Mastering Attention: Finding Spaciousness And Permission To Pause With Megan Reitz

What does it truly mean to find a sense of spaciousness and permission to pause in a world that constantly demands our attention? Global business thinker Megan Reitz, an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School at Oxford University and Adjunct Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School, unpacks her latest research on attention management. She explores the difference between the instrumental "doing mode" and the expansive "spacious mode," and shares the personal flashpoints—from growing up on a farm to stepping off the consulting partner track—that ignited her work in mindfulness, dialogue, and leadership. Discover how setting boundaries and embracing "structure creates freedom" can help you take more agency over your life and focus on what is truly worth your attention.

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Mastering Attention: Finding Spaciousness And Permission To Pause With Megan Reitz

It is truly an honor and a pleasure to introduce you to my next guest, Megan Reitz. Megan is an Associate Fellow at the Saïd Business School at Oxford University, and she's the Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at the Hult International Business School. She focuses on creating the conditions for transformative dialogue at work, and her research lies at the intersection of leadership, change, dialogue, and mindfulness.

She's on the Thinkers50 ranking of global business thinkers and is ranked in HR Magazine’s most influential thinkers listing. She has written several books, including Speak Out, Listen Up, and is currently working on her next book about spaciousness and permission to pause. She is one of the people who I most admire these days about her thought leadership, especially around spaciousness, but it has been truly an honor to get to know you, and I'm so honored to welcome you to the show.

It's lovely to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Flashpoints: Exploring The Path To Making A Global Impact

Of course. As we often do on this show, we talk about what we call flashpoints, and so I'm really looking forward to exploring the path that got you to making such a big impact in the world and the work you're doing is so powerful and impactful. I'm looking forward to understanding the journey to getting where you are. Ready to do this?

Yeah, it'd be interesting what I end up saying. I’ve got no idea at the moment, so go for it, Tony.

Flashpoints are the moments in your journey that have ignited your gifts into the world. What I'd like to do is have you share what you're called to share and along the way, we'll pause and see what themes are showing up. With that, I want to turn over to you and can start with whatever you'd like, and we'll see where we go.

The first thing that popped straight into my mind was that I grew up on a farm on a small council farm in England. My dad was a dairy farmer, and we lived in the middle of nowhere, and I had a childhood where I was constantly outside and experimenting and getting into trouble, luckily not too much trouble, looking back. I think that had a real influence I didn't realize it at the time, but that exploration and also the love of being outside and the love of nature was something that was very strong.

Also, the fact that my dad, as dairy farmers do, he worked hard. He was up at 5 00 every morning and real dedication. Him and my mom, who was then a teacher who worked equally as hard, they both did stuff that they really loved, though, so that taught me early on to expect to work hard, but also to expect to do something that I was really interested in. It also meant that I had to be fairly independent because they were pretty busy. They had a lot on their hands.

So that was the first. It's not really a point as such, but I think that upbringing and that childhood had a really big impact on me. I think a couple of other things, after university, I went traveling, and in fact, I have traveled a lot during my career. After university, I went off backpacking in order to find myself, and then didn't and finally came home, about a year and a half later, having distinctly not found myself but having had a whale of a time.

That that process of discovery, I suppose, again led me to adventure. I was particularly naive, so I ended up doing lots of really interesting, slightly dangerous outer comfort zone stuff that I think really helped me. Just really fired up that interest in exploration. I did a lot of reading and I suppose I had the space whereas lots of my peers went straight into work. I didn't. I did work whilst I was traveling. For some reason, I'm still not quite sure why, I wasn't actually in a hurry to figure it all out.

Perhaps looking back on it, these moments where I’ve actually taken extended space to step back and not actually have a real deadline and to allow myself to explore and wonder and talk to loads of very different people about what is this life about? I think that's had a huge impact on the reason why I'm really interested in what I'm interested in now. I guess the third thing that pops into my mind that I can't not mention is being a mom. I have two daughters.

