The Joy of Leadership by Tal Ben-Shahar & Angus Ridgway

Author:Tal Ben-Shahar & Angus Ridgway
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119314486
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2017-08-07T08:04:45+00:00

In her book The Zen of Listening, Rebecca Shafir suggests one method for effective listening that resonated with Kevin: forgetting about yourself and “getting into the other person's movie.” We become effective listeners, she says, when we bring the same level of absorption we bring when we're watching a film, with its attendant conditions: uninterrupted, undivided, and genuine interest and empathy in the characters and the world they inhabit, and a commitment to remaining for the allotted time—which usually, after a good film, seems to have flown by.29

Kevin became good enough at getting into other people's movies, at actively listening, that he came to think of himself as a really good salesman—and with the help of Potentialife and his mentors at Goldman Sachs, he was also developing a number of other skills. “Four years of mentorship and learning,” he said, “combined with a nine‐month accelerated course in becoming a better leader, created the perfect storm for me. I'd always wanted to create my own company, and the Potentialife program focused a lot on skills I now realize I needed in terms of hiring and inspiring people.” Kevin decided, in 2016, to start his own business with his best friend, who started working at Goldman Sachs on the same day as Kevin—and who, like Kevin, loves dogs. Their company, Butternut Box, delivers fresh, home‐cooked food to family dogs throughout the United Kingdom.

“In everyday life, so much is about sales,” Kevin said. “Selling yourself, your business, your product, negotiating to get the best prices and interacting with manufacturers and employees. And I'm trying to become better and better—not well rounded, but sharper at my sharpest strength, sales. That'll be my purpose for the next year, to hone that skill and keep trying to get better.”

“Over time,” wrote Winifred Gallagher in Rapt, “a commitment to challenging, focused work and leisure produces not only better daily experience, but also a more complex, interesting person: the long‐range benefit of the focused life. As Nicholas Hobbs puts it, the secret of fulfillment is ‘to choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what one would like to become.’”30

We can experience more flow working in a bank or a dog food provider, we can hone our listening skills while speaking to our sister or making client calls, we can practice meditation while sitting cross‐legged on a yoga mat or while sitting at our desk, but whatever we do, if we want to fulfill our personal and professional potential, we have to choose to focus, to be present, to be mindful.

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