The Missing Skill Every Leader Needs Right Now To Navigate Complexity with Resilience and Mindfulness

<p> Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole Again, the show that's here in support of the person you're becoming and your quest to live a meaningful life. And I have a question for you. Do you feel like you're communicating more than ever, but you're still not being heard? I asked this question during a corporate talk that I gave last week, and you know what happened?</p>
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<p>After I asked the question, everybody in the room raised their hand. But that wasn't the thing that really caught my attention. Now, to be fair, I couldn't see everyone in the room because the way the lighting worked, but I could see the people in the first few rows, and there was something about their body language when I served up that question and their hand went up into the air.</p>
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<p>It was almost like the overwhelm was this huge burden on their shoulders. They were feeling it and not really sure how to stop the madness. One woman shared that, "It feels like I have to check and check and check because I don't wanna miss anything." Hey, FOMO is real. "But every platform is sending me messages, including my Ring doorbell.</p>
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<p>Every time a squirrel runs by the camera, I get a message. It's just too much. I can't keep up." And the thing I've discovered during all my travels is that this group isn't unique. So many of us are feeling it, feeling the rocks in our backpack, as I like to say, of digital overload. The talk was focused in on how can we communicate with clarity during complex and uncertain times, and I think we can all agree that we are living through complex times, and it seems so loud from all that digital overload.</p>
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<p>And upfront in the talk, I shared what I call the new leadership stack, pulling from wellness influencers that talk about supplementation as a stack. And there's always a point in every presentation that I just love. It's when people really start writing notes down or taking out their phone and grabbing a pic of the slides.</p>
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<p>Even though I'm gonna share the slides with everyone after, people wanna capture the slides on their phone, and to me, that says, "Hey, that's a good point. I wanna capture that. I wanna be with that point a little bit longer." With the new leadership stack, I walk the audience through how way back in the very beginning- People thought it was all about your IQ, your intelligence, that drove your success.</p>
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<p>And that was the case for years and years and years, centuries. Then in the 1990s, we started to hear about something called emotional intelligence. It was almost like a movement. Companies started doing emotional intelligence or EQ talks and workshops. It was woven into MBA programs. This was all the rage.</p>
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<p>There was a movement. Some would say that EQ was more important than IQ because after all, the big question was: Why do really smart people still make dumb decisions? Well, emotions drive humans, and humans drive performance, so we have to weave in the emotional component of our decision-making. For the next 10 or so years, this is what we had, IQ and EQ, and we were doing a whole bunch of different workshops on EQ.</p>
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<p>Then around 2006, 2007, 2008, we start to see how our digital lives are changing. The smartphone is here. There are tablets. There are now apps. There's talk about something called the algorithm. All of it's designed to keep us on our screens, so now we have to pay attention to our digital intelligence, our DQ, which does not stand for Dairy Queen.</p>
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<p>So, this is the third element of this new leadership stack that I shared. And since we go where our eyes go, and seems like our eyes are going to our screens, one of our most valuable resources is our attention, our attention and our focus. So, AQ is another component to this leadership stack that I shared.</p>
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<p>So IQ, EQ, DQ, AQ all drives CIQ or CQ, our conversational intelligence. Because after all, nothing happens in the world without a conversation. Sometimes it's with ourselves, but often it's with someone else. And our conversations, they drive clarity. They drive safety when we have clarity, and safety drives trust, and trust drives forward progress.</p>
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<p>So, this new leadership stack is IQ, EQ, DQ, AQ, and CQ, all in an effort to help people have better conversations. And the glue, the urushi of our kintsugi when it comes to this leadership stack, is mindfulness. And with this stack One element can impact the other four. For example, when we're stressed and we're not necessarily taking an adaptive way of dealing with our stress, so we go to our phones, which hits our digital intelligence, that makes our attention fragmented, which then will lead to fragmented conversations, which probably makes us less smart, IQ.</p>
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<p>So this new leadership stack, I think, is key to help us break through all the complexity and all the noise of today. And today, I wanna share three ways that you can improve your digital intelligence, because our digital lives are relatively new. They're only, like, 20 years old or so. So we're still learning how to be with our devices.</p>
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<p>That was one thing that came out of that talk, is that people were like, "This phone, all these screens." People knew they had a problem, so they were problem-aware. They just weren't sure how to make it better. And that was the part that felt so overwhelming, so frustrating for folks, and they wondered, "How much longer can I do this?"</p>
