Long before I began working with executives and organizations, figure skating taught me something about awareness that I did not yet have the language to explain.

As a skater, you learn that you cannot rely entirely on what you can see. When you are rotating in the air, centering a spin, or moving across the ice on an edge only millimeters wide, there is no opportunity to stop, look down, and determine exactly where your body is. You have to know where you are. You have to feel your position, your balance, your momentum, and the relationship between your body and the ice beneath you.

There is a biological name for part of that ability: proprioception. Sometimes called our “sixth sense,” proprioception is our awareness of where our body is and how it is moving through space. Skaters develop this sense through repetition and experience until countless adjustments happen almost instinctively.

Years later, as I moved into leadership development and organizational transformation, I began recognizing a similar capacity in exceptional leaders.

They sense things.

They notice when the energy in a room changes. They hear the hesitation behind someone’s words. They recognize when a team has verbally agreed while something about the interaction suggests the conversation is not finished. At the same time, they remain aware of themselves—how they are showing up, what they are communicating, and how their presence may be affecting everyone else in the room.

That does not mean these leaders possess some extraordinary intuition that is always correct. Quite the opposite. What distinguishes them is their willingness to notice the signals around them without immediately assuming they know what those signals mean.

That distinction has become increasingly important to me.

Hi, I’m Byron Darden, bringing you this edition of Leading with Purpose on Purpose. In this installment, we are focused on sensory detail and the value it brings to you as an effective leader. Much of leadership development focuses on what leaders do: how they communicate, make decisions, execute strategy, manage performance, and produce results. Those skills matter. Yet before a leader can respond effectively, they have to accurately sense what is happening around them and within themselves.

The ice taught me that long before the boardroom did.

You cannot adjust your position until you have some awareness of where you are.

That idea is at the heart of what I call Sense Leadership. Enjoy!

Note:  Organizational theorist Karl Weick first pioneered and developed the concept of proprioception. He formally introduced sensemaking in his 1979 book The Social Psychology of Organizing and deeply expanded it in his seminal 1995 work, Sensemaking in Organizations. 

Find out how Leadership Begins Before the Response.