Can you be arrested?
“How are you arresting your own attention?
How are you cultivating a full and embodied presence so that you invite the best version of yourself and that of others to the conversation at hand?”
If you’ve ever spent time with me in person, you know I often begin a keynote or an event with a poem. It’s highly likely that it’s one of mine, though sometimes I forget to say this. Over the years, and since my college professor days when reading a poem in front of a group of people wouldn’t be such a strange thing, I’ve become accustomed to the awkward, pregnant, thoughtful, expected (you fill in your own blank) silence that follows such a thing.
If I’m really grounded, I’ll begin the poem right away, without introduction or explanation, but mostly, in front of corporate audiences, I feel like I need to give them a little warning, or they become lost. Their minds do a googling search, trying to figure out what’s going on. Why is she talking about a lake? What about the pigeons on the roof? The moon isn’t full, is it?
In the beginning, when I wasn’t as confident or certain about how a poem could slice through the thickest of dense places, I wouldn’t notice the energetic shifts, the openings, the curiosity, or the skepticism that peaked. Now, mostly, I’m okay with this response to what I’m doing. You think you come here for 7 leadership tips or ways to deal with difficult team members, and instead, I’m asking you to sit quietly, somewhat uncomfortably, with the often terrible memory of a long-ago teacher who told you that poetry is hard and for a certain kind of person. But probably not you. I risk turning you off.
Why do I do it? Wouldn’t it be easier and flashier to come in with a vibrant story or a startling statistic?
I’m trying to arrest your attention.
I’m trying to invite you into a unique space that will never happen again, of our being together, at this time, in this place, and to imagine it might turn out to be transforming, fascinating, or inspiring. Listen, I want you to stop the metaphorical scrolling for a few minutes.
When I help prepare new trainers for Influencing Options, I give them some key points to share about my communication and culture work. I suggest they use some dramatic pausing in their delivery, though for some, it’s not their style; it’s more like mine.
Don’t be surprised when this works! (big pause)
Don’t be deceived by the simplicity of what we will encounter today. (bigger pause)
You’re talking to them anyway; what if you made the most subtle shift, and it changed everything for the better? (staring, bigass pause.)
I need to seize your attention because the Knowing-Doing gap is immense. We’ve gotten so good at talking about leading, building trust, managing performance, or having a great work culture that we think we are doing things we are not, and worse, we think we know everything. This causes us to treat people as objects or bodies rather than the unique person who showed up here to offer up their 90K hours of lifeblood. It causes us to bypass our creativity and innovation and a fresh sense of curiosity. It invites the meh into our workaday world.
How are you arresting your own attention? How are you cultivating a full and embodied presence so that you invite the best version of yourself and that of others to the conversation at hand?
Recently, a client shared a personal story with a room filled with manufacturing managers. She shared her multi-generational commitment to small communities where people’s lives were changed because they made things. Making things created health insurance, college educations, and different lives. Her work with her company was how she would honor her family’s legacy. She had us all arrested. We were paying attention, and in the end, we showed up to our work in those few days differently, fully, with a purpose bigger than ourselves.
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