Premise:
One of the key skills that we need to develop if we want to be leaders, in general, is our ability to notice things. This is a meta skill, that once we learn, can be extremely useful in many spheres of our lives (work, home, community, etc).
What can we do about this:
The key to increasing our ability to notice is, to slow down. I am guilty of not doing this often. A lot of people that I know are guilty of the same as well. We are all so busy doing stuff (emails, meetings, preparing and delivering presentations, balancing our books, earning money, creating a brand out of ourselves, reading another book, learning another productivity hack, watching another movie or whatever else that you fancy doing.
While being busy is a privilege in and by itself, being busy all the time is not good for any of us. There are many research studies that show that being busy all the time not only adds stress but also reduces our ability to be creative. There are studies that also show that slowing down enough to experience boredom, can actually unlock our creative muscles.
Slowing down allows us the opportunity and time to look around, to see what others are doing, to talk to them without having to schedule a formal meeting, to ask them about how their day is going and listen. This is simple but not so easy to do, as I have experienced myself.
This is a key skill to bring to the table if we want to be a successful manager or a leader worth following. This skill becomes even more critical when we are trying to lead change within our lives or businesses. The signals that we might miss due to being too busy can actually be the very reason, the entire change effort could fail. This requires us to develop our self-awareness.
There are many people who say that we need to notice more, pay more attention to detail, be more present! The question is how can we learnt his skill and internalise it.
Here is what works for me, when I am most successful in being present and notice things:
Breathe:
Whenever I take a moment to take a couple of breaths before I start my interaction with others, I find that my interaction is much stronger, I am able to be present, connect and engage with the person or the thing that i am engaging with. So, whenever I switch a task or am about to meet someone, I try to take a moment to take a couple of deep breaths.
Anchor:
If I know that I am entering a high stakes situation, I find a way to anchor myself to the physical location that I am in. I do this by looking around me and finding something that I really like about my surroundings and use that to anchor myself to the location by appreciating it loudly. This serves two purpose. Firstly, it breaks ice with whoever I am meeting with and secondly, it allows me to bring my complete focus on it and thereby to my current location.
Talisman:
Another way that has worked for me in the past is when I hold a talisman. This is equivalent to a wand of a magician. As long as I have the wand and ma touching it, I imagine that I have any super power that I need. The talisman could be a ring, a pen, a bracelet, an ear ring, a headband, a cap or whatever item that you can carry on you and can access quickly at a moment’s notice. This talisman could also be a phrase that we use when we need. Some people use the name of their preferred God, some people might use something as simple as “All is well“!!
In conclusion:
In conclusion, I can only say that our brain has evolved in a certain way, which was useful in the past but can be a pain in the world that we inhabit. So, all of these are ways for us to trick it to allow us to focus on the present moment. As change leaders, it is critical for us to be more present than others, as the entire change effort depends on our being able to separate the signal from the noise that we constantly receive.
PS: Here is a short video that inspired this post. Hope you enjoy the video and at the same time find a practice that works for you: