Declutter Your Leadership: Essential Skills for 2025
I spent the first weeks of January staring at my closets.
Not organizing them. Just staring. Every time I thought about tackling the mess inside, my brain would immediately start spinning:
Where would I even begin? What if I needed something I got rid of? How long would this take? What if I pulled everything out and then ran out of energy halfway through? The mental and emotional weight of making thousands of decisions about what to keep and what to let go felt crushing. And don't even get me started on the physical labor of pulling out all that heavy stuff.
The closets stayed closed.
Until I remembered that my word for 2025 is "Support."
Here's what transformed my decluttering from overwhelming to achievable: I got help. Working with a professional organizer meant I could focus purely on making decisions while they handled the physical logistics. They explained the process, created sorting systems, and literally lifted the weight off my shoulders. Now I have a clear sense of what resources I actually have and what I truly need – a clarity that's not just about physical items, but about where to focus my energy for maximum impact. When you can see what you have, you can leverage it more strategically. When you know what you need, you can be more intentional about acquiring it.
“When you can see what you have, you can leverage it more strategically. When you know what you need, you can be more intentional about acquiring it.”
This experience got me thinking about leadership as we enter 2025. Many of us are carrying around leadership "closets" full of practices, mindsets, and behaviors that we've accumulated over the years. Some of these served us well in the past but may not be what we need for the challenges ahead. Others might be weighing us down without us even realizing it.
Just as I wrote in a previous article about swimming through uncertainty, we need to "build skills and practices that will serve us for years to come, regardless of any single election's outcome." But before we can build new skills, we might need to create some space by letting go of what no longer serves us.
This is especially crucial now. The year ahead promises to be complex and demanding for leaders at every level. Whether you're navigating organizational changes, balancing competing priorities, or trying to maintain team engagement in an increasingly challenging environment, the ability to discern what's essential from what's excess will be critical.
Like tackling an overwhelming closet, sometimes the hardest part is knowing where to start. Let's break down three essential skills that leaders need to develop or strengthen in 2025, and explore what you might need to let go of to make room for them.
Skill 1: Discernment – What's Worth Keeping?
When my organizer and I tackled my closets, we used a simple but powerful question: "Does this serve your life right now?" Not "might I need this someday?" or "but this was expensive!" Just: does it serve you now?
Leaders need to apply this same ruthless clarity to their practices and mindsets. This is especially crucial for those navigating new roles or expanded responsibilities. Take one of my recent clients – a newly promoted Director of Programs at a nonprofit who found herself leading a larger team for the first time. Her leadership "closet" was packed with hands-on management habits that had served her well as a direct supervisor but were now holding both her and her team back.
Just like my closet was filled with things that "might be useful someday," her mental space was cluttered with tasks she could (and should) delegate. The weight of trying to handle everything herself was exactly like my paralysis in front of those packed closets – overwhelming and ultimately unproductive.
What's Taking Up Space in Your Leadership Closet?
The need to be involved in every decision
Saying "yes" to everything because "that's what good leaders do"
Holding onto tasks that you've outgrown but feel comfortable with
The belief that asking for help means you're not capable
What Could You Make Room For?
Strategic thinking and planning
Developing your team's capabilities
Building cross-functional relationships
Actually using your vacation time
The shift from "doing it all" to "enabling others" isn't just about personal effectiveness – it's crucial for organizational success in today's complex landscape. In an era of information overload, where disinformation and clickbait compete for attention, strong discernment skills help leaders cut through the noise and make strategic decisions that truly matter. When you declutter your leadership approach, you create space to focus on what drives real impact.
Skill 2: Centered Presence - Creating Clarity Amid Chaos
You might have heard the term "non-anxious presence" in leadership discussions. While the concept is valuable, I prefer to focus on what we're building rather than what we're avoiding. That's why I talk about developing a "centered presence" – the ability to maintain stability and clarity even when everything around you feels chaotic.
According to research from the Center for Creative Leadership, one of the top challenges for mid-level managers is overcoming personal limitations and feelings of inadequacy – especially when leading in tumultuous environments. Since the pandemic, leaders have reported feeling increasingly challenged to maintain their impact while navigating remote and hybrid workplaces, shifting priorities, and constant change.
Think of it like my cluttered closet situation. When everything is in disarray, it's hard to find your footing. Every time you need something, you have to dig through layers of stuff, creating more mess and stress in the process. The same thing happens when leaders don't have a centered presence – they can get caught in a cycle of reactive decision-making, unintentionally transferring their stress and uncertainty to their teams.
