A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
— ALBERT EINSTEIN
One of the most memorable aspects during my time leading a Zen monastery kitchen was our team menu-planning sessions. Each week I would sit down with three guest cooks. These were students chosen from those working in the kitchen who were the most experienced and talented chefs. During the summer they were responsible for preparing three meals each day for the monastery’s seventy to eighty overnight guests. On our table were stacks of vegetarian cookbooks, detailed records of previous menus, and lots of ideas written on various sheets of paper and index cards. Our task was to decide every meal and menu, along with who would do what, for every day of the following week. Some meals were chosen from our standard tried-and-true offerings. Others were more experimental; we sometimes wanted to stretch ourselves and try new ideas, along with wanting to use and highlight in-season vegetables and fruits.
As head cook, my primary role during these sessions was to act as a coach and mentor. I provided feedback about what was working well and what could be better. We addressed the culture and practice of the kitchen and how the team was functioning and growing. In particular, we discussed how each cook was developing and learning, both from a practice perspective and as a cook. Then, we discussed the quality of the meals — what was working well and what could be better about the food that we served. As a coach and guide, I would often inquire about what I could do to support them, both individually and as a team, and what I could do to support the overall practice and effectiveness of the kitchen.
I found these meetings to be satisfying and sometimes even exhilarating. As a team, we experienced a high level of trust and care, which arose from working and practicing together both inside and outside of the kitchen. A core practice of Zen is generosity — being attentive and kind with ourselves and with one another. Thus, our job in a Zen kitchen was to help one another grow and succeed. When conflicts and disagreements arose, and of course they did, generosity provided a framework and a practice for finding creative solutions. This led to open, strategic discussions regarding the challenges and opportunities of cooking and practicing mindfulness in the kitchen. Whatever our roles, we were all peers learning and growing together by supporting one another. As for the food, we almost always came up with simple, elegant, creative menus that none of us could have planned alone.
These menu-planning meetings combined dedicated and integrated practice: They were both preparation for the primary event of cooking meals (which would happen later), and in themselves they were an important event in which we integrated everything we were learning about working together, supporting one another, and building trust. In these meetings, one of the most important things was noticing and improving how we worked together in order to support one another and get things done. Without that, we never could have fed the monastery’s guests to the high standards we aspired to.
This is the heart of what practice 6, “Depend on others,” is all about. When it comes time to lead and work with a group, we use and build upon all the practices introduced so far and apply them in order to work well together. This requires a high level of self-awareness and self-confidence, as well as humility, empathy, and openness, or approaching situations with beginner’s mind. In many ways, I would say that mindful leadership is really the art of depending on others.
INTERDEPENDENCE: THE ART AND SCIENCE OF LEADERSHIP
A classic definition of leadership is inspiring others to perform and achieve a shared vision. This is true, but I would rephrase this definition of leadership as the art of building trust and meaningful connections in an environment where results matter. The leader is in charge of supporting the team, and this requires interdependence: being in relationship with others who depend on you just as you depend on them.
A key role of a leader is to encourage people to develop their individual skills and perspectives as well as to build a team that contains all the skills and perspectives the team needs to fulfill its goals. This means identifying creative gaps within the team itself, including yourself as the leader. Where might your own skills and perspective be lacking? Who or what does the team need that you can’t provide? In other words, “depend on others” as a practice means displaying the understanding, initiative, and responsiveness to create a team that will, collectively, achieve more and think more creatively than the leader or any individual ever could working alone. The group depends on the leader to listen, to respect and consider everyone’s ideas and insights, and then to make decisions that are in the best interests of the team and the organization.
In fact, at their best, when groups work well, they almost don’t seem to have or need a “leader” at all. At one time, this is what Google believed, and in 2008, they decided to conduct a study called Google Oxygen on what makes great managers — but they were basically hoping to prove that managers don’t have much influence in the success of teams. Google’s culture, especially in the early years, primarily valued engineering savvy and creativity. Leadership and management were thought of as necessary evils or, at best, unnecessary layers of bureaucracy.
Much to their surprise, Google discovered that the behavior of the leader does significantly matter in both the productivity of the team and the well-being of the team members. Google found that leaders from the most successful, highly rated teams all shared three common behaviors:
• COACHING: A good leader takes the time to meet with each person on the team and act as a coach, which involves both building trust with and also challenging each team member. A good leader demonstrates real care for each person and for their career development.
