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

Basics do matter

When you go to a major lecture or a major talk it doesn't take you long to notice that the basics do matter:

1 -- Even speakers with small roles on the program make a significant difference for the audience when they make consistent and sustained eye contact and add excitement to their vocal projection.

2 -- Audiences are important and audience conduct is important. Personal conversations, text messages (sending and receiving), inappropriate response all take away from the experience for other members of the audience. How rude is it to be paying more attention to a text message than to the situation in which you presently find yourself?

3 -- Speakers do a service to themselves and to their audience if they preview the body of the speech and let the audience know the direction you are heading.

4 -- Examples, especially those with people in them, help explain abstract concepts for an audience and most big ideas should have some pretty solid examples. Audiences appreciate short stories that make the point.

5 -- Audiences really do appreciate that "human" touch that lets them know you are speaking to there, where they are, and not just to the next group on your to-do list. On Wednesday night at Coker College, Dr. Gus Speth did a good job of relating to his audience at Coker College and the nearly packed auditorium knew he was talking to them at Coker. They appreciated that.

Resources and Research

Decided this was a good place to make a couple of dot connections in the book world. Today I finished PLANET GOOGLE. The connection that hit me was with a book I read earlier in the year, PLANET INDIA. We would not be talking about the rising middle class in India if it were not for the information explosion and the vision of some Indian entrepreneurs in industries ranging from information services to medicine. That brings me to the idea of PLANET GOOGLE. The author of that book continues to get back to the crux of the Google business plan -- to organize and store ALL of the world's information. If there were not for online information storage places in what is now being called the "Cloud" those people in India who are enjoying the new middle class life style would not be where they are. Heck, none of us would be where we are, including me writing this blog. My hope is that those people in my Coker College public speaking classes realize they should not stop with the first piece of information they find when they hit the google search button. I hope they take into account the deeper web and find they can significantly strengthen the content of their talks.