The Rarest Gift
Every Monday, I'll bring you one mentor, a thinker, a teacher, a voice that has shaped how I lead, coach, and live. Not as a lecture, but as an invitation. A few minutes at the start of your week to think a little differently about who you are and how you show up.
Last week we sat with the tensions that arise when we value different things. This week we go quieter, and closer to home: what it means to truly be there for another person.
▍ The Story
Years ago, in the glass corridors of a high rise in central Ottawa, a colleague introduced me to a visitor arriving from Europe. I was used to meeting senior executives. But this time, something was different.
We were standing in a hallway, a random meeting that hadn't been scheduled. And yet the quality of the attention this man offered was palpable. He wasn't waiting for his turn to speak. He wasn't half-listening while his mind was on to the next thing. He was simply, completely, there, looking at me as if there was nothing more important in that moment.
I felt seen. I felt heard.
I never met that man again, but the feeling stayed with me. It was only years later, in my co-active coaching classes that I came to understand what I had encountered in that hallway that day, and give it a name: presence.
To learn more about it, I bring you a special being whose presence is always with me.
▍ The Mentor
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanhis a global spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist, renowned for his powerful teachings and bestselling writings on mindfulness and peace. A gentle, humble monk, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him “an Apostle of peace and nonviolence” when nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Exiled from his native Vietnam for almost four decades, he was a pioneer in bringing Buddhism and mindfulness to the West, and in establishing an engaged Buddhist community for the 21st century. By his students he is affectionately known as Thay, which is Vietnamese for “teacher.”
His teaching begins with a simple idea that we need to come back to simply being, and only then lead into action:“Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness we know what to do and what not to do to help.”
What made him extraordinary was not the scale of his work, it was the calm at the center of it. Here was a man who had lived through war, exile, and the loss of close friends, and who still moved through the world slowly, deliberately, at peace.
He taught that you could find peace in the earth felt beneath your foot, with each step. That washing the dishes could be a meditation, if you were truly there for it. His inner calm wasn't the absence of storms. It was the fruit of a lifetime of returning, again and again, to himself, in the present moment. And most of all, he taught that our presence is the rarest gift we can give someone.
▍ The rarest gift we can give someone
Presence is easy to admire in others and so easy to lose in ourselves.
Not long ago I was watching old videos from years ago on a beach in Punta Cana. My son was three years old. And there, on the screen, I could see something I hadn't been able to see in the moment: how far away I was. How distracted. My son was trying to have a conversation with me, and I was somewhere else entirely.
That is the uncomfortable truth about presence. Its absence rarely looks like anything. It just quietly costs us the moments we can never get back.
“When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?” – Thich Nhat Hanh
The quality of our presence matters in the boardroom. AND, it is essential with our loved ones, at home.
We live in the most distraction-rich era in human history. Our attention is the most contested resource we own, fought over by every screen, notification, and open loop in our minds.
Which is exactly why presence has become the rarest and most valuable thing we can offer another person. It says, without a word: you matter, and right now there is nowhere else I would rather be.
You cannot fake it. People feel the difference instantly, the way I felt it in that Ottawa hallway. And they feel its absence too, even when they can't name it, the way my son must have felt it on that beach.
▍ What presence actually is
Presence sounds abstract, but it comes down to something concrete. When you are truly with another person, three things are true at once:
Body and mind in the same place. You are physically in the room, and your thoughts are here too, not replaying yesterday or rehearsing tomorrow.
Nothing competing for you. The phone is away, the to-do list is closed, and the person in front of you has your whole attention.
Listening to understand. You take in what they say without quietly assembling your reply underneath it.
None of this is complicated. But in a distracted life, all three take practice.
▍ How to practice presence
As many of us step into the summer, into holidays and long meals and unhurried days with the people we love, here is a simple way to begin. The next time you sit down with someone who matters to you:
Practice being. Take in the sense of BEING with the other person and notice how it feels to just be with them. We are usually looking to do something, to be in action, to talk, to label, to fidget, to move. Our attention goes to the DOING, and we forget about the BEING.
Ground and breathe. When you notice your mind drifting or your body getting restless, take one slow breath to bring yourself back into the body and the present moment.
Offer a small signal. Make eye contact, or say out loud or to yourself, something that can anchor you: I am here for you.
Let them be as they are. Sit with the person without fixing, judging, or steering. Simply accept them as they are, right now.
That's it. It may sound simple, but it’s not easy. Start practicing and you'll be amazed how much a single moment of true presence can hold.
▍ Share with us
When was the last time you felt truly seen by someone? And when did you last offer that same gift to another?
If you are on a beach right now, or somewhere on vacation with your loved ones, notice how much of the time you are really there, in the conversations, in the small moments when connection is golden.
And if you'd like to go deeper, explore your leadership presence with a coach atquantum-leader.com/executive-coaching.
See you next Monday,
Daniela
