You can be in the meeting, answer every question correctly, and still not really be there.
I see this more often than you might imagine.
- A leader is listening to a colleague while simultaneously thinking about the next meeting.
- An executive is on Zoom while their eyes dart over to read the Slack messages that appear in the corner of the screen.
- Someone is having dinner with their family while mentally composing a text message they plan to fire off the moment they can sneak into the pantry.
Our bodies are in one place. Our attention is somewhere else. And now we have AI promising to help us move even faster.
I’m genuinely excited about many of those possibilities. However, I think there’s a uniquely human leadership advantage emerging alongside them:
- The ability to be fully present with another human being.
Presence has become surprisingly rare and that’s what makes is far more valuable than any commodity we trade on the open markets.
I’ve coached more than a thousand people from nearly 30 nationalities over the past two decades, and one thing I’ve learned is that people can tell when you’re really with them.
They may not have language for it. But they feel it.
They feel the difference between someone waiting for their turn to speak and someone genuinely listening.
They feel when a leader is curious rather than performing curiosity.
They know when you’ve entered the conversation with an answer already formed. And they remember the rare person who makes them feel truly heard.
There are often moments in coaching when I have an idea of where I think we might go. Then my client says something, or I notice a hesitation, or perhaps even a change in their energy… and the entire conversation shifts.
Had I been focusing my attention on my next question instead of deeply tuning into them with multi-level listening, I would miss how my client is evolving micro-second to micro-second.
These moments continually remind me that some of our most valuable information doesn’t arrive as an external data point; it arrives through our attention.
So, what exactly happens when AI enters the conversation?
- AI technologies can now take notes for us.
- They can summarize meetings.
- And suggest responses.
- They can even help us prepare for difficult conversations.
Wonderful. Use these technologies in these ways.
But notice what they’re actually doing: they’re giving you information about the conversation, not putting you inside it.
It’s important that we don’t confuse having better information about an interaction with actually being with someone: those are not the same thing.
The more technology handles the transactional parts of work, the more valuable I believe genuine human attention will become.
Think about the leader you trusted most in your career. Was it because they always had the fastest answer? Or was there something about how you felt around them?
Perhaps they listened.
Perhaps they challenged you without diminishing you.
Perhaps you knew they saw potential in you before you could see it yourself.
That’s presence.
If you’re still present and with me, I invite you to consider an old practice for these very modern problems we’re navigating…
Many Eastern contemplative traditions have spent thousands of years studying something we’re suddenly struggling to protect: ATTENTION.
The practice is deceptively simple.
- Be here.
- Notice when your mind wanders off.
- Return.
- Notice again.
- Return again.
This is a common way of anchoring the mind in a meditation practice. But it’s also relevant to leadership presence.
Before your next important conversation, try something very simple.
- Put your phone away.
- Close the other tabs.
- Take three slow breaths.
- Feel your feet on the floor.
- And decide that, for the next however many minutes, there is nowhere else you need to be.
- Then listen.
- When your mind wanders, return.
- Listen again.
- And again.
- Listen for what the other person is actually trying to tell you.
And don’t just listen with your ears: listen with every cell of your being.
We’ve spent years talking about attention as a productivity issue.
I think we need to start viewing presence as the critical essence of attention, and as the irreducibly human taproot of relationships and leadership. Why? Because…
- Presence builds trust.
- Presence helps us notice complexity.
- Presence gives intuition and embodied wisdom enough quiet to register.
- And presence allows another human being to feel seen.
No algorithm can outsource that responsibility for you. As the machines become faster, I don’t think our job is to race against them.
Our opportunity may be to cultivate something entirely different: human DEPTH.
Last week, I wrote about why our humanity may become our greatest leadership advantage.
Presence is one piece of that irreducibly human advantage. Next week, I will explore another:
Discernment.
When intelligent tools can give us increasingly convincing answers, how do we decide which answers deserve our trust?
Until then, here’s something to notice:When you’re with another person this week, are you actuallywiththem?