Chapter 8
Be Fully Present

While leadership sometimes requires action, it sometimes means simply showing up and being fully present.

Being fully present means listening intently, being aware of ourselves in each moment, and being aware of our colleagues’ moods and dispositions. It also means focusing on the task at hand, ignoring distractions. Focusing on that task not only helps get the work done but also sends a message that the conversation is important, and that relationships with our colleagues are important. And when we’re fully engaged in our work, we also know the limits of what can be done and when our team is on the wrong track.

In this chapter we explore the concept of being fully present and, closely associated, the state of mindfulness, and how being fully present and mindful affects the quality of our relationship with others. We also discuss how our actions are visible reflections of our beliefs, and how our actions are also statements to those around us. We spend some time understanding that distractions undermine the quality and attentiveness we give to our work, and explore some of the ways we can mitigate those distractions. Finally, we take time to recognize that, by applying empathy and patience to mindful efforts, we can often achieve extraordinary, and surprising, results.

Being Fully Present Through Mindfulness

The definition of “mindfulness,” a concept with Buddhist roots, varies depending on the source. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as “the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.”¹

Mindfulness is also about relationships. In fact, as Dr. Richard Chambers and Margie Ulbrick write in their book Mindful Relationships: Creating Genuine Connection with Ourselves and Others, “mindfulness is relationship”—with ourselves and the world around us, our environments, and the people we interact with. It’s about how we experience our bodies and our emotions, and each other.²

Sitting with a loved one, or alone, watching and enjoying a sunset is a mindful moment. Walking our dog in the park, or preparing a meal, or listening to music can all be mindful experiences, if we are fully present, focused, and undistracted. At work, we can be mindful, sitting quietly in a meeting and listening thoughtfully to the ideas and opinions of a colleague, if we are undistracted and listening with unbiased openness.

Mindfulness is accessible to everyone. It’s not a mystical, elusive experience, and it’s not necessarily meditation, but rather an intentional therapeutic technique that has value for all of us in our increasingly hectic everyday lives. We are always racing from here to there—racing in our relationships, and racing in our work. For decades people have attempted to do everything faster, even reading faster in vain attempts to absorb information faster.

But a growing body of new evidence suggests that the path to heightened comprehension and immersive learning is by reading slower, not faster. The same is true for taking notes in a meeting or in a classroom. Computers have allowed us to type pretty much everything we hear verbatim, but doing this does not allow us to process and internalize the information in the same way as when we take notes longhand.

Writing ideas down old- school style with pen and paper slows us down, forcing us to distill ideas into notes that have meaning to us. Therefore, in the moment of listening, we are also synthesizing the ideas into characters and images that make sense to us, deepening our understanding and comprehension. By slowing down our note taking—processing and reiterating information in real time—on the page, in our own style, we are practicing a form of mindfulness.

In a series of experiments that demonstrated this phenomenon, researchers asked separate groups to take notes verbatim on a laptop (group 1) or handwritten on paper (group 2). Consistently the pen- and- paper note takers beat the laptop note takers in recall exercises one week later.³

Slowing down, focusing, and becoming increasingly mindful and fully present is an important element in elevating our presence and effectiveness. As Scott Eblin, best- selling author of Overworked and Overwhelmed, likes to say, “Leadership presence requires being present.”⁴

The fact that greater comprehension and content cognition comes from slowing down makes perfect sense when we understand that, at a fundamental level, mindfulness is—in the words of Ellen Langer, one of the world’s foremost scholars on mindfulness—“the process of actively noticing new things.”⁵ It makes sense because to notice new things we must be present, open, and aware.

Mindfulness isn’t a tiring exertion. When practiced thoughtfully, it’s a relaxing and absorbing activity that makes us feel renewed and energized. Mindfulness is about being able to integrate various disparate parts of our lives into a unified whole. Remember, the word “integrity” comes from the Latin integer, meaning wholeness or one.

This integrated, holistic notion of mindfulness dispels the antiquated philosophies of work–life balance, as if these were two separate lives that needed to be in harmony. Instead, mindfulness teaches us to understand our lives as one integrated whole.

