The Art of Fascination
The Art of Fascination
Cultivating Wonder and Curiosity in Leadership
I once worked with a leader who led with fascination.
He was a skilled team coach, and also an incredible drummer and piano player...
His background in music influenced his leadership style. He knew when to take center stage and when to recede to the background to give others the spotlight. He could pick up on subtle cues in the team and use those to generate harmony around important issues. He rarely intervened to prevent a team from making mistakes because he could anticipate that they were headed in the right direction, and he knew they would learn faster that way.
Teams loved working with him. We were up against some challenging circumstances as an organization but no matter what, he approached every interaction with a sense of wonder. He made difficult things look easy and fun. His sense of timing was exquisite, dropping the right nugget at just the right moment.
Like the time he walked by my desk, as I complained that "this sprint is killing me!" Without breaking his stride, he walks by, whispering: "Are you sure it's the sprint?"
He was already gone when I raised my head in surprise, feeling as if I had just woken up from a bad dream of victimhood and could now finally see that I had created my own problem.
He pushed me and others to solve problems with wild solutions that shook up the status quo and made us see the world differently.
I have often thought about him over the years as a leader who had integrated his artistic and business skills into something… more. Something that fascinated everyone who came into contact with him. And he did it effortlessly, unselfconsciously.
In flamenco, we call this state of flow "duende." It is a place of enchantment where one loses oneself entirely in the dance, becoming one with the music, the audience, and the moment. In a way, we are not dancing- we are being danced. It's an experience of pure surrender. The audience can tell when an artist is possessed by duende because they themselves feel transported to a different realm.
Imagine experiencing that same level of rapture and fascination from the leaders in your organization.
Immersing Yourself Fully
The word fascination comes from the Latin fascinare, which means to bewitch or enchant.
A common experience I had as a child was to lose track of time when practicing the piano. Sometimes two hours had passed when it had felt like 5 minutes. Later on as a professional, fascination usually felt like a deep, immersive engagement with the task or the conversation at hand, all the while feeling inspired and content.
In the modern organizational world, it's almost impossible to experience fascination. For example, we are usually pulled into many different directions at once, or we’re accountable to myriad stakeholders with conflicting interests. This collection of pressures makes us show up distracted, impatient and rushed. Allowing ourselves to reach the point of being fascinated by a process, a person or a problem might seem naive, dangerous, or a luxury we can't afford. Yet, I argue it is a vital necessity. When leaders immerse themselves fully in the work of transformation, they bring a heightened level of focus and dedication. Surrendering to a complex business challenge or a team issue, without trying to solve it at first, but leading with a pure desire to know it and be with it, devoting yourself to it, can help you uncover nuances you’d otherwise miss. By adopting this artistic approach, you can become a more effective business leader.
Most leaders I know spend the majority of their time in meetings, getting to the end of the day feeling like they accomplished… nothing. One of the practices I recommend to my clients to help them reconnect with fascination is to do real work. Meaning, to get their hands dirty again. For example, taking a contained, fixable problem that the organization has and solve it by themselves or with just a few others, from start to finish, doing everything that usually other people do for them. There is usually a burst of energy and joy that comes from accomplishing something tangible that fuels their fascination engines again.
Being Genuinely Present and Curious with Your Team
When I was a chief of staff for a leadership team, I scheduled time with a senior executive to prepare him to speak at an employee meeting. I was disappointed when I was only given 15 minutes with him, because I had a lot of information to share and I needed to make sure he understood the nuances. Ultimately, the conversation flowed well and I covered everything I wanted. I was thankful that he had allowed me to go over the allotted time. Except that he hadn't. We were done early, even. He was so present with me that time felt warped.
Presence and curiosity are cornerstones of a fascination-driven leadership style. When leaders are genuinely present and curious, they create a more productive and inclusive environment. This involves deep listening. Listening not just to words but also to emotions and body language. Listening with your entire body, ie, not just paying attention to the sounds but to the physical sensations you experience. Imagine yourself as a human antenna listening on multiple channels. This kind of listening builds trust and shows your teams that you value their contributions and who they are as humans- not just what they can do for you or the business.
When you are in that state, listening deeply, without intrusive thoughts tugging at you, a kind of time warp can ensue where you and your team achieve flow, eg, higher performance with lower effort.
Approaching Challenges with Fascination
A wise colleague of mine once shared that whenever he encounters a challenging problem or person, he says to himself: "How fascinating!". Just this simple assertion can transform your experience in the moment of whatever inevitable leadership obstacles you’re facing.
Questioning assumptions is another way to bring fascination to leadership and foster new ways of thinking ("are you sure it's the sprint that's killing you?").
I once coached a team of passionate tech professionals who wanted to help patients have better access to medical information. They wanted to build chatbots and other web solutions to share such information. Patients they talked to asked for someone, a human who could help them remove the everyday obstacles that stand in the way of getting the treatment. It took multiple sessions of confronting their ideas with the patient data for the team to ultimately realize that "we were so in love with our ideas that we couldn't see what the users were asking for."
