Leadership and Presence
Posted on February 22, 2016 by Linda Ford PhD, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
Woody Allen used to say showing up is 80% of life. What does it mean to "show up" as a leader? Let's look at what it means to truly be present.
Have you ever had the experience of sensing in yourself that you’re not fully present with the person you’re talking to? Or maybe you haven’t noticed it in yourself but you’ve sensed that the other person wasn’t fully present?
With every encounter, there is a choice to be made. Will you be fully engaged in this moment, this encounter or will you let yourself pull away, even a little from that edge? Just noticing that you have that choice brings a heightened sense of being present in the moment.
We can sense when leaders are showing up with all of themselves, when they are fully present and authentically engaged. Or not. We can feel, then, how this affects their leadership. It’s harder to follow someone who seems not fully present with her own experience.
Writing about this makes me ponder the vulnerability of choosing full engagement and presence. I can feel how allowing myself to disconnect, even a little, from my own experience in this moment feels a little safer. There is a bit of a protective barrier around me. It’s not that I am safer, only that it feels so. But the power of leadership is in the risk of vulnerability, the full-hearted engagement that makes us want to follow.
For all of us as leaders, leading our own lives or leading others, these choices about our vulnerability and our presence are fundamental. They shape the texture of our connections with others and with ourselves. At work, these choices exert a powerful influence on our ability to get work done with and through others.
“To arrive at understanding from being one’s true self is called nature. To arrive at being one’s true self from understanding is called culture.”
Confucius