Stress is not a function of an event itself—it’s merely our emotional reaction to it, a function of the perspective we take. The event itself is impersonal—neither positive nor negative. When we apply mindfulness, we begin to understand that, instead of simply reacting to events, we can respond to them in a more meaningful way.

For example, let’s say our team has a big product launch and in the first quarter that product bombs. No one buys it. If our team views that as purely a negative event, everything involved in it becomes seen as bad—the product, our team’s performance, etc. But if we can step back and impartially examine all the circumstances of the event—for example, the market dynamics, customer buying habits, product placement, or interface design—we can mindfully explore, and then change, the situation to create a more desired outcome.

Being Aware of Our Actions

“Every decision is a statement,” says Hap Klopp, founder of The North Face. “Some are statements to the masses. Some are statements to the few. But all are statements to and about yourself.”⁶

I’ve been learning a lot from Klopp lately. I interviewed him in San Francisco in April 2015. Since then I’ve reread his 2012 book, Conquering the North Face: An Adventure in Leadership, and his new book, Almost.

The latest lesson I’ve been reflecting on is that, from the perspective of everyone on the team, the boss’s actions are extremely visible, and hyper-analyzed. Lowland gorillas, who share 98 percent of our DNA, look at their troop leaders every fifteen to twenty seconds for cues of how to behave—when it’s time to move on and forage, when it’s time to be alert and focused, and when it’s time to chill out. Our primate cousins are not that much different from us in looking to the leader for social cues.

Early in his career, Klopp was hired to help turn around a ski shop. There were many things wrong—the inventory, the accounting, the customer service, even the simple layout of the shop in terms of making equipment visible and accessible. The most critical things that needed correcting were the accounting and the vendor- sourcing practices, which entailed calling vendors to speed up the company’s delivery. But that contribution wouldn’t be the most visible to employees, so instead he focused his energy on working with the warehouse employees to clean, reorganize, and restructure the company’s entire warehouse.

Klopp’s standing up on a ladder reorganizing the warehouse with the team didn’t make the biggest dent in the bottom line immediately, but it did send a very clear and obvious message about work ethic, collaboration, and leading by example. By showing up in a very real, visible way and focusing on the task at hand, Klopp was making a small act of leadership that had great ripple effects.

Later, when The North Face was taking off rapidly, it would move into bigger office spaces every six to twelve months. The company developed the custom of having a painting party every time it took over a new space. Klopp would join these painting workdays not only to demonstrate his willingness to work side by side with everyone in the company but also to get to know people.

Every leader I’ve encountered who is described by peers and colleagues as “exceptional” or “remarkable” or “excellent” lives his or her work life (and often personal life as well) in a highly visible manner. Such leaders are not locked in the boardroom, or hiding in their offices, but are front and center, readily available and open to ideas. It’s a small and simple act that can have a big impact.

Being Fully Present in Our Work

Being fully present, especially with all the mobile devices we have these days, is not always easy. As we explore in more detail in chapter 12, distractions of modern life, especially mobile devices and technologies, can have a big effect on our interactions with others, undermining our relationships and work.

Just how distracted are we, and how big an impact can that have on our lives? In 2009, Car and Driver magazine wanted to figure out how dangerous texting and driving can be, compared with drunk driving.⁷ They rented an 11, 800- foot airport runway in the middle of Michigan and put Jordan (twenty-two years old) and Eddie (thirty-seven) behind the wheel.

They rigged up a red light in the middle of the windshield to represent brake lights in front of the driver. A passenger had a little remote control to activate the light randomly and measure the drivers’ response times. They tested the drivers at both 35 mph and 70 mph. The average reaction time while the driver was sober and paying attention was 0.54 seconds to start braking. Now they had a sober baseline.

Then they asked the drivers to pick up their smartphones and read funny quotes from the movie Caddyshack and then text funny quotes from the movie while driving. Reaction times varied, of course, but both drivers performed worse than when they were undistracted. Some were considerably worse.

