VIM Executive Coaching is quite aware of the bombardment of information that is hitting us on all sides. The same issue is often filtered through multiple lenses and through numerous interpretations even within a seemingly single point-of-view.
Americans experience this phenomenon virtually every day when it is applied to news stories. Political news, for example, is fed to us through three main cable information outlets and countless network television affiliates who frequently align with one or more of the cable news stations. We have long since abandoned the Walter Cronkite model of delivering the unadorned news: one trusted source attempting to relate “what is,” rather than “my opinion of what is.”
The Corporate World
The filtering and massaging of information is, unfortunately, a reality of corporate life. In withholding information, there is all too frequently a damaging bias. Either the leader is kept in the dark because no one wants to deliver the (negative) message, or the message is muddled in an attempt to cloud the information. The results of either problem can be catastrophic.
The obscuring of information need not be limited to a production problem or lackluster sales or even flawed market research that led to a wrong marketing assumption. It can be as simple as a personnel problem where not every side was heard.
Where the executive leader often gets their information is important, but just as critical is howthe leader gets information.
Is it a matter of trust? Perhaps. However, VIM Executive Coaching believes it is more a matter of mindfulness. For, when mindfulness is lacking, information can be withheld, bias does reveal itself and obfuscation (or muddying the waters) is the rule and not the exception.
In our thirst for “information,” we are afraid that most executive leaders, as with most news seekers, are more than willing to filter data to fit expediency, mood or personal bias rather than to carefully weigh and measure.
Be Mindful not Biased
Mindfulness is a measure of the authenticity in how an executive leader gathers information, carefully weighs that input and responds to the situation. Going back to the personnel issue we raised above, a mindful executive will openly listen to all sides and respond on the basis of having weighed the information. In this way, the executive is authentic in coming to a determination.
Unfortunately, the corporate word is commonly plagued with examples of where all types of biases influenced and shaped the arc of thinking. We must dare to mention, the painfully exposed issues of a lack of diversity and inclusion in many organizations is exactly related to a lack of mindfulness. Indeed, a separate post – or many posts – could be devoted to where inauthentic leaders allowed their information to be shaped by influences that were anything but mindful.
It behooves the executive leader to be mindful in processing information whether there is confusion over a possible merger, or where an accounting department seems to be having ongoing personnel problems. Mindfulness must naturally “dislike bias.” They are mutually exclusive.
Where does the executive leader get information? How does the leader process this information? It begins, quite literally, with the breath. Mindfulness reflects on what is, one breath at a time, one authentic thought at a time. Without the reality that is mindfulness, all of the information we believe to be true – may be anything but truthful.