You've repeatedly asked for the numbers, and haven't gotten an answer. That much-anticipated project of yours is running behind. The results your General Manager promised you aren't there yet, and it's late in the game. You've missed an important meeting to fly off for another important meeting. Your car isn't ready yet. You raced to the airport only to find that your flight is running three hours behind, and you're going to miss the start of that offsite. Your mobile phone is chirping like an entitled bug.
Delays, setbacks, knotty problems, and hold ups are the norm -- but are they pebbles, or boulders? That depends on your perspective, which is more within your control than you may think.
In the battlefield of a tough day these things seem like boulders. Red-faced, frustrated, tired, hitting your own personal tipping point, while somewhere on planet you the last bubble of patience bursts, and you are really going to say something you might regret.
Take a pause. Levitate your perspective, and the boulders become pebbles; the big picture becomes clear, and you know what to do.
Next time you are in the battlefield and find yourself red-faced impatient, take a moment to imagine you step into a superfast elevator to the 2,000th floor. Look down on the scene that has your trigger-finger itching. Take it all in. Then, if you still feel it, you are welcome to react up a storm.
My guess? You will act rather than react. You will behave differently than you would have, had you NOT taken that little ride.
Leadership requires reflection, which sometimes is a battlefield activity, and levitation is simply good strategy.
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