The Pause of Leadership: Lessons From Vipassana

During Labor Day Weekend, I stepped away for my second 10-day Vipassana meditation. Ten days of silence. Ten days of sitting with nothing but my body, my breath, and my intuition. 

No all-hands meetings, no new AI drops, or freshly baked “Thinkboi” pieces.‍

I did not do this for work. It wasn’t an escape. It was an active decision to take rest and refuel my intuition and sense of selfhood.‍

In a culture that rewards constant motion, hustle, and performance, I chose stillness. And what I came to realize is that sometimes the bravest move isn’t pushing harder; it’s pausing long enough to listen.

As creatives, thinkers, marketers, and operators, we are navigating one of the most disruptive moments our industry has seen: budgets are shrinking, AI is reshaping expectations, and media rights are shifting from traditional platforms to YouTube, streaming, and OTT. 

We once had a “Triangle of Productivity,” which was a mafia-like code of conduct… We respected it and were confronted by it. Now we are in dark days, where we are being forced to redefine our relationship to the triangle’s points. Resulting in a disorienting space for us craftspeople and creatives.

Everyone, clients, editors, and strategists, are learning at the same time. The market is fragmented, noisy, and moving fast. And yet, in the stillness of Vipassana, I found some clarity. 

The practice itself is a physical body scan. You sit on a meditation pillow and breathe with the sole goal of feeling the sensations on your physical body. The idea is to feel those sensations, but without judgement… just let the body and mind do as it will, naturally. That’s it. We’re in a meditation hall with more than 3-4 dozen others doing the same. We clock between 70-100 hours of meditation over those 10 days.

‍Well-Being as Strategy

In silence, you realize how much our bodies carry: stress, ambition, expectations. At Platte Group, I’ve learned that healthy leaders build healthy teams.

Vipassana equalizes everyone. No matter who you are, Black, white, pregnant(we had an 8-month pregnant woman sitting with us), tall, or short, you sit on that same cushion for hours. You eat the same two meals daily. 

No privilege, no shortcuts. It reminded me that our workplace must operate the same way, rooted in equity, respect, and compassion. It also creates a clear value set to remind me when engaging with potential new client partners and vendor partners. If there are red flags that don’t align with those values, we must remain mindful and non-attached. 

If someone on our team isn’t delivering, we don’t rush to blame. We ask “How are you?” We make space for the life experiences they carry with them. We support when needed. Because when people feel seen and cared for, the work reflects it.

Silence as Creative Fuel

Where does your creative inspiration come from these days? That Instagram group you’re in, Sora 2 Sponge Bob-scroll, TikTok-work colleagues, or your Gen Z ally? I’m projecting, those are a few of mine. 

Silence is the key creative ingredient during these 10 days.

In the silence, I hear my life and work’s most challenging briefs bouncing off the walls of my mind; by day three, my intuition was unhinged. 

Naturally, the most significant life challenges arise. I’ve never been one to look away… I swan dove in. 

This was my opportunity to be present with the emotions of those challenges. The many angles, whether soft, hard, or sharp-edged, thoughts, with no judgment, I circled them. Giving the challenge a bit of objective attention, with a side of occasional acceptance. ‍

This is your mind on ‘creativity,’ in its most organic form - your brain becomes a cube of rotating thoughts. You spin, flip, and switch with fresh ways of experiencing an idea or thought, and potentially, be present with a mindful gaze. ‍

We’re all at risk of drawing inspiration from the same TikToks, the same awarded work, the same Instagram posts, the same trade headlines. But creative leadership means resisting the algorithm long enough to tap into something with substance. 

During Vipassana, I had ideas for clients, for Palette Group, and for new business. All because I allowed myself to be quiet long enough to listen. Creativity doesn’t always live in the noise. Sometimes it lives in the pause.

Community as North Star

We’re moving into a chapter of Corporate America that will encompass more generations than we can count on one hand. We’re all pointing the finger at the next generation and how reckless and weird they’re making it. We just have to learn to process our own way of being and calibrate every generation and community’s culture. 

Vipassana teaches that the “I,” the ego, has a pattern of craving things and having an aversion to things (person, places, or things), both of which lead to suffering. Just because the “I” wants, doesn’t mean the “I” gets: from its team, from its friends, or from its family. Maybe, even from yourself.‍

Leadership in Vipassana is also about taking responsibility for failure, both your own and your team’s. Creating the space for your intuition to reflect and respond in a way that feels accepting of the shame that may come with your failures. I’ve never gone to Business school, but I’m sure they don’t have a class on the shame we feel when having to make tough decisions or when we receive tough feedback. I know I never learned this in Art school.

So how did “I” handle reflecting on my WANTS AND NEEDS not being quenched for 10 days? I just sat there and breathed through it all, every “good” and “bad” thing people have said about me, every “good” or “bad” thought I’ve had in my own head. 

I focused on removing the “I” from the words about me and just breathing through the thoughts and notions shared with me. They are all gifts, feedback, for my lived experience, personally and professionally.   

Leadership isn’t about centering yourself. It’s about centering the collective. However, that ‘we’ can easily alienate a community, and that is when you have to account for ‘I.’ Leaders need to be accountable for understanding their team and articulating their vision in a clear and work-inspiring manner. 

Our egos can be fuel to our fire, but also be the death of us. Jay-Z once said, “The same sword they knight you with, they gon’ goodnight you with…”  

Stay reflective and vigilant on how your ego is being managed. 

At Palette Group, our measure of success isn’t just the campaign's deliverables or its impact. It’s the community we leave stronger. When a client leaves a production saying, “This was inspiring, this was safe, this was joyful,” that’s impact. It proves that production doesn’t have to be anxiety-ridden. It can be fun. It can be compassionate. And it can still be excellent.

Presence Over Performance

Vipassana teaches you to observe without reacting. As leaders, that translates into presence over performance.

In pitch rooms and on production sets, the pressure is always to solve fast, to deliver more in less time with fewer resources. These days, budgets don’t match deliverable counts anymore, and AI has only accelerated output expectations. 

In these rushed moments, leadership isn’t about forcing your team to grind harder. It’s about creating space. Holding the room long enough for a few breaths, and the right idea to rise.

This summer, after a production, a client looked me in the eye after a particularly challenging set of shoot  days and said: “I don’t know if we’ll ever have a production like that again.” Not because of what we delivered on paper, but because of how the set felt: Streamlined, calm, respectful, safe and collaborative. We protected the well-being of our crew, our models, and the craft itself. 

Personal Thoughts

Again, this wasn’t a work Vipassana; I did this sit because I needed space to heal some tension. Personally, I know I can feel the tension that being in advertising and running a business puts on me. I’m not deluded enough to think I've fully processed the personal issues in my life that affect me at work. That is why I continue to do this healing work and translate it into professional work takeaways. Of course, I have so many personal takeaways I could share, but this is not the medium for that. If you’d like to learn more, please don't hesitate to reach out. 

One last thing, when I think back to that old Triangle of Productivity, it once meant speed, quality, and cost. A balancing act that often left us stretched and reactive. But under the Pause of Leadership lens, the triangle feels different now. 

I’ll leave you with this: How would you define your triangle of productivity today? What does it look like when you lead from pause, not speed?

If you’d like to explore the Vipassana for yourself, note that they are all donation-based and you can find them globally here: LINK 

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