Perhaps it is counter-intuitive to start my posts on mindful recognition with a focus on the benefits to the one doing the recognition. You might say it's odd to start the discussion of a (hopefully) non-selfish act with what is essentially a selfish motivation.
But there's a reason I'm doing it.
Why? Because we can't control how much positive feedback we get form others. Bosses will or won't. Co-workers will or won't.
What we do control is how much recognition and positive feedback we give to others. Ideally this could be a self-sustaining practice built on it's own feedback loop.
So, let's consider how you might benefit from the recognition you provide to others:
By recognizing others, and by making this a focus of your leadership style, you combat Negativity Bias on your team, making them more resilient and more capable of handling change, thereby making your job easier.
Positive reflection on you as a leader (and your boss for choosing you) when your team members are recognized for their successes (even if it is you that is recognizing them). There's a kind of multi-reflexive value here - the boss is successful because I'm successful because my team is successful.
Focus on the positive to counteract the Negativity Bias in ourselves. When we recognize others we focus consciously on positive events, behaviors, and occurrences. This helps our mind remember that there are lots of good things happening, in addition to any bad ones (real or just perceived). This makes life and work more pleasant.
Set an example for others leaders to follow - positive recognition will breed more positive recognition as others follow your example. I've had a boss say, "That was great that you recognized so-and-so, I need to do more of that." It feels great when you hear or see others being recognized and you know you had an influence on that.
Mindfulness is great because it gives us insight into ourselves in ways that go beyond the intellectual. It touches on all of these types of experience:
Intellectual
Physical
Emotional
Spiritual
If much or all of your life at work has fallen into category 1, then mindfulness will feel unusual, especially at work.
You will encounter emotion. Probably much more than you did before at work. It will feel strange at first.
But it was always there. You just weren't paying attention to it. Or if you did, you paid attention when it had escalated.
Better to engage it, discuss it, and help yourself and others manage it.
A leader who helps employees and co-workers on this journey leads in this way: whole employees are happy employees are productive employees.
Understanding ourselves better makes us better at what we do.
I finished Josh Waitzkin's The Art of Learning on the flight back from Oakland yesterday. A few important take-aways:
Learning is a process. You learn by working at something. Taking this approach builds resiliency. Did I fail? I can try harder next time.
Make Sandals. The world is wide. It is covered with rocks and thorns. If you wish to go on a journey you can either attempt to pave over all the difficult places, or you can make sandals. Will you try to change your environment to make things easy? Or will you change yourself so that it does not matter?
There is much more to the book than this, of course, but this is what mattered most to me.
In many places it is highly reminiscent of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and the notion of 'Inside Out' as presented in that book.
How can we take those things that distract us or make us angry and change them so that they become powerful motivators for success? Or, at a minimum, make it so that they don't bother us anymore?
In spite of being out of fashion, many of us are asked (often for very good business reasons) to provide them.
Right or wrong, there are situations where you should not provide an estimate. I learned these the hard way, here are the ones I know:
R&D work
Highly complicated things you've never done before (even if you're 99% sure you can do them).
Things you can't break down into small pieces
System integrations where you don't control the flow of development (A vendor needs you to attend 10 meetings and then they want to certify your 1 line of code.)
System integrations where the system is still being developed or tested (Here's a great question I've learned to ask over the years: 'How many other people have used this API before?').
Collaborative Development - two teams working together, especially for the first time.
Co-development - sometimes this manifests itself as #5, but it can be other things, like working with an outside vendor in a novel way on the same codebase.
Pretty much everything else is feature work and you can estimate that. It might be a little scary or intimidating, but you can.
I don't mean to suggest there is anything wrong with the things the 7 categories above. Those things can be very important work that needs to get done, and those things might be very fun work (if you can get it).
But, fun as it may be, you really shouldn't estimate it.
Here's what to do with those 7 items above - don't estimate them. Break them out into separate subsystems or budgets or categories. Whatever you use to segregate work, put them in their own place and create visibility to how the work is progressing.
Some clients/bosses won't like it, but they also won't like budget/timeline overruns with no explanation either.
Make it clear up front. Use your estimate (or non-estimate in this case) to communicate and set expectations. Then use it to reset them later if you need to.
Many bosses/clients will appreciate the effort you put into managing the simpler parts. And they'll appreciate that you understand how to separate more complex things from the typical or mundane.
As I've mentioned in other posts, mindfulness, at it's core, is about developing self-awareness.
This makes it a very useful tool that can stand at the foundation of personal and professional development.
Do you want to grow in your career or as a person? Understanding who you are is a good start.
As you start down this path it is useful to be aware that this is more than an intellectual exercise.
Think you know who you are? You may.
And even if you do, or even if you've made a good start, you will find more: more that you don't know and more things that will be challenging for you.
The road to growth is challenge. There isn't another way.
Jonathan Fries on .