A woman wearing a facemask to prevent the spread of coronavirus walks past a boarded up storefront ... [+]
As 2020 hurls itself to an end, we are in a time of wild transition. Throughout the United States, spiking Covid-19 cases stagger our healthcare systems, even as hopeful vaccines are on the horizon. Downtowns are decimated from months of protests and Covid-closed restaurants, even as a spirit of rebuilding emerges from behind boarded up windows. Businesses large and small, as well as schools and governments, struggle to find new ways of working and remaining solvent, even as their froth of activity accelerates innovation and digitalization. Highlighting the chaos is a presidential transition adding daily drama.
This time of transition can feel like a muddle. When waters are so choppy, it’s easy to get caught up in reactiveness, lurching this way and that. We sense a whirlwind of activity, but it’s not clear what will come of it, which way it will go. In such times, it may be natural for us as leaders to slow down and take a wait-and-see attitude. The slowing down, I would argue, is helpful, but the wait-and-see is a mistake. For it’s exactly when gears are shifting that a skillful leader can find a new gear. That’s the opportunity in front of us right now.
Zen leadership and the principles of resonance can guide us in how to use it.
What is Zen leadership and why would it be so helpful right now? If we think of leadership, not as a position, but ala Kevin Cashman as authentic self-expression that creates value, Zen radically reframes the authentic self. Rather than regarding ourselves as separate, corpuscular entities, we’re invited by Zen training into a direct experience of self as a resonating energetic system that is part of the whole and whole in its part. Even if we can only imagine this experience, we can acknowledge the physical fact that we resonate with energy through our senses, we transform those signals into perceptions, emotions, and thoughts, and we radiate our energy and actions back into the field around us, for better and worse. If we are sincere in wanting our authentic self-expression to create value for others, we tune ourselves to discern signals that support our intent amidst the noise of transitional times and become a signal that is a beacon for others.
Both our ability to shape conditions and serve as a beacon are hampered by a wait-and-see attitude that is too passive. That’s not to say wait-and-see is always wrong; I’ve worked with leaders in companies who build their entire strategy around waiting to see what industry trends emerge and then being a fast follower. I had a colleague who was in a position of receiving a buy-out package when his company was acquired, and the longer he waited to see what package was being offered, the sweeter it became.
But in times like these where so many people are facing grief, confusion and exhaustion, the clarifying role of leadership is particularly important. As a recent McKinsey report on the Covid-19 implications for business suggests, leaders “can help people see this time as a quest toward something new, not as a restitution of bygone days, and not as chaos to be muddled through.” Clarifying priorities, reducing busyness, setting clear boundaries around work from home, and rethinking meetings from a zero base are among the leadership moves suggested by their research.
In order to discern the “something new” that becomes a worthy quest, slowing down is genuinely useful. In our speediest mode, our nervous system enters a pattern called the Driver, which is laser-beam focused on hitting a particular goal, but is not good at sensing or listening. When we slow down, which we can do literally by slowing down our physical rate of movement and slowing down our exhale, our senses open up again. You can experience this for yourself by stimulating the Driver pattern in your nervous system. A quick way to do this is by pressing your hands together with your index fingers extended and intensely sighting down your fingers. You’ll notice that this sharp, frontal focus comes at the expense of peripheral vision. Quit pushing and you’ll sense a wider view returning.
Another way to experience the widening of senses as you slow down is to shake out superficial tension in your body and breathe out the longest, slowest exhale that is comfortable. Take in a breath and do it again, even slower. And a third time, slower yet. Individual results may vary, but when I’ve done this with leaders, they report an increasing sense of calm and quiet, as if they could hear a pin drop. That quietude is the opening of greater listening. We become more sensitive, which is another way of saying we resonate with a wider ranger of energy. Moreover, with curiosity-infused listening, we filter less, and are more open to taking things in raw, rather than jumping to conclusions based on our habits and experience. This is a crucial skill for sensing where we might go in transitional times, rather than where we’ve been.
Another way Zen Leadership can help us find forward strategies in transitional times is by a flip of mindset from coping with problems to co-creating with opportunities. This is not a matter of putting on rose-colored glasses, but a pivot point where real leadership begins. A person in coping mode is stuck, which may manifest as victimization, depression, denial, anger, indignation, gossip, or any number of ways, all of which are characterized by a self stuck to a situation it does not like. Without movement or direction, one cannot lead others.
By contrast, a person in co-creating mode is finding a way to flow and harmonize with surrounding conditions. Because such a leader creates movement, it’s possible to capture others in the wake of progress. And because such a leader is harmonizing with the bigger picture, others can sense it, too, especially when it’s pointed out to them by a leader who saw it first.
The crucial pivot point between the negativity of coping mode and the positivity of co-creating is the zero point of acceptance. Acceptance does not mean that we like what’s going on or that we won’t work to change it. Quite the opposite, it means we take it as it is—clearly, honestly, unflinchingly—and let our creativity go to work, changing our thinking, our priorities, how we work with others, and even our best-laid plans.
A practice for this flip in thinking is to start on the problem side of things and consider what problems this time is presenting for you, your team or your business. You can brainstorm several restatements of the problem, getting to the bottom of it and why it’s a real issue for you. The flip the comes in shifting into a posture of complete, unflinching acceptance: it is what it is and, in a sense, the conditions shaping these problems are exactly your pallet to paint with. You can then go back to your problem statements and flip them around in terms of what opportunity each one presents. Do this to enough statements of the problem and themes almost certainly emerge that suggest a promising way forward. In this spirit, you co-create with conditions to shape what happens next.
This is a potent time where we as leaders have an opportunity to shape the world we want to re-enter post Covid-19. For you that might be a world of less racism and resource consumption. It might be a world that reaffirms love over hate or facts over falsehoods. Don’t let a wait-and-see attitude let others define it for you. Slow down, sense the opportunities, and co-create what this transition becomes for you and all who look to you for leadership.
