Yesterday I practiced for the first time a “focusing” session. I sat comfortably in a chair while a “focusing partner” spoke slowly and calmly to me, taking me through an exercise that the technique’s creator, Gendlin, defined with six steps.
I have to say I was very positively surprised with the outcome, and especially with the potential of growth and learning that I suddenly found open before me: I can see months of practice, learning and further personal development ahead of me, without looking outside, but rather, inside.
This is the whole point of focusing. It is a technique to help us take our attention focus to the sensations and images that the unconscious part of our brains and bodys are continually using to try to get through to us. This doesn’t force us to do anything, but in fact gives us the liberty to decide whether to go with this new point of view or to go against it because it may be wrong, subjective, or simply based on cave-man-era logic.
Whether you use focusing or other techniques, you can’t expect to lead people if you can’t tap into the bodily information and processing that made us who we are as a species, before we got all intellectual about everything. Not only because your body runs you, leaving you to be its follower instead of its leader, but also because as leader you need to interpret and manage the emotinal aspects of your team’s behaviour as well.
I can’t name a single performing leader that hasn’t relied instinctively on their ’gut feeling’ at key moments. They all know that their gut has important things to say about the choices they make, so learning to listen to your gut couldn’t be stupid, could it?
The more pervasive knowledge and informtion are in the business world of today, the more important it becomes to add value in other ways in order to lead the rest.
We really must dive deeper into the wisdom of emotions, developed along millions of years of very successful evolution!
