The brain is part of the body, the leader is part of the team.
The brain is not more important than the stomach. Without a stomach the body will also die, it just takes longer. Same for lungs, heart, neck, mouth, intestines, liver, and other important organs.
A leader isn’t more important than the other parts of the team, but she can and should have a big impact – on morale, on direction, on career path for other team members.
Are you the brain? What impact are you making today?
Emotions are information. Through emotion our body tells us things (often important things) and upon which our brain is trained to react.
This system developed as an evolutionary adaptation - fear of being eaten by a bear produces a fight/flight/freeze reaction.
Today this system gets invoked for reasons that often don't have anything to do with why we evolved the system in the first place, and it is therefore an imperfect system.
We can pay attention to this in ourselves. Understanding that we are having an angry reaction is meaningful - perhaps we should be angry. We also may be reacting to one thing (work) and taking it out some place else (home). This is less healthy.
Choosing these reactions and managing them are part of being an adult. It isn't easy. I've found Focused Attention Training and meditation to be effective ways to understand these streams of information and work on managing them in an offstage way.
This can help you later on when you have to manage them onstage.
You can also understand people by looking at their emotional reactions, though again, this is an imperfect system.
A person may display anger for a number of reasons:
Frustration
Pain (physical or emoational)
Exhaustion
All of these are examples of the brain doing the best it can to handle a situation.
What is happening inside that person you can't tell without talking to them or knowing them very well.
What you do know is that anger is a strong emotional response driven by something that is bothering them. It's an indicator that this person may need help and you should approach it from that direction.
It's also possible that anger is being used to manipulate or negotiate. This is also information.
Here's another good blog post on this topic: post.
I am really enjoying it which is why I am sharing this before I'm even half done.
The book digs into Negativity Bias (which I've written about before here) and the reasons why it exists. AND, it provides you with ways to combat it and develop help develop Positivity Bias.
The exercises/practices it provides are related to mindfulness practices but are even simpler to get started with. The tools this book provides are designed to specifically attack Negativity Bias by changing your brain to be more receptive to positive experiences and hold onto them longer.
So, while these simple practices are behavioral (they are things that you decide to do and you develop the habits of doing them), the goal is much more than that, the goal is changing your brain.
This is pretty exciting and you can get started with them quite easily.
As a leader this is a crucial tool to develop if it doesn't come naturally to you. And Negativity Bias tells us that it won't come easy to most of us.
It's hard to draw a map of a place if you've only ever been through it once, going in a straight line in a fast moving vehicle.
For a guide, you may want someone who can draw a map from memory. You may want someone who has been lost where you're going. You may want someone who has, at least, been there a lot of times, walking in more of a zig-zag pattern and seeing what's around.
OR you're accepting a guide who knows a little more than you but can't draw the map.
Both can work, but understand what you're getting and accept the advantages of the latter if you choose it. That is, you will be getting lost along the way, but you will also be a guide at the end of the journey.
Sometimes there is no map and never will be - for the country is forever new. In these cases we can only compare it to country we have been in before and offer help to one another.
Because Mindfulness and other types of Focused Attention Training derive from religious practices, many people may feel that they are private or non-public activities.
There is some merit in this line of thought. The practice, any that I've seen, is private in that you are focusing inward to improve attention and enhance awareness.
But why really does this seem private?
There is nothing really private or revealing about it. Your thoughts aren't different when meditating than at some other time. Nor are they required to be shared with others. Nor are they shared with others.
What differs, really, is posture. The eyes are closed. You're sitting there. It's prayer-like in that way, even if what you're doing isn't religious. You're just paying attention to the mind. This resembles sleeping or praying and those are considered to be private activities in the West.
I guess sleeping is private in every culture. And it is the closed eyes, probably more than anything, that make it seem private to us.
Mostly it's different. If you aren't with a group of people, you're on your own and that can feel uncomfortable. Better to do that thing you're a little unsure of in private.
But ask yourself these questions:
What seems more personal to you, reading a book or meditating? Which would you be more likely to do in public? Which is actually the more private activity? Why?
Mindfulness practices are maintenance and improvements for the machinery of the mind. If we think of them this way then there shouldn't be anything more personal or private about them than any other activity you engage in for self-improvement.
Does that mean you should go out an meditate in public? I guess that's a personal preference and probably relates to your goals and why you meditate. Some people do it.
The saying 'Know Thyself' comes to us in the West from Ancient Greece where it was one of the Delphic Maxims. There were originally 147 of these that we know about, though 'know thyself' is easily the most famous (and catchy).
Here are a few other Delphic Maxims: 'Do not make fun of the dead', 'Be (religiously) silent', and 'Make promises to no one'. You can see why the rest of them haven't achieved the popularity of 'know thyself'.
Part of the reason 'Know Thyself' has stayed with us is its truth. Self-knowledge is core knowledge. It's what we need to have any kind of adult life.
So, for those of us who are interested, we should all be asking: "How do you do it and how do you get better at it?"
'Know thyself' is great advice, but it isn't exactly an instruction manual.
The practice of mindfulness, or focused attention training as it is sometimes called, comes to us from the East. It derives from Buddhist meditation practices. Though, as it appears today in corporate and educational settings, it is devoid of outward religious ceremony or trappings.
This Eastern-based practice provides you with essential tools to pay attention to thoughts and to be aware of the interactions between mind and body. Mindfulness is paying attention to you mind. By paying attention to your mind and body - deliberately, intentionally, for at least a little while - you begin to develop a greater awareness of what's going on.
In this way it is a tool for real, intentional self-awareness and proactive living.
If we consider it in this way it can be seen as a great example of the melting pot of our modern global culture. East is meeting West (as it often does) and one is the mirror of the other. Mindfulness practice can become a tool to achieve that core Western goal of 'know thyself'.
Jonathan Fries on .