Opinion: Complete focus required in fully-present managment

My third boss out of college was a very deliberate woman. She spoke slowly and she had an unnerving habit of looking right into one’s eyes. I didn’t know what to make of her. I had worked in a parochial school where the principal allowed every meeting to be interrupted by calls, students and other faculty members. Then, I worked in a department store where we had no privacy behind a counter. All of a sudden, someone is wanting to be “fully present” for me?

She waited a moment and said, “I’m giving you the time. I suggest you take it.”

I have no memory of what was so important that I had to make an appointment to speak with her. But I do remember the phrase, and I take it as a gift.

How many of us are fully present for anyone? Are we fully present for our families, our friends or our co-workers? Most of the time, it seems as though we are partially present as we desperately try to do two things at once. Although we’ve learned that it never works well, we keep trying to cram 30 hours into a 24-hour day.

Bad examples

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I called a local video store to ask if they had season five of a favorite series. The clerk said, “No, it was supposed to come in this week, but it didn’t.” I said that I wanted season five. “We don’t have it. Sorry.”

I then went online and discovered that season five had been out for some time and it was season six that was supposed to be in. I called back and said, “I think we’ve had a misunderstanding. I am looking for season five, not six.”

His response: “Oh, sorry. I was really busy checking people out.”

The whole situation evolved because he wasn’t fully present for either the store customers or for me.

A few months ago, I had to go to Houston for medical treatment. The first week was spent in tests and exams. The second week was spent waiting to hear results. I finally called the patient advocate who got to the bottom of the mess: “The department thought you had gone home.”

“Why? I called and left a message saying that we would be staying locally. I gave them our local number.”

“Most people go home after the first week. They assumed you did, too.”

That was really no answer but it was all that I was given. Whoever answered the phone was definitely not fully present.

Managers often act like busy parents with a brood of kids. One boss had an open-door policy that really worked as a low-security prison for anyone who had the temerity to want to meet with her. Sitting across from her made one feel like a voyeur watching the boss’ life play out. She would take all calls that came in, business or pleasure. It was often embarrassing to hear her upbraid one of her kids, arrange for a dinner engagement or set up club meetings. Her open door also allowed people to come in and interrupt. Once, another vice president actually came in and sat down next to me. My subject was completely dropped while he began talking about an issue that was totally unrelated to the topic of the original meeting.

This boss was definitely not fully present.

Inefficient multitasking

What can businesspeople do to be fully present for our clients?

The first step is to realize that it is impossible to do two things at once. You can acknowledge another customer while you are serving someone else, but concentrate on the person who is in front of you.

Don’t try to work on the computer while you take a phone call. Usually, we turn to the computer when a phone call goes on too long. Wouldn’t it be more fully present to tie up the call and move on to other tasks?

If an employee wants to speak with you, take the request as a gift. This is time to bond, to get things done, to find out what really is going on, to motivate and to manage.

If you are attending a seminar, give the speaker your attention. In the spring, I gave a big presentation on communication for a business. The senior VP sat in the front and worked on figures and a spreadsheet during the first half-hour of my seminar. Not only was it rude and distracting to me, it sent the very clear message to the employees that what I was saying was not important to him. By inference, that meant it was not to be valued by them. He definitely was not fully present.

Business drama

One of the most difficult skills in acting is improvisational theater. You’ve probably seen “Whose Line is it Anyway?” with Drew Carey. I took improv classes for a few years in Hollywood. The trick to improvisation is to give the other actors whatever they need and to be fully present. If another actor starts going off on a tangent in a scene, you go along or the scene will fall on its face.

Actor No. 1: “I found the treasure map under the stairs.”

Actor No. 2: “You couldn’t have. This house was built three years ago.”

Now, there is nowhere for the scene to go.

How about this?

Actor No. 1: “I found the treasure map under the stairs.”

Actor No. 2: “Who put it there?”

Actor No. 1: “I think it must have been Bluebeard. He lived here in New Jersey.”

Now, we have a scene and a laugh.

Teaching others to be fully present is a little like improvisation. There are a few simple rules that begin and end with listening, only doing one thing at a time and appreciating the other actors in the drama we call business.

To be fully present, you have to care.

Sinara Stull O’Donnell is a professional speaker and writer through Springfield-based SinaraSpeaks. She is the author of “Be The Star Of Your Life: Are You Ready For Your Close-Up?” She can be reached at sinara1@sbcglobal.net.[[In-content Ad]]