• EMPOWERMENT: A good leader empowers the team and avoids micromanaging — guiding and supporting the team, trusting the team to do what’s required, and providing the team with a good deal of freedom. A good leader seeks the balance of providing what the team needs to succeed while being careful to not frustrate or get in the way of the team’s functioning by managing too closely.
• LISTENING: A good leader creates an inclusive environment and shows concern for both success and well-being by listening to each team member. A good leader brings awareness to any inherent tensions between the team’s success, the company’s success, and the individual’s well-being and finds ways to resolve them and support success on all levels.
What Google discovered in their study is very similar to how I define (in chapter 1) the three jobs of leaders — to think, listen, and hold space. Whatever terms you prefer, it’s also clear that these three jobs or behaviors reflect how mindful leaders compensate for and overcome the sometimes negative impact of the three apes: Leaders pay attention to avoid reactivity and micromanaging, they listen to others to strategize in the best ways for the group, and they foster connection and empathy to avoid a protective tendency to go it alone.
RESISTANCE: TRYING TO SWIM ALONE IN A SEA OF RELATIONSHIPS
When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we appear to be separate, alone, and disconnected. This is a mirage, much like aspen trees that, above ground, appear to be individual trees. Underneath the ground, aspen trees are connected by a massive root system. Similarly, when we look at our fingers, of course, each can move separately. At the same time, they are part of a system, one hand. Humans are much more like this than we generally think. There is an expression from Zen that says we are like water and milk; mixed together they become indistinguishable, not exactly two, not exactly one.
The truth is, we swim in a sea of relationships — with partners, children, parents, siblings, bosses, boards, coworkers, employees, teachers, students, customers, and all the other people who make up our world. We are dependent on others for all the physical and material things that surround us — for our houses, electricity, clothing, and food. Even the clean air or not-so-clean air we breathe depends on others. Every aspect of our world — the health of our families, communities, political systems, and our planet — is interdependent.
This interdependence goes beyond what is obvious — beyond companionship, love, food, clothing. We also depend on others for music, math, politics, science, the arts, our ethics, beliefs, and ideas. Most of us cannot prove that the earth revolves around the sun. We didn’t create existentialism, or language, or the internet.
On the most fundamental levels, we are dependent on others for who we are, our identities, our values, how we think, and how we experience ourselves and the world. We are shaped and influenced by our families, our friends, our community, our education, our religion (or lack of a religious tradition), and our society. The degree to which we exist in a web of ideas and beliefs and community is difficult to fully appreciate with our conscious minds.
Yet, strangely enough, what we often celebrate the most is independence. To be number one, as if all that counts is a single raised digit and not the whole hand. We feel we should be able to take care of ourselves, to make it on our own, to be self-made men and women who aren’t beholden to others for our livelihood, welfare, or circumstances. Of course, personal strength, confidence, and self-reliance are excellent qualities, but those qualities don’t exist in isolation. They aren’t meant to separate and divide us from others. Just as Google discovered that all teams need good managers to thrive, an individual’s successful independence reflects the support of their wider community.
If that’s true, then why is it that we so often forget the fact of our interdependence or seek to avoid depending on others? First of all, recognizing our dependence can be risky and frightening. Depending on others includes the potential for disappointment and the pain of being let down and hurt. Any close business, personal, or family relationship means relying or depending on others to show up, to help, to do the jobs you can’t do, to provide emotional support, to accept you, to love you.
When we depend on others, we can feel vulnerable. Others might fail us, causing loss and pain. Since no one wants to be hurt, we might try to avoid being dependent or admitting how dependent we really are. If we do this (or more often, when we do this), our attitudes are really a defense against being hurt rather than seeking an achievement that reflects on and benefits our community, or all the people who support us.
Further, being in relationship means that we are not in control. Others may have different goals, or different ideas about how to reach those goals, and yet we can’t move forward without other people. Agreement, cooperation, and collaboration can be difficult to achieve, and so simply in order to get things done, it can sometimes seem easier to do things alone. If we believe in our expertise, we might also believe that the only or the best way to get things done is our way, and so we avoid discussions, negotiations, and compromises.
