Gotcha.
A is for Attentive awareness in our GRAVITY framework but probably not in the way you are used to seeing.
Are you sensing a theme through this framework? So much of what we are taught or told or shown about leadership is great in theory but lacks a little bit in practice.
When we perform a “leadership role”, we run the risk of getting stuck in things that matter but aren’t high priority for the mission.
If we are going to be taken seriously as leaders, we need to hyperfocus on metrics and KPIs to prove we are good leaders. The trap of KPI hyperfocus is this…KPIs that aren’t aligned with the mission and the actual daily work are measuring activity instead of impact.
So if the KPIs aren’t really the priority, what am I doing talking about attentive awareness?
Attentive awareness isn’t about monitoring performance or metrics. This is about what happens in the background all day, every day. The moments that are so standard, we don’t notice them anymore but have a bigger impact on the mission than any meeting with your top donor.
It’s easy for me to say that from the outside looking in, writing the newsletter, launching a new leadership framework. Right?
Right.
But it isn’t easier said than done. I’m guessing you already do things every day that have you closer to Attentive Awareness than you know.
Do you play match three games on your phone? Or build jigsaw puzzles? Or guess the ending to a movie before the big twist is revealed?
The pattern recognition you use in all of those activities is no different than the pattern recognition you use to be an attentive leader.
Now that we have that established, let’s talk about something really important. What this whole being attentive thing looks like in practice.
If you are of a similar vintage to me, you probably remember falling asleep watching TV and waking up to snow after all the channels went off the air for the night.
Here’s the unvarnished reality, what we see everyday becomes nothing more than snow on an old TV.
Unless you work from home, I’d be willing to bet you take the same route to commute every day. When was the last time you paid attention to a street sign or listened to the announcements on the train? If your commute lasts for 42 minutes of an audiobook, why would you need to pay attention to the announcements?
And that kind of background noise is fine until there is a delay that you didn’t hear over the announcements and you got out at the wrong stop because you listened to your audiobook for 42 minutes.
What I’m taking the long way around saying is this, the things we see everyday stop standing out.
Meetings that slowly started getting away from you just stayed that way.
The strategic plan gets stale and the refresh just isn’t prioritized.
Daily interactions that should be red flags become part of the environment.
If it happens every day, it’s normal. Right?
Just because it is “normal” behavior doesn’t mean it is a healthy or functional work environment. We can get used to a whole lot when a paycheck and benefits are on the line so we need to look at something else as the standard for “normal”.
Enter attentive awareness.
This is the pivot in GRAVITY. We start paying attention to the daily interactions again. A helpful way to approach this shift is to come into each interaction the same way you did on your first day. I think it’s safe to say that we all go into our first day paying attention to the way things work or don’t work.
We evaluate the small moments that have become a normal part of the work environment. But over time, things that we might have questioned on our first day become an accepted part of how we operate.
Fun fact, I’m a fan of British comedies from the 1970s. To loosely quote a character in one of my favorite shows, if you take care of the little things, the big things take care of themselves. No surprise that line stuck with me all these years.
But there is some deep truth in that line because if we don’t take care of the little things, they become big problems.
So we need to watch for the drift that is quietly taking over the Five Moments (remember those from a few weeks ago?). Because taking time to check in with each other at the first board meeting after the holidays is normal but spending three hours circling a decision that hasn’t been made for the last three quarters is not.
Attentive awareness is less about creating a problem free environment and more about refusing to normalize dysfunction.