Three ingredients of perspective

It's conference season, and I've been a busy girl the last few weeks, hitting stages on both sides of the Tasman.

My keynote theme for every event this month, whether local government, sports and recreation, secondary schools, or waste management, is consistent: perspective.

If there's one thing that doesn't discriminate by sector, it's stress! I've been talking about how to pull yourself out of a pit of short-termism and overwhelm and reconnect to fulfilment and purpose. In my new book,I go deep on the importance of perspective for long-term legacy leadership. All the evidence - as well as common sense - tells us it can't be good to live in constant service of the most present and most urgent things demanding our attention.

Daniel Kahneman coined the acronym W.Y.S.I.A.T.I in his work Thinking Fast and Slow – 'What You See Is All There Is'. We give what's right in front of us disproportionate importance, and our long-term goals get repeatedly bumped down the list. When we lose our sense of perspective, we waste time on trivial stuff, and get distracted from important issues. We also risk developing a 'problem orientation' where we feel overly negative about everything, lose touch with other people's views and experiences, and lose empathy and connection to the world. 

A loss of perspective is a loss of humanity.

What perspective is made of

Perspective isn't pop-psychology or esoteric waffle. It's good decision-making practice with tangible application. In Local Legends - and on stages across Australia and New Zealand! - I outline the three ingredients of perspective: horizon, significance, and connection.

1. Horizon

Expanding your horizon increases the reach and payoff of our decisions and actions. When we think longer term, we leverage our potential impact. Checking our horizon means pushing out the time horizon (from this week to this decade), and attaining distance from the situation (with diversity of views and opinions.)

2. Significance

Not all problems are created equally. Checking for relative importance and permanence (how does this stack up against the other problems we're facing, and how much will this matter in the long-term?) is smart. It saves our limited time, energy, and attention for the most important things, puts us in a better head-space and helps us live better lives.

3. Connection

Everything is connected, but it's hard to see that when you're going through it. Connection looks beyond individual issues to interrogate patterns and relationships so we make choices that are better overall. It means looking at trends, considering flow-on effects and not getting panicked about short-term dips inside long term trajectories.

You can embed perspective into your conversations, reports, meetings and decisions. When you do, you become better leaders and decision-makers.

If you want to learn more about perspective, check out this post - it's an oldie but a goodie - join the waitlist for Local Legends, or come and see me speak somewhere soon.

Til next week,

A