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Chicago Executive Coaching presents
In Part 1, we explored how timing, challenge, focus, ritual, and purpose can create conditions that make flow more likely.
But leaders do not always have the luxury of arranging the perfect conditions. Some of our best thinking is required in the middle of a conversation, an unexpected problem, or a decision that cannot wait.
That raises a deeper question:
Who do I need to become to experience flow more frequently?
In Part 1, I shared something that occasionally happens during a coaching session. I become completely absorbed in the conversation. I am listening, recognizing patterns, connecting ideas, and responding to what is unfolding in the moment. Then I make an observation that causes the client to stop and say:
“That was profound. Can you repeat it?”
Sometimes I can’t. At least, I cannot repeat it with the same wording, timing, or impact. The thought seemed spontaneous. But was it?
It may have appeared in that moment, but it was drawing upon a lifetime of leadership experience, years of coaching, study of human behavior, thousands of conversations, mistakes made, lessons learned, and patterns recognized along the way. I am not consciously sorting through all of that while the client is speaking. Much of it is simply available. That is what makes spontaneous flow especially interesting. The moment may not have been planned. But the ability to respond to it was being developed long before it arrived.
The moment may be spontaneous. The readiness for it is not.
Part 1 focused on creating the conditions that make flow more likely. That matters. But a quiet office, a protected calendar, and a silenced phone cannot supply the skill, judgment, or experience the work requires. Flow is not a light switch.
We cannot simply block 90 minutes, eliminate distractions, perform a ritual, and expect our best thinking to arrive on schedule. The conditions matter. So does the capacity we bring into them. That capacity is developed over time.
Through repetition, feedback, self-awareness, discipline, experience, and patience, we gradually become more capable of handling difficult work without consciously managing every part of it. Eventually, some things that once required intense concentration begin to feel more natural. That is where the idea of proficiency becomes important.
When we first learn something new, even simple tasks can require a surprising amount of concentration.
We think through each step. We make mistakes. We correct them. We repeat the process.
Over time, with enough practice, some of that effort begins to disappear.
In an earlier Leadership Breakthroughs post, I described this progression as moving toward unconscious competence—the point where we can “go because we know.” That does not mean we stop thinking. It means we no longer need to consciously manage every part of the process.
A skilled driver does not think through every movement involved in making a turn. An experienced presenter does not consciously calculate every pause or gesture. And in coaching, I am not mentally sorting through a checklist of listening techniques while the client is speaking. That frees attention for what is happening now. And that may be one of the reasons proficiency supports flow.
When the mechanics of a skill no longer consume all of our conscious attention, more of that attention becomes available for the challenge in front of us. But proficiency alone is not enough. A leader can become highly competent and still be bored, distracted, or going through the motions.
So the real question becomes:
What allows proficiency to become full engagement?
Experience adds another layer. Over time, leaders begin to recognize patterns that were not obvious earlier in their careers. A conversation starts to drift, and something feels off.
We sometimes call this intuition. But intuition is not magic. Often, it is experience working faster than conscious thought. The more situations we encounter, the more patterns we have available to recognize. And when we reflect on those experiences—what worked, what did not, and why—we give ourselves more to draw upon the next time. Of course, experience alone is no guarantee of wisdom. There is a difference between having twenty years of experience and having one year of experience twenty times. The value comes from noticing, learning, adjusting, and adding to what we know.
That accumulated knowledge can become especially powerful during flow state. We are no longer searching consciously for every answer. Connections begin to emerge from what we have already learned. Which leads to another question:
How well do you understand what you naturally bring to those moments?
Experience gives us more to draw upon. Self-awareness helps us recognize what is already there. Leaders are often highly aware of what their jobs require. They may be less aware of the strengths they naturally bring to those demands.
Those questions matter because flow is personal. The conditions that help one leader become fully engaged may do very little for another. We are also sometimes the last people to recognize our own strengths. What feels ordinary to us may be anything but ordinary to someone else. That is one reason I use self-discovery assessments in my coaching work. They can help leaders better understand their behavioral strengths, motivations, and the soft-skill talents they may already be using without much conscious thought.
Greater self-awareness does not guarantee flow. But it can help us recognize where we are most likely to become fully engaged—and where further development may be needed.
Self-awareness helps us recognize our strengths. Discipline helps us develop them. In Part 1, discipline showed up in a practical way: starting before we feel ready, protecting our time, and staying with the work long enough for deeper engagement to become possible.
Here, the role of discipline is different. It is what keeps us practicing when a skill still feels awkward. It keeps us learning when progress is slower than we would like. It helps us seek feedback, make adjustments, and repeat the process until what once required conscious effort begins to feel more natural. That matters because flow often depends on capabilities that have been developed long before the moment arrives.
We may admire someone who appears calm, intuitive, and fully present under pressure. What we do not see are the years of repetition, mistakes, feedback, and correction that made that response possible. Flow may feel effortless. Becoming capable of that effortlessness is not. And that requires patience as much as discipline.
There is often an inconvenient stretch between understanding what to do and being able to do it naturally. Leaders can be especially impatient with that stretch. Once we understand a concept intellectually, we may expect ourselves to apply it immediately. But knowing is not yet being.
That does not mean the development is failing. It may simply mean we are still in the conscious stage of learning. The temptation is to abandon the effort because it does not yet feel natural. But if we stay with it, practice it, reflect on it, and keep adjusting, the capability can gradually become more available without so much conscious effort. That matters for flow. The more mental energy we must devote to managing the mechanics of a skill, the less attention remains for the challenge itself.
So perhaps one of the less glamorous requirements for becoming more flow-ready is simply patience. Patience long enough to let practice become proficiency.
If flow were simply a matter of technique, we could stop here.
Find your best time. Remove distractions. Set a meaningful challenge. Practice long enough to become proficient.
Useful advice. But incomplete.
Flow also depends on what we have developed in ourselves before the moment arrives.
That may include:
Greater awareness of our strengths
The discipline to keep developing them
Patience with the learning process
The ability to recognize when emotion or self-judgment is pulling us away from the moment
Enough experience to recognize patterns without consciously sorting through every possibility
The confidence to trust informed intuition when appropriate
None of this happens overnight. Which brings us back to the deeper question behind this second part:
Who do I need to become to experience flow more frequently?
Perhaps the most useful starting point is not to chase flow itself.
Think instead about a time when you were completely absorbed in meaningful work.
Choose one. Then work on becoming better at it.
When I make an observation during a coaching session that seems to arrive from nowhere, it really does not come from nowhere. It comes from experience. Study. Mistakes. Curiosity. Listening. Practice. Reflection. And thousands of conversations that came before that one. The sentence may be spontaneous. The readiness for it was built over time. That may be the larger lesson of flow state.
We can create better conditions for it. We can learn more about ourselves. We can develop greater proficiency, discipline, and patience. Then, occasionally, something happens. We stop trying so hard to perform and become fully engaged in the work itself. And when that happens, flow can be exhilarating—not only because we may do some of our best work, but because doing it can feel deeply fulfilling.
Flow helps us perform. Purpose helps us decide what deserves that performance.
So rather than asking only: How do I get into flow? The better question is:
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