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Orignal article was posted on <a data-mce-href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-bunny" href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-bunny">Substack </a>on 4/24/2026On the ones who find a way to sit with you stillMonday was a good day.I posted something on LinkedIn, my perception about what to do when everything is urgent. The post moved. Comments, conversations, momentum. The kind of day that reminds you why you’re doing this.Then the week did what weeks do.A colleague, also building something of her own, sat me down and pushed on my message. Not unkindly. She’s trying to help. But when someone asks you to dig deeper into what you’re selling, you find out quickly how much digging is left. Doubt crept in. Then resentment, which I’ve learned to take seriously, resentment usually means something real got touched. The flat days followed. Wednesday. Thursday. The kind of days where you don’t post, don’t reach out, don’t have the words.I am standing at a threshold. Something is either arriving or I’m about to decide what I’m walking toward. Both feel true at the same time. Both feel enormous.And today, Friday morning, I sat down at the table by the window to have my breakfast.<figure id="figure-fuodxipgvmod7lu4t"><img id="fuodxipgvmod7lu4t" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/36Gn1vgOmTGGQvjXc1iD3lcsYUTVU2RM2eqGFYkbsoNcFL5WjbQ8U6hoTdkBbupK.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/36Gn1vgOmTGGQvjXc1iD3lcsYUTVU2RM2eqGFYkbsoNcFL5WjbQ8U6hoTdkBbupK.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>I’ve been sitting here a lot during my sabbatical. Eight months in, I’ve learned things about this spot. How the light comes through in the morning, which birds show up first, what the trees look like right now in late April when everything is that specific shade of green that only lasts a few weeks. I notice things here I wouldn’t have noticed a year ago. Somewhere in these eight months I became someone who pays attention differently.My white dog settled next to me.And then, on the other side of the glass, maybe two feet away from me and one foot from her — a bunny.<figure id="figure-j68b36dm1amod7mbhd"><img id="j68b36dm1amod7mbhd" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/22cmGzPsYGB5KfU55MwonaNxXpQESJqqmZKdP0doDhgE0nVdF2EebWjXpyRKYgBB.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/22cmGzPsYGB5KfU55MwonaNxXpQESJqqmZKdP0doDhgE0nVdF2EebWjXpyRKYgBB.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>We have dogs. Two of them. There are no bunnies in this backyard. And yet there he was, still and unhurried, not looking at me exactly, not looking away, just present in the way that small creatures sometimes are when they have decided, for reasons of their own, that this is where they will be for a while.Neither dog moved. Neither dog made a sound.I just watched him.Something about the bunny reached into childhood. A soft, half-formed thing, my grandfather, bunnies in cages, the feeling of small warm weight in my hands. I have very few memories from those early years. Since the sabbatical they’ve been returning slowly, on their own schedule, only when I’m open like this. I don’t fully know why it was him I felt in that moment. I just know I did. I started tearing up before I even understood why.He just sat there. Then he hopped, unhurried, a little further down the path. Stayed there another five minutes. Not going anywhere.Then the bunny went up the hill, one flash, and gone.And the moment he disappeared, my other dog appeared. As if on cue. She came to me, touched my hand, looked into my eyes, checked my energy the way dogs do when they already know. She didn’t chase what had just left. She just turned toward me. You still here? Good.She was part of it. I’m sure of that. The whole thing was one piece. The stillness, the bunny, and then her, walking me gently back into the room.A year ago I wouldn’t have given another thought. Georgia has bunnies. It wandered in, it left.But the sabbatical did something I didn’t entirely plan for. It made me permeable. I move slower now. I receive things; signs, stillness, the particular quality of a morning when nothing is scheduled and something small sits outside your window and doesn’t ask anything of you.Birds are messages now. The slow morning is a message. The bunny was a message.I don’t know exactly what it said. Maybe it didn’t need to say anything specific. Maybe my grandfather just wanted to sit with me for a few minutes, in the only form available to him now, on a Friday when I needed it.The sign on my wall says Stay awhile.He did.<figure id="figure-9wbtmlkwzomod7mrfw"><img id="9wbtmlkwzomod7mrfw" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/2dGBORezeeTfBm4B99kUem1lgISGoVZ5kq6mF0hTUiHYII5RiLHKJAHGg1mLx9tq.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 3/2; object-position: 10% 25%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="3:2" data-caption="" data-positionX="10%" data-positionY="25%" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Bunny

