Spiders and Leadership (!)
I woke up one morning recently and was enjoying my coffee in the quiet early light when something caught my eye. Suspended between two branches outside the window was a spider’s web. I was pretty sure it hadn’t been there the night before. Or, at least, I hadn’t noticed it.
But there it was - this intricate little piece of architecture. Threads stretched from branch to branch, caught in the morning dew. For a few minutes, it glimmered.
I found myself wondering how long I might have gone without noticing it if the light hadn’t hit it just so in that exact moment. And of course... it's had me philosophizing...! Sometimes the most extraordinary work is invisible. Until it catches a flicker in the right light...
The spider wasn’t trying to be seen. It simply kept weaving. Doing its work, thread by thread, probably while I slept. That feels important to me... somehow.
So much of the best leadership is like that, isn’t it? The person who held the room together in a difficult meeting. The manager who noticed someone withdrawing and followed up. The executive who regulated themselves instead of infecting the room with their anxiety. (Yes, emotions are indeed contagious - not just metaphorically, but neurologically - goodness!)
No one applauds those moments. Often, no one even notices them. And yet... they’re the threads that hold the whole thing together. The light catches them only occasionally.
And you know what else I wonder? The web isn’t weaker because it’s almost invisible. In fact, invisibility is part of how it functions. Its strength isn’t dependent on recognition. I think there’s something there for leaders, too.
Not that leaders need to - or should - be invisible. No. But some of the most consequential work of leadership can be very hard to see. Holding space is difficult to measure. Self-regulation doesn’t show up in a quarterly report. A quiet conversation with a colleague might prevent burnout, shift a relationship, or help someone stay... and leave no obvious trace at all. Leadership lives above and below the surface somehow. Here and not. Tangible and not.
A spider’s web is astonishingly delicate. And astonishingly strong. Its strength comes from the weave - not the thickness of any one thread. Those aren’t opposites. The web glimmers in the light. The spider did the work in the dark. And isn’t leadership like that, too?
A leader speaks the sentence. But what allowed them to speak it calmly? The years of inner work. The difficult conversations. The self-regulation no one applauded. The moments of choosing curiosity over certainty. The apologies. The boundaries. The pauses. That’s all below the surface. So perhaps the leadership lesson isn’t simply, “The most important work is often invisible.” Maybe it’s this: Invisible work still changes the ecosystem.
Whether or not anyone ever notices the web. Sometimes the light will catch it. Sometimes it won’t. The work still matters. That’s a hopeful thought, isn’t it?