I’m been reading a great book called Presence by Peter Senge and his colleagues.  The authors make a great case for the importance of paying attention to what is emerging in a team or organization rather than forcing or trying to make things happen.  I believe this approach is vital to the health of organizations, communities and dare I say our planet.  

A business leader who takes a softer focus on what is trying to happen is in direct contrast to the current focus on measurement, scoring and evaluation in the workplace.   This is because by the time you have measured it, your ability to act on what is emerging is likely to have already  passed. 

One of the things I’m taking from the book is that presencing is about paying attention not only to your intellect but to your emotions and your intuition when making decisions.  (For those of you who’ve been reading my newsletter or blog for awhile, my attraction to this idea will not come as a shock.)  I would hazard a guess that when you think back on significant decisions that you have made in your own career or life, your gut feeling and your emotional well being had a strong influence on your ultimate choice.

But how does one measure a gut feeling?  Or put a value on the emotional well being of employees?  Employee engagement and satisfaction surveys are one way to measure these things.   Yet, it’s also about increasing emotional intelligence by paying attention to the climate of each meeting and taking time to notice how the emotional mood of a meeting informs the process and the decisions being made. 

I highly recommend Presence for any manager or executive who wants to understand and balance the need to measure and direct their team with a greater awareness of what is trying to happen in a team or organization.