Original post written for <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-194530887" href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-194530887">Substack </a>on 4/17/2026What a baseball game taught me about the trace we leave behindThere’s a certain kind of validation you can’t manufacture. You can’t script it, you can’t prompt it. It just lands, usually when you weren’t looking for it.The invitation arrived out of nowhere. My former company’s annual outing (a Braves game) and I was on the list as a plus-one. The kind of event I used to organize around, show up to, be fully present at and then one day, simply wasn’t part of anymore.When the invitation came, I hesitated for a moment. Should I? Would it be strange? But then I reminded myself: I left on my own terms. Good terms. And some of those people, my former direct reports, my colleagues, had become something closer to real friendships over time. Several of them had since been promoted or moved into broader roles. I was genuinely proud of them. I said yes.The timing was interesting. That Tuesday at the game, the following day I had a meeting that could shift the direction of my next chapter. I didn’t know yet how it would go. But Tuesday wasn’t the day to think about that.My friend met me at the entrance to the private section. And before I even made it ten steps inside, it started. Big eyes. Wide smiles. Hugs. What are you doing here? Wait! Did you rejoin? Am I missing something?I spent the first hour just walking around. Saying hello to the VP team, catching up with people I’d worked closely with, connecting with others I knew less well but had always liked. Everywhere I went, there was warmth. More than I expected, if I’m honest with myself.And then something surprised me.I was being introduced to a newer employees, people who joined after I left, who had never once worked with me. And the response when they heard my name: Oh my god, I’ve heard so much about you. I saw your photo in the directory.I didn’t know what to do with that. I stood there for a second, genuinely surprised.A few weeks earlier, I had written a piece about leading without authority, about how the real measure of leadership isn’t the title, it’s the trace you leave behind. Whether people move differently because of how you showed up. Whether the culture carries something of you in it, even after you’re gone.I always struggled to say that out loud about myself. It felt presumptuous. Like claiming something I hadn’t fully earned the right to claim.But that afternoon at the ballpark, I didn’t have to say it. It was just there. In the hugs, in the introductions, in the face of someone who knew my name before we’d ever met.The next day, in that important meeting, the question came up. How do you lead people? What does that look like for you?I didn’t reach for frameworks. I didn’t explain my philosophy or list my methods. I told the story of walking into that room.Because sometimes the proof arrives right when you need it. Quiet, unhurried, wearing baseball caps and holding beers. And all you have to do is receive it.<figure id="figure-lzt5pza9rrmo383w97"><img id="lzt5pza9rrmo383w97" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/10CxN9Q2IGhNXUTWIovJU7eWLQxuWtvvvlJT50uYZk3xP1yvFcCD7Qmpd8x9h0La.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: 40% 60%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="40%" data-positionY="60%" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Proof Showed Up Uninvited

Original article posted on <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-193805818" href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-193805818">Substack</a> 3/10/2026The fleas came first.We were mid-cycle on the treatment for our two dogs. Every pet owner knows the drill: specific timing, a protocol you have to follow or it doesn’t work but this time it did not work! So I scrubbed. The dogs, the floors, the furniture, the baseboards. All of it. Twice! The kind of task that arrives with no interest in your schedule.<figure id="figure-1ylp60zxdmnxmf4rb"><img id="1ylp60zxdmnxmf4rb" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/39wAxtcRMq7uVz6Yeu0v5ARlAqeQqfVsZJ4AiLS6p4EbNKhtKLBYNrnX12RGvUZq.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/39wAxtcRMq7uVz6Yeu0v5ARlAqeQqfVsZJ4AiLS6p4EbNKhtKLBYNrnX12RGvUZq.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>&nbsp;Eight months ago this would have undone me. Not the work itself but the interruption of it. I would have been furious, powered through grinding my teeth, and collapsed somewhere on the other side. This time it just felt like an unexpected chore.&nbsp; We were also dog-sitting. A neighbor’s dog, five days, so three dogs total. We had him over before. Cute pup, easy to navigate but for some reason this time it felt harder. But then when his owner came to pick him up on the fifth day, he walked over, looked at her, and went straight back to his bed not wanting to leave. I actually laughed.He’d found rhythm in our place. Apparently he liked it.I’ve never seen that before. A dog choosing to stay. I stood there looking at him for a moment and didn’t entirely know what to make of it.&nbsp; &nbsp;<figure id="figure-20zjf1tovmnxmgby2" class=""><img id="20zjf1tovmnxmgby2" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/233XdRbfEnQrpSzcTj7Wx4jhlzwowdDwUvytluApdS6jcGCoYU4cQ6tZCMOJaTPO.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/233XdRbfEnQrpSzcTj7Wx4jhlzwowdDwUvytluApdS6jcGCoYU4cQ6tZCMOJaTPO.