Liminal Space Archives

To listen to this month’s blog, click here.

Once you recognize that you are standing in liminal space—that threshold where old identities no longer fit and new ones haven’t yet formed—the question shifts. It is no longer What should I do? It becomes What is asking to be heard?

Last month I explored liminal space not merely as a phase to move through, but as a way of being to inhabit—especially during transitions when clarity has not yet arrived. I emphasized that liminal space is formative, not efficient. It resists speed and rewards presence.

This month, I want to focus on the practice that makes inhabiting the threshold possible: discernment through deep listening. This marks a deliberate shift from understanding liminal space conceptually to engaging with it practically. Discernment is how we can stay present without forcing premature closure; allowing clarity to emerge rather than demanding it on command.

Why Listening Is So Challenging in Liminal Space

In modern Western culture, uncertainty is treated as a problem to solve rather than a space to inhabit. Leaders accustomed to competence, decisiveness, and forward momentum often interpret not knowing as weakness or risk.

Yet during deep leadership transitions, the absence of immediate answers often signals that a more fundamental reorientation is underway. Familiar frameworks for making meaning begin to loosen before new ones stabilize. This is not failure; it is development.

Adult development research, particularly Robert Kegan’s work, helps explain why this phase feels so disorienting. As we grow, we outgrow one way of making meaning before the next has fully formed. The in-between can feel like loss or groundlessness, but it is also evidence of growth. Liminal space marks the moment when identity shifts before strategy can follow.

Listening as a Creative and Embodied Leadership Practice

Before anything meaningful takes shape, there is a phase of sensing. Artists understand this instinctively. They pause long enough to notice what wants to emerge rather than forcing form too soon. This is where liminal awareness becomes lived, somatic, intuitive, and embodied.

A client in her late 50s noticed she repeatedly volunteered for projects involving succession planning and knowledge transfer, while quietly avoiding opportunities framed as expansion or visibility. Her body was moving toward something before her mind could name it: a transition from building her own legacy to cultivating the next generation’s capacity to lead. This is discernment at work: not as analysis, but as embodied leadership intelligence.

In leadership transitions, this kind of listening often includes:

Attending to energy, not just logic.
Noticing what consistently draws you and what quietly depletes you.
Listening to the body as a source of insight, not an obstacle.
Working with images, symbols, and metaphors when language feels inadequate.

These practices slow the pace just enough to reveal information that cannot be accessed through cognition alone. They work with the raw material of transition rather than trying to bypass it. In this way, listening becomes a quiet form of alchemy, allowing what is unfinished or uncertain to transform through presence rather than force.

Discernment as a Leadership Capability

During transitions, discernment becomes more than a personal practice, it becomes a core leadership capability. It allows leaders to respond from alignment rather than habit, and to make decisions rooted in integrity instead of urgency.

This is where structured reflection becomes essential. Not as a space to rush toward answers, but as a leadership container for listening, integration, and meaning making. When leaders give themselves permission to pause within a held space, the wisdom that surfaces is often shaped by discernment rather than pressure.

Discernment is not indecision. It is mature leadership capacity. It reflects the courage to stay with complexity long enough for something truer to take form.

Practicing Discernment in Everyday Life

Discernment does not require a sabbatical or retreat, though those can help. It can be cultivated through small, deliberate practices embedded in daily life:

Create white space in your calendar—not for productivity, but for noticing.
Ask better questions instead of demanding faster answers.
Track patterns over time through journaling or voice notes, rather than reacting to isolated moments.
Trust what is consistent, not what is merely loud or urgent.
Notice your body’s signals: which conversations, decisions, or directions create expansion versus constriction.

Over time, this practice builds capacity. Liminal space begins to feel less like groundlessness and more like fertile ground, where leadership identity is reshaped rather than simply rebranded.

Reflection Questions

What signals, internal or external, are asking for your attention right now?
Where might slowing down actually support clarity in this leadership transition?
What decisions would benefit from discernment rather than immediacy?

Listening in liminal space is an active, intentional practice. It is also a form of courage, one that resists urgency, tolerates ambiguity, and trusts transformation to unfold in its own time.

Listening in liminal space is an active, intentional practice.

An Invitation to Stay with the Threshold

Sometimes the most meaningful transformation begins not with answers, but with the courage to stay present long enough for them to arrive. This is where discernment becomes actionable, where waiting becomes wise leadership rather than paralysis.

