Back-to-back meetings, mountains of decisions, no time to visit the bathroom let alone think.
And despite all that activity, many worry that the impact of their efforts is often vanishingly difficult to identify.
The problem isn’t time management, focus, ambition or effort. Their busyness is masking a much deeper issue and that’s to do with the quality of their thinking.
As the pressure mounts, most leaders default to what’s urgent, or immediately visible. Emails. Requests. Escalations. The next meeting.
What quietly disappears is thinking.
Not because leaders don’t care.
But because pressure narrows attention, creates chaotic physiology which inhibits thinking.
When that happens, effort increases but impact declines.
Let’s take a step back and explore where thinking and performance meet.
When we coach leaders, we try to explain that there are multiple levels of the human system that must be controlled if you want to deliver game changing impact. We suggest an iceberg metaphor. What you can see above the water are the results you achieve in life and the actions leaders take to drive those results.
Results are determined by what we do, our behaviour. Behaviours are the final common pathway to outcomes. This is why there’s so much focus on leadership behaviours. The choices leaders make are key and they are visible. You can see leaders seeking information, generating ideas, connecting with others, developing their people, communicating, and driving continuous improvements.
But behaviour is the output, not the source of a leader’s performance.
Below the waterline sit the real drivers of performance:
1. Thinking which always occurs in the context of what we are
2. Feelings, which is simply the awareness of our
3. Emotions, which are just the integrated patterns made up from our
4. Physiology, which is all the data streams between all our bodily systems
If our physiology is chaotic, then our emotions are more likely to be negative, which we may or may not feel. But the quality of our thinking is impaired when our emotions are negative.
If our physiology is coherent, emotions tend to be positive, which we may or may not feel but positive emotions improve the quality of our thinking.
With better thinking we make better choices particularly around how we have a greater impact on the business and add more value for our customers.
When leaders do QBRs or even weekly meetings, we never think about thinking. We are rarely curious about the foundations of our own performance.
Leaders may ask “what did I do?”
But never “what state was I in when I did it?”
So try asking yourself these five questions in every meeting where you are trying to create impact and move the dial:
1. Am I in the right state to optimise my brain function and be more strategic
2. What state are the people around me in, do they need to shift their state too
3. What state would be more energising and inspiring to those around me
4. Can I radiate and positively infect others with this high-performance state
5. From this state what is the single outcome that matters most this week, and how do I excite other around this outcome
Notice the impact of changing your state on others’ performance.
It’s not about being falsely upbeat or “happy clappy”.
Sometimes the best emotional state you need as a leader to optimise your problem-solving capability and create the right energy in others is “determined” or “resolute” or “supportive” or “curious”.
What is key is meeting people where they are at then ‘SHIFT-ing’ yourself to help other SHIFT themselves.
We teach this ability to SHIFT as a specific performance skill. This will help you level up and those around you level up.
If you SHIFT your emotional state, you become more coherent, physiologically. Your pre-frontal cortex works better, your attention sharpens and the ideas, that are already in your mind, are suddenly accessible to you.
Think about it. Where was that good idea ten seconds before it occurred to you?
The answer is that it was already in your mind, but you couldn’t access it. When you generate coherent physiology suddenly such ideas are available to you.
Unlocking your own intelligence isn’t about tips or tools.
It’s about developing the leader who’s overwhelmed by their diary.
If you develop your ability to SHIFT, then:
You’ll be able to think systemically, when others collapse into urgency
To create space, cognitively and biologically, for better decisions.
When that development happens, something interesting occurs.
Your diary often stays full.
But your impact increases dramatically.
If this resonates, and you want to explore how coherence, pressure performance, and leadership maturity shape results at the CEO level, you can find out more about my work and our coaching approach by contacting us or ready my book 4D Leadership.
Your calendar doesn’t need saving.
Your leadership does.