Yesterday, while listening to Pam Yako speak about her book The Savanna Code, I found myself reflecting on the mirrors we become for one another. Iplate yamandwendwe did not go to waste: it served wisdom and insight to everyone gathered.
Some mirrors help us recognise strengths we have overlooked. Others reflect a diminished version of ourselves, shaped by judgement, indifference or someone else’s expectations. Through our attention, words and actions, we influence what people see when they look inward.
This raises a question every leader should sit with: Do people leave your presence with a fuller sense of their own worth?
The Gift of Receiving
Being in the audience gave me space to receive. There was no room to hold and no next response to prepare. I could listen, notice what resonated and allow the conversation to stretch my thinking.
The experience also reminded me of the power of a question. The person asking helps direct the conversation, drawing attention to one possibility while leaving another unexplored. A thoughtful question can open a door someone did not know was there, inviting them to recognise their own wisdom.
For leaders, this carries responsibility. What do our questions make possible? Do they invite discovery, encourage honesty and deepen understanding? Do they give people room to think for themselves?
The Return on Time Invested
I often think about the Return on Time Invested (ROTI) in our interactions. Every encounter carries the possibility of creating value.
My hope is that people leave an encounter feeling Seen, Empowered, Loved and Fired-up: SELF.
- Seen in the fullness of their humanity.
- Empowered to exercise their judgement and use their gifts.
- Loved through care, dignity and respect.
- Fired-up to act on the possibilities they can now recognise.
Achieving that return depends on how consciously we show up and how carefully we attend to the experience we create for others.
Leaders can become so absorbed in what they are trying to achieve that they overlook how others experience them. A hurried response, an interruption or an unacknowledged contribution may pass quickly for the leader, yet linger much longer for the person on the receiving end.
Our intentions are familiar to us. Our impact often needs to be revealed by others.
This is why 360-degree feedback can be the medicine, and the mirror, we did not know we needed. It brings other people’s experience of us into view. Receiving it requires the humility to accept that their reflections may reveal what our own mirror has missed.
We Grow in Relationship
Nature offers another way of understanding this responsibility. In an ecosystem, simplicity and complexity coexist. A seed needs the right conditions to grow, yet those conditions depend on countless relationships. Soil, water, sunlight and living organisms all contribute.
People, too, grow within relationships and environments.
Our past experiences have helped shape who we are: the encouragement we received, the opportunities we were given, the judgements we absorbed and the spaces in which we learned either to belong or to hold ourselves back.
The present carries traces of what came before. What we do today becomes part of someone else’s experience and may influence their future. A leader’s belief in a person may find expression years later in a decision, a contribution or the courage to begin.
Through an Oneness outlook, this connection becomes deeply personal. We participate in one another’s becoming. Our presence has consequences, even when we never see them unfold.
Choosing the Reflection We Leave in Others
Recognising the influence of our past also invites us to consider the choices available to us now. Awareness allows us to reconsider our habits, question inherited beliefs and choose how we engage. We can encourage that same agency in others by helping them recognise the capacity they already carry.
For me, this sits at the heart of leadership: inspiring people to SEE the fullness of their Being and creating the conditions in which they can give expression to it.
Yesterday’s book conversation, and the exchanges that followed, gave me that experience. I left with fresh questions, a wider perspective and a renewed sense of my own worth.
I hope others left feeling Seen, Empowered, Loved and Fired-up, too. For me, that was the return on time invested: SELF.
And it left me with a question I carry into my next encounter:
After meeting you, what becomes clearer to people about who they are and what they are capable of becoming?
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