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>To add to the pile, my husband and I, we started going to the gym regularly about 3 weeks ago. First time ever. Which comes with its own chaos. A new food regiment, a new schedule, and a body that has opinions about all of it. Loud ones. The kind you feel in places you forgot existed. This week it felt overwhelming and harder then before - I guess, the honeymoon period is over.&nbsp; On top of this the things started moving on the job front.The recruiter calls were good this week. Several of them, which hasn’t happened all at once like this before. Something felt different. I kept finding myself talking about <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com">Anthilles</a>. Not just me, my background, the resume version of who I am. The company. What it does, who it’s for, what it’s built for. That shift is recent and it matters.But after the day of calls my brain would hit some invisible wall and just stop. I could feel it arriving. That particular exhaustion that isn’t about sleep, it’s about bandwidth. And instead of filing it away and plowing forward like I used to, I took the dogs out. Stood in the sun. Once I lay down on the couch in the middle of the afternoon and slept for forty minutes.The version of me from two years ago would have found that unacceptable.I’ve also been thinking about LinkedIn. I post carousels, an organized, educational content, built to demonstrate expertise. They haven’t been getting much traction. But when I write about what’s actually hard, what I don’t have figured out yet, people show up. I’m genuinely not sure what to do with that information. Whether it’s the algorithm or something more true about how we actually reach each other.Maybe both.&nbsp; And then, somewhere in the middle of all of it, I had a conversation with a colleague. An executive coach I’d connected with on LinkedIn. One of those conversations you don’t plan for and can’t quite explain afterward except to say that something shifted.He reflected back what he saw. The way I was holding this transition, staying open to what was coming in without abandoning what I’m building. He didn’t tell me what to do. He just named what was actually happening. And something in me that had started to chase, started to rush toward the next thing, just... stopped.A few days later another recruiter reached out who works specifically with PE-backed companies, organizations in transition, exactly the environments where this kind of work creates the most impact. It felt like an echo of that conversation. Like the patience had already started returning something.I don’t know what the path looks like yet. I’m not sure I’m supposed to yet.&nbsp; So that’s the week. Fleas. A gym. Three dogs and one who didn’t want to go home. Recruiter calls where I finally talked about the company, not just myself. A couch nap I didn’t feel guilty about. And one conversation that quietly put me back on the ground.I know this piece has no real arms and legs. It’s a hodgepodge of things that just happened. No reflections, no lessons.So I’m letting it all go. What was hard and tiring, I release. What was unexpected and wonderful, the teachers who showed up without warning, I hold with gratitude.And this weekend, when the sun shines and warms the earth, I will simply ground myself and trim the azalea bushes in the morning.And maybe buy myself a bike.<figure id="figure-uh0zxmuuzmnxmhiuj"><img id="uh0zxmuuzmnxmhiuj" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/1euL1QMvgJT2EAuEpy9mZbTw16yGvwUMCj3Bz3IhbEEv3cRAaCtrcfLDrHFcRglX.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Fleas Came First

Original article created on <a data-mce-href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-forest-doesnt-know-about-your?r=1up3dt&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true" href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-forest-doesnt-know-about-your?r=1up3dt&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true">Substack</a> 4.04.2026El Yunque, Puerto Rico. And why I stood still.We arrived late.That’s how it started. Late to El Yunque, the only tropical rainforest in the US National Forest system, the only one in all of North America, and already there were hundreds of people on the trail ahead of us. All of them moving fast. All of them heading toward the waterfall. Toward the swimming hole under the waterfall. Toward the thing they came to see.&nbsp; I almost did the same.There’s a particular kind of anxiety that lives in transitions. I know it well right now. A new job on the horizon. A new chapter. The kind of change that makes you feel like you should be moving, deciding, preparing. Like standing still is the same as falling behind.But something stopped me on that trail.<figure id="figure-f6vy6ilzkmnj1nluj"><img id="f6vy6ilzkmnj1nluj" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/fT3q985X8OMBN7h7CnWoWMNaWHbbvZukVQL7igYHJZyWMOiMHld4CbKxLBV291sl.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/fT3q985X8OMBN7h7CnWoWMNaWHbbvZukVQL7igYHJZyWMOiMHld4CbKxLBV291sl.