Practice 6, “Depend on others,” can bring up a lot of resistance. The nervous ape doesn’t like being vulnerable, and so the nervous ape often resists dependence in all its forms. The imaginative ape easily comes up with worst-case scenarios, spinning all kinds of stories about what could go wrong or how we might be found lacking. The risks of depending on others are tremendous, almost never-ending, and yet they mostly boil down to a few simple fears: Perhaps that, if we rely on others, they may turn into threats who seek to undermine or harm us (through their actions or inaction). Or that others will eventually, and inevitably, let us down by abandoning us, leaving us for a better job or a better partner, or simply by becoming ill or dying.
Whatever the reasons, the ways we act to protect ourselves in our relationships are fairly easy to recognize. We shield our feelings and our hearts from depending on others by doing exactly what we fear others will do to us.
• We don’t fully commit to a relationship or a group.
• We aspire to be strong and independent as a way to show we don’t really need a relationship or a group.
• We constantly search for another, better relationship (for better employees, partners, friends) or a better job; that is, we hedge our bets and withhold trust.
These actions lead away from connection by fostering disconnection. They can undermine our strengths, since they are ways we refuse help, and so they diminish any help we might receive. Emotionally, they sacrifice richness for shallowness in the name of self-protection, as a way to avoid disappointment and heartbreak. They represent an approach to independence that actually hampers the results we long for.
In business, leaders face this dilemma all the time as part of their job: They fear being let down by those they lead and looking bad as a result. This is why I think of depending on others as an art that in many ways defines what mindful leadership is all about. Depending on others requires practicing and cultivating all six of the other mindfulness practices.
As a small positive example of this, when I was CEO of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, I decided to initiate an open vacation policy. This meant that employees could take as much time off as they wanted for retreats or well-being, without any limit. The only agreement was that everyone would complete their work and meet or exceed agreed-upon goals and performance standards. There was no approval process for time off, other than coordinating vacations among employees. This was important to me, both personally and for the company culture. I didn’t want anyone tracking my vacation time. I wanted to be supported and trusted, and I wanted to treat others in the same way.
At first, I noticed that I felt nervous and vulnerable about this policy. I wondered if employees would abuse it. I worried that I’d be seen as not creating a sense of urgency and accountability or that I’d be viewed as a pushover. This anxiety remained for several months, and in a few cases, people who were not meeting their work obligations had to be let go. Eventually, this policy, and several others that empowered employees and gave people lots of freedom, helped shape a culture that was dynamic, productive, and caring. Not only did employees not abuse the policy, they tended to not take enough time off. I had to remind people to do retreats and take vacations. And the level of commitment to our work and to the team was extremely high, often off the charts.
One of the more interesting lessons I learned from our open vacation policy was that by providing more openness and trust, I also needed to be more conscious and disciplined about agreed-upon results, as well as to have difficult conversations when results were not being achieved. Depending on others, when done well, can help achieve a paradoxical blend: It allows for more freedom and greater empowerment while encouraging greater clarity, accountability, and results.
TRY THIS: Just notice the ways that you find it difficult to depend on others. What is your edge? In what ways is depending on others challenging? In what ways are you vulnerable to being let down, disappointed, and hurt? Notice your resistance, your reluctance to being open and vulnerable. Where in your body does this reluctance and resistance appear? Journal about your answers.
MEDITATING ALONE TOGETHER
Here is the question I am asked most frequently by Google engineers about mindfulness meditation: “What is the least amount of time I can meditate and have it make a difference?” I respond that the majority of scientific studies measuring the effectiveness of meditation are based on twenty minutes a day for eight weeks. Other studies report that much shorter amounts of meditation can influence brain structure and behavior patterns. From another perspective, that of my own experience, one conscious, mindful breath each day can make a difference.
The second-most-often-asked question by Google engineers is, “How can I sustain a daily mindfulness meditation practice?” My answer: If possible, practice with others — find another person or a group to sit with. Sitting with others even weekly can make a substantial difference in supporting your practice.
In other words, even meditation and mindfulness depend on others. I experienced this when I first participated in early morning meditation at the San Francisco Zen Center when I was twenty-two years old. I was living in the Sunset district of San Francisco, a few miles west of the Zen Center, and I drove across town at 5:00 AM for the 5:25 AM period of meditation. I walked into the meditation hall and sat down on a black cushion facing the wall. To my left was a woman who seemed over twice my age. She was wearing a light brown poncho. There were two thirty-minute periods of meditation and ten minutes of walking meditation in between. At the end of the second period, we all walked upstairs for twenty minutes of chanting. Afterward, I drove back to my apartment in the Sunset district.