What's especially challenging is that much of today's chaos is by design. The constant barrage of "urgent" demands, fear-mongering headlines, and pressure to react immediately – it's all engineered to keep us off balance. Panic and reactive scrambling is often exactly what these forces aim to produce.
Building a centered presence requires creating and protecting practices that ground you. One executive we work with maintains her centeredness through horseback riding. She is disciplined about going riding every day from 5-7pm. She works relentlessly, but not between 5-7pm, and her team knows that. This practice feeds her not only through physical movement but through building a relationship with an intuitive animal that helps her stay connected to her own intuition.
What puts you in touch with your intuitive side? For some leaders, it's yoga or meditation. For others, it's running, strength training, or simply taking a walk. The specific activity matters less than the discipline of making room for it. Whether it's 15 minutes or two hours, it's about creating and protecting time for practices that center you, whatever those practices might be.
What's Taking Up Space in Your Leadership Closet?
Reactive responses to every email marked "urgent"
Taking on your team's anxiety and stress
The belief that showing uncertainty makes you look weak
Constant availability as a measure of dedication
Making decisions from a place of fear or scarcity
What Could You Make Room For?
Thoughtful response over immediate reaction
Creating space for reflection before action
Modeling sustainable work practices
Setting clear boundaries around availability
Making decisions from a place of clarity and purpose
Daily practices that ground and center you
A centered presence isn't just about personal well-being – it's a strategic advantage in today's high-pressure business environment. When outside forces try to push organizations into reactive modes, leaders with a centered presence can help their teams stay rooted, clear about their purpose, and focused on what truly matters. This stability creates the conditions for innovation, thoughtful risk-taking, and sustainable growth, even in uncertain times.
Skill 3: Conflict Competence - Addressing What Surfaces
When you start decluttering a space, interesting things surface. Old photos that bring up memories. Items that trigger complicated emotions. Things you forgot you even had. The process inevitably brings up "stuff" that needs to be dealt with – both physical and emotional.
The same thing happens when organizations and teams start to transform. Changes in leadership practices, shifts in team dynamics, or evolving organizational priorities often surface conflicts that have been buried under layers of avoidance – that tendency to prioritize surface-level harmony over authentic engagement with differences.
Let's be clear about what we mean by conflict and conflict competence. Conflict occurs in any situation where people have different interests, principles, or feelings. It's natural and inevitable in any group of humans working together. Conflict competence is about learning the skills that allow you to handle these differences productively without having to twist yourself into a pretzel and ignore your own needs.
I've been working with a leader recently whose organization is striving to be more inclusive. While this is absolutely the right goal, leaders there feel like they're walking on eggshells. They want to be as inclusive as possible, but they're struggling with how to balance broad participation with the pressure to deliver results quickly. They're also grappling with staff expectations that "true inclusion" means everyone gets a say in every decision. While clearer organizational guidance would help, individual leaders also need the skills to navigate these complicated dynamics productively.
What's Taking Up Space in Your Leadership Closet?
Avoiding necessary but difficult conversations
Confusing politeness with genuine respect
Fear of damaging relationships by addressing issues
The belief that conflict always leads to negative outcomes
Perfectionism that prevents honest feedback
What Could You Make Room For?
Direct, respectful communication
Productive engagement with different perspectives
Early intervention in team dynamics
Building trust through authentic dialogue
Innovation sparked by constructive disagreement
Self-compassion when you make mistakes
Conflict competence isn't just about managing interpersonal dynamics – it's essential for organizations committed to creating positive change in the world. When leaders can skillfully navigate differences and create space for productive disagreement, teams become more creative, decisions get better, and organizations develop the resilience needed to stay focused on their mission even amid uncertainty. This is especially crucial for organizations working to support social infrastructure and the public good – the challenges of 2025 are complex enough without internal friction depleting our energy and resources.
From Cluttered to Capable
Just as I needed support to tackle my overwhelming closets, leaders need support to navigate these challenging times. Whether it's working with a coach, engaging with peer mentors, or joining professional communities, getting help isn't a sign of weakness – it's a strategic choice that helps you see more clearly what resources you already have and what you actually need.
The year ahead will test leaders in ways both expected and surprising. But by decluttering our leadership approach – letting go of what no longer serves us and intentionally developing these three critical skills – we can create the clarity needed to focus our energy where it matters most. When we can see what we have, we can leverage it more strategically. When we know what we need, we can be more intentional about acquiring it.
This clarity becomes our compass as we navigate the uncertainty ahead, helping us stay focused on the impact we're here to create.