Show aliveness. How often do you see someone maybe that you walk into a coffee shop and they’ve checked out. They’re on a Caribbean vacation, but they’re at work in front of you, or they’re playing with their phones or they’re not present? Presence is priceless. Presence with your family, presence with your team. Fully present. There are so many people. There’s a fantastic concept to go deep into, and it’s called attention residue. Every time we are working and pick up a phone and look at a message, we have given a bit of our attention and left the residue on that phone. Every time we are reading a book and there’s news in the background, our limited amount of cognitive bandwidth and attention, some of that goes to the news. When we are checking our phones 50 times a day, we are giving pieces of our attention and, get this, we’re leaving that residue on the phone, social media, and video. And then we put the phone down or the technology down, and we’re in front of a teammate or customer or a child, and we’re not fully there. And people know it. One of the most powerful ways to connect with another human being is to listen well and then be fully present. So show you are human. I remember being in South Africa and the gentleman who was driving us to the events, I noticed every time he’d see another human being, he would come alive. He’d laugh. He’d go, “Hello.” Later on, he was driving me back to the hotel. I said, “You really seem to love human beings.” He said, “Robin, I’ve seen a lot of dead people in my life.” He lived in a place where there’d been a lot of upheaval. He said, “Robin, I’ve seen a lot of dead people in my life. So when I see someone who is alive, it makes me feel very, very happy.