The next morning I drove across the quiet, early morning streets of San Francisco, walked into the meditation hall, and sat in the same seat. To my left was the same woman wearing a light brown poncho. The following morning, when my alarm went off, I felt tired and had the thought of sleeping in instead of going to meditation. Then, I thought, Oh, the woman in the brown poncho might miss me. With some resistance, I got out of bed and went to sit meditation, and there she was. My assumption that she was depending on me, even in this most insignificant manner (in my imagination), helped me establish my daily sitting practice. For all I know, I helped her as well.
During the first years of my daily meditation practice, I always sat with groups, which generally ranged from forty to eighty people, at the Zen Center in San Francisco, Tassajara, or Green Gulch Farm (the three centers that comprise the San Francisco Zen Center). The underlying philosophy in which I was trained is that the motivation and rationale for having a meditation practice is multilayered. Cultivating one’s inner strength and finding freedom from the egoistic self is a core factor. Two other factors are primary as well: We meditate to support one another’s practice. Our presence and intention helps others. And we meditate to develop our ability to listen and respond to others with more depth, which increases our capacity to help them.
That is, meditation and mindfulness are not sought for our personal benefit alone, and they aren’t achieved solely through individual effort. The same is true of leadership.
TRY THIS: If you find it difficult to sustain a regular or daily meditation practice on your own, find a buddy, another person to sit with each morning, either in person or virtually. Or find a group to sit with, even once a week. Sitting once a week with others can make a big difference in supporting your daily practice.
When others depend on you to show up, you are more likely to meditate. And sitting with others provides a wider experience of meditation and opens up your overall purpose and intention for practice. Of course, we practice for ourselves, and by sitting with others we find that we also practice to support others. We recognize that our intention and presence supports others’ intentions and presence.
LEADERSHIP CREATES COMMUNITY AND EMPOWERS OTHERS
People often think that leadership means doing, and doing whatever is needed, all by yourself. Popular culture fosters the image of the singular hero going it alone: from James Bond to Charlize Theron in the movie Atomic Blonde to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. This was certainly the case for me when I started and grew my first two companies, Brush Dance and ZBA Associates. I had a strong desire and tendency to want to do everything myself. Despite my experiences in a Zen kitchen, it was years before I developed the experience and confidence to regularly depend on others and consistently empower a team. The popular notion of the independent leader is hard to shake, and it can become a bad habit, one I’m still unlearning.
For instance, a number of years ago, within a short time span, several friends and colleagues told me they were interested in participating in a weekly meditation group. They were eager to develop a regular meditation practice, and they believed that being part of a weekly group would support this. Of course, I wholeheartedly agreed, and I decided to launch a meditation group in my hometown and call it Mill Valley Zen. It felt natural for me to lead this effort to support others.
So I rented a room at a local community center, and each Wednesday night we met. I led the meditation and followed this with an informal talk and group discussion. Then after a few months, one by one, everyone in the original group stopped coming — for a variety of reasons, such as new jobs, new relationships, general busyness — and other people joined, and a small community evolved.
Despite my full-time work, I took my role as meditation leader seriously, and each week, I prepared something to say, or sometimes I would read passages from a Zen-related book. I also got into the routine of doing everything involved in the administration of the group: I paid the weekly rent at the community center, unlocked the doors before our meetings, collected the donations, and locked the doors after our meetings. When I was traveling and couldn’t attend, I arranged for an experienced teacher to substitute for me to lead the group.
Years went by. While I found the group very nourishing, at other times it felt like a good deal of effort. After seven years the group began to feel somewhat burdensome to me, and one Wednesday evening I announced to the group that I wanted to take a break, a long break, like forever.
A few days later I received an email from one of the group members inviting me to meet for dinner before the following Wednesday group meeting. Eight people attended the dinner, and they informed me that they did not accept my resignation. They wanted to find a way to allow me to teach and not have other responsibilities. They decided to take away my checkbook and pay the rent (from weekly donations they collected). They took away the keys, so others would open and close the meeting space, and when I was out of town, they offered to take turns leading the group. They wanted me to show up whenever I could and be a Zen teacher.
