Chapter 7
Be Aware
Being aware has many layers, but it begins with being self-aware. This means that you are aware of your thoughts and feelings moment by moment. You are aware of how different people and situations affect you. You are aware of how the hindrances manifest in your life, both personally and professionally. It also means that you are aware of how you impact others; how your words, your actions, and your demeanor or energy impact those around you. In addition, you are aware of how you interact with your environment and the effect you have on various constellations, such as your family, your team, your organization, your community, and the planet in general.
Being truly aware means that you are awake in the moment. It means that you are cognizant of the constant feedback loop in the world and the interconnectedness of all things. There is a cause and effect to everything. Every action carries with it a subsequent reaction. You need to take responsibility for yourself. Once you see how you have impacted another person, you cannot help but acknowledge responsibility for that impact. Leadership is a great privilege, and this privilege carries with it a great responsibility.
Awareness enables you to maintain sound judgment and make better decisions because moment by moment you'll see what is arising within you. You won't be blindsided or hijacked by emotions that are out of control. When you are aware of feel (the physical sensations associated with the emotions that you experience), and you remain aware of these sensations, you remain in control. The reason for this is that feel unchecked drives behavior. When you are angry that your team is not performing to your standards and you yell at them or you are cutting, derogatory, and sarcastic, there is a good chance that you are no longer in control. Typically, the sensations in your body are so great that you just blurt out what comes to mind, without listening to your internal censor. When you've said things you later regret, you may notice that you experienced strong sensations in your mouth or throat, among other parts of the body. Notice these areas next time you are about to blurt out something that would be best left unsaid or said more delicately.
You might say, “But I had every reason to be angry.” The issue is not that you experienced anger; the issue is the behavior that followed. If people feel intimidated, their own feel gets activated, and then you have two people who are interacting but not listening to one another. Instead, two egos are interacting, with one on the offensive and the other on the defensive. As a leader, your main interest should be to enable your team or staff to live up to their potential. This helps you and them to be most successful.
Imagine that you are dealing with a challenging stakeholder, for example, the investment community, or those who regulate your industry. If you are not aware, you may become defensive about what this stakeholder says about your company or your leadership. In fact, before you know it, you may be arguing with the stakeholder or defending your position without truly listening.
The reality is that those who are challenging you may be mistaken or have interpreted information incorrectly. If you are truly aware of how you are responding emotionally, you are in a better position to set the record straight. This may potentially alter the action the stakeholder takes regarding your company and put you in a more favorable position. If, however, you overreact and get angry without awareness, you are likely to make your situation worse and to put yourself in a disadvantageous negotiating position. You may even be faced with having to repair an important relationship.
There is also the possibility that the stakeholder may be correct. You may not like what the stakeholder has to say, but if you are aware, you may realize that the conclusions have a grain of truth or that they are painful but sound. If you are really open, you may be able to take advantage of the lesson. This could put you in an even stronger position going forward. It also signals to others that you are willing to listen. From this place of apparent vulnerability you can generate great strength and credibility.
Leaders who are aware are coachable. They acknowledge that they don't know everything. They signal that they are willing to learn from those who are worthy of being listened to. The reality is that it's lonely at the top. Leaders have few people to confide in. But they have a huge opportunity for being coached. They have access to talent, to knowledgeable people in different walks of life and different fields. And they don't need to be in a formal coaching relationship with those people in order to benefit from the mind-set of allowing themselves to be coached.
People who are coachable are like putty in the hands of the universe. They don't let their egos get in the way of their growth and transformation, and as a result, they put themselves and their organizations in advantageous positions. Others will often give them more information because of their openness and willingness to acknowledge that they may not have all the answers. This puts them in a good position to make decisions with more complete information.
Mindful Makeover
The Scenario
You are conducting a one-on-one performance review with an individual who has performed well all year but who in recent weeks has made several significant mistakes.
Before
You may be so upset by the recent poor performance that you disregard the person's high performance throughout the year, focusing only on her errors and blaming her for the negative outcomes. This creates the probability that your employee will become defensive, angry, and demoralized.
Or you may focus only on the good performance and not deal with the recent performance issues. You may be uncomfortable about giving bad news or having a difficult conversation. Your stomach might be in knots, and as a result, you avoid what you might view as confrontation.
With either approach, the performance isn't appropriately appraised, and future issues will invariably arise as a result.
After
As a mindful leader, you are self-aware. You know you are disappointed in the individual's recent performance, but you are appreciative and conscious of her good performance throughout the rest of the year. You are also aware that the way in which you handle this situation will impact your employee's motivation, and you want to use every opportunity to mentor her.
As you prepare for the meeting, and during the discussion, you are aware of your thoughts, in the form of images or internal talk. But, and this is key, you are also aware of the sensations in your body (feel space). Perhaps your stomach is in knots about the difficult conversation to come. By being aware of the tightness in your stomach and accepting it, you prevent it from driving your behavior and causing you to avoid what needs to be said. You will be controlling your mind, rather than it controlling you. And you can use this opportunity to get a good employee back on track.
I want to emphasize again that this is all learnable: you can train yourself to be aware. The mindfulness technique that directly pertains to cultivating awareness is Internal Awareness, described in Chapter 3. Internal Awareness focuses on the thinking mind and the feeling body.