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<p>And life is only getting faster. Technology is only speeding up thanks to AI. So we have to figure out how to create better DQ, digital intelligence, so we can have hopefully better conversations, because life will only get more complex. It's not gonna get simple unless we all decide to go off the grid, which I don't think is gonna happen anytime soon.</p>
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<p>So here are three things that are simple, practical tips that you can do to start improving your digital intelligence or your DQ. And if you do this really well, maybe you head over to the real DQ, Dairy Queen, and get a little treat as a way to celebrate, because I believe we should celebrate our small wins, because our small wins will lead to bigger wins, so we should not discount them.</p>
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<p>So here's the first tip. Actually, before I share the first tip, I will say a general tip is to download, it's totally free, my Pause, Breathe, Reflect app, and it will help you not only with mindfulness, but it will help you with your overall digital health and give you back about an hour a day from all the scrolling we do.</p>
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<p>So that can be found in the Apple Store or in Google Play. So let's get to the first tip. I'm a big fan of taking your most distracting apps and seeing if you can remove them From your phone, and simply access those through your laptop or your computer. Or if you feel you can't do that, find a way to hide them from your home screen.</p>
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<p>Create just enough friction so they're not easily accessible when you have a moment of boredom. I would much rather you lean into that moment of boredom, create some space, stay away from your devices, and just be. 'Cause we all need space. We all need a bit of a break from all the noise. So that's the first tip.</p>
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<p>See if you can either move or delete some of your most distracting apps and simply access them on your desktop or your laptop. Here's tip number two. Create some tech-free zones throughout the day. So this could be simply not turning on your phone or not going to your phone in the first fifteen to twenty minutes after you wake up.</p>
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<p>Now, you might wanna check the weather, I get it, but stay away from social, stay away from your work email. Give yourself a little time before you hop on the phone and start scrolling, because we've all been there. We're like, "Oh, we're just gonna check for just a little bit," and then twenty minutes, thirty minutes later, we're like, "Oh my God, I can't believe we're still on the phone."</p>
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<p>So give yourself some freedom maybe in the morning, or maybe you decide to turn off all your screens, all your devices a good hour before bed. This is gonna help your brain and your body start to shut down, settle in to a good night's sleep, which helps your overall health, but your mind and your body will, will feel wonderful by just having a break from all the noise, all the content.</p>
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<p>So see if you can do that. Again, tip number two is all around creating spaces away from technology, away from your devices. Another idea is to get outside into nature, and you can bring your phone for safety reasons, but you don't have to listen to anything that's on your phone, including this podcast. I would much rather have you just listen to birdsong for a bit.</p>
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<p>That will give you a stronger connection with the nature that is within you. And here is the third tip. Curate who you follow. Follow real people, not AI slop. Follow people that enhance your energy, that make you feel good That can help you feel hopeful and optimistic, curate it in a way that helps you live a meaningful life.</p>
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<p>I'm not totally anti-social media and I'm not totally anti-phones. They can do wonders in helping us connect with like-heartedness, but hopefully open to different-mindedness. But I am a big believer in making sure that we follow people who are putting out a positive ripple effect. So there you have it.</p>
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<p>Three tips that can help improve your DQ, your digital intelligence. And that can then lead to hopefully having better conversations, which allows us to navigate today's complexity with a bit more ease and grace. And if you're part of a corporation and would like to learn more about this new leadership stack and the talk I delivered, please reach out.</p>
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<p>I'll put my calendar link in the show notes and we can connect and talk about how we can bring this concept to your team or company.</p>
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<p>And as always, thanks for listening. Thank you for being here. I hope you're checking out our new series called A Perfectly Imperfect Union. I'm talking to 102 real folks across our 50 states here in America and the District of Columbia about their reflections on America as she turns 250. And those episodes air every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.</p>
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<p>So there'll be a new one tomorrow, and I hope you'll check it out. Until then, let's remember to celebrate our scars as golden symbols of our strength and resilience. And don't forget to have fun storming the castle.</p>
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<p>And if you wish to learn more about creating beautiful ripples and how to prevent a bad moment from turning into a bad day, please visit my website, michaelobrienshift.com and sign up for my newsletter called The Ripple Effect. And join us each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday here at Whole Again and discover how you can heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience.</p>
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<p>Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You've got this and we've got you.</p>