It's a huge upheaval in what's my job in the world? What does success look like for me? How do I show up in a way that will influence and impact these incredible people? They give you very straight feedback very immediately as to the impact that you are having, and that's tough a lot of the time. I think that's probably one of the most profound things that is connected to my work on mindfulness and dialogue. If some people could see more private moments when I'm having a complete meltdown with my kids, they'd wonder why on earth I was doing research on dialogue and mindfulness. I’ve been exceptionally good at doing it wrong, but learning from it as I do.

One of the most humbling experiences. Having teenagers, I have a son and I'm dealing with that right now and it's very humbling to know that you as much of a big deal you might think you are in the world, you're not. Not to them. They challenge you.

It's a cause to think carefully about what you're role modeling. S I think in my work on speaking truth to power, one of the most interesting things is blind spots, is the fact that many people in positions of power don't realize how they silence others. They have really good intentions, but their behaviors don't match with those intentions, and therefore they carry on regardless and don't realize the impact that they're having. I think actually parenting can be exactly the same. We can have really good intentions and never actually realize what's being seen we can say one thing but actually our actions are speaking very loudly. That's a an interesting parallel with some of the research that I’ve been doing.

I want to come back to this idea of space is a really good thing to create more intentional ways of showing up because if you're just going, let's say stuck in the pattern of just doing, it's hard for you to know what you're doing is doing to other people. Giving yourself some spaciousness allows yourself to say, “What's really going on here? How am I creating an impact on other people? What am I doing that is that is potentially not serving?” That space allows other people to really see a difference in you or I should say you to see the difference that you're making in other people.

I'm sure we'll get on to this, but it's different mode of attention. When we're busy doing stuff, we tend to be quite self-absorbed and self-referential and we're narrow in what we're focused on, which is fine and great for certain activities. When we're in what we call a spacious mode of attention, we are seeing interdependencies and flow and emergence. When you see the world and your relationships in that way, you notice a little bit more about the impact that that you have on others and the impact that they have on you. That's an enormously important mode of attention to make sure you make time for.

From Farm To Faculty: How Nature And Travel Shape Thought Leadership

Before we move into the how did you get into this world of your thought leadership and into working at these different universities, I want to ask, first of all, I want to make the connection to your background, how interesting it is that you grew up on a farm and you spent a lot of time outdoors and the traveling. You have been a space traveler for a long time, and I think that is a wonderful connection point when you think about where you are now.

It's been set in you since your youth that being out in nature, being out in the world, is an important aspect of seeing yourself differently. You get to know yourself, even in the challenging moments of the mishaps when you miss a flight or something happens and it doesn't work out or just being out in nature and seeing that now sometimes things don't work out you hit inclement weather or things just are challenging. Those challenges are also ways for us to discover who we are.

Yes, absolutely and in all the travels that you make plans, some of them work, some of them don't work, some of them feel disastrous at the time but then you look back on them and go, “That was amazing.” Yes, they've helped me to be interested and curious quite a bit of the time, not all the time, with situations that are ambiguous and uncertain. I’ve encountered lots of different sorts of people and how different people view the world and how they act and behave.

That's also been really important. Otherwise, we can end up in a bit of a bubble where we see the world similar to many people around us. That was that still remains a challenge. For me, I think there is really something about the capacity to not have a deadline, to genuinely explore and stay exploring. One of the memories I have, which is so mundane, this was another traveling trip with my now husband and we went to Chile and we'd done some hiking and stuff.

There is really something about the capacity to not have a deadline, to genuinely explore and stay exploring.

We found ourselves in this really sweet little town and it happened to have a really nice cafe. When you're traveling, a good coffee, when you finally discover one is an absolute miracle. I remember us sitting down at this cafe and with this exceptionally good coffee and then just thinking, “Let's just stay here for a few days.”