In my work as a Courage Alchemist, I see this moment again and again: leaders standing at a threshold, tempted to move quickly, when what is actually required is presence. Alchemy does not rush transformation. It works patiently with what is already here, trusting that clarity emerges through deep listening rather than force.

If you find yourself standing at a threshold, professionally, creatively, or personally—the practice of discernment can help you listen for what is trying to emerge. And if you feel called to sit with a trusted guide and explore what this liminal space is inviting you into, I welcome the conversation.

To listen to this month’s blog, click here.

In December 2023, I wrote about liminal space as a season of waiting and not knowing; the in‑between moment when old structures fall away and new ones have not yet taken shape. The invitation then was to recognize these moments, resist rushing through them, and trust that something meaningful was unfolding beneath the surface. That framing still matters.

As I stand at the beginning of 2026, I want to deepen the conversation, especially for leaders, professionals, and women in their wisdom years who sense that what once defined them no longer fully fits. Because once you’ve learned how to name liminal space, and even how to navigate it, a different invitation appears:

What if liminality isn’t just a phase to move through, but a way of being you are asked to inhabit as part of your personal growth and leadership evolution?

From Understanding Liminal Space to Embodying the Threshold

Anthropologists describe liminality as the middle stage of a rite of passage—the space between what has been released and what has not yet been claimed. Victor Turner, an influential British cultural anthropologist, observed that this phase is inherently ambiguous: old identities loosen before new ones take form, allowing deeper transformation to occur.

In executive coaching and leadership development, this same dynamic shows up as transition rather than change. William Bridges, who was a leading organizational change consultant, made a crucial distinction: change is external and often swift, while transition is internal, psychological, and slower. The most uncomfortable phase—the neutral zone—is also the most creative, even when it feels disorienting. This is where many people try to hurry things along.

We rush to answers. We fill the space. We reach for the next title, plan, or structure—not because it’s aligned, but because not knowing feels intolerable. Yet liminal space was never meant to be efficient. It was meant to be formative.

When Identity Shifts Before Strategy

In my work as an executive coach, liminal space often appears not as crisis, but as quiet dissonance:

A role still fits on paper but no longer fits internally.
Accomplishments no longer provide the same sense of meaning.
Legacy and purpose questions surface before answers are available.

Adult development research helps explain why this happens. Robert Kegan’s work shows that as we grow, we outgrow one way of making meaning before the next one stabilizes. That in‑between stage can feel like loss, but it is evidence of growth.

Seen this way, liminal space is not a breakdown to be fixed, it is an initiation into a more authentic way of leading and living.

Discernment Over Decision-Making: Creative Reflection as Alchemy

Earlier approaches for engaging with liminal space productively focused on mindfulness, journaling, creative expression, and support. These remain essential creative reflection practices, particularly when the nervous system is seeking certainty.

What I’m emphasizing now is something more aligned with my emerging work as a Courage Alchemist. These practices are not about fixing uncertainty. They are about cultivating discernment, the capacity to listen deeply and allow clarity to emerge rather than forcing premature decisions.

When practiced intentionally, reflection helps us:

Sense what is trying to emerge rather than decide too quickly
Integrate lived experience instead of rushing toward insight
Stay present long enough for meaning and direction to take shape

This is where personal growth becomes embodied, and leadership becomes aligned rather than reactive.

Questions That Support Discernment at the Threshold

Rather than asking What should I do next, liminal space invites questions that slow us down enough to hear what is forming.

Consider these questions as reflective companions rather than problems to solve:

Where in your life or leadership does something no longer fit, even if you can’t yet name what comes next?
What are you tempted to rush, resolve, or decide prematurely?
What might become possible if you treated this pause as purposeful rather than problematic?

These are not productivity questions. They are discernment questions, essential for conscious leadership and meaningful personal growth.

Liminal space was never meant to be efficient. It was meant to be formative.

Liminal Space, Courage, and the Practice of Staying

If you are beginning this year without a fully formed map, consider this:

What if clarity is not missing, but incubating?
What if this pause is not emptiness, but preparation?

Liminal space is not asking you to act faster or perform with certainty. It is asking you to stay present. And staying, especially in a culture that rewards speed and certainty, is an act of courage.

An Invitation to Work Together

If you find yourself standing at a professional, creative, or life threshold, you don’t have to navigate it alone. If you feel called to explore what this threshold is asking of you, I invite you to connect with me. Sometimes the most powerful transformation begins not with answers, but with the courage to stay present long enough for them to arrive.

Listening Before Knowing: Discernment in Liminal Space