When a Season Comes to a Close

What endings reveal about leadership, alignment, and the quiet work beneath the work

This month, I’ve been preparing to finish up with a few clients. And as these seasons come to a close, I’ve been thinking about how rarely we talk about endings in leadership.

We know how to celebrate beginnings.
We know how to navigate the messy middle.
But endings—especially aligned endings—carry their own quiet, powerful wisdom.
And most leaders move past them too quickly to receive it.

Because when you walk with someone through a chapter of their leadership, the work leaves an imprint.
Not only on them.
On you.

That’s the part no one prepares you for.

Endings ask you to feel the fullness of what was shared, without rushing to what’s next.
They ask you to acknowledge that meaningful work doesn’t conclude neatly just because the calendar says it does.
And if you’re paying attention, endings ask you to listen to what the season is teaching you.

Why Endings Feel Tender (Even When They’re Right)

There’s a particular texture to an aligned ending: a blend of completeness and tenderness.

It’s not heaviness.
It’s not loss.
It’s the recognition that something meaningful occurred here—something that can’t be measured in deliverables or milestones.

It’s the recognition that someone trusted you with their leadership—not the polished version, but the real one.
And you trusted yourself enough to show up with integrity, presence, and clarity.

Tenderness arrives because endings highlight the invisible work:
the shifts you witnessed,
the steadiness you offered,
the growth they claimed,
and the ways you quietly grew alongside them.

This tenderness isn’t sentimental.
It’s evidence of depth.

A Teaching Moment: How the Cor Framework™ Holds Endings

Every season of leadership moves through the rhythm of the Cor Framework™:

Root. Align. Extend. Sustain.

We often imagine Sustain as maintenance—keeping things going.
But the deeper truth is: Sustain also includes completion.

To Sustain something well, you have to know when:

• the work has done its work,

• the season has carried you as far as it can,

• the next step requires spaciousness rather than continuation.

This is where many leaders struggle.
They attach sustainability to perseverance, not to discernment.

But discernment is the heart of sustainable leadership.

Sustainability is not repetition.
It’s right-sizing.
It’s releasing.
It’s allowing what’s complete to remain complete.

And without the willingness to close well, you cannot open well.

Endings Ask for a Different Kind of Leadership

Anyone can start something.
Far fewer know how to end something with intention.

Endings ask you to practice skills that rarely get celebrated:

Presence
Staying attuned rather than checking out or speeding up.

Honesty
Naming what shifted, what’s changed, what’s complete.

Gratitude
Acknowledging the human work beneath the visible work.

Release
Letting go of what is no longer yours to hold—without shrinking the impact of what was shared.

These are quiet skills.
But they are the skills that shape you into a leader others trust.

What This Season Is Teaching Me

As I close out with these clients, I’m noticing how each ending clarifies something in me:

Where my capacity is expanding.
Where my work is deepening.
Where my leadership is asking for more space, more intention, more alignment.

I feel gratitude—real, grounded gratitude.
Not only for who these clients became, but for who I became while walking with them.

Leadership transforms us in the moments no one sees.
Endings are one of those moments.

If You’re Standing at an Ending of Your Own

Maybe you’re transitioning out of a role.
Maybe a collaboration is shifting.
Maybe you’re outgrowing a season that once fit you perfectly.

If so, here’s what I want to offer you:

Pausing isn’t the opposite of progress.
Pausing is what makes aligned progress possible.

Honor what’s complete.
Release what no longer supports your becoming.
Don’t rush into the next chapter before you’ve received what this one was here to teach you.

I’ll be sharing more soon about what I’m opening in the new year—work shaped by these very endings.
Work that feels spacious, grounded, and deeply aligned with where Cor & Kin® is headed.

Until then, may you honor your endings with as much intention as your beginnings.
They deserve that.
And so do you.