“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” ~ Simone Weil

Photo Credit: Kevin Jordan

Greetings -

I hope you, your families and friends are well! Spring is springing in the Bay Area and I am loving the great opportunities to be out in nature for daily hikes and runs (well, more like jogs in my case). And I think I may have caught the pickleball bug, thanks to my recent introduction to the game by a very good friend and former colleague. The tennis player in me is still a bit dubious, but I think I am going to give pickleball a fair shot.

I am very pleased to share that my colleague and good friend, Harry Hutson, and his co-author, Barbara Perry, will be publishing their new book, Hope At Work, in April. At a time when the "hope gap" seems to widen daily in our work and in our lives, Barbara and Harry provide a grounded and thoughtful meditation on why it is important to inspire and sustain hope. Their analysis delineates the need for and power of organizations and communities that inspire possibility, fuel our sense of agency, honor our worth, create space for openness and foster deeper, more meaningful connections. Congratulations to Barbara and Harry on the upcoming publication of your excellent work!

I recently had the opportunity, and great fun, to be a guest on The Atomic Impact Podcast. Host Jason Osborn and I discussed the realities of building a solo executive and leadership coaching business. Throughout our conversation, I shared lessons learned about running the business side of coaching, navigating uncertainty during COVID, and staying confident in the value I deliver even during periods of intense change (of which there are not shortage). We also discussed how relationship-driven sales, intentional reflection, and expanding into team and group coaching are shaping the next phase of growth for my business. You can find the show here (about 20 minutes, so not too much of me! :)).

As with the advent of Spring and the myriad changes associated with it, leaders must also continually adapt to their evolving business context, organizational demands and team member needs. Adept leaders meet people where they are and understand their perspectives and address their questions.

Creating and holding space for others to share information, ask questions or express divergent viewpoints can be transformative. It can also facilitate rich, productive conversations across a diverse range of topics. Applying these learnings can facilitate substantive behavioral change and change how we serve ourselves, teams and organizations with greater effectiveness and versatility.

This edition will, in part, explore how to facilitate presence, create space for deep communication and enhance understanding. There are lots of other gems too that I hope you will find both interesting and of use.

With respect and deep admiration for you all, happy reading and listening!

Be well, take good care of yourselves, families and community. 
-kj

PS - (Missed a newsletter? Past editions can be found here: https://www.kevinjordan.coach/blog. And if you hit paywall on an article(s), feel free to send me a note and let me know what you need. I have subscriptions to many of the sources that I cite.)

Featured: When the Best Leadership Skill Is Just Being Present

"Set the intention.
Shift into calm.
Stay curious.
Listen with your body.
Invite reflection."

Conceptually, we understand the critical need for presence. Effective and empathic communication rests on the practice of listening well. Adept leaders meet people where they are, understand their perspectives, and help them feel seen and heard.

I work with leaders who genuinely want to show up this way. They know listening builds trust. They know attunement creates psychological safety. And yet...

Many of them struggle with the tyranny of the urgent - the unrelenting pressure to do everything and be everywhere. Our always-on culture and insatiable demands for the now conspire to make us less attuned to the needs of others and inhibit our ability to deliberately cultivate the practice of creating time and space to truly be present.

The key question: how do we move from aspirational desire to practical, daily practice? If presence is essential leadership work (and the research suggests it is), how do we design roles and systems that actually make it possible? Because asking leaders to "just be more present" without removing anything else from their plates is neither effective nor sustainable.

"When leaders practice attunement, employees don't just feel heard—they feel anchored. And in a world that's increasingly chaotic, that's the difference between disengagement and resilience."

Articles

Harvard Business Review: Are You Really a Good Listener? "Listening is a cognitively and emotionally demanding activity. It takes deliberate attention and effort...But if you master this managerial skill, you will build stronger relationships, foster greater trust, minimize misunderstandings, and create opportunities for meaningful change. Don’t let haste, defensiveness, invisibility, exhaustion, and inaction keep you from becoming a better listener and leader."

