What the Classroom Taught Me That Business School Never Could 👩🏿🏫
Greetings Beloved,
I want to tell you about the first time I truly understood what it meant to hold space for another human being's growth.
I was not in a boardroom. I was not in a graduate seminar. I was on the floor of an early childhood classroom, sitting at eye level with a four-year-old who was in the middle of what the world would call a tantrum and what I have come to learn to recognize as something far more important: a nervous system in distress, reaching for a regulated adult to help it find its way back to calm.
Right after college, I began teaching in early childhood, infants through pre-K. It was during that season that I was introduced to Conscious Discipline (www.consciousdiscipline.com), a framework developed by Dr. Becky Bailey that centers the adult's self-regulation as the prerequisite for the child's. The premise was simple and radical at the same time: you cannot teach a dysregulated child from a dysregulated nervous system. The adult's brain must first create the conditions of safety that make learning possible.
That understanding did not just change how I taught. It began a healing journey that changed how I understood myself.
Being in the classroom with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers gave me something that no MBA program could have offered: daily, embodied practice in leading from a regulated space. Every morning I walked through that classroom door, I was being asked by the nervous systems of the children in my care to be the most grounded version of myself available. Not perfect. Not untroubled. But present. Anchored. Safe.
What I did not fully understand at the time was that this was not just pedagogy. It was neuroscience.
Dr. Bruce Perry, whose Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics has reshaped how educators and clinicians understand brain development, describes the brain as a fundamentally social organ; one that develops in response to the relational environment surrounding it. (Perry and Winfrey, "What Happened to You?" 2021.) The quality of the relationships a child experiences does not simply influence their emotional wellbeing, it literally shapes the architecture of the developing brain.
This is what enriched, nurturing environments do: they build brains. And the adults in those environments, regulated, attuned, genuinely present, are the most powerful brain-building tool available.
The trajectory that only hindsight makes clear
From early childhood teacher, I moved into early childhood coaching supporting educators in the same relational and regulatory practices I had learned in the classroom. From there, the path led to organizational consulting. And on the surface, that trajectory looks disjointed.
What I understand now is that it was always the same work.
As long as the work involved people, their nervous systems, their capacity to learn, their ability to relate to one another under pressure, I was always going to be equipped to support it. Because what the classroom taught me was not a curriculum. It was a way of being present with other human beings that makes growth possible.
The executive who cannot receive feedback without going defensive. The team that stops innovating when stakes get high. The organization whose stated values and lived culture have grown so far apart that the gap itself has become the wound. These are not strategy problems. They are nervous system problems. And they require the same thing that two-year-old on the classroom floor required: a regulated presence willing to create the conditions of safety before asking for any growth at all.
🧠 The Brain Science
Dr. Dan Siegel, whose interpersonal neurobiology framework has bridged the worlds of neuroscience, psychology, and education, describes the concept of "integration" (the linking of differentiated parts of a system into a functional whole. (Siegel, "The Developing Mind," 1999.) Integration in the brain requires safety. And safety, as we explored last month through the work of Dr. Stephen Porges, is not a cognitive achievement. It is a relational one.
What this means for organizational leaders is direct: you are not simply managing a team. You are shaping the neurological conditions under which your team can or cannot do their best work. The classroom knew this even if some educators are still learning. The boardroom is still learning it.
🎯 What LBA Elevates
At Love Before ALL, the Grow the We component of the Love Before ALL Approach begins with the same premise that Conscious Discipline taught me on a classroom floor in my twenties: the leader's regulated presence is not a soft skill. It is the prerequisite for everything else.
You cannot build psychological safety from a dysregulated nervous system. You cannot invite honest communication from a place of defensiveness. You cannot grow a team's capacity while simultaneously contracting your own. Regulation is rooted in healing.
The classroom taught me that the regulated adult in the room is always the architect of what becomes possible. Two decades later, that truth has not changed, only the healing that has taken place to allow access to regulation.
⭐ Leadership Practice: The Architect's Audit
This week, I want to invite you into a simple but honest reflection.
Think of the last time your team struggled (a meeting that went sideways, a conversation that broke down, a deliverable that missed the mark). Now ask yourself:
What was the state of your own nervous system walking into that moment?
Were you regulated, genuinely present, and safe to be honest with?
Or were you defended, rushed, or performing a calm you did not actually feel?
Please do not have to answer this with shame. Answer it with the same curiosity you would bring to understanding a child who could not learn. Because your team, like every human being, can only grow as far as the relational environment around them allows.
🌸 The Invitation
If this is landing, take time to conduct the “Architect’s Audit” this week and see what you find. Consider what additional healing is needed to facilitate regulating your nervous system. You don’t have to have all the answers, only the willingness to take time to find them.
The LBA Connection Circle is a free monthly 45-minute space for leaders who want to think this through with someone who understands both the neuroscience and the mission.
Join the waitlist here!
With deep roots and a teacher's heart,
Annie 💛Your Curious Cultural Architect
Growing compassion from the inside out.
Producing results while caring for people.
