Is there space to think, breathe, or connect in your workday? In this episode, I talk with leadership thinker and mindfulness researcher Megan Reitz about the tension between doing and being – and how fear, power and pressure keep us stuck in overdrive.

Megan is an Associate Fellow at Oxford’s Saïd Business School and co-author of Speak Up and Speak Out, Listen Up. Her latest research explores spaciousness - a different kind of attention that opens up creativity, connection and compassion.

Together we examine how workplace culture often rewards busyness over awareness - and what we lose when we constantly prioritise speed, certainty and performance.

We explore:

• How anxiety shapes attention - and limits creativity
• The impact of power, status and unspoken dynamics in leadership
• Why language matters - and what gets lost when we only speak in targets and metrics
• How spaciousness can release compassion, curiosity and insight
• Practical ways to bring more space into work, leadership and life

This is a thoughtful, expansive conversation that doesn’t just talk about making space - it invites you to feel it. Grounded in both research and lived experience, it helps us examine our defaults, rethink productivity, and reconnect with what matters.

If you’ve ever said, “I’d love to slow down… but I just don’t have time,” this one’s for you.

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About Guest

Megan is Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, Oxford University and Adjunct Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School. She focuses on how we create the conditions for transformative dialogue at work and her research is at the intersection of leadership, change, dialogue and mindfulness. She is on the Thinkers50 ranking of global business thinkers and HR Magazine’s list of Most Influential Thinkers.

Her books include Speak Up and the updated Speak Out, Listen Up, shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year. Her TED talk on employee activism has been viewed over 1.5 million times, and her research has been featured by the BBC, CNBC, Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan.

She is mother to two wonderful teenage daughters who test her regularly on her powers of mindfulness and dialogue.

Find out more at https://www.meganreitz.com/