Category Archives: leadership

Presence

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Photo by James K Min, Denver, CO, 2023

It is not the same as appearance.

Presence is energy.  Like sound, it has a frequency and an amplitude.  Like light, it has a wavelength.  Presence is sensed; it is felt. 

What does your presence feel like to others?  How does it change according to context, mood, and other factors?  When are you aware of it yourself, and how do you modulate it, if at all?

Whose presence do you crave?  Who soothes, comforts, uplifts, encourages, and quiets you, simply by being with you?  Whose presence do you carry even when you’re apart, because it helps?  How do you do it?  Whose presence do you avoid?  Why?  What do these people teach you about yourself?

How do I already presence well?
–I make eye contact; I shake hands enthusiastically.  I’m relaxed, open, and friendly.  I can have a conversation with practically anyone, as long as we share a language.  I am comfortable with people in general, which makes people comfortable with me.
–I’m a fantastic hugger.
–“I’m mostly peace love and light, and a little go fuck yourself.”  My friendly and open personality does not make me a pushover.  I do not tolerate disrespect or abuse, of myself, my family, or my work teams.  I call it out civilly and if the behavior continues, I consider carefully and end relationships without regret.
–I’m good at 看臉色 ‘kan lian se’ literally ‘seeing facial color’ in Chinese—meaning to attune to people’s nonverbal cues.  I can adjust my posture, tone of voice, facial expressions, and language to match my counterparts. 
–Most of the time I think I balance confidence/competence well with humility.  Strong back, soft front.  If this is how people experience me, then I’m happy.

How could I show up better?
–People have told me I come on too strong, that my energy is too high.  I can be loud and animated.  I gesticulate.  I could do better sometimes attuning to my surroundings and toning it down as needed.
–In certain situations and with certain people, my confidence wobbles.  I second guess myself and may come across as weak, unsure, unreliable.  I can get tongue tied and flustered.  This makes me easy to bully and manipulate.  It happens much less frequently with age, but I still feel vulnerable to it sometimes.  Deep breathing in the moment helps a lot, and also lengthening my spine.

How do we evaluate presence as a society, and what makes it good?

Smiling Strangers.  “You’re so friendly, Cathy, you must be from the Midwest,” said the boy from the East Coast, just as I’m thinking people here look at me like I have two heads when I’m friendly.  In Colorado, however, people still smile and say hi to perfect strangers in public.  It just makes my day, really.  Do these folks realize how much their smiles mean to me?  To anybody?  Do you yours?

The Helpers. Nurses. Social workers. Teachers. Therapists. Charity workers. Volunteers. Moms. Doctors. Who else, especially in your life right now? Come to think of it, is there any profession or work that could not be thought of as helping? We may not always be in a good mood. We are too often exhausted, spent; too many of us are burned out right now. And still, we show up. We help. At our best, when our presence connects us in sincere service, it makes us all better.

How can we be present better to one another collectively?

Love First.  If we have any love in us, how can we pull it up and out, put it in front, and show up for ourselves and others leading with it? Easier said than done. And we won’t be able to do it all the time. Let’s try harder anyway, ya?

Attune and Differentiate. Know yourself. Honor yourself. Show up all you. We can each own all of our strengths, our optimal resonance frequencies, our brightest light. Stand up straight and strong. Then, decide which petals of our identity flower to lead with, discern the context and respond appropriately. This is not about hiding parts of ourselves, rather mindfully showing up to connect, however it works best for us and those around us.

Lead and follow by example: Amplify. When you get feedback that your presence helps someone, take the compliment graciously. When someone’s presence benefits you, let them know. Positive reinforcement–rewarding desired behaviors–is one of the most effective ways to help the behavior recur. Look out for the good, amplify it–the sound and the light.

Honest, mindful, authentic presence. How much better could everything be if we were to offer this more often to more people, ourselves included?

Leadership

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ACK! Late start on this one, friends, stayed at book club late!

When do you think about leadership? How much do you consider yourself a leader? Assuming you lead in some way (and we all do), how do you approach it? How important is it to you? How much do you care about your leadership?

My leadership strengths:
–I am a student of leadership. I study it, evaluate my own performance, seek feedback, and constantly strive for improvement. I attune to those who lead me and evaluate their performance also, and my standards are high and clear. My leadership stance is learner before teacher, collaborator before authority.
–I am decisive, clear, fair, and transparent as much as possible. I am direct, rather than passive or aggressive.
–I monitor my biases and check in with those I lead, as well as fellow leaders.
–I really try hard to own my shit and walk my talk; I apologize and correct readily.

How could I lead better?
–I think I often lean too far into my default tendencies. Call it yellow/green from Insights Discovery, ENFP in Myers-Briggs, or Abstract-Random in Gregorc Mind Styles; it all pretty much looks the same. In my thinking mind I recognize other’s styles, and I’m not sure I adapt well in engagement, for optimal collective decision making and interactions. I certainly don’t think consciously about what others’ styles are and then modify my presence and approach intentionally–I think good leaders do this.
–I could observe other leaders for strengths I don’t have, and emulate them. I could query them for perspectives, thought processes, and decision methods. These are also the people who could probably offer me the most helpful feedback.
–I could seek more opportunities to support those who lead me, by giving them honest, loving, concrete, and actionable feedback. No matter our place in the hierarchy, we can lead and be led by anyone we encounter.

