Several months ago I heard a business coach talk
about leadership – not your ordinary leadership program talking about how to
enhance your organization through your leadership qualities. Rather, his focus was on how to lead
yourself. He started by
challenging us to define our individual culture by asking: “Who are you—your
core values, your behaviors, how you interact with others, your level of social
awareness and social intelligence.”
Then he challenged us to clean up our own acts to become a better leader
in our organizations and communities, pointing out that anyone can be a leader
regardless of title – you can lead from any seat!
Several things about his session caught my
attention right away. No PowerPoint
– handout or slides on a screen.
Rather, he facilitated a discussion and only provided a two-page handout
that prompted a discussion among the participants. I was immediately drawn to the handout because the first
group of words listed had the caption “Possible Intentions – Desired Changes
That Stick.”
Just then, he asked us to review the words,
identify two or three intentions and discuss them in the group. Here’s a sampling of the words and
phrases: successful in business,
more family time, learn French, make a big difference, growth of knowledge, rest
more, creative endeavors, new relationships, mental challenges.
Now that you’ve identified your intended state, how
do you get there? That’s the
challenge we explored next. It
takes commitment, awareness and deliberate intention to accomplish your desired
intention. Why is this a
challenge? Well there are systems
already present in you that have conditioned you over time to be who your
are. The unconscious part of our
brain dominates what we do, our actions and reactions, and that is what we must
overcome in order to change. This gets in the way of being who we want to be.
Yoga Nidra I thought. Okay, what’s Yoga
Nidra? Yoga Nidra means yogic sleep, a
state of conscious deep sleep for extreme relaxation and subtler spiritual
exploration. I practice yoga and
my instructor often leads the class through Yoga Nidra, and as part of this
practice we are asked to state our intention – desired state (to ourselves),
and to state it in the present and not the future, as in I am versus I want to
be. For example, “I am physically
fit” rather than “I am going to exercise regularly.”
The next exercise was inevitable. Look at the next group of words
containing identifiers of the raw material of your human system – your personal
default “culture” – the way you act or habits you have to overcome to get to
that desired state. Here’s a
sampling of those words and phrases:
Emotional energy, limiting beliefs, distractibility, perseverance,
fears, intuition, pessimism, optimism, proactive, reactive, blind spots. Our brain wants to do what’s familiar,
what keeps us safe. Our brain is
afraid of threats. We act without
noticing what we are doing. We
don’t witness nor are we aware.
What you do comes from who you are—the unconscious part of our brain.
Imagine my surprise when he guided us through a
Yoga-Nidra type of exercise – not a state of sleep but a state of relaxed
consciousness. The intent was to
experience being mindful, to be present to what is and what is happening around
us, to be curious and interested without judgment, to exercise a beginners
mind, a zen-like mind. It’s all
part of the evolution of ourselves.
If we force ourselves and others in our organizations to evolve in a
mindful way, think of how much our organizations will evolve.
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