Lift your sight above the treeline

Leaders are often advised by coaches, leadership books, training etc to work ON the business, not IN the business, to elevate to the “40,000 foot view” to see the big picture, the distant horizon, the long term possibilities, the Vision.

Yes, the “40,000 foot view” is truly valuable for leaders, but it is a (figuratively) high level of context to lead from. Sometimes it makes more sense to simply lift your vision above the treeline.

You’ll note I used the word context. Recently I’ve been mentoring some newer coaches and one of the topics has been around the absolute core coaching tool, Context (a real-life example in this post). Contextual thinking is about always looking for what the underlying truth, issue, opportunity, the challenge is.

Leadership is all about thinking in Context, seeing the opportunities and challenges over the long term, before then dropping back down to “ground level” to bring that context to review all activities and decisions at a day to day level.

However, another key to context is to lead from the right level of context at any given time. At the moment, in the “pandemic now”, I’m finding that many leaders are needing to focus on more immediate needs.

Given that, lately I’ve often encouraged leaders to drop down from the “40,000-foot view” high level of Context to a lower elevation, lower level of context.

As a way of visualising this, first I ask them to imagine that they are walking through the…