Glickstein on Leadership Listening - We can HOPE

Lee Glickstein has a method of public speaking that he shares with people that he calls Relational Presence. I think of relational presence of understanding the importance of speaking so much from the need to get a message to listeners that you overcome the reluctance many of us feel about making "presentations." Don't take my idea. Check out his web site, which is included in the comments he makes in this observation about Leadership Listening. Since he and I both support this particular candidate for president, I thought I would share what seem to be on-target observations about the leadership style:

From a RELATIONAL PRESENCE newsletter on 10-31-08

Leadership Listening

by Lee Glickstein, founder, Speaking Circles International

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Self-Reliance," an essay on Barack Obama's favorite reading list.

Chances are that in a few days we will elect a president whose most striking leadership quality appears to be the capacity to listen from a place of independent solitude during times of crisis. When I picture him coming up to a moment of truth when a critical decision needs to be made, a road to take or not take, a button to push or not push, a declaration or commitment to make, it's easy for me to imagine him breathing and listening in expanded neutrality even while surrounded by a whirlwind of details and opinions flying at him.

In these moments of chaos, the enlightened leader drops into a deep stillness at the eye of the storm, to an egoless state of no agenda and often, at first, no clue. A capacity for this expanded state of listening is critical for clear thinking and effective decision-making, and is in rare supply at any level of leadership--from leading a family to leading a nation.

The capacity for expanded listening is of course also crucial in leading one's own life. How do we maintain perspective and stillness at eye of the storm while chaos swirls around us and often within us?

In my life, desperation to conquer severe stage fright provided me a natural arena to work out this challenge. Speaking to a group, or even imagining such scenario, choked me with anxiety and dread. Decades of avoidance, humiliation, and not giving up led me to stumble upon a leadership principle that has allowed me to stand tall and still in the eye of the storm in front of any group: Listen first.

I don't speak until I first listen to my listeners. This takes at least one full breath. I listen while I speak. I listen to my words landing. I listen to the space between sentences, the longer space between paragraphs. I listen with my eyes, with one person at a time. My intention is to always be with one person at any time. This is the practice and priority of Relational Presence that is the basis of my life work.

Stillness is the underlying connective tissue of the group's soul. It's where we all meet. Shared presence becomes more interesting than the anxiety, more powerful than the fear.

Truth, grace, and inspired leadership emerge eloquently from shared presence and expanded listening. I'm looking forward to these qualities playing out on the national and global stage through our new president, should "that one" prevail on Tuesday.

Here are some relevant addresses for Lee: email: inquiry@speakingcircles.com
web: http://www.speakingcircles.com