Lost but not losing my way

Last week I spent time translating TLW — Transforming Leadership from Within — one of the leadership programmes of Companions for Leadership, into Dutch. The reason: we have a growing number of Dutch-speaking clients. And what a wonderful project it was. I love playing with words. Especially when there’s no time pressure.

One word has stayed with me in particular: discernment. In Dutch: onderscheidingsvermogen.

Why is this such an important leadership quality? And especially in combination with courage?

There is a moment most leaders know, but few name out loud.

The moment you realise something no longer feels right. Not because you led poorly. Not because your judgement or intention was wrong. But because the goal you were moving toward lost its truth along the way.

You worked with good intentions. You believed in it. And others believed alongside you.

And now you stand here.

Lost but not forsaken is a well-known mantra of anthropologist Jitske Kramer about transitions. It reminds us that in times of chaos, doubt, or profound change, you haven’t lost your way — you are simply in a valuable in-between space. Jitske writes about how difficult it is for people and organisations when goals no longer seem to hold, and when the alternative is not yet available. And how hard it is for us to revise our assumptions.

We are, after all, addicted to our own way of thinking.

Not only because that way of thinking provided certainty, but also because it has become part of our identity. It is the story you tell yourself about who you are as a leader, what you pursue, why you do what you do. Letting go of that story doesn’t feel like a course correction – or not only that. It feels like loss.

And the more you have invested – in time, in energy, in the people who followed you – the heavier that loss weighs.

Not because the path was wrong. But because it was yours.

Discernment is an inner knowing – the capacity to feel through the noise what truly matters. Not every voice in our head is wisdom. Not every impulse is an authentic desire. Not every sense of certainty is clarity.

Discernment is the art of seeing through all of that – distinguishing signal from noise and choosing wisely.

Discernment is why some leaders turn around in time. And why others keep walking a path that stopped being the right one long ago.

In Dutch, we have an expression that carries more wisdom than it first appeared to:

Beter ten halve gekeerd dan ten hele gedwaald. Better to turn back halfway than to go astray completely.

Turning around halfway. Not as a shortcoming, but as an act of leadership. As proof that your discernment wins over your ego.

That takes courage.

The leader who dares to say this no longer feels right opens something. In themselves, and in the people around them. Because others are doubting too. They are simply waiting for someone to say it first.

That is precisely the quality that distinguishes leadership from within from leadership on autopilot.

It does ask something of you.

Lost but not losing my way.

Losing my way means you have lost the path back to yourself. Lost means you had to reconsider your route — but your compass still works

Discernment is that compass.

Courage is the step you take when you follow it.