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>I don’t know if it was the light coming through the canopy. Or the sound of the forest that is loud in a way that isn’t noise. Or maybe it was just the sheer scale of it. Trees that have been growing for longer than I’ve been anxious about anything.I stopped.I looked up.And for a moment, I wasn’t someone with a next chapter. I was just a visitor. A small one.Everything stopped.Not metaphorically. Actually stopped. The anxiety. The mental tabs I had open. The running list of things to figure out before the new phase starts. The noise that lives in my head when I’m in a transition. All of it just... went quiet.What took its place was peace. Real peace. The kind that settles into your body, not just your mind. I felt it in my chest. In my shoulders. In the way I was breathing without thinking about breathing.I was in the right place. At the right time. On the right timeline. Mine. Not ahead of it, not behind it. Exactly where I was supposed to be.I don’t say that lightly. I’m not someone who uses words like that easily. But that’s what I felt. A deep, bodily knowing that everything was in its right order. That I didn’t need to rush toward anything to prove that.Our nervous systems are not designed for the pace we ask of them. Constant decisions. Constant stimulation. Constant becoming. We don’t give them permission to reset. And then we wonder why we feel depleted even when things are going well.That forest reset me. In twenty minutes on a trail, it did what months of pushing forward couldn’t.There is something humbling about standing in a place that doesn’t need you. That was here before you. That will be here after. El Yunque has survived hurricanes, including Maria, which devastated it in 2017. It came back. Not the same, never the same, but alive. Green. Dense. Completely itself.I put my hand on a tree. <figure id="figure-zzsc4bf2jemnj1oe26"><img id="zzsc4bf2jemnj1oe26" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/20TVKhSwBLKrP5Dr8V8OVyuT2tQZjfDOiDrheqxLuzaEatMrfKSW16mlUEHydVG6.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/20TVKhSwBLKrP5Dr8V8OVyuT2tQZjfDOiDrheqxLuzaEatMrfKSW16mlUEHydVG6.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>I don’t know why we do that. Touch old things. Maybe to feel that something has held on. Maybe to borrow a little of whatever it knows.This tree didn’t know about my transition. About the new path. About the version of myself I’m still becoming. It just stood there, massive, unhurried, covered in moss and vines and the evidence of surviving everything that had come its way.I stood there too. For longer than made sense if you had somewhere to be.<figure id="figure-htq4nln1xlmnj1p12i"><img id="htq4nln1xlmnj1p12i" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/19y9XUZHuMl9NJXFUi3BJ96QevKpxpV88T9uSOvybSceFQ25LMQzaBfRKPokcRiY.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: 100% 75%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="100%" data-positiony="75%" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/19y9XUZHuMl9NJXFUi3BJ96QevKpxpV88T9uSOvybSceFQ25LMQzaBfRKPokcRiY.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: 100% 75%;"></figure>Here is what I know about transitions: they make you future-tense. Everything becomes about what’s next, what’s possible, what’s required. Your attention collapses into a narrow corridor pointed at the horizon.But you can’t lead from there. Not really.The best leaders I’ve seen, the ones who actually move organizations through change, aren’t the ones running fastest toward the waterfall. They’re the ones who pause. Who look up. Who let the moment ask something of them before they impose their agenda on it.That pause isn’t passivity. It’s the opposite.It’s presence. And presence is where everything actually begins.I walked out of El Yunque sweaty and a little muddy and deeply, unexpectedly settled. Not because anything had changed. The new job search was still there. The uncertainty was still there. My list of things to do was exactly as long.But I had remembered something. That I am not just a professional navigating a transition. I am a woman. A human. A visitor on this earth who gets to touch ancient trees in a rainforest in Puerto Rico and feel small in the best possible way.That’s not a distraction from the work. That’s what makes the work worth doing.&nbsp; At <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com">Anthilles Consulting</a>, we work with leaders navigating exactly these moments — the transitions that ask you to be both decisive and grounded. If that resonates, I’d love to hear from you.<figure id="figure-ux175uegkmnj1qbkj"><img id="ux175uegkmnj1qbkj" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/1jkqQGFODHCJtUL9OHezRPxKsMLlw47g2UDBApiM8HrQuBuk9PPXHEviz6wE3j1N.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Forest Doesn't Know About Your Next Chapter

