Creating the conditions for executive team development

IMAGINE YOU were given a tool that could do the following:

• Improve your culture change management,
• Connect you with others in a meaningful way,
• Provide you access to vast amounts of creativity, great ideas and innovation,
• Bring you a sense of inner peace, calm, acceptance and gratitude,
• Help make you a loved and respected leader,
• Reduce your stress and improved your resilience to disease,
• Help create engaged and accountable teams,
• Improve the trust you have in yourself and your inner knowing.

What if this tool didn’t cost a thing? What if this tool is something you already possess? What if you could access the power of this tool simply by choosing to use it?

What are we talking about? What is this tool we already have but don’t fully appreciate, use or develop?

Listening.

Ah, not another messaging about listening!

I know you know intellectually that listening is a good thing. But have you fully experienced what real, deep, present-based listening feels like? You have a Ferrari in your garage and you only take it out once in a while to drive to the mailbox. It is so simple it is almost too simple. We think the solutions to most of our problems require great effort or complex processes. Listening seeks freedom while your mind seeks control.

The hardest person to lead is yourself and the hardest part of your self-leadership is to guide the mind and not have the mind guide you.

Good listening happens when the conditions are right:

• You’re in the present moment, aware of your body and how you feel.
• The mind and the breathe slow down and the awareness of others and your environment goes up.
• You tell your inner monologue to quiet down. You might focus on:
• What is the potential in others that is greater than what they are aware of?
• What is the other person not saying with their words?

Being free from what holds us back in order to experience meaningful connection with ourselves, others and nature can be achieved if we bring awareness and commitment to a tool we were born with: listening.