The leadership skill we’re losing: knowing when to slow down

On a recent trip to my husband’s hometown in India, I was stopped in my tracks by a thousand-year-old banyan tree, tall and regal, standing in the middle of an ancient temple. A vast canopy was supported by roots that had taken centuries to reach the ground. The temple had been built around it, not the other way around, in quiet acknowledgment that some things cannot—and should not—be hurried. The tree’s beauty and strength came not from efficiency or design, but from patience. It had grown by using time as a gift rather than a constraint, expanding slowly, deliberately, without urgency. St...