A question every leader should ponder
A few years back as part of a family enterprise consultation, I had a coaching session with the patriarch of a family enterprise. This gentleman was very driven, very committed to his faith and uniquely, at least in my experience, had three coaches. As he talked about how busy he was, a question arose, one that I’ve asked most of the leaders I have coached since. The question is, “Who are you when you are not busy?” This gentleman said that he understood the question intellectually, but he said he had no idea how to answer that question.
Every leader that I coach struggles to find more white space in their life and how to be available to themselves. White space is the time energy and space to reflect, to process, and to be available to what feelings and thoughts are beyond the immediate. Especially with our electronics demanding our endless attention, consider how much white space you have in a day. If you feel like Indiana Jones running ahead of the boulder you may get to brag that you are busy-even frantically busy or as many people say hyper busy or crazy busy, but that doesn’t make you an effective leader. With this leader, I quoted a Bible phrase that I know, “Be still and know that I am” (Psalm 46:10).
Being available to yourself requires white space, but it is bringing attention and availability to your thoughts, feelings, even your body. On that last point, I have always thought of meditation teacher, Jack Kornfield, who in his profound book, A Path with Heart, quotes from a James Joyce short story, A Painful Case, “He lived at a little distance from his body.” This also relates to not only using your head, but also your heart, your gut, or intuition, and if appropriate for you, your soul. I think those other three voices require some stillness and greater availability. Yet I also think they often contain deeper wisdom than our intellectual analysis.
Just this week someone I’m coaching said they have thought about that question every day since our first session. Let me use an example of the type of question I think this really is. In Zen meditation there’s a practice called a koan. A koan is an unanswerable question that the student struggles with, sometimes for years. It’s a question that you cannot answer intellectually, for example “What did your face look like before you were born?” Carrying this question and reflecting on it is more important than some mental analysis of it.
Being available to yourself is different from rumination. Rumination is reflecting on the past or the future with a negative emotional overlay, what some would just call worrying. Being available is also not about planning. At this point my sense is many of people reading this want to know exactly how to do it. I’m not sure there are exactly “seven magic steps” to being available but let me give you some approaches that my clients and I have found helpful.
Many people create time and space each day for this. In fact, the leadership development model I use shows that the majority of the top 10% of leaders tend to have a daily reflective practice. It can be as simple as when they’re walking their dog, their drive home, or I even had one client whose executive assistant locked her in the office library after taking her cell phone from her. Also realize there’s a continuum of this type of availability, from three short breaths before entering a meeting, to a ten-day meditation retreat. Both are helpful. Having a coach tends to create white space to step back from your life, reflect and feel in a safe neutral environment. Meditation in my experience helps us get still and allow the deeper, less urgent thoughts, feelings, and even body sensations to arise. Personally, once in the middle of one multi-day retreat, I became viscerally aware of how busy my life had become. I knew this intellectually and would’ve agreed to it before the retreat, but the retreat allowed me to truly feel it not just in my head but my heart, gut, and soul. It led to a shift in my career.
I remember reading a quote a long time ago that the first step in any relationship is attention. I would suggest that if you are not even available to yourself, you’re far less available to the other important people in your life. So, as you reflect on your development as a leader, I would encourage you to carry this question and see what arises.