That luxury of not having a time frame really is so amazing to experience. Obviously, my life over the last several years has looked very different to that. Absolutely have a time frame on everything pretty much, school time and kids, but that experience stays with me and with it a respect for another way of being with the world. That's just different. It's not better or worse. It's just very different.

"Structure Creates Freedom": The Importance Of Boundaries For Spaciousness

I think there's something about that the both and of this, which is to say you need to be able to see what it's like to live in the world of not having a plan and just seeing what things evolve, but then also knowing once you've had that, how can you go into a world of structure and create that structure that allows you to say, “Now that I'm in this structure, how can I use what I’ve learned but meld that into a purposeful pattern that works for me without losing myself?”

This reminds me of this this thing that I often say, which is that structure creates freedom. In that, there's an ability to understand that you're going to do the right things in the in that structure, but you have to know how you are going to plan for the right things in those moments, if that makes any sense.

That might link to something in in my current work which looks at the need for boundaries in order to create a sense of spaciousness. That's very different for different people. One person's structure and boundaries that enables them to feel free and safe and to pay attention differently is another person's straightjacket and far too tight and it has the opposite effect. All of us have a need for guardrails of some sort.

That's quite helpful for us to reflect on and be aware of. It's especially interesting as well when we are working with others and when we're in positions of power, to know that people thrive in different sorts of structures with different boundaries and spaces. Our way might not be the way that is suitable for them.

The Professional Journey: Landing In Mindfulness And Dialogue Research

We're going to get into the book for sure and get into this body of research, but I need to know, how did you land into this body of work and tell me what was the professional journey of discovery.

The very standard response to that is that having not found myself backpacking, I went into something which is a very good career if you've got no idea what to do, which is consulting. I became a management consultant, in strategy actually in particular, and that was fascinating. That took me into the internet industry, the wild West of the internet industry in the ‘90s, and then back into consulting at Deloitte with their people and organizational change.

Through that process, the bit that I really was interested in was the people stuff. I'd been thrown in in an organization called Boo.com, which was rather infamous. I got thrown in to being a manager of quite a big team, having no experience whatsoever in my twenties, and it was a cross-cultural team. It was just fascinating looking at how do I do that? How do I get people to understand one another and get on? From Deloitte, I went to Ashridge, specializing in organizational change and people and then starting executive education and research there.

I'd say how I ended up here is probably through very fortunately meeting two people in particular. One person, Michael Chaskalson, I met probably about 2000 and actually via a mutual friend. Michael's work was in mindfulness and he was just starting out in executive education. I turned up to his workshops for a bit. He inspired my interest in mindfulness and practice. He inspired my journey on training in that area.

In a very memorable moment, which I can completely can picture just now, I remember him tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “How about we do some research together?” That went into a big long project called The Mindful Leader. That was just instrumental to where I find myself now. We were essentially looking at what does it mean to be mindful as a leader? Can you practice it? How do you practice it? What is actually helpful and relevant in relation to leadership?

Meeting him was absolutely, I suppose to go back to your previous language, a flashpoint. The other person I met about 2013-ish, in fact it could have been before, in Ashridge, I met John Higgins, who was teaching on the same program that I was. I don't know whether you or any of the readers have ever had that experience where you meet somebody and you just know. You just click. Even though John and I are quite different in many ways, but I just knew I was going to end up working with him.

We just connected. He also pretty much the same time as Michael had tapped me on the shoulder, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “How about we do a project called Speaking Truth to Power?” I said yes to both, which was an interesting couple of years. He obviously is still my co-researcher and co-author. His fascination comes from a background looking at power and its misuse and use and how does that affect how we show up and have conversations at work?

Of course, the two of us then have journeyed into that area significantly over the last several years now. We show up on shows like this as if I'm the person that comes up with these ideas and we never are. There are people there that had we not met them, we'd have ended up somewhere else. That would have been great as well, but to ever claim that we are where we are because of something that we've done independently is crazy, crazy. Those two have just been hugely inspirational and important in in my life and continue to be.

