterday I was sharing my story of struggling at 2:31 a.m. to feed three newborn babies, each with different needs, all at the same time. In those stressful moments leading my family, I relied on the power of the pause and a simple ABC approach: Assess. Breathe. Control what I could control. It helped me step back and ask: What does each child need from me right now?
It has been over two years since that moment. We even had a nice stretch of nights where they slept without a peep. Just like in leadership, sometimes a team gets into a rhythm, and your job is simply to help keep that positive cycle going with encouragement and individual attention. But I think my triplets knew about this blog because they are back to their old tricks again. And, just like any team matures, my three and a half year-olds have figured out how to work together find new ways to keep me up at night.
When my triplets were babies, I was primarily responding to three individual needs under pressure. Now, I am responding to the dynamics among them, day and night. If you manage or work with a group of people, you know firsthand that one person’s reaction can affect another. Competing needs can compound and escalate each other. Fair doesn’t always mean everyone needs the same thing. And solving one person’s problem can sometimes affect the whole group.
Just this weekend, one of my kids figured out that instead of crying and running into my room in the middle of the night, they could cry and wake up a sibling, and that sibling could come running into my room to report the problem. Sometimes all three end up standing next to my bed to tell me that one of them is upset. “Fake tears,” as I sometimes call them. But to the three of them, it is a very real situation that Mom needs to deal with right away.
And this is where the leadership parallel has become even clearer to me. Earlier leadership challenges can feel like individual problem-solving: What does this employee, colleague, student, or stakeholder need? As leadership responsibility grows, the question becomes broader:
- What does this individual need?
- How is that need or reaction affecting others?
- Is being fair to one also being unfair to the others?
- When should I intervene, and when should I create space for the group to work through it?
Leadership, then, becomes less about responding to individual problems and more about understanding the dynamics around them.
Why the Pause Matters Even More Now
As complexity grows, reacting quickly can solve one issue while unintentionally creating another. For me, the ABC framework has evolved too:
- Assess: Not just what is happening? but what is happening between people?
- Breathe: Resist the pressure to immediately fix the loudest or most urgent issue.
- Control: Determine what actually requires your intervention and what doesn’t.
The pause gives you a chance to see the whole picture before deciding where you are actually needed.
With my own family, I eventually figured out that sometimes one child simply wanted to softly cry for a little while before falling back asleep. They didn’t actually need their siblings, or me, to solve anything. In fact, if everyone just stayed in bed, the loud child would eventually doze off, and everyone would go back to sleep. My job became reassuring the other two that their sibling was okay and that they didn’t need to intervene.
It’s still a complete work in progress, and every night seems to bring something new. But it has reinforced something important for me about leadership.
Leadership isn’t treating everyone identically, and it isn’t solving every problem yourself. It is understanding individual needs within a larger environment.
Sometimes leadership means stepping in. Sometimes it means asking a better question. And sometimes it means allowing people to navigate something themselves.
The problems I am experiencing today are very different from three newborns crying at 2:31 a.m. But my three children continue to teach me about managing competing needs, relationships, and dynamics.
The pause that once helped me determine which baby needed me first now helps me step back, understand the dynamics in front of me, and decide where my leadership is actually needed.
