Be fully present.
I say this a lot to leaders--and always, something in the back of my mind makes me want to call bullshit on myself.
I have the attention span of whatever has a slightly shorter attention span than a squirrel. The upside is I am a quick thinker, witty (if I do say so myself, and I frequently do), and can move alongside our clients at their pace and anticipate what might be around the next corner of their development, improvement process, or transformation.
The tough side is that being fully (really fully) present is like physical work, weight-lifting, and requires more from people whose brains work like mind does than it does from people whose focus is more traditional.
I have learned all the same tools, tricks, and techniques you have--silence, deep breaths, watching thoughts disappear in a balloon, etc., but none have really made a difference.
Last night, I watched a video about how to bond with a horse. For those of you who have not heard me say it 5,000 times, I am in love with my new horse, Jaxxon. We are working through some things (as the honeymoon has recently worn off), and I am all about building strong relationships, so I “invested” in a video series about how to deeply connect with your horse on their own terms. First off, I didn’t realize horses had terms. Now I do. That’s what a beginner I am. The series is full of useful (if not impossible) exercises for me and Jaxxon to bond at his leisure. And let me tell you something, he takes his leisure quite seriously.
In said video series, one is directed to avoid asking your horse to work during feeding. So today, I arrived at the barn between meetings at what I thought was the appropriate “in between meal times” hour. It was not. Turns out (like *someone I am... know), horses basically eat all day. It takes a lot of green stuff to keep up 1,800 pounds of fabulous.
Anyway, munching happily on a near truckload of hay in his paddock, Jaxxon gave me side-eye as I stood nearby and waited for him to finish. I didn’t get too close, so as not to have him feel worried that I was planning to steal his food. And he ate, my friends, for a long time. It was a LOT of chewing. And more chewing. In and of itself, this is no surprise, but the meditative nature of horse chewing is. I felt myself calm down. And I waited. For 237 lifetimes, I waited, but not impatiently. I get impatient waiting for even the most immeasurably small fragments of time, so I was observing myself calm and focused and not wanting to rush. I was feeling… fully present.
There were moments when I thought, “OH NO! I wanted to lunge him (he runs around in circles, and I stand in the center and give him voice instructions on what he should be doing) and groom him and check on the foot with the lost shoe. I had plans, and his need to eat was getting in--oh wait, this is me being present with him and those are my needs.
Being radically present means the other person’s needs come profoundly, irrevocably, first.
It’s what people need from you as their leader--especially in one-to-one meetings. It’s what your teams need. It’s what the organization’s strategy and vision need from you as a leader.
It’s what I owe my clients, my friends, my husband, my children. It’s who and how I want to be to the people around me, and here I am learning radical presence as a leader and human being at 54 years old, from a beautiful horse, fantastically skilled at chewing.
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Corey Jamison brings more than 30 years of experience partnering with executives and teams around the globe to drive dramatic, sustainable organizational transformation. She has worked with leaders at all levels of some of the largest brands, and offers a level of experience, acumen, partnership and courage that inspires leaders and teams toward the hard work of taking it to the next level.