Seeking out diverse and even opposing viewpoints will reveal hidden facets of a problem. This can lead to more comprehensive and effective solutions. But you need to be willing to see them.
Fascination In Action
One of the phenomena I often observe in highly accomplished leaders when they join their teams in problem-solving or decision-making meetings is that they arrive with a pretty good idea of what the right answer is, and that they just need to nudge the team in that direction. This kills any possibility for fascination to arise.
A pioneering organization that successfully integrated artistic mindset - including fascination- is IDEO, the company that brought design thinking and play into the mainstream as a process for innovation. I remember running some of the first design thinking workshops at my previous company. Watching highly competent scientists and business people use Play-Doh and other playful tools to work on serious business was magical. The joy in their eyes was evident, while they still cared deeply about their work. It showed me that the seriousness that (still) pervades many companies just makes their problems worse. Joy and playfulness help solve them. In fact, when we infuse joy and play, the results usually surpass our expectations.
Cultivating Fascination as a Leader
Cultivating this kind of fascination and perspective as a leader requires commitment and courage.
Loosening Your Grip
Traditional leadership models emphasize control, direction, and certainty. Leaders are expected to have all the answers, steer the team with confidence, and maintain a firm grip on the wheel.
However, fascination requires letting go. For example, I've seen leaders say they want to delegate decisions to their teams, only to "slap their wrist" at the first mishap. This is fake letting go. This is one of the reasons why delegating often does not work well, and why leaders continue to complain that people remain dependent on them, while teams complain that they’re being micromanaged. It happens the other way around too. I saw a genuine attempt at relinquishing control coming from a senior leadership team, only to be rejected by the operating team! They had been yearning for freedom, but they were not ready for the responsibility that came with it.
At the heart of letting go is a capacity for tolerating our discomfort when (not if) things go awry. If that means gradually relaxing your grip until you get comfortable relinquishing more, so be it. But most importantly, stay fascinated with your own behavior: "I really want to step in and go fix this mistake my team made. How fascinating! I wonder why that is..."
Embracing The Mystery
Leaders who cultivate fascination view uncertainty not as a threat, but as a wondrous mystery. I don’t mean that you should resign yourself to the elements and not take any action. I’m advocating that we stop seeing ourselves as the people in charge who need to get rid of uncertainty, and start seeing ourselves as a Sherlock Holmes of sorts, putting the clues together which will reveal a clearer picture over time.
This shift in perspective allows us to approach today’s increasingly complex, ambiguous future with a more relaxed mind and a willingness to explore. In my experience, the more I seek to find an answer or get something under grips, the more it eludes me. The solution is not to quit and sit there hoping that the solution will find me. It’s a more subtle shift. I keep doing the work, but I try to widen my consciousness to consider all the hidden factors I can’t see but which are influencing the outcome, too.
Abraham Verghese encapsulates this wonderfully in the book The Covenant of Water, with this sentence:
“Lean not on your own understanding. Let God worry.”
How To Be More Fascinated
OK, so how can we develop this quality in a practical way?
Make Art: Paint, dance, play music, write, doodle, sew, whatever "non-productive" activity brings you into a state of flow. I promise you, the more you experience this, the more you will seek it and bring it to the rest of your life, including your work.
Listen Like a Human Antenna: In your next meeting, listen with your entire body. Not just to the words being spoken but to the tone and the unspoken sentiments. Take note of your sensations and what impulses arise. Take it all under advisement. Don’t leave this treasure trove of valuable data on the table.
Ask VSQs: As a coach, I’ve always been encouraged by teachers and mentors to ask “powerful questions”. I’m also a fan of Very Stupid Questions. The ones that you think are obvious, or that you should know the answers to and you’re ashamed you don’t. In my experience, these question often stop people in their tracks and make us question, as R.E.M. said, the world as we know it. Fascination guaranteed. You may be surprised by the insights you gain.
Go For Wonder: Allow unstructured time in your day for exploration and reflection. Spend time in nature, go through a day without a schedule or plan, spend unstructured quality time with family or friends, meditate or pray- these are a few examples of ways you can experience life’s own intelligence at work, supporting you, without any need to hold on.
Fascination isn't just about being absorbed in your work. It's about creating an environment that generates creativity and energy, where those around you feel engaged and seen. Where there is a sense of wonder and ease even if times are challenging.
In a world marked by constant change and uncertainty, the leaders who will thrive are those who can maintain a sense of fascination. Those who can integrate their inner artist with their business expertise, see the extraordinary in the ordinary and inspire their teams to do the same.
So, leaders, are you ready to find your "duende"? The future of your leadership may very well depend on it.
Watch how an artistic mindset can make you a more successful business leader. Change requires action, but first and foremost, change requires a changemaker. That's you. And inside you is a change artist waiting to be liberated. If you’re ready to inspire authentic change in your organization, let’s talk.