If you’re like me, you cram your schedule chock full through December 23, trying to squeeze every last ounce of productivity out of the year before collapsing in a heap on the couch for a few days, or even a couple of weeks if you can swing it. That has been my go-to routine for as long as I can remember.

On a recent Friday afternoon, I made the hour-long drive from San Jose to downtown San Francisco to speak to a group of university students at a Fintech conference. Mind you, I have very little to say about Fintech. I do however have a few things to say about relationship building and leadership, which Menlo College’s Dr. Faten Ben Bouheni hoped I would share with these finance majors.

May 8 marked my last day as the CEO of American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley; and our biggest event of the year – ALF Silicon Valley’s annual Exemplary Leadership Celebration, a sold out gala that honors two exceptional Senior Fellows and an extraordinary network.

This contribution comes from Sean Fitzpatrick (Class 39), a Senior Fellow from the ALF Houston/Gulf Coast Chapter and Executive Director of the Jung Center. Sean also serves as a co-facilitator for ALF Class 62 Fellows alongside lead facilitator Judy Le. He brings a human-centered approach to his work as a bridge builder, storyteller, and psychotherapist.

In ALF, we use Otto Scharmer’s Theory U framework to describe how we might move through problem-solving in a deeper, more holistic way. It requires getting comfortable with the unknown. Sitting at the “bottom of the U” and paying a new kind of attention to our senses—in particular, our gut and heart sense. Dad regularly reminded me, in the midst of all of the challenges that were thrown at us, that we can “decide not to decide” today. We can wait for more information to present itself, for divine intervention, or for the universe to illuminate the next steps. But in order to hear those directions, we have to activate our capacity to listen deeply.