The Power Of Community: Finding Your Best Thinking Through Collaboration

I just love how you shared that because first of all, it's wonderful to when you meet people who just you know somehow, things are going to happen here, that you found a collaborator and they're not going to have the same background or the same types of thinking that you, but there's a click. I'm a big believer in this idea that we do our best thinking in community with others or in connection with others.

When people come to me and they're like, “I feel really stuck. I don't know where to go next,” I'm like, “Have more conversations.” Not just meaningless conversations, but conversations with people and through that, your thinking evolves. I know you get this because you speak to dialogue and all these other things, but it's really wonderful to see that this has been embodied in your work and you've lived it.

Sometimes when we have our head down and we're so busy, we don't have time to meet anybody or converse with anybody unless they are very obviously connected with our precise goal that we're looking at that particular moment. I think always, again, up and down, I’ve tried to make sure that I meet very different people without a need for it to end up in a particular place but just from the curiosity of like, “You're a different person. I wonder what your story is,” and it doesn't have to go anywhere. It doesn't have to be useful, but some of these meetings, some of the time when you look up and look around, there's people that you encounter in this world that are there to make a profound difference. Of course, if we've got our head down, we can't see them and that would be a crying shame.

There are people you encounter in this world that are there to make a profound difference. But if we have our heads down, we can't see them—and that would be a crying shame.

This is exactly the motto we need to be getting into people's minds. Get out and talk to people without a desire to get something from them, but just to be in community and be curious. I think there's an element of that which really will expand your world. Who knows what it'll lead to? Not to make this about me but I’ll share this little thing. I remember when I was early in my career, I used to have these things called curiosity conversations which Brian Grazer made popular in his book. We were on the same wavelength.

I was just talking to people in the company I was at, I was at this company called Genzyme. Through that, these curiosity conversations with people just learning about what they do and why they do it and just interested, I got an opportunity to work on this really amazing project in China and it was the coolest thing. For me, that's what happened. It was a benefit, but it wasn't coming in and saying I need to get a job or I need to get this opportunity. It was just asking questions and showing that I'm interested in learning.

That's the bit that is a real risk in our workplaces and society at the moment. It's that capacity for curiosity, openness. The level of instrumentality that runs our lives very often now means that we look at people more as a means to an end, our ends preferably, than as really fascinating and wonderful people. I include myself in this. I get trapped into not seeing other people, really seeing the person that's in front of me. Of course, we can't do that the whole time and sometimes we do have a goal to achieve really quickly, but we shouldn't lose that capacity to look around and be fascinated with some of the characters that pop up in our lives because they have a lot to teach us.

We look at people more as a means to an end—our ends preferably—than as really fascinating and wonderful people.

Stepping Off The Path: Why She Said No To The Consulting Partner Track

We've covered a lot of ground already before we move on to digging deeper into spaciousness and permission to pause, which I love, is there another flashpoint or maybe a challenge that you faced along the way that had you thinking like, “Am I in the right path?”

One that pops into my mind is at in consulting actually, reaching that stage where there's a real partner track. That's your direction and there's an assumption that that is what you're doing. Everything gets geared up for going through the various rounds of promotion in order to achieve that. Me realizing and being okay with the fact that I knew that I didn't want to do that. I looked at the partner role and probably incompletely and incorrectly thought, “That's quite a lot of sales.”

I really loved the bit where I was kind of coaching other people and I was looking at more theoretically about how change happened. That was a point where I thought if I continue on this path, it's going to be for the wrong reasons. It's very tempting to stay in consulting, particularly in the big consulting firms and go for partner and the lifestyle and things that it brings with it in some ways. For me, I took a risk and I stepped off that. I didn't really know where it would end up, to be honest, but again, that was another flashpoint.

