The Key to Leadership is Being Present and Aware!

“In any moment, no matter how lost we feel, we can take refuge in presence and love. We need only pause, breathe, and open to the experience of aliveness within us. In that wakeful openness, we come home to the peace and freedom of our natural awareness.”  – Tara Brach

Ever feel like you can’t quite catch up, catch a break or even catch your breath? That has been a space I’ve been occupying lately in fact, I’ve set up camp here. I’ve decorated the walls with mental sketches of what it takes for me to feel productive, good, or simply enough. Lately I’ve had lots of both exciting and difficult to navigate happenings and I’ve found myself with too much to do, too much to take in, just too much. It’s a familiar, and in this way a “comfortable,” place. Yet I know it’s a place where I miss things, I miss whole conversations with family and friends (or my response is so delayed it brings a laugh or worse an eye roll from my teenage daughter), I miss taking in the beauty of my surroundings, I miss experiencing what I’m up to fully, and most importantly I start to miss my life.

As I watched an interview I did with my fellow Northwestern University alum, Dr. Jay Kumar for an episode of the GenConnectU’s series Thriving Brain called Why Are Presence and Awareness Essential for Effective Leadership? I realized that what I’ve really been missing lately is presence. ​

When I’m in the midst of the busy, the too many things on the to-do list, the “I’m running late” mode, that’s when my brain goes into overdrive, desperately trying to figure out how to make it all happen because when I make it all happen, then and only then, can I relax. This is anything but presence, I’m distracted and drowning in the details, the expectations, the assumptions, the thoughts. Ironically, what I’m seeking in my quest to get it all done is calm. And yet calm doesn’t care about how many things I check off, it doesn’t live in the land of when I get this done then … instead it’s available to me when I choose to be present.
 
So when I take a deep breath just now, I remember, yet again, that I am choosing my life. These choices are happening whether I’m present for them or not. When I’m intentional about creating what I want, leading from my heart, that’s when I come back to presence. Being truly here is the foundation for powerful leadership and living. Presence is the threshold to not only being an effective leader but also a wholehearted person. Setting a path and inspiring action happens when I’m present, not when I’m lost in regrets or nostalgia about the past or subsumed into worries about the future. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to learn from our past experiences and strategically plan for the future. AND our most powerful leadership and meaningful living happens right now. This is when and where we choose what’s next and we inspire others to join us.
 
Once we are present, we can start to notice what’s happening for us, for others, and around us. Awareness is a window into what is true, and self-awareness, specifically, is an opening into transformational leadership. Tasha Eurich in her book Insight: The Surprising Truth about How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think, the TransformAble book of the month defines self-awareness as the “will and skill to understand who we are and how others see us.” Awareness is the light we shine internally and externally to illuminate new ways of being and experiment with new types of doings. It’s not judgment and it’s not self-absorption. It’s just noticing with curiosity, a powerful exploration of what is for the sake of understanding what can be. Like presence, awareness is a choice. And I know I’m easily lulled out of awareness (and metaphorically to sleep) by the rhythm of my mental and embodied habits especially when the busyness takes on a life of its own. Choosing is the will and noticing is the skill of self-awareness.

​I centered my framework of Leading from the Inside Out on Presence and Awareness because this is how and where we energize our leadership. From this foundation of presence and awareness we touch our aliveness, the energy that transforms leadership and life into what it’s meant to be:  sparkling, can’t get enough of it, connected, and on purpose. Want to tap into your true leadership with presence and awareness? Let’s connect!