The Performance Improvement Blog

Mindfulness for Leaders

Mindfulness is defined as:

… the psychological process of bringing one's attention to the internal and external experiences occurring in the present moment,^[1][2][3] which can be developed through the practice of meditation and other training.^[2][4][5] The term "mindfulness" is a translation of the Pali-term sati,^[6] which is a significant element of some Buddhist traditions. The recent popularity of mindfulness in the West is generally considered to have been initiated by Jon Kabat-Zinn.^[7][8

A slightly different definition comes from Psychology Today: 

Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention on the present. When you're mindful, you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judging them good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to experience.

Mindfulness has become a very popular notion in the business world. Even Harvard Business Review is publishing articles on the topic. Rather than brushing it off as just another “touchy feely” fad, organizational leaders, overwhelmed with trying to do more and achieve more with less resources in a rapidly changing world, are turning to anything that will help them reduce stress, balance all of the pressures in their lives, and feel better about what they are doing.

The question they are asking themselves is, “How do I achieve mindfulness in the course of my day-to-day life, without taking a year off at an ashram?”

Robert Pasick, in his new book, Self-Aware: A Guide for Success in Work and Life, provides answers. This very practical book, inspired by Pasick's work with business students and clients, has application to any organizational leader, and any adult for that matter. It is about achieving self-awareness and what that means for one’s career and relationships and the work one must do to achieve that level of self-awareness.

Pasick warns:

If you are not ready to make significant changes in your life, my advice is not to read this book. Keep this book in a safe space for another day. My students often report that through the processes in this workbook, they have switched from one career path to another.

However, this book is not only about making career choices. It is also a guide for living fully in relationships, whether at work, at home, or in the community. Relationships are key to receiving feedback, reflecting on one’s strengths and areas for improvement, and experiencing a meaningful life.

Pasick adds:

If followed, you will embark on a process designed to increase your self-awareness. You will be asked to read, reflect, answer questions, and engage actively in a series of exercises. Some exercises will require the participation of significant people in your life.

In some ways this is a deeply personal book as Pasick tells us his own story about development as a man, a psychologist, a healer, a son, husband and father, giving us examples of his experience of mindfulness so that we can learn from him as we read stories about what he has learned from family, friends, students, and clients.

“Self-Aware” has the tools you need for getting feedback from others and using that feedback for self-reflection on mind, body, and spirit. Pasick doesn’t promise you an easy journey but he does provide what you need to make the trip stimulating and fulfilling.

Email: Lost in Translation

Lost in the so-called "Email Scandal" surrounding Hillary Clinton's campaign for President is the fact that email is a terrible way to communicate anything other than names, dates, and times (just the facts!). Anything else can be easily misinterpreted. 

Farhad Manjoo addresses this problem with regard to the apparent hacking of Clinton campaign email and the taken-out-of-context message from Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign's communication director. In a New York Times column, Manjoo writes: 

...there’s something even more pernicious than weak security here. The deeper problem with email is that it has never quite settled on a social mode. An email can be as formal as a legal letter or as tossed off as drive-by insult. This invites confusion. For instance, in context, Ms. Palmieri’s “Take the money!!” doesn’t sound so bad — it looks like a quick, half-cheeky way to end an overlong discussion. If it were said on a phone call or an instant message, “Take the money” would have sounded like an entirely normal way to end the conversation.

In 2008, one of my blog posts addressed this email problem in business communication. I wrote:

Email appears to be replacing the telephone and even meetings (heaven forbid!) as the primary mode of communication, especially in global companies. This is causing miscommunication to be the norm rather than the exception. Non-verbal behavior is an essential element of face-to-face communication, but, obviously, totally absent in email communication. In her blog post “Why Email Humor Falls Flat (and What to Do About it), Jessica Stillman cited research reported in an article in Psychology Today that found that sarcasm and humor were communicated in email messages only about half the time. She concluded:

Email strips us of the smiles, widened eyes and posture signals that help us convey our meaning and mood, while leaving intact our conviction that we’re being perfectly clear.

One commenter to the blog post wrote:

As a manger of several extremely competent senior professionals on a virtual global team where email is the main mode of GTD, I spend more time managing the impact of email misunderstandings than any other single thing.

When email is the only mode of communication between two people, the danger of miscommunication is even more serious. In research conducted by Janice Nadler at Northwestern University, email negotiations between law students were much more likely to end in agreement when the negotiations were preceded by a getting-to-know-you telephone conversation. Without voice contact much is lost in building rapport, without which there is a tendency to make negative assumptions about what is in or not in email messages.

I find that even simple comments in email can be interpreted in many different ways by the receiver. Take for example the statement, “I think you handled that well.” The sender knows exactly what he means. You, on the other hand, can understand this in different ways depending on which word you put the accent and what meaning you attribute to that accent. If you put the emphasis on “I”, you might say to yourself that he thinks I handled the situation well but nobody else thinks so. If you put the emphasis on “think”, you might say to yourself that he’s not sure if I handled it well. If you put the emphasis on “you”, you might say to yourself that I handled it well but nobody else handled it well. If you put the emphasis on handled, you might think that he thinks I manipulated the situation for personal gain. If you put the emphasis on “that”, it might be interpreted as sarcasm. And if you put the emphasis on “well”, you might wonder if “well” is good enough. In face-to-face and phone communication you hear the word emphasis and tone of the statement.

This might sound like an extreme over-analysis of a short, innocuous sentence, but in the hurried, stressful environment of a workplace, this is the kind of instantaneous interpretation that occurs. And in a global environment, language and culture increase the likelihood of this kind of interpretation leading to miscommunication with possibly dire consequences.

The use of email as the principal mode of communication in business, government, and politics has increased since I wrote that post six years ago.  At the same time, hacking and Freedom of Information Act requests in the U.S. have exposed more and more private email to public scrutiny. I can only surmise that many people are being misunderstood and unfairly maligned because of this still popular way to send messages. 

Megan Torrance Talks About Learning in Organizations

I’m always looking for examples of companies that put learning ahead of training. TorranceLearning is one of those companies. They design custom learning experiences for client organizations by starting with the intended results and related performance problems and then, and only then, do they provide employees with the tools, structures, and processes to learn what they need to know and do to be successful.  

I had the pleasure recently, along with my Learning to be Great™ business partner, James Stilwell, to interview the founder and CEO of TorranceLearning, Megan Torrance. She answered our questions about how her company helps clients create a learning culture and how she creates a learning culture within TorranceLearning. Lessons for all of us are in this video of the interview.

 

Of the many insights I gained from this interview, two stand out for me. One is the key role of managers in learning. As Megan says, “The single biggest impediment to applying something on the job tends to be managers.” We need to help managers learn how to support the learning and development of their direct reports and co-workers. The second insight is “collaborative learning”. According to Megan, this takes two people, one person willing to be vulnerable and open to feedback and another person willing to give help within a culture that isn’t punitive regarding mistakes, failures, and just not knowing. All good lessons.