Stephen H Baum Leadership

How do you show up?

If nothing else, when you read Leadership Dojo, it will cause you to take a very different look at yourself than you have any time previously. I believe it could lead you to take your leadership up several notches in your family, your community, your organization..

To begin with, how do you enter a conversation you anticipate will be difficult? Or a meeting you expect will be testy? Are you prepared to fight? How does your body feel at that moment? Are you tensed up in your eyes or jaw or shoulders or gut? If the answer is yes, you wont be at your best. 

When the interaction is “hot” in real time, how do you react when you feel someone is coming on too strong with an opposing view on something you really care about?  Do you instinctively back away? Or do you instinctively “power up” and meet power with power?  Neither one gives you advantage. Think about it as a physical event — say, a wrestling match. If you push too hard, lean too far forward, you could be hurt by a more powerful opponent or pulled off balance and find yourself pinned by a smaller but clever opponent. 

And what if the conflict was with someone you would be living with (or wanted to live with) for a long time? A crucial client. A spouse. You need to win your point but not lose the relationship. How easy is it for you to avoid an adversarial situation and approach the conflict together?

How easy is it for you to “see” what the opposite person is feeling? Can you read the body language? How you show up, what is going on in your body and how it shows are a new dimension of competition. 

Our parents told most of us long ago to take a deep breath and count to ten before acting on a negative emotion. If that is how you can get yourself calm and centered, do it. If not, find a way to cool it briefly, then explore with the other person  what is going on, where they are coming from, where you are coming from and then what solutions might work.

This is only the beginning of taking your leadership presence to a higher level. Future posts will offer both tools and insights.