I was surprised, moved, and happy with this turn of events. For me, it was a big aha moment. Without any thought, I had done everything to run and manage this group. I was unaware of my resistance to depending on others and how this had stifled the growth of the group. Through my own sense of independence, I had, not very consciously, undermined the commitment of its members. Part of the dynamic was the habit we often fall into of thinking we have to do things by ourselves. And partly I had let fear — my fear of being let down and disappointed by others — keep me from letting go of control.
Mill Valley Zen, as a community, was born that evening. It went from being my group to our group. This shift from my not depending on others to depending on others transformed these relationships and transformed the Mill Valley Zen community.
A very similar dynamic and pattern is also at play in how we parent and how we lead. Looking back and reflecting on when my children were young, I had a tendency to do too much for them and not expect enough of them. Once I stopped waking them up in the morning and expected that they take responsibility for getting up, this supported their own sense of responsibility. The same was true for making school lunches each morning and a variety of other daily activities. When my children were older and finding their way in the world, I again had a strong tendency to want to support them. My reminder to myself in relationship to my children became: “I support them to be self-sufficient.” This actually helped me a good deal, clarifying a way to be caring and to support their growth.
As a leader, I still can struggle with this tendency to go it alone and do for others rather than foster interdependence, collaboration, and shared responsibility. This is another important benefit of this practice: By letting go of our “need” to be independent, and letting ourselves depend on others, we empower others and help create a self-supportive community.
TRY THIS: Do a brief audit of the people who depend on you. Acknowledge and write about the ways that others depend on you. At the same time, notice and reflect on how you depend on others.
Let yourself sink into and fully embrace the mutual support you’ve given and received. Let yourself feel safe and held by other people in your life, and acknowledge the ways you’ve given this to others. In your journal, reflect on the meaning and richness this has provided. No one is perfect; others have sometimes let you down, and at times you’ve done the same. No matter. For now, fully appreciate your most important relationships, whatever role they play in your life.
TEAM BUILDING MEANS UNDERSTANDING WORK STYLES
In any group or community endeavor, but particularly at work, it’s very helpful to understand everyone’s strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. This allows us to build strong teams despite our individual preferences and limitations, which is an important aspect of teamwork.
Obviously, this starts with yourself: What is your leadership or work style? Are you aware that you have a style? Review the four categories of work styles below. Which one, or which combination, comes closest to describing you? Of course, we are all capable of embodying any of these categories, depending on the context and needs, but in general, which one do you tend toward? Which is your predominant style?
• THE VISIONARY: You are someone who has an active imagination, lots of ideas, often big ideas, and you like others to gather around your vision. Having and driving toward a vision provides you with a good deal of energy.
• THE ORGANIZER: You love keeping things in order; you enjoy process, creating systems, and keeping track of things. Overseeing or being part of organizing, tracking, and creating systems is energizing for you.
• THE PEOPLE PERSON: Your primary focus is on people — working with others, understanding others, and helping others. You get a good deal of energy and satisfaction from being with people.
• THE DOER: You orient around getting things done. You love marking things off your to-do lists, completing projects, and starting new ones.
Once you’ve identified your predominant style, try answering these questions in your journal:
1. What is special and important about your role?
2. What do you want the other roles to know about what you do and achieve?
3. How do you think your role is misunderstood or not fully appreciated by the other roles?
The point of this exercise is less to define yourself as a type than to reflect on four essential viewpoints that any organization needs in order to function. Every organization needs these four different perspectives, yet few people excel at and enjoy all four equally. Each viewpoint fulfills an important purpose, and many groups assign people to take on these responsibilities as their role, whether formally as part of a job title or informally as part of the group’s collective expectation. Visionaries want to take the organization toward a large and noble purpose, and organizers depend on visionaries to provide a goal for their efforts. Then, without systems, visionaries would lead the organization toward chaos. All groups involve negotiation, compromise, and collaboration, so you also need people who are comfortable facilitating agreements and managing conflict, or nothing will get done at all. Finally, you need people who like to get their hands dirty and do what needs to be done, in addition to thinking, talking, and strategizing.
TRY THIS: Think of a group you work with, at work, in your community, or in your family. Consider what “type” of work style each person has; you can come up with your own categories if you wish. Then consider whether this group is balanced and complete. Is every necessary role accounted for? What skills might be lacking?
