As a leader, one of the most important things you can do to build relationships and truly engage with your team (with anyone, actually) is to be fully present when you are with them.

Now, when I talk about being present, I’m sure you know already that I’m not just talking about physically showing up. It's about giving your undivided attention to the person who is in front of you right now.

Think for a moment about the last time one of your team members (or colleagues, or family members) came to talk to you about something. Did you stop what you were doing, face them, put down whatever was in your hands and focus purely on them? Did you truly listen with all of your senses, and fully grasp where they were coming from?

Were you totally tuned in with your:

• Eyes - what am I observing/not observing?

• Ears - what are they saying/not saying?

• Heart – what might they be feeling/not feeling?

• Mind – what might they be thinking/not thinking?

If you were, then you have missed your calling as a mindfulness guru and you can stop reading now. The rest of us will press on. 😆

Let’s face it, being present can be incredibly challenging these days. We are all battling against a relentless barrage of emails, calls, notifications, reminders, deadlines, updates, meetings, life admin and cute kitten videos.

So if ‘being present’ is a new thing for you, or something you struggle with, you are not alone.

How to be present and ‘in the moment’

The good news is, there are a few simple things you can do to improve your ability to be fully focused and ‘in the moment’ with your people:

1. Find the right time

2. Find a suitable location

3. Set your intention

4. Remove digital distractions

5. Notice and manage your wandering attention

6. Ask for feedback

Let’s look at each of these elements in a little more detail.

1. Find the right time

Your team member asks you, ‘Hey, do you have time for me to bounce an idea around with you for five minutes?’ Even though you have a looming meeting/deadline/other pressing issue on your mind right now, it’s tempting to say yes, because you truly do want to talk with your team member about whatever is on their mind. So what do you do?

Simply ask them, ‘How long do you really think we need for this conversation?’

And even if you do technically have time, ask yourself: can I be fully present for this conversation right now? If your answer is no, you could then respond with, ‘Look, I really want to be able to give you my full attention when we catch up, and right now I’m caught up with [upcoming meeting/deadline/issue]. Can we book ourselves in for a chat please?’

Now your team member knows you want to seriously listen to what they have to say, and you’ve locked in a dedicated time to do that. Super!

**Hot tip:** if there are times of the day or the week when you find it easier to be present, let your team know in advance so that they can either book in a chat with you, or at least have a better chance of catching you at a good moment.

2. Find a suitable location

Think about where would be best to hold this conversation. To be fully present for your team member, find a space that will help you eliminate distractions and focus on what your team member is saying. It might be a meeting room, a coffee shop, a quiet corner or the park across the road - whatever works for you both.

3. Set your intention

Before you meet with your team member, take a moment to set your intention for your conversation:

How do I want to be in the conversation?

Present. Focused only on them. Really trying to understand their perspective/challenge/opportunity/concern.

What do I need to let go of before the conversation?

The previous conversations you’ve been in during the day and all the actions that are crowding your mind.

How would I like my team member to feel during and after our conversation?

Like they were deeply listened to and felt truly heard.

Sometimes it takes a few minutes to change gears from what you’ve just been doing to the conversation you’re about to have, so taking a few minutes to set your intention and ‘get in the zone’ prior to your discussion can be very helpful.

Hot tip: create space between meetings.
Having back-to-back meetings can be a significant derailer to intention-setting. Try booking meetings for 25 minutes instead of 30, or 50 minutes instead of an hour, to allow you time to transition your mind from one to the next.

4. Remove digital distractions

Something super easy you can do to help you be more present with your team member is to remove all your potential digital distractions. (OK, so it’s not THAT easy, but you can do this! You really can!).

1. Phone on silent

Start by putting your phone on silent and place it either face down or somewhere you can’t see it. There is nothing worse than being on the cusp of getting a lovely insight from your team member when your phone beeps or buzzes and you glance down, breaking the connection with your team member and BOOM! … the moment is gone. What a shame.

I reckon my Mum has a really healthy approach with her mobile phone – she says, ‘My phone is for my convenience, not everyone else’s!’ So, channel my Mum and park your phone whenever you’re in a conversation.

2. Move away from computer

If you’re working face-to-face, I’d suggest moving away from your computer.

One of my lovely program participants, Julie, who leads a team at Red Energy’s call centre in Melbourne, shared that whenever one of her team members approaches to have a conversation with her, she swivels her chair to face them so that her back is facing her computer screen and she can’t even see it in her peripheral vision. She finds it makes such a difference to her ability to be present. You may have experienced that sinking feeling when you’re trying to talk with someone and their eyes keep glancing away from you and you know that they’re actually trying to keep an eye on something else. Funny how quickly those kinds of conversations dry up.

3. Shut everything else down

If you are working virtually, my tip is to close all other programs on your computer so that you have only the video conference open and any content you need for that specific conversation.

Switch off other notifications so you can be present for your team member online.

Use a good headset so that you’re only hearing them and are not distracted by any other sounds.

5. Notice and manage your wandering attention

Think of your last conversation with a team member. Perhaps instead of really being present your mind wandered off to your next meeting, or to an argument you had earlier in the day. Jack Kornfield, an American author, Buddhist practitioner and teacher, has a lovely analogy for wandering minds that have difficulty staying present.

Jack says that our untrained wandering mind is like a puppy:

“We put the puppy down and say, ‘Sit. Stay.’ What does it do? It gets up and runs around. ‘Stay.’ It runs around again. Twenty times, ‘Stay.’ After a while, slowly, the puppy settles down.”

Jack’s advice for the times when we notice our ‘puppy’ has wandered off mid-conversation is to notice that the ‘puppy’ has gone, and gently and calmly ‘bring the puppy back’. I can’t tell you how many times I find myself saying ‘bring the puppy back’ during the course of a day. (I think my puppy is a cheeky chocolate Labrador! What would yours be?)

I also find this analogy powerful because if we were training a puppy, we would be gentle, kind and persistent. Sadly, so often when we talk to ourselves we use a frustrated, angry and scolding voice. Treating ourselves and our wandering minds like we would treat a new puppy encourages us to bring compassion to our own learning so we can become more and more present with our team members and others over time.

6. Ask for feedback

As you practise being present with your team member, tell them you are working on it and ask them for feedback on how you’re doing.

You could ask, ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 low and 10 high, how present was I with you today?’ Or even simpler, ‘How well did you feel I listened to you today?’

When your team member gives you their response, you can follow up with, ‘If there was one thing I could do to improve my listening, what would you suggest?’

If you have built trust with your team you may receive some insightful answers! And if you ask each of your team members this question, you may start to notice a pattern or a theme in the feedback; maybe it’s ‘put your phone down’ or ‘ask more questions’ or ‘stop talking over me’. Then you need to think about how you will implement their suggestions.

When we are fully present, what’s actually happening is that we become fully attuned to the person in front of us. Just like an old-fashioned radio, we turn the dial through the noisy static trying to find the right station, and when we find it the static disappears and the presenter’s voice comes through crystal clear. We are tuned in.

Being fully present and in the moment has the power to supercharge your relationships with team members and others. As the inimitable Maya Angelou once said,

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy ‘7 simple tips to connect with your team’ and ‘How to nail your feedback’ (it’s a trilogy!)

For more on understanding and using presence, check out Chapter 6 of my book, ‘on your marks, get set… LEAD! A beginner’s guide to people leadership’.