Lead With Your Eyes

Look me in the eye.

Tell me." You know? So we find that for me, when someone says that to me, I'm like, "Okay, this is a, this is something really important." Getting back to lean, uh, so that's a cultural piece, but getting back to lean, I was introduced to the, the daily stand-up, so the, the daily huddles and those sorts of things, and one of the first images they showed me about, uh, how it can be done in some organizations is they draw the, the half circle on the floor facing where the facilitator and where the daily visual management is.

So having that, they said, "If you think we're going hard, have a look at this." We're standing up.

That was, that was even a challenge, right? Oh, we've got to stand up.

But they had them y- everyone stand on that line for those who aren't aware, and it would be your eyes need to be looking at the eyes of the facilitator.

That was about respect and, and making sure that they could see that you were deeply engaged in looking at them and the content.

So really important culturally for me.

Yeah, it is about respect, and, and I think it's, yeah, absolutely with leadership is I'll, I'll follow a leader that I respect, and they, and if- And I've got their respect.

I think it makes a pretty good team.

So that's where I sit

I think it says something too about the difficulty of the skill, which can be learned, in that we equate not making eye contact so often as if you don't do it.

Because it can be, if used inappropriately, it can come off as weird, right? Like if you're trying to stare at somebody's eyes.

That doesn't really work either.

It's very complex in its simplicity, but it's something that, to your point, Andy, I think we aspire to do more of at the right time.

I just wanted to drop in actually from that cultural piece.

So yeah, absolutely what you just said, Andrew.

So down in Australia, our First Nations people, it can be the other side of that.

It can be very threatening, disrespectful to even look each other in the eye at the inappropriate time.

So there's like don't stare directly at their eyes in those certain cultures.

So it's a bit of a tricky one.

So yeah, I'm keen to unpack it a bit and in particular around lean and leadership.

So