Brood X is here! During the last few weeks, my neighborhood of Capitol Hill, DC has been teeming with cicadas. I love watching them zip around like little fairy drones. I love their electric buzzing from the linden trees that line my block. I love watching them try to evade the bats chasing them around the high skies at dusk.
Holed up for 17 years, they have a lot of life to live! But their lives are so short. Once they emerge from their underground holes, they only have weeks to live. It saddens me to hear the crunch of their carcasses under my feet as I walk down my sidewalk.
But it also got me thinking – maybe they see time in a radically differently way than we humans do. Maybe those few weeks pass exceedingly slowly in their worlds. Maybe the month of June feel like years and years to them. We do not see the world in the same way.
Perception Matters
From assessing and diagnosing the current situation to coming up with solutions, we all see things from different perspectives. For the adaptive challenges leaders face, the problems aren’t simple. They aren’t easy to define. There’s usually not one perfect solution. There are many roads to nirvana. We each hold a piece of truth, but not the whole truth. And there is so much power in that knowledge.
Leaders who understand this have an advantage. They seek out many perspectives when framing a challenge. They ask a lot of questions, like “what’s another way of looking at this?” or “what are we missing?” or “tell me why I’m wrong.” They ask for disconfirming information and invite the Devil’s Advocate into the conversation to protect against confirmation bias driven by a singular point of view.
Getting people to agree on facts is not enough. Good leaders also make space for sense-making, surfacing different interpretations of those facts. They work to build shared meaning and a shared diagnosis of “reality”, leveraging diverse, beautiful points of view. When people begin to align around reality, that’s when collective, focused action can be unleashed.
Perspective in leadership coaching
Generally, we see our challenges in the workplace with a narrow perspective. A leadership coach can help you broaden your viewpoint, using tools like role-playing that enable you take on different perspectives.
As you broaden your viewpoint, you will begin to tease apart facts from assumptions and potential misunderstanding. You will be able to distance yourself from triggered emotions and reactivity. Opening up the question and widening the challenge you think you’re facing at work will also unlock many more options for solutions.
Have a point of view and hold it lightly
When a leader works with the team to build a shared reality, it can feel like indecisiveness and low confidence if not managed well. Seeking out different perspectives doesn’t mean you don’t have one of your own. Strong leaders have a point of view, and a rationale for why they think what they do. Being able to explain your thinking and your “why” helps others connect to your ideas on an emotional level. Inviting them to share their own thinking and the why underpinning their opinions highlights common ground and values and builds the pool of shared meaning.
Being open to having your mind changed is a key way to influence. Reminding yourself that you only see part of the picture can help you stay flexible in your thinking. In short, have a vision, but hold it lightly and allow different perspectives in to build a shared view of reality.
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