How often do we give colleagues or family the gift of being present? How often do we receive the gift of presence back? The idea of being fully present came up in my monthly Vistage leadership group. I keep thinking about it, so I thought I’d write about it and connect a few dots that I’m seeing. Being fully present sounds simple – why do I find it difficult?
One successful attempt I had at being fully present this month was in a discussion over dinner about what we wanted the shared purpose of our family of four to be going forward. These family dinners are rare now with our oldest only home for short college breaks. With our second hopefully heading off to college next Fall, it is definitely a time of transition. While I have applied the idea of developing shared purpose in work settings for decades, I never thought to be intentional about a conversation on shared purpose with our family until now. It was a fun first conversation and particularly special to have our young adults contributing ideas for our family’s purpose and what they want to give and receive (and yes, “send money!” was the first answer). Now, I just have to remember to follow up. Thanks Todd Musselman for the encouragement to develop shared purpose in work and family relationships!
Another place that being fully present came up related to the workplace this month was in a seminar I attended with Culture +. Big thanks to the authors of Love As a Business Strategy for all the inspiration. I took away several ideas and reminders on how to show up at my best in work and life. They mentioned Peter Drucker’s idea that I’ve been quoting for decades that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” and now I’m adding and amplifying their idea that “Behavior eats culture for lunch.” I’ve definitely got plenty of examples on both sides of that. The most success I have is when I remember that I have two ears and one mouth for a reason, and I focus on listening, repeating back, and checking my understanding of what colleagues are communicating. Being fully present (or not) reinforces or undermines our best efforts at creating positive work and family cultures.
In the monthly Conscious Conversations series that I am facilitating for the Houston Chapter of Conscious Capitalism, we discussed this quote from Mackey and his co-authors in Conscious Leadership about being fully present:
“When we are fully present in each moment, we begin to notice the fear, sadness, anger, illness, low self-esteem, and depression in other people. Compassion is the normal human response to pain and suffering, but we must be present in the moment to notice it. It isn’t easy to be present.”
At least I don’t feel alone in the difficulties of being fully present! I’ve got lots of work to do on noticing positive and negative emotions in my interactions. On a more successful note, last Friday, I spent a day in prison with the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) as a volunteer at the Business Plan Competition and Graduation. I’ve been volunteering off and on with PEP since 2008, and I highly recommend getting involved if you want a powerful experience of how being present can be life-changing for you and the participants. What keeps me coming back as a volunteer with PEP is the multitude of vibrant, real-life examples that we all have the ability to change and grow.
I’m a little hesitant to throw too many ideas out there at once, but I can’t resist mentioning that I read the book Likeable Badass by Alison Fragale this month. Alison’s top tip is to be Assertive and Warm, a likeable badass. Being fully present is a norm for the likeable badass leaders that I know. I hope to write more about this another time, and, for now, I will encourage you to buy and read Likeable Badass for all the insights.
What are your best tips for being fully present? I’d love to learn from you. Let’s be more present in 2024!
TAMMIRA 