We all know, intuitively, that patience leads to better outcomes more often than impatience.
Yet in a fast-paced, complex environment, it’s one of the hardest qualities to hold onto. When everything feels urgent, patience can seem like hesitation.
But in leadership, especially as teams and systems scale, patience is often what separates a wise decision from a reactive one. Impatience promises speed but usually costs clarity.
It pushes us to jump to conclusions about people, projects, and performance before outcomes have had a chance to emerge. In complex work, cause and effect aren’t always visible. To rush to judgment is to risk mistaking an unfolding process for a failure. Research backs this up.
A study on patience in organisations by Krahnke and Cooperrider (2014) argues that patience is often underestimated at work, yet essential for emotional self-regulation and collaboration, what they call “taking time for patience in organisations.”
The ICMA Career Compass describes patience as “a leadership virtue” that allows us to “suspend judgment long enough to learn something new.”
And leadership researchers such as Gino and Staats (2015) note that deliberate pauses in decision-making improve accuracy and foster learning in uncertain environments. Patience isn’t passivity. It’s the capacity to stay present when results are uncertain.
It’s what allows fairness, trust, and growth to take root. If happiness at work begins with how we meet difficulty, then patience is where that work starts. Until next time,
Dermot
The Messy Middle. ✉️ Enjoying The Messy Middle?
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