What’s Your View?

One morning on a recent Tasimba safari, we sat quietly in our 4X4 vehicle no more than 10 yards from this beautiful adult cheetah.? No words were needed, none were spoken. We were each immersed in the awe and inspiration of this magical moment.

He sat on the termite mound, constantly scanning the savanna in a full 360, never fixating on looking in any one direction. His sharp eyesight can pick up the slightest animal movement as far as the horizon allows. And he listens, constantly listens, to the information flow of all the sounds around him.

He is both hunter for his own meal and hunted by other predators as a competitor. Constant alertness and awareness both feed him and keep him alive.

There’s a valuable lesson here for humans. We sometimes have a nasty habit of fixating on one point of view, literally only seeing in a narrow range of vision. We become blind and deaf to everything else.

Even though we have all the same senses of animals in the wild to have perfect 360 awareness of everything going on around us, how many of us really use those senses?

The best leaders develop innate all-around awareness so that, like a cheetah, they are quickly able to sense both opportunity and threat. And they don’t need a termite mound to do it.

Do you have real 360 awareness?