Harvard Business Review: The Most Strategic Leaders Excel in 4 Disciplines. "By taking a proactive approach to enhancing the four disciplines of strategic fitness — strategy, leadership, organization, and communication — you’ll continuously mine new insights from your interactions leading to greater competence and confidence in setting strategic direction for your business. According to research by Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria, the average CEO invests 45 minutes a day developing their physical fitness. How much time are you investing each day in your strategic fitness? It may be the difference between thriving, or not surviving, in the business wilds."

Harvard Business Review: Soft Skills Matter Now More Than Ever. "In an age when technical expertise can become irrelevant in just a few years, foundational skills matter more than ever. Abilities like collaboration, problem-solving, and a solid grounding in math transfer across jobs and help teams adapt to new challenges. The key to effective human resource management is to prioritize these skills in both hiring and employee development. This builds a workforce that is resilient, quick to adapt, and prepared to thrive in a constantly evolving environment."

Harvard Business School: What Leadership Looks Like in an Agentic AI World. "...Leaders can harness agentic AI to create their own digital support team to power their performance."

Psychology Today: The Unique Power of Intellectual Partnership. "Collaborative alliances between peers may be one of the most overlooked relationships in contemporary life. These dyads give rise to personal and professional growth—and sometimes to a beautiful friendship."

Blog Posts & Opinions

Seth's Blog: Scarcity and abundance. "The most resilient and effective form of achievement is the resilience and peace of mind that comes from knowing that our work is contributing to a culture that is moving forward. Not so others lose, but so we find a place that feels like winning."

Lenny's Newsletter: How to debug a team that isn’t working: the Waterline Model. "A guide to solving team problems (without always blaming the people)."

Sam Jacobs: The Age of the Strategist. "When execution becomes a commodity, deciding what to do becomes priceless."

Podcasts 

HBR IdeaCast: The New Leadership Structures that Unblock Innovation. "The ability of an organization to innovate over and over again, for the long term, depends on leadership structure, culture, and systems...Today's leaders need to shift from the focus on decision-making and producing to creating the conditions for collaboration, experimentation, and smart decision-making across teams, silos, and wider ecosystems."

Executive Function: Building systems that can make decisions without you. "Jeanne De Witt Grosser, Chief Operating Officer at Vercel [and formerly a senior executive at Stripe], unpacks what separates good executives from extraordinary ones, shares her rigorous executive hiring process, and reveals the brutally honest performance review feedback she'll never forget."

Sounds True: Perception Is an Act of Creation. "David Brooks [talks] about his transformative journey from cerebral detachment to emotional awakening, [including] how a mystical subway experience forever altered his vision, the difference between diminishers and illuminators, and why perceiving souls...is essential to truly knowing another person."

Arts, Music & Culture Corner

The Guardian: ‘What a fascinating challenge for an artist’: how Monet captured Venice in his twilight years. "New exhibition brings together the artist’s many Venetian paintings, a perfect match of artist and location that almost didn’t happen." [This exhibition is currently on display at the de Young museum in San Francisco through the end of July.]

The Independent: Emmylou Harris: ‘It’s a lot harder, isn’t it, to just live a long life?’ "As the country music titan prepares for her final European performances, she speaks to Louis Chilton about life, mortality, and being part of the ‘greatest era’ of music."

The New Yorker: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking. "ChatGPT does not have an inner life. Yet it seems to know what it’s talking about."

Reflections

"Friends. Sisters. Mothers. Professors. When women affirm women, it unlocks our power. It gives us permission to shine brighter." ~ Elaine Welteroth

"Everybody needs four things in life: Something to do, someone to love, someone to believe in and something to hope for." ~ Coach Lou Holtz

Poem
By Ron Padgett
I’m in the house.
It’s nice out: warm
sun on cold snow.
First day of spring
or last of winter.
My legs run down

the stairs and out
the door, my top
half here typing