Delight

Every morning, before I open my laptop or glance at my calendar, I reach into a small bowl that sits on my desk — a simple pottery dish filled with words. Each word has been chosen carefully over time, for the way it holds a spark, an invitation, a quality I want to cultivate. Today, the word I drew was delight.

I sat with it for a moment. Rolled it around in my mind. Delight. Even the sound of it feels light, doesn’t it? There’s something playful about the way it lands. A word that invites you to smile before you even know why.

Etymologically, “delight” comes from the Old French delit, meaning pleasure, joy, or gladness. That, in turn, has roots in the Latin delectare. “to charm” or “to please.” There’s a softness to it, a sense of wonder in being charmed by something. And that’s really what it is: allowing yourself to be moved, surprised, touched by life’s small moments.

In our driven, goal-oriented world — especially in senior leadership — delight often feels like a luxury we can’t afford. Who has time for delight when the day is packed with meetings, strategy reviews, performance check-ins, and the constant churn of decision-making? And yet, when we lose our capacity for delight, we lose touch with one of the deepest sources of human energy and creativity.

Delight elevates the ordinary.

It turns what might have been a box-ticking exercise into something infused with meaning and life. When I let delight guide me through the day, even the mundane takes on a certain glow. The first sip of tea becomes a tiny ritual of gratitude. The conversation I’ve had a dozen times before might offer a fresh insight. Even the inevitable disruptions: the surprise meeting, the difficult feedback, the delayed train, can soften, as if delight lends me a wider lens, one that sees possibility instead of frustration.

For the senior executives I work with, this is more than just a feel-good notion. It’s a leadership practice. Delight changes how we lead. It brings presence into the moment. It opens curiosity. When you approach a conversation, a project, or a challenge from a place of genuine delight — in learning, in connecting, in creating something worthwhile — you bring out the best in yourself and those around you. It’s infectious. Teams feel it. Cultures shift because of it.

And perhaps most importantly, delight grounds us. It reminds us that leadership isn’t all weight and responsibility. It’s also a privilege to influence, to guide, to create impact. When we’re constantly running on stress and obligation, our thinking narrows, our empathy fades, and our sense of joy evaporates. But delight expands us. It opens up space for flow, for intuition, for fresh thinking. It’s in those moments of lightness that true insight often appears.

So today, as I move through my day, I’m letting delight be my compass. Not as a distraction from the hard stuff, but as a way of meeting it differently. Finding the sparkle in a small success. Taking an extra breath before diving into the next thing. Noticing what’s working, instead of fixating on what isn’t.

If you’re reading this and feeling caught in the relentless pace of leadership: the endless firefighting, the meetings, the metrics, I invite you to pause, just for a moment. Look up from the to-do list. Find one thing, however small, that brings you a flicker of delight. A sound. A face. A view from the window. Let it land.

Because when delight guides your experience, even the most ordinary moments begin to shimmer. And that, more than any strategy or KPI, is what sustains great leadership.