In this post, regular FED contributor Steve Holliday writes about making conscious choices.

Steve Holliday

One of the key underlying principles of the Future Engage Deliver approach to Leadership is that of conscious leadership, of being truly aware and awake to the choices that we are making.  What does it take to make a conscious choice?

I recently chose to join 5 fellow northern folk, all of whom are novice open water swimmers, in attempting to relay swim the English Channel in Summer 2014. A significant step beyond my usual open water river & lake frolics!  I’ve been reflecting on what it took “in me” to make this truly “conscious choice” about the future I want to create for my open water adventures. Was I really conscious in my choices? Was I really able to freely choose? I believe I did have “conscious choice”, whatever the constraints I was and wasn’t aware of – but the key question for me was how to do this?

The first step for me was facing and being at ease with my current abilities, and accepting my own part in being the novice open water swimmer I am at this moment – and at the same time being aware of how great I want to be in the future.

With this awareness I was able then to be curious and playful in exploring various interesting, exciting and scary possibilities – and – daring to believe and commit to what might be possible for me, and at the same time what doing something BIG might be like, inside newly-forming relationships with other fine folk.

Making the choice and committing to my future – to do Channel Relay 2014 – is a step into the unknown, scary and exciting all at the same time, with an awareness that I am responsible and accountable for making this choice about my future, and for engaging others in helping me boldly deliver on it.

It strikes me that in very recent FED work with one of my client teams, I was encouraging them to take these same conscious commitments and choices – the biggest of which was to consciously choose FED and its powerfully simple tools, to actively support their own conscious leadership practice – every day.

Leadership Nudge: Are you making truly conscious choices? How do you really own the choices, the consequences, and the outcomes as they unfold?

By Steve Holliday