Leading with Presence when Nothing is Certain

January 23, 2009 by  

jungle

Leadership programs have helped executives be empathetic to employees facing organizational change. Soft skills help change leaders give employees the time and space to wander around in a jungle of uncertainty until they’re ready to accept new models, systems and structures.

That uncertainty is now magnified as the world’s financial, economic and business foundations have shifted beneath us. Uncertainty is no longer a place on the path to something different. It is the path.

For today’s leaders – of organizations, teams, start-ups and even solo professional and creative firms (self-leadership) – its all the more important to increase self-awareness and presence in order to hold the space for events to unfold, and for people to adapt.

Holding space, or presence leadership might sound counter-intuitive to habitual change responses that attempt to reduce confusion. Those typically include more doing, telling, reacting, trying to “make things happen” through force of will, jumping to conclusions about the future and making assumptions about the past.

cosmosBut confusion results when people believe they don’t know something they should know, or need to know. Confusion will be reduced or eliminated only when that belief is replaced by unconditional acceptance of uncertainty.

Presence leaders will communicate and model how this acceptance is a pivotal point of power (not weakness). In doing so, they naturally influence people in their organization to see themselves as cause, not effect, and to be poised for the best, not resigned to the worst.

The jungle metaphor transforms to a still mysterious, but friendlier, supportive and more orderly place where people can wander, but not be lost.

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Filed under: change leadership, disruption, metaphor, Natural influence, self-awareness, shift
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