In today’s podcast episode, I talk about what it looks like to be a leader that maintains a calming and healing presence. I share tips that you can immediately put into practice to be a calm leader during stressful times.
Today on Create Magic At Work®:
You don’t need to have all the answers
Ways to feel more inner peace in your leadership
Benefits of participating with detached involvement
Celebrating the different pathways people take to achieve desired results
“There's so much pressure on leaders to always come up with the answer. When we force solutions onto problems, we create more problems potentially.” - Amy
Hey everyone, it's Amy Lynn Durham and you're listening to Create Magic At Work. Create Magic At Work is on a mission to equip senior leaders with tools, they need to be a true servant leader, and actually understand what that means. improve employee engagement, retain top talent, and transform your workplace culture to have less stress and drama. So let's start making magic. Hey, everyone, welcome to the summer solo magic series where I am sharing quick, bite-sized leadership tips from an executive coaching and spiritual intelligence lens. Today, I want to talk about what it looks like for you to be a calm leader, to be a leader that maintains a calming and healing presence. What does that look like? And what are some ways that you can put into practice to where other people start viewing you in that way? So the first thing I would like to share in being a calming healing presence, and this is what is really difficult for some leaders, because of the systems that we have worked in, we have been groomed and trained to feel like we always have to have the answer. We always have to have the right answer, and we have to share it immediately. And that my friends, right there is a recipe for inner turmoil in a meeting. Because if you're sitting in a meeting stressed out that you have to come up all the time with the right answer. Or if you have a team member coming to you with something they need to solve or something, then you need to brainstorm. And you have this inner stress of always needing to know the answer and be the quote-unquote expert because you're their leader, that's going to put you on a fast track to burnout. And that is going to create the opposite of inner peace. So I'm going to offer you some ideas to play around with in your work and in your life, that might actually help you feel a little more peaceful in your leadership. And also, you will start being viewed as an authority that people can go to, to help them solve their issues. Without forcing solutions onto them. You'll just help them facilitate their thinking. And they can come up with their own answers. And oftentimes those answers are brilliant because they came from their own inner wisdom. And then they'll follow through with those ideas much stronger because they came from them. And you helped cultivate that. So the first tip that I'd like to offer and how to be a calming and healing presence is to Be present. I share this a lot from Dr. Angeles Arrien. She is an anthropologist that studied cultures all over the world. And she created what's called the four universal communication principles. One of those principles is to show up and choose to be present. Well, what does that mean? What does being present for someone mean? Here's what I offer from an SQ spiritual intelligence lens for the workplace. Being present does not mean offering advice immediately. Being present means deeply listening to what people are saying, not to respond, as Stephen Covey would say, and actually not to understand, as Stephen Covey would say, my new AHA! comes from Aaron Tabacco, who is an expert in my opinion at maintaining presence at a high level, I did an episode with him on the Create Magic At Work podcast, if you missed it, go back and check it out. He says, If you truly want to be present for someone else, then you listen to bear witness. And when you do that, you don't have to have this internal turmoil going on within you that you have to fix something or you have to jump to a solution at that moment. You can just listen to bear witness. So if someone is telling you difficult news in the workplace, all you have to do is just deeply listen, you don't have to jump to a solution. There will be time for that later. So that is one magic tip on being a calming and healing presence as a leader and what a gift that is for you, to not feel that weight of having to know what to do right away, or feeling guilty because you couldn't help somebody with your amazing words of wisdom at that moment. There's so much pressure on leaders to always come up with the answer. When we force solutions onto problems, we create more problems potentially. And so we need to take a step back. And this moves into the second part of being a calming and healing presence. This is a big one. This is detachment, part of Angeles Arrien's communication principles that universally connect all of us, no matter what culture we're in, that she found was if you remain open to outcome, but not attached to it, it helps you connect more with others. Deepak Chopra also talks about the law of detachment, where you move through your day and you practice non judgment. Today, I will move through my day, I will move through it without judgment, whatever happens, happens, I will take responsibility for my part, I allow myself and those around me the freedom to be as they are, and I will not rigidly impose my idea of how things should be. I will not force solutions on problems, thereby creating new problems. I will participate with detached involvement. You know, in the first episode of the summer solo series, I talked about mistakes, one of the leadership hacks that I talked about, was looking at mistakes in a different way and looking at failure in a different way. And celebrating mistakes and failure. Here where we're talking about being a calming and healing presence, you don't want to force solutions on problems creating more problems. So you participate with detached involvement, as Deepak Chopra would say, let people have the freedom to be as they are. And this applies to our whole life or personal life as well. If you rigidly impose your idea of how things should be onto people, one, you're going to turn them off, they're just gonna be like, this person is just shoving down my throat, what they want me to think or what they want me to believe. And it's not coming from my own inner wisdom, that's the way they're gonna feel even if they can't articulate it. And you're just gonna get someone shaking their head and moving on. Also, consider back to celebrating mistakes and failure. Consider that whatever mistake someone makes, it might be the perfect mistake for them in their life. And at that moment, and who were you to get in the way of that? Who were you to impose what you think is the right next step for them? It could be the most beautiful mistake they've ever made. And they could come out the other side, with the biggest learning moment of their life, and a transformational experience. We all take different paths in our lives, to end up where we want to go. And just because your path worked for you, does not mean those exact same steps are going to work for someone else. So as a leader, sit back and celebrate the different pathways that people take to get to the results that you need to get and try this new way of leading, where you don't impose your views so rigidly to force outcomes. Imagine what can happen from that. Imagine the possibilities that you can't even conceive because you're one person and you're letting the whole team now innovate and create. That is how to be a calm and healing and present leader. You maintain presence. You deeply listen, you listen to bear witness not to immediately fix or solve. You don't rush to quick fixes. We'll talk about that a little bit more when we talk about change agents. And you detach from outcomes, knowing there is no way possible that you could conceive what is the right path for every single person. If you want to learn more about being a calming and healing presence, and if you want to have a little fun with me and see what your skill level in this area ranks. I do have a framework and a really fun, I think it's fun. It's super deep work but it is fun to talk about and discuss. I approach the situation in a very safe, nonjudgmental way. Reach out to me. And we can see where you're at with an assessment that I have and we can see where you're at with your level of being a calming and healing presence as a leader, Something fun if you're just curious, and you can explore that. We can also explore recommendations for the next steps for you specifically where you're at on your journey. Thanks for listening to this episode of the summer solo magic series, and I am sending magic to everyone. Hey, everyone, it's Amy here. Thank you for listening to the latest episode of Create Magic At Work and please come back often and subscribe, rate and review the podcast. Keep joining us for more exciting episodes where we help you transform workplace culture into systems that create less drama and stress and have high productivity and profitability. You can get your own tools for the workplace at createmagicatwork.net I have a new create magic at work journal that was just released and it invites you to reflect on different themes for work, life, and business. Each section of the journal contains a topic, an affirmation, and two prompt questions to help you journal your thoughts. Topics are like inspiring others, mentorship, expansion, and productivity. Connect with me at www.createmagicatwork.net, also connect with me on LinkedIn under Amy Lynn Durham, sending magic to everyone, and see you next time.