I grew up in a tropical beach town on the east coast of India, watching coconut trees reaching up into the skies. Every time their branches moved, a pleasant breeze washed through the air. For a long time, I believed the trees produced the wind.

It was a logical conclusion. We had hand-fans made of dried palm leaves that produced a current of air when waved. Therefore, it made sense that to cool the heavy, humid air, one simply needed to make the trees move.

It was an innocent inversion of causality. The illusion held because the leaves were tangible. They could be touched and held. The wind was formless and abstract. To an untrained perception, the tangible form always appears more “real”, and therefore more powerful, than the formless.

Today, as I watch the coconut trees sway with the welcome monsoon winds in Goa on the west coast of the country, I know that as intangible as the wind might be, it is the wind that possesses the power to cause the tangible leaves to move.

Yet, the highest levels of leadership still operate on that childhood illusion. When faced with friction, the immediate reflex is to ask what to do and how to do it.

But forcing action to generate impact is the equivalent of trying to shake a tree to produce the wind. Sure, I can find ways to make trees move, which involves immense, exhausting effort and almost zero returns. No amount of tactical execution can solve a structural deficit of presence.

Awakened Leadership is not anchored in action; it is anchored in state of consciousness. Action is not the source of power, it is the downstream consequence of it.

When perception is clear, precise action follows effortlessly. Until perception is clear, any action is merely a fluke.

The work is never to force the leaves to move. It is to understand the wind.