I'm so pleased that I somehow trusted the fact that I could do something completely different and it would work out. I'm thankful that I think part of my upbringing meant that I tend to do that, I tend to be quite optimistic and I don't mind risk in that sense. Just sort of go for it and that was a key moment for me.

I love you share this with all. Something about what you shared, which if you look under the surface, this idea of the hard work mentality that was ingrained in you, you can work really hard towards something, but if it's not yours to work hard for then it can be a waste of time or it could be not worth it. When you and I think about people who are working as an entrepreneur or in a business and they realize, “I'm spending a lot of time on things that don't serve me or that I'm not meant to be working on,” and then they realize outsourcing that element or bringing in a partner will actually allow them to focus on the things that they do more skillfully and work hard at it.

It's worthwhile also saying that. I felt like I was in a position where I could take that risk and I felt like I had the resources around me or would have the resources around me to enable me to take that risk. It is important to be clear that not everybody at all is in that kind of position. If that decision point had come maybe later in my life when I had a family, I'm not sure.

Would I have taken the same decision? Could I have taken the same decision? I don't know. Just in case this comes across as rather sickening to anybody that's reading, “I believe you, Megan. Well done,” really recognizing that at various stages in their lives, we have more or less capacity to make these kinds of risks and follow our hearts. The conditions are key. I really believe that.

Spaciousness And Permission To Pause: Decoding The New Book's Big Idea

I love that you bring that in because it's so important for people to see, “Where am I in this journey that I'm on and what risks am I willing to take and can I take? Everyone's pictures different. Let's talk about where your work is headed right now. I know you've got a new book coming out in a bit, but you're working on a book that is really fascinating. I’d love to have you share just some ideas about what does spaciousness really mean to you and the things that are top of mind for you right now?

I suppose it is relevant just mentioning how we got to spaciousness. Having worked for ten years in psychological safety and working with organizations that are trying to change culture, and then also working with leaders who are wanting to practice to become more mindful. You hear something very frequently, and that is that people say, “I really care about this. I really want to make the change. I'm just a bit too busy at the moment so that's why I’ve done absolutely nothing.”

After a while, John and I just got really curious about that. So many people saying, “I'm just so busy. I can't do it, I'm too busy, I don't have time.” There came a point, and again another conversation walking down the canal that I can remember with John, I remember stopping dead in my tracks and just going, “What is this about?” Let's not just take this superficially and nod our heads in agreement and say, “Yeah, absolutely. No, it's an issue with time, we're all so busy.”

Actually, is it? What do we really mean when we say we don't have enough space? What does having space even look like? What do we think we'll do with it? What is it? That was the point where we began to ask a lot of people a very open question which was more comfortable for some and less for others, which said, “Please, could you recall a moment where you experienced a sense of spaciousness? Without needing to know what that word means, there's no right and wrong definition around it, but what pops into your mind when you consider a moment of spaciousness?” Tony, what pops into your mind when I say that? Go on, tell me, what comes into your mind?

Yeah, for me, it's about traveling and being able to have the ability to not have an agenda but just simply being at ease with what's happening. Even if it's at work, it's allowing myself to be me more live as myself and not feeling like I'm beholden to something else.

Doing Mode Vs. Spacious Mode: Attention Management And A New Reality

Wonderful. We've asked that question and spent a lot more time on it with hundreds of people, and you can imagine how interesting that is. Some themes have come up with that. Mainly, what we're interested in is more around attention management than time management. I think when many of us say that we're really busy or we're too busy, it's actually an issue of where we are choosing to pay attention.

We're not only interested in what things we choose to look at, we're interested in the way that we pay attention to the world and the impact that that then has. In our work, talking with lots of people, we have defined these two modes which I mentioned a bit earlier, but just to flesh them out a bit more. There's something that we call the doing mode of attention, and when we're paying attention in that manner, when we're encountering others and the world around us in a doing mode, it's instrumental.