Then they took a break and chilled out on the tarmac to get a good buzz on. They mixed up some vodka and orange juice and drank away an hour or so, until the drivers blew a 0.08 on the Breathalyzer. Then they repeated the test. For the most part, the younger driver Jordan, outperformed the older driver, Eddie but not always, as shown in the results.

At 35 mph:

• Reading Caddyshack quotes—added up to forty-five feet before the driver reacts
• Texting Caddyshack quotes— added up to forty-one feet before the driver reacts
• Intoxicated—added up to seven feet before the driver reacts

At 70 mph:

• Reading Caddyshack quotes—added up to thirty-six feet before the driver reacts
• Texting Caddyshack quotes—added up to seventy feet before the driver reacts
• Intoxicated—added up to eleven feet before the driver reacts

That’s right. Intoxication is not even close when it comes to the distractions our devices offer. Reading or texting on your smartphone is way more impairing than driving drunk. The Car and Driver experiment puts it up to six times more dangerous.

Driving is second nature to most of us. It just requires paying attention and following the traffic rules. Obviously, texting impairs our ability to do that. But how does texting affect our work? Active listening, mental processing, creative engagement, and problem solving all require much higher cognitive and collaborative participation. So, when we are texting and e-mailing while in meetings or on conference calls, what’s our impairment level? Twenty times greater? Thirty times? And how does this translate into impact on our work? We should ask ourselves, “What’s the business opportunity loss when the people in my company are constantly distracted?”

It’s not news to anyone that multitasking is debilitating in many ways. The simple action of switching from one task to another is, in itself, a cognitive drain. Not only that, simply attempting to multitask lowers our IQ performance to that of nearly an eight- year- old, according to a study at Stanford University.⁸

To be fully functioning adult leaders, we need to be truly present. And to be truly present, we need to shut down the smartphone and fully engage in the task, or conversation, at hand. When we engage fully in the moment, sometimes remarkable things can happen . . .

Showing Up with Empathy and Understanding

From the kitchen window, actor Christopher Reeve could see that his wife, Dana, was getting frustrated. Over and over again, she was running awkwardly, hunched over, down the driveway while holding onto the back of Will’s bicycle. Their son Will, six years old at the time, was still terrified of riding without his training wheels, or without his mom holding him up. Reeve watched as his wife and son repeated the same failed routine again. Finally, Dana came inside, exhausted and frustrated.

Reeve said to his wife, “Let me try.” He rolled his wheelchair gently down the ramp outside and onto the driveway, where his son was wiping away tears. Reeve spoke to his son slowly. Since the accident, Reeve’s voice had become soft and measured. He told Will to place both hands on the handlebars and hold them steady. He explained that, by doing this, the bike wouldn’t shake as much. He told Will to look up, far ahead, to where he was going and not down at the pedals or the front wheel. He told his son to first place his right foot on the pedal and his left foot on the ground, prepared and poised to push hard.

Will froze. Then Reeve reminded his son that he would never let him do anything too scary or dangerous— that riding a bike was something he knew Will could do. He told Will he was going to count to three, and on three, it was time to go. Reeve counted slowly, and, when he reached three, Will pushed off hard and rode down and around the driveway. The first time he circled back, his face was a mask of concentration and focus, and the second time around his face only reflected joy.

In his book Nothing Is Impossible, Christopher Reeve writes that, before the accident that left him paralyzed, he was a whirlwind of activity.⁹ He constantly took his family sailing, horseback riding, traveling, hiking, and adventuring around the world. He writes that he never really asked if they wanted to go; he just took them. And after the accident, he learned to listen. He learned to speak to them where they were, trying to see their perspective, with a deep sense of empathy.

Reeve writes that, before his accident, he would not have believed that he could teach his son to ride a bike simply by talking to him. Teaching, he had thought, was about showing, demonstrating, and physically leading the way. But during his recovery process, he learned the power of conversations, words, intentions, and meeting people at an intersection where they are ready to learn. He learned this because the physicians and caretakers around him would introduce an idea or an activity, but only when they thought he was ready to tackle it, or else he would push it aside. It’s all about introducing learning opportunities when people are ready to learn.

