Modulating Posture

What it looks like when a leader decides to take up less space

I serve on a nonprofit board here in McPherson. At a recent meeting, I decided to try something: speak up less.

That’s it. No dramatic intervention. No new strategy. Just a decision, on the drive over, to modulate my posture — to contribute less and listen more.

It went pretty well.

“Pretty well” shouldn’t be noteworthy. But for someone whose instinct in a meeting is to fill silence, offer a framework, or move the conversation toward resolution, choosing not to speak is its own kind of discipline. It takes more effort to hold back a thought than to share one.

Pastors are trained to be present. To notice what’s happening in a room, to name it, to guide it somewhere useful. That skill is real and it matters. But it can become a reflex that crowds out other voices — especially in a room full of people who are perfectly capable of getting there on their own. Sometimes the most helpful thing a leader does is create space by not filling it.

The meeting didn’t suffer for my restraint. Other people stepped into the pauses I would normally have occupied. Perspectives I might not have heard came through because I wasn’t already talking. The group reached its own conclusions, and they were good ones.

I don’t think every meeting calls for this. There are moments when a clear word at the right time moves things forward. But I’m learning that the instinct to contribute isn’t always the same as the call to contribute. And knowing the difference might be one of the more important leadership skills nobody teaches you.

Modulating posture. It’s a small phrase for a small adjustment. But the room noticed, even if they couldn’t name what was different. And I drove home feeling lighter than I usually do after a board meeting — which might be the clearest sign that something shifted in the right direction.