Question: From a Legitimate Leadership perspective, what can our preoccupation with our cell phones show us?

Answer: We are not only very connected, we are also very hooked. If we leave the devices at home for 24 hours, we feel that we have been excommunicated from society. When we are unable to check messages for 30 minutes, we feel desperate.

We are still bedazzled by the technology and impressed by the obvious utility of these devices. We are fixated on what these wonderful contraptions can do to help us manage our lives.

But a less obvious underlying utility of mobile devices lies in their potential to provide us with key insights into what is happening, not in our busy world, but in the world behind our eyeballs – in our inner realm. They are excellent barometers, in real time, of our intent.

All that we have to do to tap into the real value of these devices is to reflect, not on what they are doing for us, but what our usage of them is telling us about ourselves.

In the first instance, our modern devices tell us where our attention is really focused or what we are choosing to make important to ourselves.

The messages, sent and received, do not lie. They reflect most accurately what we are giving heed to and hence what we see as significant to ourselves.

More specifically, in terms of the maturation of our intent, they make explicit the following:

• Do we see other people and the world at large as being there to serve us or do we see ourselves as there to serve others?
• Are we focused on our expectations (what we want to ‘get’) or on our contribution (what we are prepared to ‘give’)?
• Are we concerned primarily with the satisfaction of our needs or with acting for reasons higher than our self-interest, in other words, our values?

Secondly, our mobile devices tell us about our current level of courtesy or regard for others. Every time we keep our connective devices on, take calls or excuse ourselves to make a call, we are revealing our intent.

This is because we are disclosing, in a manner most apparent to others, two things about ourselves:

• Who we are prepared to discourteous to. By definition, those whose company we are in.
• Who we are prepared to be discourteous for. By definition, someone other than those whose company we are in.