We have a goal in mind. We are looking to control and to predict and to manage, and we tend to be a little bit more focused on ourselves and getting that goal done. The attention's quite narrow, we're trying to grab something. That's a very useful form of attention and we wouldn't be alive now if we didn't use it. It's incredibly important. There is another way of encountering and paying attention to the world around us and that's what we call the spacious mode.

That's when we look up and expand our awareness and we aren't seeking to achieve a particular thing. We are less in our minds, we're less noisy, I suppose. There's not so much of the, “I need to do this, is this worthwhile, will this person do what I want them to do, what will happen?” All of that noise that tends to, in a way, can serve us in the doing mode, that is different in a spacious mode.

In the spacious mode, we are looking at possibilities. We're open, we're curious, and we are much more comfortable with paradox and ambiguity. We don't have to solve or manage things. That form of attention is one where we often have a lot of insight. We see the patterns, the flow, the emergent, the relationships, the interdependencies that are around us. If we take this right to the philosophical and then we'll bring it back to slightly more pragmatic, this is a way of seeing reality.

They're two different ways of seeing. One way of seeing the world is that it is instrumental and manageable and predictable and causal, and the other way of seeing the world is that we are intimately in a constant gesture response dance with others and the world and the environment around us. Depending on the way that you see the world, you then act into it obviously in a very different manner, and that, in turn, creates the world that is around us. Our attention influences what we look at and therefore, what we do, and that then creates our reality.

Our attention influences what we look at and therefore what we do, and that then creates our reality.

In our work on spaciousness, we wanted to find out why has the doing mode for so many people got out of hand? What's the consequences of that and how do we open up spacious forms of attention for ourselves and for others? The role it, yes, because I can bring you a business case. Obviously, it's incredibly connected to creativity, innovation, collaboration, relationships. All of that is really served by the capacity to access spacious mode.

It's also about just joy and life and our capacity to participate and wonder and be curious in the world. Our work now looks at why we avoid space because it might be that people listening to me think that space is rather idealistic and lovely and you know enlightenment, etc. No, we can find spacious attention very uncomfortable, actually, and we are exceptionally good at avoiding it and finding something to do in its place.

When you open your attention, you're a hop, skip, and a jump away from some really gritty questions like, “What am I doing? How does this work? What's my purpose? What impact have I had? What decisions have I made so far that I wish I hadn't? What would I need to change now to be the person that I want to be?” These are all questions of the spacious mode and my god they frighten the heck out of most of us. We immediately reach to our phone and busy scroll or we just start activity. This busyness is sometimes an avoidance. The question is how can we pay attention to the form of attention that we are using? How can we be more choiceful in that? I’ll pause there just for a second just to see whether that makes sense.

The Illusion Of Progress And The Fear Of Spaciousness

It makes so much sense. Megan, you just dropped some serious knowledge there. There was some wisdom, I should say. I just love what you shared and it's brilliant. Two things come to mind. Number one, I think about, and this is very rudimentary, the old saying of like be the author versus the reporter of your life. Oftentimes, we get into the reporter mode because it's almost comfortable to be in the reporter mode. Things show up and you're just like, “I'm just reacting to whatever shows up.” As opposed to being in the author of your day. Space is scary because it puts us in the driver's seat of deciding what to do.

It's interesting, actually. In a way, yes, it does. In a way, it absolutely throws us out the car and that's what makes it so scary. Although we can make different choices and we see possibilities in the spacious mode, we also come face-to-face with the reality of ambiguity, uncertainty, deep interdependencies. It's acceptance and an acknowledgment that we can influence the impact that we have and of course we can influence how we pay attention to things, but of course, also, we have to acknowledge that the lovely, warm assumptions of the doing mode that we can actually control and manage things might be a little bit far-fetched.

It's both of those things, actually, Tony. You realize yes you have choice and yes you can author, and also, at the same time, it's quite paradoxical. You also realize, “Actually, I can't be in charge here fully. I can be open, I can be receptive, but there are some things that I will never understand or be able to plan and predict.” That can be more or less scary to people.

