Leadership lesson: seeing in perspective is different than speaking down to someone
Eye level talk makes a change in response
How can we be blocked at the “seeing in perspective” level and can not zoom back?
Many times of the day leaders need to zoom out and in several times into different contexts to see the big picture and then understand details of a situation, checking different perspectives. This is not easy, you need practice to do this. Sometimes it comes automatically, sometimes you put more effort into it.
Our mind is like a stage with actors and a director, and sometimes our stage is full, there is no headspace anymore. Nevertheless, we do not identify that is full and still run into the next meeting. And maybe this next meeting will be a one-to-one meeting between a leader and an employee. And the leader has a full headspace. He just had a situation where he needed to switch to the big picture, zoom out, and was not coming back.
What happens then?
The leader meets the employee. The leader is still in the “seeing-in perspective” mode, and not able to zoom back.
The leader speaks down to the employee, like he would be superior like he would be able to see the big picture, and the employee is not. This might be true in some situations, as leaders have sometimes information that cannot be shared with employees at one moment in time, and this gives them the ability to connect the dots and see the big picture.
The employee gets frustrated because the conversation is not at eye level as usual. The outcome is not one that both wish, not constructive, emotions might come in and they are not able to have a valuable conversation.
What can the leader do differently?
Take time to switch to the “normal setting”, clean up the headspace upfront the next meeting, and come into “now and here”.
This gives the right attention to the person you are about to have a conversation with, and helps you recalibrate how and what you talk, depending on the other person's values, personality, psychological needs, and so on.
There are many methods here and every person has their own way to arrive into the “now and here” moment. One that works for me and I can share here is box breathing. This works like this:
inhale for 4 seconds
hold your breath for 4 seconds
exhale for 4 seconds
hold your breath for 4 seconds
inhale for 4 seconds and repeat the cycle
It is like adjusting yourself to the present situation and being able to recalibrate for your next meeting in a fast way.
The idea of coming down from the tree to talk with me came to me from a parenting training I did many years ago when the parent is sometimes “up” with their approach and the child is asking the parent to come down and talk to them:
Bottom line:
Take time to recalibrate before each interaction to pull valuable conversations and understand others' perspectives.
Tell me in the comments which other techniques you use to arrive into the “now and here” and switch the context fast:
Resources:
Box Breathing and Benefits article
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