The Thinking Mind
The thinking mind includes the images you see on your mental screen with your eyes closed and the internal talk you have in your head. When you say you have had a thought, one of three things is happening:
- You see an image or a moving picture in your head.
- You have a conversation or tell yourself a story.
- You both see an image and talk to yourself, each of these reinforcing the other.
The Feeling Body
When you are moved to action or when you are obsessed with a thought, there is something at play here other than your thoughts. In these instances, one or more physical sensations in your body reinforce the thought. This feel is merely a physical sensation associated with emotion. For the most part, attention goes to our minds, our thoughts. We tend to think that all answers reside there. But that could not be further from the truth.
When you are caught up in emotion, what is really going on is that you may be lost in your thoughts and not realize that it's the sensations in your body that are calling the shots. Feel that goes unchecked or unnoticed will unwittingly drive your behavior. What many of us don't realize is that the body and the mind are communicating with one another all the time. If you're not trained in mindfulness, you will likely be paying attention to your mind and not notice that your body may be communicating something quite different.
When you value logic at the expense of intuition, you may not be seeing the whole picture. As you pay attention to both the thinking mind and the feeling body, you gain control and will not be hijacked by emotion. You are then able to see what is really going on and are not blinded by anger or fear, for example.
I described in Chapter 3 how this technique works when you are doing a formal meditation practice. Below I describe some mindfulness-in-action strategies that will help you to further develop awareness.
Strategies for Mindfulness in Action
This is where the rubber meets the road. Practicing the formal technique will help you to deepen your Internal Awareness. But it's the ability to be mindful as you move through your day that will really make a difference in your life, professionally and personally.
Returning to the example used earlier in the chapter, Internal Awareness is a strategy that you could use if you were challenged by a significant stakeholder. The instinctive reaction might be to get angry or impatient, to get defensive or maybe to go on the offense. But now you would be aware that this sensation is arising.
The first thing to do as you are listening to the stakeholder is to become aware of your body. If you are experiencing an emotion, you will definitely be experiencing one or more sensations in your body. If the emotion is strong enough, you may be experiencing sensations throughout your entire body. The first step in taking control is being aware of these sensations.
The second step is tracking them. They may be getting stronger or weaker, they may be spreading or deepening. What matters is that you maintain awareness. If your mind wanders, gently bring it right back to the sensations. As long as you maintain awareness of the sensations, you will be in a position to respond rather than react. Feel always drives behavior if it is unchecked. As long as you track feel, you will be in control of what you say and what you do.
The next thing you want to do is apply equanimity to these sensations. This means that you accept the fact that you are angry or fearful or whatever is arising for you as a result of being challenged by the stakeholder. Equanimity means giving yourself permission to feel. You accept the sensations arising within you, allowing them to arise in your feel space. This is a state of maintaining control; there is no acting out in these circumstances. Behavior is under control because you are responding, not reacting. As a result, you are less likely to become defensive and better able to ask for clarification and to determine what is causing the stakeholder's concern. From that place of equanimity you are better able to determine if you need to alter the organization's course of action or clarify your position and maintain course.
Now a note about equanimity. This concept involves accepting what is arising in your sensory experience. Equanimity means you accept what is. In the external world, it means that you accept that which cannot be changed. If something can be changed, by all means change it if you wish. But, of course, change it from a place of equanimity. When you are equanimous, you see things very clearly. You are not rocked by what is going on around you; rather, you act from a place of wisdom.
You can also use Internal Awareness as a strategy in action when working with your team. Let's say you assigned a key project and the team has let you down. The work is not at the level you expected or require. If you fly off the handle, you are unlikely to get the best work from them. If they didn't perform well the first time, they are unlikely to perform better if you are irate.
You have an alternative. Of course you will be angry or disappointed. But in this alternative you will be aware of what is going on internally for you. You can track the sensations so they don't drive your behavior. This does not mean that you will not express your disappointment or anger. It means that you will do so equanimously. By tracking the sensations and being equanimous with what is arising within you, you will know if you need to be gentle with the team and the guidance you need to give them, or if you need to be sharp to deliver your message. From that place of equanimity you will know what action to take, and that action will be free of your ego. Thus there will be a greater likelihood that you will get what you need and want.
When you operate from this place of awareness, it's not personal, and this gives all parties a chance to correct their action without jeopardizing relationships. When a leader intimidates his or her staff, the staff don't do their best work. The objective should always be getting the best performance possible. It is always about sustainable performance.
Practice this strategy of Internal Awareness as you move through your day. Anytime you experience any strong emotion, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, tune in to your body and see where you are experiencing the sensation. This will get you into the habit of tuning in to yourself and will make you more familiar with your body so that, with practice and in time, you will be able to respond this way spontaneously when it matters most.
You may be thinking that it will be overwhelming to be in a difficult situation, dealing with difficult emotions, trying to listen to what is being said, and also tracking your own feel. At first it is tough. It takes practice. But the more you practice, the easier it is. You'll soon find that you are able to divide your attention effectively so that you are truly listening, and at the same time, tracking what is arising within you.
Sometimes people ask me if this will make them appear weak as a leader. The answer is an emphatic no. To the contrary, it takes great strength to be in control of your emotions and channel them wisely without denying or suppressing what you are experiencing. This is what it is to be fully aware and a mindful leader.