Chapter 10
Be Clear
As a leader, it is essential to be clear–clear about your personal purpose, your company's vision and strategic direction, your motives and intentions, your thoughts and emotions, and your expectations for yourself and others. Essentially, when I talk about clarity, it applies to everything, both internally and in the world at large. Being clear is closely linked to being aware of what is going on within you and around you.
Being clear allows you to make better decisions. You are also more likely to be able to identify opportunities for your business and to discard proposals that are not in line with your vision. After all, a great opportunity that doesn't fit your strategy isn't a great opportunity for you. It will merely cause you to take your eye off the ball and may cause you to spread your resources, including people, time, and money, too thinly. Being clear means too that you are better able to determine who will be the most appropriate strategic partners for your business. It enables you to be proactive and to resist being driven by short-term goals or results at the expense of sustainable outcomes. When making decisions, it's important to know what is driving the decision. The clearer you are, the better you will be able to determine whether a decision is sound or based on any of the five hindrances. You will be completely aware if it is based on your purpose and strategy or on someone else's.
When you have clarity, you will know when you are distracting yourself because you don't like what you see within yourself or around you. For example, you may have experienced a situation where others in your organization assessed an individual as not performing as well as you believed that person to be doing. It's possible that the others didn't have the whole picture and didn't see what you saw. However, it's also possible that you had a blind spot. Perhaps one of your hindrances was not allowing you to see clearly. Maybe you hired the person, and your pride wouldn't let him or her fail. Only by being clear will you have a choice as to whether to make the right decision or assessment of the person's performance.
As you pay attention to clarity, you will become more easily aware when you are clear, as well as when others are clear. It will also become evident to you more quickly when you hear a presentation that lacks clarity or when a conversation seems to go around in circles. The more you look out for clarity, the more you will notice that true clarity is rare. Yet training yourself to be clear is definitely worthwhile, as you will notice how it makes you and those around you more effective and efficient. In fact, making clarity a priority signals to all those around you in the organization that it is your standard and expectation. This will prompt others to be more rigorous and disciplined in communicating with you.
Mindful Makeover
The Scenario
You have had to update your strategy, and you need to explain the significant changes to the various stakeholders. It will be a particular challenge to explain this to employees, many of whom will be concerned that their jobs may be in jeopardy.
Before
Your inclination may be to couch things so that no one worries about losing their job. You may also be concerned that employees will feel hurt or take offense at the changes that are about to take place. As a result, your message is not clear and you water down what you intended to say. Employees hear the inconsistencies in the message and they worry that the situation is much worse than it is. The effect is that no one is clear about the vision, the strategy, or their place in the organization.
After
As a mindful leader, you are completely aware of how difficult this will be for employees. That is precisely why you pay particular attention to the clarity of your message. You ensure that the vision and strategy are clearly articulated and delivered. You know that your responsibility is to execute the new direction, and you need the support of all employees to make it happen.
Being clear ensures that your employees know where they stand, and they know that you are leveling with them and not sugarcoating the message. They trust what you say and can get on with making the new direction a success.
As with focus, the ability to be clear or to develop clarity is a by-product of training your mind with the mindfulness techniques described in this book. You have an opportunity to practice being clear every time you meditate formally or use a mindfulness-in-action strategy. Being clear takes effort, so as you formally practice the techniques, be sure to be clear about what you notice. If you are working with a relaxation technique and you are relaxing different parts of the body, be clear about where the tension is; become aware of how tension in one part of the body impacts another. If you are using a relaxing breath, notice how the out breath releases tension in various parts of the body.
When working with Internal Awareness, be clear about noticing thoughts (images and internal talk) and feel sensations in the body. This technique is about dividing and conquering what is arising in the thinking mind and feeling body so that you are not overwhelmed. When you are clear about feel, image, and talk, you untangle these sensory experiences like strands. By being clear that they are really separate, you notice that they no longer have a grip on you.
The same process applies to External Awareness. When you work with sight, really see, and when you work with sound, really hear. In formal practice, clarity comes not from interpreting what you see and hear but from experiencing what you see and hear without a filter. Filtering involves judgment; instead, you want to see and hear things as they really are.
The more you practice this, the more clarity you will develop. One more tip: As you sit in formal meditation, be sure not to allow yourself to get spacey. The way you know you are spacey is that you lose or forget the technique with which you are working. For example, if you're working with Internal Awareness, you may suddenly find yourself in a relaxed state, the technique forgotten. That may seem pleasurable, but do this too long and you are not training your mind. If you notice you have spaced out, gently come back to the technique you are working with. Don't judge; know that everyone experiences spaciness at one time or another.
