presence is a crucial act of leadership.
2. Empathy: The power to appreciate the purposes, worries, and circumstances of others
Leadership without empathy is ill-informed at best and bullying at worst. Empathy is not “soft.” It is courageous, skillful, and wise to quickly comprehend the world of another and all influence depends on it.
3. Purpose: The mutual resolve of a community
Authentic purpose lowers supervision costs while improving performance. It is not only logical, but felt emotionally and physically. We will share ways to locate the intersection between the deep personal purposes of individuals and the important purposes of an enterprise.
4. Authenticity: Accelerating achievement through truth
Living true to ourselves and to our word sounds right and yet doing so can be a major challenge. Authenticity, however, is not just a moral imperative, it is also a skill. We will explore how a well-told truth creates connection and turns conflict into useful intelligence.
Sustaining the Fire
Igniting vitality in an organization is not enough, however. If not sustained, cared for, and fed, vitality will eventually blow out. In our experience, there are three more promises that must be kept to sustain vitality in an organization once it has been ignited:
5. Wonder: Fueling the fire and keeping our best day in front of us
Creativity and innovation rest on wonder. In this book, we will show how practices that combine curiosity and possibility free us from imaginary limits and inspire fresh thinking.
6. Timing: The victory of evolution over revolution
Revolution is an act of desperation for people who have been bad at evolution. When we are good at seeing and acting on what it is time for, we create less resistance and more cooperation. We will share what we have learned about timing and how it builds organizational agility.
7. Surprising Results: Making a meaningful, continual, and energizing difference
Vitality grows in cycles of surprise. When people produce valuable results beyond their own expectations, there is widespread, energizing delight. The key is designing and delivering short cycles of surprise, and we will show you how.
This book will explore each of these promises and show how, together, those promises ignite and sustain community, contribution, and choice. The image below summarizes our offer. If it is attractive to you, then we welcome you as a fellow traveler and ask that you read on.
Throughout the book, we will invite you to visit thevitalityimperative.com, an online resource intended to be a “reader’s companion” that supports and deepens your exploration of these ideas.
PROMISE #1
Awareness without Prejudice
It is easy to miss valuable “weak signals” often hidden amid the noise.
—McKinsey Quarterly
The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.
—Richard Moss
We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.
—Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook
In 1986, a 14-year-old violinist named Midori Goto, known simply by her first name, performed Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade in her debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Tanglewood music festival. As Bernstein himself conducted this challenging piece, the E string on Midori’s violin snapped. She turned gracefully to the concertmaster, took his violin, and resumed her play. Moments later, the same string snapped on the replacement violin, and again she turned to the concertmaster, took yet another violin, and returned seamlessly to the performance.
In spite of the disruptions, The New York Times’ John Rockwell termed Midori’s performance “near perfect.” When the piece ended, amid wild cheers and applause, Bernstein knelt and kissed her hand in honor of her poise and musicianship. Her capacity to be present amid the mayhem was remarkable. We think every one of us can learn to be as poised as Midori through the power of presence.
How Does Presence Produce “More with Less”?
Presence is as crucial to vitality as oxygen is to fire.
Presence dictates how much of our mental, emotional, and physical talents are available to us at a given moment. Many leaders tell us about precious days when they were especially perceptive and effective, operating at the top of their talents. If you want to spend a greater percentage of life experiencing those kinds of days, then get very interested in presence.
By presence we do not mean charisma; we mean awareness. How well leaders are connected to a given moment governs their impact per unit of time, money, and stress. More fully, presence is the ability to be aware intellectually, emotionally, and physically without prejudice—that is, any preconception that pollutes our awareness. There are big stakes here because both insight and action are correlated to awareness. If you miss the moment, you’ll miss the signals crucial to your success. The quality of your future is directly correlated with the quality of your presence.
Practicing presence is not common. Common practices and wise ones, however, can be different, and quite often are. In our conversations with people around the world, we hear that there is “not enough time” for such new pursuits. Typical solutions to the not-enough-time dilemma often make things worse. We hurry, multitask, and give shallow attention to each moment as we rush toward the next one. Meeting agendas feature many subjects, but few things are resolved.
The outcome? Maximum effort and minimum impact. As a result, impatience increases and effectiveness declines, leaving even more to be done.
We think it is time for the victory of presence over this irrational cycle of waste.
The victory of presence has major benefits to community, contribution, and choice:
• Increased trust
• Better judgment and decision making
• Noticing “weak signals” that others miss
• Greater safety, fewer injuries
• Greater peace of mind and enjoyment of work
If you care about those benefits, then there is good news: presence is improvable.
A leader’s ability to make a meaningful difference rises and falls with the quality of presence. In this chapter, we will cover the principles of presence, introduce some basic practices to develop presence, and show you how to recover presence when it is lost. Let’s investigate.