Your eyes are wider open and you're able to see what you do know and what you don't know and that's okay, but at least you're taking more agency over that. I think maybe the proper way to frame it is that you're taking agency over your life in that moment as opposed to just letting things go autopilot and just let them be as they are and you're just reacting to it. Something showed up for me and I’ll just call it the illusion of progress.

We tend to think like, “Look at me. I’ve got through all my emails or I’ve been doing all these things.” Sometimes we think of that as progress, but the reality is sometimes, busyness and the doing can sometimes feel rewarding in their own because we're getting things done, but are they the right things to be getting done? I love the fact that you use attention as the as the true marker that we're looking for, because we need to be thinking what am I paying attention to and is it the right thing? There's an illusion of progress that we get into is that are we paying attention the wrong things?

You've nailed it, absolutely. In many ways, unquestioned assumption around success is centered around activity and the achievement. From a very early age, we learn at school that success is the achievement of particular grades or results. I better not get onto this subject because otherwise you'll never stop me in terms of education. What are we actually teaching kids? A lot of the time, we're teaching kids that success is regurgitation of certain facts and your short-term memory capacity in an exam situation to get a grade.

Does success mean that we live, that we wonder, that we're open, that we experiment, that we learn, that we infuse others? Where is all that definition, if you like, of success? Gone. Funnily, again, sort of paradoxically, we need to pause to remember that for many of us, of course, that's the sign of success, but we live in a world that's perpetually giving the impression that success is accumulation. Its accumulation and its activity. It's saying busy, and it's outwardly showing stuff. We can all get very caught into that very easily.

Certainly, as part of our work, we're looking at that kind of basic assumption of what is worthwhile? What does it mean to be human? That's an incredibly relevant question at the moment with AI as well, the very popular, slightly idealistic framing that AI will give us lots more space so that we can do what we want. At the moment, I would say, will it help?

The Space Paradox: Why More Time Makes Us Busier

This is so powerful, the insight you just shared. I'm going to call the space paradox because the more space we have, the more scary it will be for people to say like, “What do I do with the space?” I’ll just do more of what I do before and that'll just hide us from what we really should be doing, which is focusing on who am I, what is my purpose, how can I unlock what's really important for me, particularly, as opposed to just hiding myself in busyness, or something that affect?

It's going to create lots of space where we can even more busily try and do even more than we did before. Unless we can really re-examine what it means to be human, AI is not going to do that for us. It's going to probably make the hamster wheel go a lot faster. I think that vision of understanding of success in creating the space to really connect with what it is for us is hugely important.

Our attention is grabbed the whole day by different people and organizations and structures. The most obvious one is always on social media and technology and how the social media tech giants grab our attention. It's much more rife than that. It's in the workplace. We have senior leaders that set metrics that design performance management frameworks. All of these things, of course, grab our attention to go in a certain way. Just like they do at school when suddenly, success is all about, as we have over here, GCC grades at the age of 16. What's a surprise? Everybody then pays attention to how can I get an A grade? That's my whole purpose at school. How do I get an A grade?

We wonder why we have kids who don't have the curiosity that they need to in a world that we're creating. Our attention is influenced constantly, which is fine as long as we have the space to be aware of that and to have some level of choice in it and figure out is that heading me in a direction that that is really purposeful?

As a leader, I'm ever so interested in how leaders inadvertently influence other people's attention, and sometimes do that in ways that are nonsensical in terms of what we're trying to achieve. One story here that really stuck in my mind was with a CEO whose senior team was really frustrating him, and he wanted them to be more collaborative and strategic and etc.

He was wondering why they were all just running around in the operations. When we reflected on it, it was fairly obvious that whenever he met with them, the first thing he asked about was the operations and the quarterly targets. He spent most of his attention on those, and then couldn't figure out why everybody else was paying attention to the same thing. This is the impact that we have. As parents, constantly, we are influencing what our children pay attention to. We need to spend more time just checking in occasionally that we're doing that in a way that we're proud of.