Original article written for <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-192229142" href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-192229142">Substack </a>on 3.27.26The Government Failed. The Workers Didn’tIt started with Bad Bunny.My husband and I were watching the Super Bowl halftime show, and somewhere in the middle of it, we looked at each other and realized we had never been to Puerto Rico. That felt wrong. The show was extraordinary, but it was also controversial, the way anything becomes controversial now when it asks you to remember that Puerto Ricans are American citizens, that the island exists, that it has been underfunded and overlooked and hit by storms and is still, somehow, standing. We didn’t want to just watch. We wanted to show up. We booked the trip.<figure id="figure-32mck1o7xlmnerlru6"><img id="32mck1o7xlmnerlru6" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/34ntqUTqfnJnt3DNjnlBh0OKuJfYkdEVljo76RVa2tH2uSNjj0HyAjqshoU0X8PR.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: undefined undefined;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/34ntqUTqfnJnt3DNjnlBh0OKuJfYkdEVljo76RVa2tH2uSNjj0HyAjqshoU0X8PR.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: undefined undefined;"></figure>&nbsp;What we didn’t know when we booked was that by the time we traveled, we’d be in the middle of a partial government shutdown. TSA workers, underpaid always, now unpaid, were leaving in numbers. Who works thirty days without a paycheck? The week before we left, the news was reporting three-hour lines, then four, then five, then six. And then, a few days before we flew, the new announcement: ICE agents would be stationed at airports.We are both American citizens. That used to feel like a sentence that ended there. It doesn’t anymore. I grew up in post-communist Eastern Europe, in a place where the work of entire generations was built around one idea: this must never happen again. The Holocaust. The occupation. The slow dismantling of who people are allowed to be. History was not a subject we studied from a distance. It was a warning we carried close. The America I arrived in didn’t feel like that warning. It felt like its opposite. I don’t know how to explain what it is to watch that change, to absorb it in real time. It sits in the body differently than grief. It’s more like vertigo.We arrived at five in the morning. The domestic terminal was already busy, so we walked it, assessed, and made a decision: international terminal, fifteen minutes away. When we got there, the crowd was larger than I expected. We needed to check a bag, which meant two lines: one for check-in, then TSA security. As we joined the first queue I was already scanning, already thinking about how to move through this efficiently. That’s when I noticed a sign: TSA Pre-Check holders could check bags in a separate lane as long as they had the right tag. I found a worker and asked, and mid-conversation she told me to move; they were just opening a new register. We were there in seconds, third in line, bags checked in twenty minutes.Then came the TSA Pre-Check lane, which had become a general line that morning. We stood in it for a full hour, eating the sandwiches we’d packed before dawn, and honestly, we were fine. We were laughing. The line was long but it was moving, and something about that felt important. Despite everything, something was working.And then we got to her. A TSA worker stationed near the scanning booths, not just standing there but announcing, passport out, boarding pass ready, laptops, shoes, liquids, and everything she said cut through the noise and actually landed. People knew what to do. People were doing it. The line kept moving because she was making it move, reading the crowd, adjusting, staying completely present to what the moment needed. I don’t know how to describe the quality of her presence except to say she was leading without a title, without any formal authority over anyone in that line and it organized everything around her. When I reached her, I stopped and touched her arm and said thank you. She smiled and kept moving people through.One and a half hours after we arrived at that terminal, we were on the other side, walking, stretching our legs, finding somewhere to sit before the flight.Here is what I kept thinking about afterward. This chaos was manufactured. It didn’t have to exist. It exists because of choices made by people with enormous power who do not understand, or do not care, how organizations actually function, how people actually work, what it costs in human terms to run a system on fear and scarcity and public humiliation. And yet the workers showed up. Unpaid, or barely paid, or knowing their colleagues had already walked away, they showed up anyway, and they moved thousands of people through a broken system with competence and, in some cases, with real grace.I watched the lines in front of me, and almost no one said thank you. Not to the woman directing traffic, not to the man stopping and starting the flow to keep things moving, not to any of them. I noticed that. I notice it every time. There is something important in the gap between what those workers were given, a failed system, no support, impossible conditions, and what they produced. That gap is not small. It is, in fact, the whole thing. It is the proof that leadership is not what comes from the top. It is what people choose to bring to the work regardless of what’s coming from the top. When formal leadership fails, and it fails constantly, and spectacularly, and sometimes deliberately, it is the people on the ground who decide whether things hold together. They are not waiting to be told. They know what good looks like. They build it anyway. That is not a small thing. That is everything.At <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com" data-mce-selected="inline-boundary">Anthilles Consulting</a>, we work with leaders navigating the moments when the system isn’t giving you what you need and you still have to move people forward. If this landed somewhere, I’d love to hear it.

