Doug Silsbee is an affiliate coach of The Pyramid Resource Group and will be releasing his second book from Jossey-Bass in the Fall of 2008. The following is an excerpt from Presence-Based Coaching. We will be posting each of Doug’s “Six Moves for Leadership Presence.”
The first move for leadership presence is “Stop!” Anytime, we can stop the incessant flow of activity and thought in our lives to recognize, in the present moment, the possibility of choice.
Even though it is intellectually obvious that we can choose, most of the time we go through our daily activities without really considering the range of choices available to us. We are, most of us, far more habitual and automatic that we would like to think. We’re pre-occupied, going down the tracks of our current activity, thinking about the future or the past.
Stopping, in mid-stream, is the first step towards re-organizing ourselves around what’s important. It’s claiming a moment to make a conscious, unhurried choice about what we want to do or say. Deceptively simple, a “Stop!” is a move into greater self-awareness and pro-activity. It’s akin to your mother telling you to count to 10 before saying anything in anger!
