What Catches Your Attention Is Not Random — It’s Leadership Data
Before You Decide: Where Leaders Lose Power Without Noticing
I never know which tiny figures will come with me.
They live together in a small container. When I open it, I don’t choose. I listen for who wants to emerge.
But that comes later.
First, I walk.
Sometimes I’m looking with a wide-angle lens, taking in the whole field, the context, the system. Other times I slow down and shift into a zoom lens, letting my attention rest on texture, edges, and small irregularities. I notice what catches me, not what I think should matter.
Something begins to stir.
Only then do I open the container.
And inevitably, one or three seem to say, Here. Put me here.
I don’t fully understand why. I place them. I pause. And the scene emerges.
The less I try to control it, the more surprised I am by what shows up.
How Attention Chooses Before We Do
This practice is both a creative exercise and a leadership one.
Because practicing creativity like this strengthens the very capacities leadership depends on: attention, discernment, patience, and the ability to stay with not-knowing long enough for something wiser to surface.
As Arnold Mindell (2017) writes,
“…dreaming includes all the things that catch your attention. The little things that ‘flirt’ with you belong to the dreaming… These ‘flirts’ are pointers to ways of resolving conflicts that we have not yet consciously recognized” (p. 238).
When Perception Hardens, Power Follows
This is exactly where many leaders get stuck, not from lack of intelligence, analysis, or intention, but from moving too quickly to interpretation, solution, or certainty.
Here’s what happens instead.
Perception hardens.
The way we are seeing starts to feel like the truth.
And power follows that perception, shaping decisions, tone, authority, and impact long before alternatives are even considered, especially in systems where others have less voice to challenge or influence what the leader sees. As that happens, options quietly narrow.
Before noticing what is actually unfolding, we are already acting.
The Moment Before Meaning Locks In
So pause here for a moment.
Notice what you have already decided or assumed about where this photo is taking place, and who these tiny people are.
Now notice what is happening in your body as you realize that.
Are you bracing?
Speeding up internally?
Feeling a push to conclude?
Or a hesitation you’d normally override?
These physical cues often appear before we lock in meaning and move to action. They are early signals about how power is already beginning to move.
These aren’t distractions.
They’re data.
Because once meaning locks in, our responses tend to follow habit, role, or rank. Before that lock clicks shut, there is room to sense, to adjust, and to choose differently.
Practicing for the Decision Before the Decision
I invite you to try this experiment in a moment where the cost of getting it wrong actually matters.
Before your next high-stakes conversation or decision, slow down just enough to ask:
What lens am I using right now?
What am I assuming?
What is flirting with my attention that I might be skipping past?
And if I stayed with this moment a little longer, what else might be trying to emerge?
That’s the moment I’m practicing for when I head out with my tiny people, not knowing who will emerge or what scene will take shape.
I look wide.
Then I slow down and shift my lens.
I notice what catches me.
And I let something begin to form.
Because at this level, how we see is never neutral.
Source
Mindell, A. (2017). Conflict: Phases, forums, and solutions: For our dreams and body, organizations, governments, and planet. World Tao Press.