Communicate With Presence

In this edition of Next Generation Leadership, I would like to introduce our guest writer. My daughter Kilani Daane, a Gen Z leader and executive coach to future leaders shares her perspective on the importance of communicating with presence......

When I first found myself in a leadership position, I felt completely lost. I had the title, yet lacked the skills to lead. There’s one moment in my leadership career that has continued to stand out to me since the moment it happened and is the reason why understanding presence in communication is such an important topic for me to share. I was scheduled for a one-on-one meeting with one of my team members, we’ll call her Dina, who brought up a concern to share with me: that she didn’t feel comfortable carrying out a task that had been assigned to her. Unbeknownst to her, I had just hung up the phone after a tough conversation with one of my leaders. My stress levels were high, my mind was racing, and I did not have the tools (or awareness) to understand that my disposition needed to be changed before any effective communication could happen between Dina and myself.

As Dina beautifully shared her feelings and situation with me, I appeared to be listening, facing her, leaning in to listen, yet my mind was busy replaying my previous conversation. When Dina brought up her concern, I brushed past it and suggested she do the task anyway and find a way to make it less uncomfortable for her. Twenty minutes after hanging up the phone, I received a text from Dina letting me know she was stepping down from her position and wasn’t interested in working with our team anymore. That was the day I realized my leadership tactics needed to change, with the most pressing one being communication.?

While there are many tips to increase the effectiveness of communication (in this case communication meaning both active speaking and active listening) in interpersonal relationships, one of the most important, and often most overlooked, is presence, which we will define as "full mind and body awareness at this moment". In fact, we can go as far as saying that presence is a prerequisite to effective communication, which is supported by Forbes in their quote that, “being mindful can produce a better outcome and prevent the communication from getting out of control.”

For many years, the understanding of leadership has been for the person occupying that role to lead the way through direction, or in other words, explicitly telling others what to do. However, as with most things over time, we’re starting to see a shift in the world of communication - both in how we speak, and how we listen. One of the biggest changes in communication in the workplace that we’re seeing right now is the integration of Generation Z into an environment created to help Generation Y and Generation X thrive. As with every new generational integration, this can cause issues, and often does.

Gen Z’s are on the trajectory of soon surpassing Millennials by number in the workplace. There’s a huge influx of Gen Z’s that, in the coming years, will change workplace culture, communication, and interaction. According to Deloitte, Generation Z? “has an entirely unique perspective on careers and how to define success in life and in the workforce.” This means that in the near future, there’s going to be an expectation for things to change - and quickly. Members of Generation Z have a profound sense of fairness, meaning we believe that all members of an organization should be treated with equal respect, regardless of their title. In our eyes, everyone is a leader. Even if the job description doesn’t say so. The benefit of this, though, is members of Generation Z, also expect themselves to act as leaders, meaning there’s new potential for growth and expansion in organizations. However, in order to capitalize on this new potential, it’s important to learn how to communicate effectively with this new generation to create the space for them to grow. For the purpose of this article, we will explore one element of effective communication, presence.?

So the question remains, how do we integrate effective communication into an environment that is constantly evolving and filled with people who are also constantly evolving? The answer is presence.?

One of the reasons I love coaching is because of a foundational principle in the industry that tells us our clients possess infinite potential and wisdom within. It’s just our job to help them realize that potential and wisdom through the power and art of coaching. The way we’re able to bring our clients to realize their potential is through the power of presence - of creating time and space for them to look within. According to Harvard Business Review, “mindfulness has been shown to be beneficial in the workplace on a number of fronts.”

When it comes to communication, you and I, and everyone else on the planet already know how to communicate perfectly regardless of our similarities or differences. It’s an innate trait of being, by design, an animal. However, because we’ve evolved so far as a species to gain the intelligence of being able to do 37.5 tasks at the same time, we’ve also lost our inherent presence with one another. This presence is where effective communication lives. Makes sense why we all struggle with communication, doesn’t it??

However, the beauty of understanding this, also tells us a quick fix is available. Simply practicing presence. Below are three steps to understanding and practicing mindful communication.

1 - Create a mindfulness practice

“Learning to be present can help you tackle stressful situations more calmly,” says Rob Dube from Forbes, ?which is why it’s incredibly important to have a mindfulness practice that you can bring out whenever you need in the workplace. There are many ways to bring mindfulness into your day, but two of my favorites include focusing on your breath and focusing on body sensations. Start by intentionally practicing mindfulness at the start of your day, and as you gain confidence, start to bring mindfulness into your conversations as well.?

2 - Come from a place of care

Once mindfulness has been established, leading with care comes naturally. You’ll find that your conversation will begin to flow with more ease than before, and over time, you’ll find that your connections with others will begin to flourish as well. Leading with care is important as it allows the other person to feel heard, an important component of their readiness to listen and move forward with excitement. Isn’t that the dream??

3 - Understand what it really means to be present

A common misunderstanding is that presence is simply a matter of turning your body towards your listener/speaker, looking in their direction, and nodding occasionally. However, presence goes much deeper than this. Although the aforementioned cues are a part of presence, true presence requires cognitive mindfulness as well. Cognitive mindfulness means truly absorbing every word your speaker says without thinking about what you’re going to say next, what you’re going to have for lunch or anything else outside of what’s happening in the moment. Practice this, and you’ll find that when it’s your time to respond, your inner wisdom will release itself through your words without you having to think about it. Presence allows us to truly connect to one another (and ourselves).?

In this blog post, we’ve explored why mindful presence is a prerequisite for effective communication. We’ve addressed the change occurring in all organizations around the world with the influx of a new generation in the workplace. With this change, a change on our end as leaders is required as well with the most pressing one being a change in how we communicate in order to maintain (and increase) efficiency and productivity in our organizations.?

The beauty of mindfulness and presence in conversation is that it creates the space for us to come back to our innate wisdom and understanding of how to converse and communicate with those around us. We can practice this by following the three steps above: Creating a mindfulness practice, coming from a place with care in all conversations, and understanding what presence really means. The more effectively we communicate, the more effective our results will be.?

Kilani can be reached at: [email protected]

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Marcel is a top Executive Coach, voted Executive Coach of the Year in 2020, the author of two critically acclaimed leadership books, and is considered one of the world’s authorities in mind-body leadership. Kilani is a former National Level Division I Beach Volleyball Athlete and entrepreneur who is currently pursuing her ICF coaching accreditation in Ontological Learning and has been described as a transformational coach with a deep sense of wisdom and intuition.

Coming from our own coaching backgrounds, we decided to join forces in 2021 to increase our effectiveness as a multi-generational unit so we can support multinational and multicultural teams to help them future-proof their organizations for generations to come.