The Government Failed. The Workers Didn’t

Original article written for <a data-mce-href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-question-that-stayed-with-me" href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-question-that-stayed-with-me">Substack</a> 3.20.2026Because some answers take longer than the conversationSomeone asked me recently how to lead without authority.More specifically, how do you get people to do things, to actually move, when you have no formal power over them?I answered. I said something true. But two days later the question is still sitting with me, turning over quietly, the way questions do when you know you left something important on the table.And the image that came to me, not during the conversation, but after, in the stillness, was my sons.&nbsp; They’re grown now. They live outside our home. But I keep going back to who they were in high school, and what I watched happen at our dinner table.They both played sports. One played football and wrestling. The other lacrosse and wrestling. And they would come home and tell us things, stories from the field, from the mat, and I would sit there across from them, food going cold on my plate, just completely arrested by what I was hearing.How they handled a conflict inside the team. How they showed up for a teammate after a brutal loss, or after someone made the error that cost them the point, cost them the win. The way they described it, the instinct they had for when to speak and when to just be there, it wasn’t something anyone had taught them. It was something they had grown into, quietly, through caring about the people next to them.<figure id="figure-jc1zp6o7ommyxlfqx"><img id="jc1zp6o7ommyxlfqx" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/1bkmYhyYoO2frJvI5mGA1jz0qI6hGb1DYy6Kxgo7n1efZUGxVgXFvo3BtxUph0Ny.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/1bkmYhyYoO2frJvI5mGA1jz0qI6hGb1DYy6Kxgo7n1efZUGxVgXFvo3BtxUph0Ny.png" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>No title. No authority. Just presence, and the trust that had built up around it.And I remember thinking: this is it. This is actually it.The proof was in the house. Our home was always full with their friends spilling in on weekends, friendships forming that have lasted long past graduation, long past the teams that made them. That’s what real leadership leaves behind. Not compliance. People who want to stay close to you.&nbsp; Then I turned that thought toward my own work.I’ve spent years moving across organizations, helping departments get a handle on new processes, cleaning up old ones, leading teams through implementations and changes that disrupted everything they were used to. Consulting work, mostly. No direct reports. No formal authority over the people I was working with.And I kept hearing the same things.I wish you were my boss.I wish I worked for you.Are you hiring in your department anytime soon?And then the quiet version of it, people appearing in my doorway who had no reason to be there. No organizational connection to me. Just someone who needed to think something through and felt safe enough to come. Questions about conflict. About how to handle a difficult situation. About growth and what to do next.That’s what it looks like. That’s what leading without authority actually looks like.Not people complying. People choosing.&nbsp; So here is what I wish I had said in that conversation.Leadership without authority is not a technique. It’s not a communication style or a stakeholder management framework. It is a way of being with people that makes them feel, at a level they can’t always name, that they are safe.Safe to make a mistake in front of you. Safe to say the thing they’re actually afraid of. Safe to bring an idea that might be half-formed, or wrong, or exactly right. Safe to be the full, complicated, uncertain human being they are at work, which is the same human being they are everywhere else.It’s sitting with someone in their fear of change instead of pushing them past it. It’s listening; really listening, not listening while you prepare your response, and letting what they say actually land. It’s respecting what someone knows, even when what they know is inconvenient for the timeline. It’s caring enough about the person to tell them the truth.When you do that consistently, when people experience you that way over time, something happens that no authority structure can manufacture.They don’t do things because you told them to. They do things because they want to. Because the work feels worth doing. Because the team feels worth showing up for. Because you feel worth showing up for.You stop making people move. They just move.&nbsp; That’s what my sons understood on the field when they were seventeen.That’s what I’ve been doing, in my own way, for twenty years.And that’s the answer I should have given.&nbsp; Anthilles Consulting works with leaders navigating exactly this, the moments when formal authority isn’t enough, and something more real has to take its place. If this brought something up for you, I’d love to hear it.<figure id="figure-2ilksx5x7immyxmycz"><img id="2ilksx5x7immyxmycz" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/153vLTdm0lr88jeQk4kSkodpffDFbg1pR9sN1nfxJv5X9VIqOl2BqwjXtWGun7ZR.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: undefined undefined;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Question That Stayed With Me

Dorota Castillo Studio

Dorota Castillo Art & Poetry Studio is a personal creative space for intuitive painting and poetic expression. Dorota’s work explores inner transformation, symbolism, and emotion through color and movement, guided by process rather than perfection. Each piece invites reflection, resonance, and a felt connection beyond words.