Where do we experience good leadership in society?
Illustration of individuals and their attributes is beyond the scope of this post.
Where do you experience excellent leadership, and how do you identify it?
How can you, today, provide positive reinforcement of positive leadership behaviors in those around you–and not just those with a title, power, and authority?

I think this is good place/time to provide a resource list:
—Leadership On the Line, Heifetz, Linsky
—Organizations as Machines, Organizations as Conversations, Suchman
—Leaders Eat Last, Sinek
—Dare to Lead, Brown
—Think Again, Grant
—Drive, Pink
—Managing Transitions, W and S Bridges
—Improvise!, Dickins

How could leadership at scale be better?

Train relational leaders formally. Leadership is not just about financial strategy, quarterly earnings, and operations. It’s about organizing people in complex networks of relationship. It’s verbal, as well as visual and vibratory. Formal training in self-awareness, self-regulation, emotional intelligence, and effective communication should be required in interative learning episodes at every level of promotion, in any organization.

Reward long term team success ahead of short term financial metrics. Qualitative and quantitative, cumulative, longitudinal assessments of relational success include turnover, 360 evaluations, absenteeism, and others. This goal requires leaders and led alike to tolerate and engage in uncomfortable conversations. The best teams do this early, often, and well.

Improve almost any strength listed these 30 days. Honesty, integrity, accountability, perspective taking, polarity management–what if all leaders received regular training and continuing education on any of these, with opportunities to simulate, role play, exchange stories, and compare challenges? What if we supported designated leaders both in their inner and outer relational work?

Leadership may be where I feel the most optimism for humanity. We know the relevant attributes and skills, the environments and structures that facilitate and sustain excellent leadership. We all have the capacity to learn, practice, and train any of these skills, no matter our place in any hierarchy. Organizations that invest in the emotional intelligence and training of their members thrive. There is still time. We can do so much better.

Accountability

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What does accountability mean to you? How do you hold it, for yourself and others?

OWN. YOUR. SHIT. No more, no less. The more I think of it, the more I also include fairness and nonjudgment in this concept. At its core, accountability is objective, dispassionate. Ironic, then, that its consistent practice plays a central role in building and maintaining trust, that profound, subjective emotion that can move mountains when strong, and yet can be destroyed in a single breath.

We are almost halfway through the month, friends! Listing my own life practices every day feels like a whole lot of repetitive navel gazing–does it resonate at all? Or are you getting supremely bored? I’m loving it personally, as new insights emerge almost as soon as I sit down each evening, and I see so many nascent and intertwined ideas to develop and expand in the book. Do the societal assessments and admonishments feel pedantic? Redundant and preachy? Oh well, I’m working stuff out here–thanks for joining the ride, and feel free to get off and get back on later, it won’t be like this forever! Okay onward:

How do I already do accountability well?
–I take responsibility. After an initial WTF, ‘you suck’ moment in interpersonal conflict, I am quick to self-assess, ask myself the asshole question, apologize if needed, and make repairs. For operational snags at work I trouble shoot with the team and our collaborative root cause analyses are efficient and effective.
–I invite others to own their stuff, gently. Holding someone accountable is not the same as blaming, shaming, or guilt tripping. The objective is not to make someone ‘feel bad’, but rather to acknowledge and address mistakes and course correct going forward.
–I’m able to separate facts from interpretation, most of the time. Even in the most emotionally charged situations, I’m able to reason through and eventually get to reconciliation.

How could I do better?
–It’s hard to put my finger on it…sometimes I’m in such a rush to take responsibility that I get anxious, almost like it’s a race to blame myself before others can do it–is it virtue signaling? I really do believe, in my thinking brain, what I wrote above. True accountability is not about blame. But my feeling brain may still harbor some false unworthiness that I need to work out?
–I think I can do better at upholding accountability around me. It can be a delicate balance of relationship, task, emotional regulation, and other factors… Sometimes it’s not appropriate to do it in real time, rather people (I) need to cool down, find the loving posture, attitude, and words. This risks missing the opportunity. So I can balance commitment with timing?

How does society do accountability well?

Wheels of Justice. They turn, at least sometimes, if slowly, imperfectly, and incompletely. There are tenacious and resilient people all around working to make visible and accountable that which others would sweep under any rug. Their relentless persistence and infinite mindset truly boggle me, and I bow in admiration.

How could we do better?

Transparency. Political campaign funding. Corporate finance and taxes. Pharmaceutical research. Medical billing. Legal loopholes. We can’t hold anyone accountable if we don’t know who’s doing what. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, as they say–it’s at least a partial truth.

Cull the bureaucracy, grow the manpower. So many systems remind me of the Weasleys’ Burrow, a house built of lopsided additions, ricketty stairs, and hoarded artifacts from divergent historical worlds. FDA drug approval and post market safety monitoring, civil and criminal litigation, employee hiring, promotion, and retention–so much red tape and not enough people who understand and can navigate it–people who do good go overworked and unrecognized and those who do harm fly blithely under the radar, all for far longer than serves us. Like individual people, our organizations and institutions need agility, responsiveness, and adaptiveness to operate optimally in the accelerating complexity of our world. Easier said than done, I know.

What else? How does accountability show up effectively in your life? Where do you really need more? I will revisit this; stay tuned.