Meaningful, not just many

We want more, and we want it now! This is the mindset you and I have today in a changing world driven by technology. Leaders face this pressure all the time.

There used to be a time when you can simply say, “I don’t know the answer to that.” Then you can take your sweet time searching the library and browsing through an encyclopedia for the answer. Today, with smart phones (which are really mobile computing devices), the time between not knowing and knowing has been reduced to how quickly you can click on a link.

“More speed, more power.” This is the constant marketing theme behind the gadgets that are churned out every year, promising to make our life simpler and to make us more efficient. And we all bite into the false promise.

Faster and more powerful devices don’t minimize our workload. They simply maximize our capability to do more. With faster and more powerful technology, we’re expected to deliver more. We do want to do more, yet no technology in the world is powerful enough to add more hours into any given day. That belongs exclusively in our Creator’s realm.

You and I are rewarded for speed and action. So we want to speed things up a bit, so we can do a bit more, because we want more rewards. But here’s a sobering truth: our speedy and busy lifestyle has blurred our vision, so much so that we do things faster, yes, but with less intelligence and common sense.

Our frantic schedules, and the pressure to work harder and 24/7 have set us in constant motion. We’re permanently busy, afraid of losing time and falling behind the cuter GenY, the new entrants to the workplace who seem to be eyeing our position and who might just get it if we don’t watch our back. And so we pass each other in the hallway without really connecting, but we’re busy with our connections in LinkedIn and our “friends” in Facebook. But even with the social networks we’re in, we find ourselves isolated and unavailable emotionally.

We wouldn’t be able to keep this kind of pace. We’re not engineered by God to behave like computers and machines. Unknowingly, our dedication to speed and action can be counterproductive. We need to slow down and step back to achieve one important thing in the midst of the speed blur: Clarity.

Leadership effectiveness involves more than just efficiency and speed. It also involves the ability to put clarity in chaos and complexity, and to set a clear direction to follow for people who are also overwhelmed with the requirement to deliver more and to deliver faster. Leaders should keep in mind that not everyone in the organization can move with the same speed as they do.

Does the leadership pause especially when things seem confusing and chaotic? Leaders need to temper their drive to accomplish things with a commensurate drive to pause, look at the horizon, and contemplate, especially when facing tough and complex leadership challenges.

Pause can power clarity and performance. It’s not easy as it sounds, but rid yourself of the emotional addiction to take immediate action every time a situation arises. Leaders need a creative pause to sort things out and bring clarity to a situation at hand. The “leadership pause” requires humility to ask for counsel or get a third-party intervention perhaps, and deliberateness in reflection and thoughtfulness in taking action steps. A pause would allow us to face ourselves and the situation or challenge, and, more important, to gather creative tools to deal with it. Because a pause gives us clarity.

You are I are no superheroes. A leadership pause may just turn out to be a life-saver.

(Attend the fund raising seminar “We Will Rise!”, a whole-day event featuring eight of the top speakers in the country. Learn, give and share, as ALL proceeds will go to the typhoon victims of Yolanda, on Dec. 10, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at CCF Makati, A Venue. For further inquiries, contact Inspire at 09158055910, or call 632-6310912 for details.)