How a Manual Camera Teaches Mindful Leadership
It’s that point in life for me where one trundles off to do some ‘mature age learning’ and be the old guy in the class that annoys everybody else with his enthusiasm!
So, it is with the photography course I’m doing through a local TAFE — the Australian equivalent of a junior college.
I’ve taken photos for years and even get some praise for them. But they’ve all been ‘happy accidents’ rather than the product of any process, plans or preparation.
Listening to my lecturer — an accomplished commercial and artistic photographer — discuss techniques and theories is taking some of my intuitive and some of my ignorant photographic practices to another level. And, it’s making for better snaps.
It seems to me that mindful leadership — be it in an organisational, business or political setting — is a similar. Through luck and instinct, we do some things well, and some things really badly. Through discipline, training and conscientiousness, we do more things well, and hopefully less things badly.
That’s the difference between being an auto-pilot leader and a mindful leader. Sure, I can take better than average photos using the automatic focus and exposure settings on my camera. However, with some extra effort and awareness, I can take excellent photos using the manual features. They’re more satisfying for me and more evocative for those who see them.
A camera has three basic functions that go toward getting the right effect for a photograph: ISO (the sensitivity of your ‘film’ to light); F stop (the size your aperture is set to and the depth of field and clarity the camera captures), and; shutter speed (how fast your aperture opens and closes, and the movement your camera captures).
The interplay between these three makes pictures; either short or long focussed; either freezing motion or letting it blur, or; either lightening or darkening a subject. It’s a series of practical and creative choices — based on preference and circumstance — to get to the ‘right’ combination — rather than just letting the digital wizardry do everything for you.
We can think of mindful leadership according to three such settings too: sensitivity, clarity and patience.
Sensitivity. Modern workplaces are exactly that: modern. They are no longer punch-in and punch-out, 9 o’clock to 5 o’clock, and hierarchical institutions. Employees, particularly younger ones, have different and widely varying expectations of work and their employers.
It’s somewhat counter-balancing, but workplaces have, on the one hand, become more transactional and, on the other hand, stronger determinants of self-identity. In a way, our expectations of our workplaces have gone up and our expectations about our own happiness at work have also.
From a leadership perspective, this new brew of factors — some pulling toward the workplace and some away from it — requires much greater sensitivity. Workplace culture is no longer uniform, homogeneous and singular in purpose. Rather, it’s the sum total of a great deal of diversity of skills, backgrounds, expectations, ambitions and commitment levels. Mindful leadership is about reading that complexity and harnessing what’s best from individuals to achieve common results.
Quick Fix 1. Know and make known your bottom line as a leader. Make it the footer on each e-mail. Clearly communicate to people what the standard of performance is and what the implications are for either exceeding or not meeting that standard. As so much in modern workplaces swirls around, make that the promise that everybody can find stability in.
Clarity. It’s an understatement to say that the world’s an increasingly complicated place. There’s a massive amount of clutter out there — whether it’s competing ideas, competing businesses, competing versions of the truth, or competing digital noise.
You’ve heard it from staff many times. “What does this mean for us?” “How do these things fit together?” These are different ways of saying “I’m not clear about our goal / my role and it makes me sad / anxious / angry / unhopeful etc.” It’s coming from the emotional place as much as the rational.
So, the challenge of a mindful leader is to be fully present with that and to own it. The self-talk goes: “I’m hearing that my team is unsure and it’s impacting on them. Let me consider some things in our future that are non-negotiable or certain, and communicate those. Let me fill the hope deficit.”
Quick Fix 2. Acknowledge what’s uncertain and affirm what’s certain. A mindful approach balances accurately depicting reality and underscoring its positive aspects. As an American general said: “Positivity is a force multiplier.”
Patience. As the digital world further accelerates, our capacity for patience diminishes. Whether that’s decreased attention spans when reading or road rage incidents during traffic jams, it seems we’re getting a lot less capable being patient.
And we wear each other down with it in workplaces: constantly expecting results “yesterday” from each other; needing to prove that we are “flat out, mate”; asking each other “did you get my email?”.
So, one of the greatest things that can be done as a mindful leader is to be the paragon of patience in your own workplace. Patience is all about having the wisdom to know what’s truly important and urgent rather than just work for the sake of it. Patience is about listening to people’s concerns while reserving the right to decide. Patience is about taking the long-term view rather than being spooked by a stakeholder’s complaint, or short-term P&L glitch, or an IT provider who struggles to deliver. Patience is about maintaining perspective about how significant your cause actually is in the scheme of things.
Patience is contagious. Think how calmed you find yourself around patient people.
