Great leaders master less & foster more

1.

“The really outstanding leaders are people who first listen and get people to tell what they think and what they know. And then to put that all together for a higher order integration. That’s real leadership.” (Daniel Goleman, interview with Harvard Business Review)

Dan Goleman gives a beautiful explanation of what powerful listening can be and how it is, to me, the most effective tool in working towards change in interaction with people. Look through their eyes and see if you can envision the change you have in mind.

Genuine attention is a very intriguing source of energy. While engaging in interaction to change a certain situation I try to start for the assumption that I have no real solution. I may have my ideas, views and opinions, but the real solution for every interaction will be born in that interaction. Think of it as a little seed, planted somewhere in the ground we share beneath our feet. By caring for this ground and that particular seed, by paying attention to it instead of turning it into a battlefield, I may be capable of allowing something beautiful to grow out of our meeting.

Great leaders know how genuine attention can make small ideas grow into big changes. They also know that they can do nothing but enable the change, maybe also encourage it. But the real drive for change comes from within the seed, from within the person you’ll work with, from within everybody you engage with.

2.

When things happen the right way, will you let them?

“Can you allow things to happen the right way?”

This question crossed my mind while listening to a session about mindfulness by John Kabat-Zinn at Google.

I got a picture in my mind of a friend of mine who’s constantly worrying at work. It’s like she never has enough time to set things straight and to make things right. Often she takes her work home. And still things aren’t the way she wants them to be. And when they do there’s almost no time to enjoy them because another task is waiting, accompanied by another impossible deadline.

I wondered if she would be willing to sit back and be aware, just to allow things to happen the right way.

I wondered if I would be willing to do so. Maybe you wonder as well whether you’d be willing to do so.

Hold that thought for a while.

It seems absurd to say that ‘allowing to happen’ may be the best way to get things under control.

But there are many kinds of control. When you’re in resonance, when you – as a surfer – are one with your wave, then you’re in control. You are because your body is reading the wave in a way your rational mind can’t begin to understand. You read in dolby surround, in every kind of direction at the same time, with every sense possible.

Some people call this harmony.
Some mindfulness.
Some awareness, or flow.

I’m curious if I could become aware of moments when trying to control things keeps me from resonating, keep me from ‘allowing things to happen the right way’?

There’s a sentence popping up in my mind right now which may help me to open up.

“In you I trust.”

Let’s try that for a second. See what it does to us.

When magic happens – how to turn something bad into something great

This is a story about change and how changing things is as much as about making changes as it is about allowing change to happen. This is a story about how something really frustrating and annoying turned into a great gift. This is a story about the power of being superbly human. Enjoy.

The last couple of months I wake up at night. Why, I don’t know. But when I’m awake I lay there listening and I hear a buzz coming out of the hallway. I was convinced that the noise was caused by my neighbour’s fridges. He’s running a bakery and his fridges are next to our hallway.

So I decided that I had to talk to him. But I kept delaying our meeting. And at the same time I started making up conversations in my head. I started to make scenario’s, started to design strategies about how to obtain my goal, how to anticipate a possible ‘no, I don’t believe you’ and so on. The more I waited, the more tensed I became and the harder it seemed to get in touch and talk about what I thought was happening.

I even got to a point where I thought I wouldn’t be able to keep calm enough to have a proper conversation. And so I talked about it with my coach. He wrote a wonderful letter, showing understanding and compassion. He was familiar with this experience and urged me to be compassionate towards myself and my neighbour. Bottom line was: give each other the chance to have a fruitful experience in trying to find a solution together.