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 trees in a forest. They can see the trees in their line of sight, but they can’t see beyond that.

If their focus is in the shorter-term, the answer is not to elevate to that “40,000 foot view“, all they need to do right is to climb to lift their sight just above the treeline, to see the direction to take, the weather ahead of them, the rise and fall of the treeline, perhaps the clearings in the forest on their path.

I’ve been told the imagery of simply lifting your sight above the treeline is valuable, it lifts us up just that little bit beyond the day to day tasks to focus on leading rather than managing or “doing”, yet without any feeling of abdication of current responsibilities and duties.

I’d love your thoughts, and a reminder that I keep my diary open to support leaders on zoom meetings to listen to whatever level of context you are focussed on.