Learn to Dance on Jell-O

To dance on Jell-O is to gracefully handle stress and change. This is especially key for a leader, as the ground beneath their feet is constantly – and rapidly – changing. As we know, it’s hard to recognize today’s business world with its:

• Volatility: Whole industries and companies have had to shift strategy and direction to keep up with the global conditions that affect their services and products.
• Uncertainty: In our current business climate, little can be predicted based upon previous experience.
• Complexity: With so many causes for change and global conditions to consider, the resulting interdependencies can make predictions quite difficult.
• Ambiguity: “Is this choice the best way?” Are our decision tools capable of selecting the best decision?

Picture your life as a leader. You arrive at your home office or workplace and are greeted by 140 emails demanding immediate action. Your staff are asking question after question about their priorities, and you’re wondering how best to answer.

Dance on Jell-O Series

In this series, we’ll examine the five dance steps that thriving and evolving leaders master for any number of scenarios:

1. Cultivate mindful awareness
2. Focus attention on results
3. Concentrate on your strengths
4. Manage stress in a positive way
5. Handle conflict with grace

Let's start our lessons now.

Step 1: Cultivating Mindful Awareness

Read this short exercise and then try it.

• Close your eyes.
• Pay close attention to the sounds around you.
• Notice your internal chatter. Perhaps you’re commenting on the task I have given you.
• Stay here for a couple of minutes.

Mindfulness is defined as moment-to-moment observation of the changes that occur in our mind or environment without judgment and/or evaluation. And you just spent a few minutes experiencing awareness of sound—from the environment and from within.

This practice is critical to our dancing competence as leaders, because we must be highly observant of how we respond to change—whether we initiate it or it comes from outside. Mindfulness teaches us to be more neutral, less concerned about being right and more willing to be effective.

Mindfulness also encourages self-reflection, which can show us how we get in our own way by stepping on partner’s toes or trying to tango when it’s a waltz, all the while claiming it is Argentinean dance music.

Try these three approaches and see if they have a subtle impact on your leadership ability.

1. Next time you go to a meeting, focus 25% of your awareness on taking long slow deep breaths that originate in the abdomen and fill the lungs to near capacity. Your breathing will not be noticed. Most people are too caught up to notice.
2. When you are working at your desk or with screens (laptop, tablet, smart phone) move around or look away every 45 minutes. While doing this, try deep, full breathing.
3. Experiment with noticing and naming what you are thinking, feeling, physically sensing, or doing. Try to act as a fair and neutral observer of yourself.

This is just the beginning of a practice that will make you a more self-aware person. Coincidentally, these exercises will also facilitate positive interactions with other people. Imagine what it will feel like to be able to keep your feet out of your mouth and not overreact to a situation!

Mindfulness is the key to both.

Next up: focusing your attention on RESULTS. See you next week.

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Elad Levinson has over 45 years of experience as a leadership coach and organizational consultant. Elad will teach the first Praxis You course, Thriving on Change, coming this Spring from More Than Sound. Learn more about Praxis You here.