SHORTS | The Five-Minute Pause for the Mind with Rebekah Cresswell

Rebecca, there's something I want to play back and ask that might make you blush in front of the 10,000 or so people that are listening. But it's a little behind the scenes insight for listeners around the start of this podcast. But I think it's really significant in terms of leadership and it's something I talk to quite a lot with my clients. So I forget the exact words that you said, but we was due to start recording this 11:30 I think, and you popped up and said, oh, I've just come off of something really busy or some sort of word like that. I want to just take five minutes to sort of prepare and clear my head or words to that, to that effect. And I think that is really significant because I, in a really positive way, by the way, because I talk a lot to people about as leaders managing transitions and how can we show up and be the best version of ourself but more importantly be the person that, that we're about to speak to needs us to be. And so often we can go straight from a really difficult meeting and rush into another really important meeting that might be someone's one to one or a podcast recording. And half of our brain is still on the thing we just done. Researchers call it attention residue. I love the fact that you did what you did and I encourage leaders to do it a lot. I would much rather have 45 minutes with someone who is fully present and in a good mindset than 60 minutes where half of their focus is on the thing that they were just doing. So I guess two questions that come from that like why did you do that? And in the 10 minutes that you took away, what did you do?

One, I wanted you to know that you're important and I wanted you to know the facts. I, I had two choices at that moment when I just come back off something is am I late? And then make a reason to Ben. Do I log on now and just explain to Ben the situation and then he knows. Ah, right. That's why. One, I don't like being late. It's something I've worked on. I used to be late a lot actually and I remember somebody once saying to me, not about me, about somebody else actually who was late. But it really made me think, think is it's a really arrogant thing they said for somebody to be late because what it's saying is I don't mind keeping you all waiting while my important self comes to the the meeting. So for me that really struck a chord with me. So I don't like Being late, I like to be timely and I wanted you to know that. I realized that our appointment was important, but I just couldn't be on time at that moment. I wanted to create myself a little bit of a windbreak, if you like, to be able to come to you fully present. Mindfulness is very important to me. It is hard for us as humans to be mindful. Actually, we're only mindful about 5 to 10% of the day, which is why we wonder when somebody's supposed to do extreme concentration stuff, why they find it difficult. So you have to practice that. And one of the things I say to my teams, I never allow any emails during my meetings. And if I think people are, I will actually call it out to say, or I'll start the meeting. Everybody knows the sort of rules of engagement now is I say, I don't want you doing emails while you're in the meeting because it's not good for you and you're not fully mindful. Then you're trying to do two things at once. So we actually have very productive meetings because people are fully focused on the discussion, they contribute more, all that kind of stuff. So I totally agree with you that you need to be present, mindful, engaged, and it probably goes back to the social quotient and also the emotional quotient.

Do you allow laptops or devices in meetings?

People do use them a lot for. Instead of printing stuff out. So from an environmental point of view, that's not a problem. But I don't know whether I've got a very keen sense of hearing my boys say. I don't actually, but I. That clacky noise gives it away if somebody's typing. And I can even tell now on teams if somebody's not present because we're so used to that virtual. So I'll ask people if I notice people getting. Do we need a break right now? Everybody's in the rhythm of it. So there are laptops. I don't have a laptop myself in front of me because I think it creates a barrier when I'm in a meeting. But I mean, I don't say no to laptops. Nobody would take a phone call or anything that everybody would always say, I've just got to step out. Which is pretty perfectly fine. We're all managing really quite important services. People need to. So, yeah, I think it's about a respect thing.