Creating Space: Effective Leadership Starts with Awareness

By Ashlee Jensen, Altum Coaching Services

The day begins before you’ve had a chance to consciously decide how you want to lead.

Emails. Text messages. A missed call. A staffing issue. A compliance question. Another meeting. Before you finish one decision, another one is waiting. Somewhere along the way, you’re no longer determining your day. Your day is guiding you.

​Leadership development often focuses on giving leaders more tools. Those tools matter, but tools alone aren’t enough. Leaders also need the space to recognize what the moment is asking of them and which leadership approach will serve it best.

Often, the challenge isn’t the volume of work, or even the work itself. It’s that the space between what happens and how we respond has become increasingly small.

We move from one demand to the next without enough time to notice what’s happening within us. When space disappears, we become reactive — not because we lack experience or we aren’t capable, but because reacting requires less cognitive effort than intentionally choosing a response.

How to Start
When the pace of the day begins to take over, intentionally creating space can help you move from reacting to responding. Begin by creating a brief moment of space: Pause. Breathe. Notice.

A pause isn’t inactivity. It’s a leadership decision. Even 10 seconds gives you room to ask:

• What’s actually happening here?
• What does the situation need from me?
• Am I reacting or am I responding?
• Which leadership strength is most useful right now?

And that creates awareness. Awareness doesn’t change the situation itself, but it changes how you enter that situation.

Expanding Your Options
When we’re under pressure, our minds naturally look for the fastest path forward. We rely on familiar patterns because they’re efficient, often reaching for the strengths that have served us well.

Sometimes that’s good. Other times, it’s like using a steak knife to cut a watermelon: The knife isn’t wrong, it simply isn’t the best tool for what the moment requires.

Awareness creates choice. Without awareness, choice becomes difficult to access. And choice creates intentional leadership.

Leading with Intention
Intentional leadership is difficult to access when every moment is spent reacting.

The pace of home care may never slow down. But creating moments of space — even brief ones — can change how we experience it, how we lead through it, and ultimately how we support the people who depend on us.

Creating space doesn’t eliminate the demands of leadership. The emails will still arrive. Staffing challenges will still occur. Regulations will continue to evolve. The goal isn’t to remove complexity, but to prevent complexity from determining how you lead.

With awareness comes the ability to notice not only what’s happening around you, but what’s happening within you. You begin to notice when frustration is driving your communication, when urgency is shaping your decisions, or when exhaustion is narrowing your perspective. That awareness creates an opportunity to choose a different response.

Leadership has never been only about making decisions. It’s about how we show up while making them: When we’re fully present, we listen differently. We become more curious. We respond with greater intention.

Creating space is where awareness begins. And awareness is where leadership begins to change.

Leadership in Home Care
This is the third in a series examining what effective leadership looks like in today's home care environment. The last post explored the hidden impact of constant change on leaders. The next article will focus on seeing your people clearly.

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Ashlee Jensen is the Founder of Altum Coaching Services, with 20+ years of experience in the home care industry, supporting leaders through growth and change. She believes meaningful leadership begins with awareness, deepens through alignment, and is sustained through intentional action.