Strategies for Mindfulness in Action
In addition to developing your clarity through your formal practice, you will find plenty of opportunities to improve your clarity as you move through everyday life. For example, if you are in a meeting, you can choose to work with sight (what you see, such as the person who is speaking or other people in the room) and sound (the voice and tone of the person speaking). Be sure that you are hearing what is being said and not internalizing your filtered interpretation or assumption about what they must mean or intend. You might think this sounds absurd. But you would be amazed at how much we filter. Has anyone ever said to you, “I never said that,”but you are sure they did? It's possible that they said what you believe they said. But be open to the possibility that you interpreted, rather than heard, what was said. And to prevent others from misinterpreting what you say, speak using mindful speech, as described in Chapter 6. By doing so, you will increasingly train yourself to say what you mean and mean what you say. As you hear yourself, you will become your own sensor for lack of clarity.
Whenever you experience lack of clarity or feel muddled or confused, it's worthwhile determining if one or more of the five hindrances are at play. The more unclear you are, the more hindrances may be getting in the way or the more powerful a hindrance may be in your life.
For example, imagine that you have received a job offer that on paper looks phenomenal. In fact, it's everything you have wanted, or so you thought–as you read the offer, you aren't so sure. The role looks very interesting, the money is what you want. Your mind says, “This is great,”but your body is not at ease. Your stomach is tight, and you aren't as happy as you thought you would be. If you don't explore this situation mindfully, you will focus exclusively on the logic and you will talk yourself into the job. You might list the pros and cons to make sure the offer makes logical sense. Then you might accept the offer. And regret it later. But if you really examine what's going on, you might find that one or more hindrances are causing your lack of clarity or confusion. You may be attached to an image of yourself and what you should be doing. You may be confused about what really matters to you and not realize that you are living someone else's dream for you. Or you may be experiencing inferior pride because colleagues have been promoted above you, and taking this role would make you “equal”again. In these cases, your decision is being driven by what others value and what you have internalized, rather than by what is truly important to you.
A mindful approach to reviewing the job offer would be to examine what's going on in your body. Where are you experiencing sensations associated with being uneasy? Once you determine that, stay with the sensations so you experience the full effect. The sensations may increase greatly, they may shift, or they may spread. What will happen in this process is that clarity will follow. As you allow yourself to be quiet and experience some stillness, you will see the full effect of your body's reaction. In order to clearly hear what your body is saying, you need to listen. You need to listen without your mind censoring what your body is communicating. Once you have the complete picture, you can decide your next steps. You may choose to not accept the job because you've determined that it's not right for you. Or you may decide to accept the offer, but you will do it with your eyes wide open. You will know where the pitfalls lie and make the necessary compensations.
Another situation where you can practice clarity is on the golf course or the tennis court. When you don't feel that you are playing to your regular standard, it may be that one or more hindrances are at play. Are you playing outside yourself? Are you fixated on a particular score? Are you driven by avoiding embarrassment? If you answered affirmatively to any of these questions, the hindrances are definitely at play. And you will know this by the sensations in your body. When the body is not at ease, there is generally feel. Find the feel and stay with it. It takes practice to be able to do this as you are playing a game, but the more you practice, the better you will be at working with it in the heat of the moment. You know that when you play within yourself and you play your game, not someone else's, your performance improves and the score takes care of itself. Some days you play well and score well. Other days you play well but don't score so well. But you never perform at your best when you are not in the present moment. If you are clear in this moment, you position yourself favorably for the next moment or the next shot.
Practicing clarity provides a good opportunity to give some thought to the people with whom you spend your discretionary time. Are they truly people who energize you, who nourish you, who bring out the best in you? If the answer is yes, then you are being mindful and clear in your relationships. If, however, your relationships drain you, upset you, make you feel less than worthwhile as a human being, or you consider them to be shallow in nature, then you have an opportunity to reflect upon the reason you invest your time this way.
Time is your most valuable resource. You may find at different stages in your life that you will have more money or less money, but time is fixed. If you spend an hour doing this, you cannot spend it doing that. If some of your relationships are not positive and yet you continue to spend time with those individuals, the hindrances are likely to be at play. Examine what those hindrances might be. When you are with these people, do you experience feel sensations? What is going on that keeps you coming back? Allowing yourself to experience this fully will provide you with the answers you need to make conscious choices.
To be mindful is to be clear: to be clear about your motives, your intentions, your choices. It's not about the actual choices themselves–that is up to you. It's about choosing wisely and consciously, and knowing why you do what you do.