Leadership Moves

What if your number one priority as a leader was not to be in control of everything, but just be aware of where you, and others, were pointing your minds?

In the businesses, organisations and families we interact with we often see an individual having a huge impact by noticing that there’s a ‘noise’ issue contaminating the group’s performance, and then finding a way to turn the noise down. Because, completely innocently, groups often get caught up in the collective story of what’s going on, fuelled by the human capacity to use the past to predict a future that hasn’t happened yet.

The state of mind of an individual, particularly in a leadership role, has a huge impact on the rest of the organisation. If they are pointing their minds towards scarcity, risk, fear or panic then the chances of this trickling through the organisation are high. Inadvertently the narrative of an external factor or event becomes a shared reality of the group and the imaginary dragons get treated as real.  Before you know it you have two issues, the ‘real’ one you are trying to deal with and the psychological one you have created. The good news is, all it takes is for someone to spot that the ‘dragon’ is an illusion, and you can get on with dealing with whatever is in front of you. If you’ve recently been through a year-end, product launch or are going through a back to work project you’ll probably have seen this in action!

Photo by Tarik Haiga on Unsplash

Sometimes it takes courage to point out to everyone that they’ve got their best knight armour on to deal with a dragon that isn’t there. But the impact of calling it is that you then get a team who have taken their armour off (including the helmet with a slit to peer out of), who are out of defensive mode (towards the dragon and each other) and therefore have the freedom of mind needed to access all their wisdom, clarity and connection to deal with the real issues.

Being grounded and paying attention to where people are pointing their minds is a leadership move that can be made in any moment. It has the power to reset a team, and refocus them on what needs to get done.

How often do you take a step back and ask yourself, ‘where am I pointing my mind, and inadvertently others’ minds?’

And what can you do to turn down the noise so people can hear their own wisdom?