Studio Notes: This is a bi-weekly note for paid subscribers that answers your questions about leadership development and the creative practices I shared in The Rehearsal Hall. The Studio Notes help you go deeper into the practices and exercises and get specific feedback on using them in your leadership role. They’re similar to what directors give actors at the end of rehearsals — things to work on and additional context. Leadership is an art & practice.
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Responses to your questions
“I did the sense walk, which was fun, but I don't know how it makes me a better leader. Can you explain that more?”
Beautiful question! I'll first give more context about vision and how the sense walk fits in.
Vision is one of ten leadership attributes that make a great transformational leader. It is one of ten attributes that I help you to develop through this newsletter and community.
While Vision is one of ten parts, Vision has four parts to it.
Vision is:
Sensing
Seeing beyond the current reality
Bringing in/integrating outside connections and theories
Strategy/path-making
Each part has three levels.
Green shows the base level, red is the more advanced, and a profound vision ability is the yellow.
Where most leaders are
If I were to map where many leaders, especially new leaders, are in this diagram — they wouldn't be in the circle. They would be on the pink outside. Leaders find vision very hard because it's often the opposite of management. You aren't redoing the past; you are sensing something that has never been done. Sensing takes intentional training. Vision includes, but is different, from strategy.
Last week's sense-walk exercise helps you develop the sensing part of vision. Referring to the chart I shared in last week's Rehearsal Hall, you'll see what each level entails. The first sensing level, the green part of the chart above, is "The leader is aware that change is needed without relying on prompts."
You have base level vision if you can sense that things are working or not working without needing someone to tell you. You can sense it. You don’t need to know the solution or strategy, but you can sense something.
How do you do that?
You listen to cues and your intuition.
How do you train yourself to do that?
You do exercises where you follow your intuition.
The sense walk helps you notice things as they are, pause and tune into that noticing, and then trust yourself to follow a trail — either to drop, not take a step, or to take a step.
The sense walk is a low-stakes way of developing this skill. The business and organization are not going to fail if you follow the wrong path on the sense-walk. You can test things out, notice what happens in your body when you follow your intuition. You can notice what happens in your mind when you get a clear sign to not follow a sound or event on the sense walk.
You learn to trust and listen to outside cues and internal instincts that you can later use in your work.
How to bring this into your work.
It is essential at this stage to keep practicing the sense-walk. First, you can do it in nature. The next place could be doing it when you log into work or walk into a physical office, sensing the feel of the space. I know many organizations are pausing as we approach the holiday break, but when you come back to work, practice sitting for 30 seconds to a minute before any meeting or presentation to see what you sense in the space.
At first, I recommend sensing and making notes about what your intuition is telling you. It can be short, like:
You're practicing sensing.
After a few weeks of sensing and note-making, you could share your sense with someone else. It could be saying to a co-worker, "I'm sensing everyone is energized by the new project." Or, "I sense we need to do something about X even though no one has said anything. Are you feeling this too?"
As you sense things over time, you'll be operating in the green part of sense as you feel things, including when the right time to share is.
Sensing can feel insignificant, but I promise you, it is significant. You will operate and lead from a more sophisticated and refined lens. In February, we'll dig deeper into level two sense skills when doing the "Leading from the Roots" Leadership Intensive.
Try the above for January, please share questions, insights, and stories as you do it. I’m here to support this important work.
That's it for today. I'll share a new meditation on Monday and a new practice for the second leadership attribute next Thursday.
Happy holidays.
Kerri