An important nuance of excellent leaders is that they have the capacity to recognize when others are ready to go to the next level— ready to take on a new challenge— and, instead of doing it for them, encourage their heart and prepare them to make that leap. A small act of leadership starts by simply showing up and being willing to share your skills and experience.

Showing Others It's Okay to Let Go

Following procedures can be a good thing. Having clear protocol bolsters confidence and spurs clear, intentional action. Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger maintained something pilots call “deliberate calm” in the face of his emergency water landing on the Hudson River on January 15, 2009, when the Airbus he was piloting lost both engines after flying through a flock of geese. As highly experienced pilots will describe, that landing was not as miraculous and untenable as many believe. Sully was simply following standard procedure when he calmly glided the Airbus to a water landing.¹⁰

In that example, Captain Sully thankfully held on with “deliberate calm” to his training and experience. But sometimes we hold on to ideas or possessions when it’s really time to let go.

In 1994, fourteen heroic firefighters perished in the South Canyon fire in Colorado. According to the Wildland Fire Leadership Development Program, although the firefighters had been instructed to drop their gear when fleeing the advancing fire, none did.¹¹ One body was found only 250 feet from the safety of the top of the ridge, still wearing his heavy pack and carrying a chainsaw.

After the event, experts calculated that, if the firefighters had run just a half-mile-per-hour faster, they would have outrun the fire. Average humans, unencumbered, can run about twelve to fourteen miles per hour for short distances. Carrying their gear might have cut the firefighters’ speed by half. Perhaps they were disoriented in the smoke and fire. Perhaps the act of dropping gear would be to admit failure. Perhaps in the moment, and in spite of their training, they didn’t hear the order and simply never thought of it.

We consistently overvalue our possessions. In the 1949 wildfire disaster at Mann Gulch, crew foreman Wag Dodge clearly ordered everyone to drop their gear and run from the advancing fire. Walter Rumsey testified that, even though he was running for his life, he saw that his partner, Eldon Diettert, was carrying a shovel. Rumsey grabbed it from him to lessen his load, but then searched around for a tree so that he could carefully lean the shovel against it.¹²

In moments of intense pressure, we can get caught up in our foolish consistencies and adherence to habit in the face of changing circumstances, which keeps us from being fully present. In both wildfire disaster examples, the firefighters simply couldn’t see that the circumstances had elevated to the next level—that, in fact, protocol dictated that it was time to drop everything and run.

We can also become so enamored with our possessions, physical or mental, that we self- identify with carrying them, to the point that we refuse to let go, even when it’s time. To carry a Pulaski fireman’s axe, invented by a famous firefighter and inventor Edward Pulaski,¹³ is a badge of honor, just as carrying our habits and opinions with us everywhere we go affirms who we are.

We not only tend to overvalue our physical possessions but also our decisions. How can we identify those fixations that are holding us back and weighing us down, while reaffirming those closely held convictions that empower and propel us? Taking a tip from Harvard medical researcher Jenny Rudolph,¹⁴ I suggest that the best advice is to say what we are thinking out loud, in the presence of those whom we trust and who will hold us accountable.

In her research, Rudolph found that, once medical students made incorrect diagnoses, they would often persist in ineffective treatments long after it had become obvious that the treatments were not helping. They were simply unable, or unwilling, to revisit their original diagnosis. They became stuck— fixated— on their original decision. Instead they should have tried the following steps:

• Say out loud an expanded list of the symptoms identified
• Say out loud an expanded list of the possible diagnoses that would fit the symptoms identified
• Say out loud a plan to eliminate each diagnosis one by one

By simply saying out loud what we are thinking in the face of changing circumstances and evidence, we force ourselves to consider our opinions and biases, and to be fully present in addressing the task at hand, to be mindful instead of focusing on previous decisions we’ve made. We not only hold ourselves more accountable but we implicitly ask those around us to check our judgment.

Showing up each day with mindfulness and presence, and modeling the behavior you believe in, is a small act of leadership.