Why Great Leadership Starts With Paying Attention

Nearly 20 years ago, when I first met Brian Schubring, I remember asking him a pretty basic question: What does the name “Leadership Vision” actually mean?

I was new to the organization and wanted to understand the name. Brian explained that leadership was about influence. Everyone has influence over someone. It might be one person, it might be hundreds or thousands, but leadership wasn’t reserved for just the person with a title. Vision, he explained, was about the unique way each of us sees, understands, and navigates the world.

I remember that conversation because it changed the way I thought about leadership. So, this summer, almost 20 years later, I asked Brian and Dr. Linda Schubring on the Leadership Vision Podcast, essentially the same question.

A lot has changed since that first conversation (I believe it was July of 2007). Our work has changed, the organizations we serve have changed, and the challenges facing leaders have certainly changed. But the basic idea has remained remarkably consistent: leadership is about your influence, and vision is about your identity.

As we talked, I realized there is a simple question that connects the two: What do you see? And this is a question we ask a lot.

Learning to See What Others See

Years ago, Brian told me how he would pick his daughter up from school, and while they were getting a snack or running errands, he would always ask her what she saw in the environment around her. What was she noticing? He wanted to understand the world through her perspective instead of assuming that she was experiencing it the same way he was.

Now that I’m a parent (of four kids which is a story for a different day), I find myself doing the same thing. This summer, our family did a lot of traveling, and as we explored different cities, I would ask my kids what they noticed. Their answers were sometimes obvious, but often surprised me. They saw things I didn’t, not because I wasn’t paying attention, but because they were paying attention to different things.

I think there’s something important in that for leaders. We can spend so much energy trying to get people to understand what we see that we forget to ask what they see. The newest person on your team may notice something you’ve become accustomed to. Someone closer to the customer or client may understand the problem differently than you do. The quiet person in the meeting may see something important but has simply never been asked.

When we ask people what they see and actually listen to their answers, we’re doing more than gathering information. We’re communicating that their perspective matters.

Curiosity Is a Leadership Practice

During our conversation, Linda described “What do you see?” as one of the controlling questions in our work at Leadership Vision. We ask versions of it all the time: What’s getting your attention? What are you noticing? Who are you paying attention to? What seems different right now?

I like these questions because they put us in a posture of curiosity. We aren’t asking someone to confirm what we’ve already decided. We’re trying to understand what the world looks like from where they’re standing.

That’s harder than it sounds, especially for leaders. Leaders are often rewarded for knowing. We’re supposed to have answers, make decisions, set direction, and solve problems. Curiosity asks us to acknowledge that someone else may be seeing something we can’t, and that can be uncomfortable.

It also means listening can’t simply be a technique we deploy because someone told us good leaders are good listeners. If you ask someone what they think while mentally preparing your response, you’re probably not listening very well. If you ask for feedback after the decision has effectively been made, people will eventually figure that out too.

The question only matters if we’re genuinely interested in the answer.

When the Environment Changes, Leaders Have to Change Too

I think this is especially important right now because the context of leadership is changing so quickly. In our work with organizations, we’re seeing leaders wrestle with uncertainty, shorter planning horizons, rapid change, and approaches to leadership that don’t seem to work quite the way they once did.

That can be particularly disorienting for experienced leaders. You’ve spent years developing ways of communicating, making decisions, leading teams, and solving problems. Those practices probably helped you get where you are, which makes it difficult to consider that some of them may need to change.

Linda made an important distinction in our conversation:

adapting how you lead doesn’t mean abandoning who you are. You can maintain the essence of yourself while practicing new habits, unlearning a few things, and finding different ways to engage the people around you.

One example she shared was listening. If you want to become a better listener, tell your team you’re practicing listening and then actually practice. Ask someone what they’re noticing. Don’t immediately explain why they’re wrong, defend a decision, or jump in with a solution. Try taking the posture of a student for a few minutes and see what you learn.

That might feel almost too simple to qualify as leadership development, but I think that’s partly the point. Growth doesn’t always require a new framework or a massive organizational initiative. Sometimes it starts with changing the way we enter a conversation.

Align and Adjust

Toward the end of our conversation, Brian offered two words that have stuck with me: align and adjust.

Start by asking where your influence is already aligned with what this moment requires of you. What’s working? Where are your skills, experience, relationships, or instincts helping the people around you? In uncertain environments, it’s easy to become so focused on what’s changing that we overlook the things we’re already doing well.

Then consider what needs to adjust. Maybe it’s a behavior or an attitude. Perhaps you need to listen more and explain less. Or perhaps ask another question before offering an answer. Possibly there is a leadership practice that worked incredibly well five years ago but isn’t serving your team in the same way today.

Leadership doesn’t require us to become entirely different people every time our circumstances change. But it does require us to pay attention to what those circumstances are asking of us.

A Simple Activity

So here’s something simple to try this week. Ask someone you work with, live with, or lead:

• What do you see?
• What are you noticing that I might be missing?

And then resist the temptation to do anything with their answer right away. Don’t solve, correct, or compare it to what you see. Just listen and get curious about why they see what they see.

You might learn something about your team or the challenges in front of you. You might also learn something about yourself.

Nearly 20 years after I first asked what the words “Leadership Vision” mean, I think that’s part of the answer I’m still learning. Leadership is about the influence we have on the people around us. Vision is about the unique way we see and navigate the world. And perhaps part of becoming a better leader is recognizing that our vision will always be incomplete without the perspectives of the people around us.