To think about it from the our children's perspective, it's like if we're only focusing on how they're doing in school, then maybe it's also about asking them how they're doing in outside of school, like making sure we're checking in and saying like, “What are you enjoying? What are the things that you're doing with friends,” and making sure that it's not just about the grade.

Also, inspiring them to have a natural curiosity in the world as much as we can. Can I just say that I think I fail regularly on this by the way. I’ve got two teenagers that are you know stuck on their phones scrolling TikTok most of the time. Please, do not think that I have this figured out because I absolutely don't.

I do know that they also are looking at how I live my life. Even when they're not aware of it, they are taking note of whether I'm looking at my phone or whether I'm working on stuff that isn't really beneficial to anybody. They notice, and they are learning from us. What are they learning in terms of how we are where we are shining our attention? Is that where we want them to shine their attention? I think that's really worth asking a few times.

Must-Read Books: From Martin Buber's Philosophy To Giraffes Can't Dance

I could talk to you for hours, so this is a problem. We've got some great conversation going here. We need to come to a close to respect your time. I do have to ask my last question, if you'll honor that. That is, what are 1 or 2 books that have had an impact on you and why?

I haven't prepared this. I'm going to give one which is rather high-brow philosophical, but bear with me. One is Martin Buber's book I and Thou. His work was at the center of my Doctoral research. He's one of the godfathers of dialogue and his work is incredibly poetic, which is another way of saying it's really difficult to understand.

I spent years looking at it. His words continue to inspire me and I still find myself going back to his words and going, “I see that's what you mean,” and then next year I’ll go, “No, I see what you mean.” I think any book that makes you do that, that walks alongside you and continues to help you to see things and explore things is just an amazing gift and so I would have to mention that.

Any book that walks alongside you and continues to help you to see and explore things is just an amazing gift.

I just love the fact I love it in these conversations when you haven't prepared and things just pop into your mind and I just think they're so funny sometimes. The other one that's just popped into my mind is and I'm so sorry I can't remember the author, but it's Giraffes Can't Dance. It's a picture storybook for toddlers, young children.

Actually, do you know what, my mom bought it for me when I was about 25. I absolutely adored giraffes. I remember I read this book and I remember by the end of it, I was in tears because it's one of those absolutely beautiful stories about a giraffe who can't dance and who got laughed at by all the other animals, who then went out into the jungle.

They just centered themselves, saw the moon, saw the beauty, just started moving with the environment that was around them and then, of course, the animals realized that Gerald the giraffe was one of the best dancers that they'd ever seen. I’ve read that over and over and over with my girls, I still read it and I adore it. They seem to be two good books to mention.

Closing Thoughts & Where To Follow Megan's Work

On two different parts of the spectrum, but I absolutely love that. That's pure gold. I just love that message. It's so good. Megan, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for sharing your stories, your insights, and I couldn't be more excited for your next book because it's going to be something that a lot of people are anxious to learn more about. Before I let you go, I want to make sure people know where to find out more about your work and where they can follow you.

Thank you. The best place is my website which is MeganReitz.com. All of the things that I publish and my research reports and things like that are on there. I am fairly useless at social media. I'm trying to build a different relationship with it, shall we just say that? The only thing is that I that I am on is LinkedIn and actually I do use LinkedIn, so that is another way that people can connect with me. Also, if you bear with me in my 1 post every 2 weeks or 3 weeks, you'll probably then get some idea of what I'm up to and I'd love to connect with you.

Thank you again and thanks to the readers for coming on this journey with us, I know you're leaving with some insights that are going to change the way you're showing up this year and into the years to come. Thank you for being a reader and thanks for being on this journey with us. That's a wrap.

Important Links

• Megan Reitz
• I and Thou
• Giraffes Can't Dance
• Megan Reitz on LinkedIn

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