COLLABORATION MEANS UNDERSTANDING NORMS
There are many reasons for the recent upsurge of interest in mindfulness in the business world. One main reason, I believe, is the recognition that there is a strong correlation between success and creativity and the ability of employees to collaborate — to trust and support one another effectively in teams. A Google engineering manager once told me that while it’s important to have really smart people on his team, what’s even more important is the way in which the team interacts, trusts one another, and finds healthy ways to deal with conflict. Cultivating interdependence is what allows the team to find solutions and produce results. This is, of course, the same lesson I learned in the Zen kitchen, where mindfulness practice — developing self-awareness and cultivating an attitude of curiosity and generosity — is regarded as the key component of successful collaboration.
And collaboration is the current watchword in business. In the January/February 2016 issue of Harvard Business Review, an article entitled “Collaborative Overload” begins with these observations and statistics:
Collaboration is taking over the workplace. As business becomes increasingly global and cross-functional, silos are breaking down, connectivity is increasing, and teamwork is seen as a key to organizational success. According to data we have collected over the past two decades, the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50% or more.
In 2012, a few years after confirming the importance of good leaders, Google embarked on another research initiative, called Project Aristotle. They wanted to know why some teams underperformed, some were average performers, and others worked exceedingly well. Through research and massive data collection, they wanted to understand what makes the perfect team. Over a period of more than a year they looked at data and interviewed members from 180 different teams from various parts of the company, looking for patterns.
They were at first baffled. Despite all the data they were collecting, it was yielding very little information that helped them understand what differentiated groups. They weren’t sure whether they were asking the right questions. Then, through their interview process, they discovered what they began to call the norms of people working together. Norms are agreements or unwritten rules that establish expectations and behavioral standards that govern how people interact. These norms are the ground truth; they define how people actually behave as opposed to the way they aspire to or say they want to behave. Norms define a company’s culture and, ultimately, these norms determine the levels of trust, vulnerability, and functioning of teams. However, norms can vary among groups; each group might establish its own norms, which might differ (in ways large and small) from the norms of the organization overall.
In the Zen kitchen, mindfulness practice influenced the norms because we were Zen students in a Zen monastery. As a matter of course, we paid attention to how well groups functioned to support the kitchen’s goals and the well-being of each person. This involved what I think of as “presence” and “embodiment” — evaluating the alignment of a person’s words, values, heart, body language, and behavior; how much each person communicates real care and concern; how open each person is to feedback; and the level of each person’s vulnerability.
Mindfulness practice does not generally influence the norms in most corporations and businesses today, and that’s an important reason why mindful leadership is essential. Through our own example and efforts, we can help establish a norm of mindfulness that improves how groups collaborate and interact to get things done. We can use the seven practices to help foster the norms of high-performing teams Google identified through Project Aristotle. Google’s final report stated that these positive norms include psychological safety, structure and clarity, dependability, meaning, and impact.
PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY: Team members developed a high level of trust and vulnerability. No one person dominated the discussions; everyone on the team spoke roughly the same amount of time during discussions. Team members showed a high level of emotional intelligence as measured by the ability to read facial expressions.
In a sense, any and all mindfulness practice is a tool for developing greater psychological safety. At work, this means that each person on the team is open, curious, and vulnerable. They are engaged in the practices of not being an expert, connecting to their own pain, and connecting to the pain of others.
STRUCTURE AND CLARITY: High-performing teams exhibited clear goals and clear roles for team members. This was something that was done really well in the Zen monastery kitchen: we set clear goals and gave concrete assignments. It seems obvious but is often not given the attention it deserves — the importance of each person knowing exactly what success looks like for them, for their team, and for the organization.
DEPENDABILITY: Agreements were honored, and communication was clear about deadlines and expectations. My experience, such as with the open-leave policy at SIYLI, is that this requires putting regular systems into place regarding reports, measures, and feedback.
MEANING: The work the team was doing had some personal significance for each member. Identifying what’s meaningful is an ongoing process for the leader and for all team members, and it requires regular storytelling about aspirations and about successes and failures. For the leader, this means inspiring others, whether they are cooking meals or coding a search engine. It also means focusing on the personal growth and well-being of each member as part of the team’s mandate.
IMPACT: The work of the team was purposeful and seen as contributing to a positive impact. Impact can be experienced on a variety of levels: how working together improves the well-being of each team member and of the team as a whole, how the team is impacting the division or company, and how the organization impacts its customers and society.
TRY THIS: At work, how does your team compare on each of these categories: psychological safety, structure and clarity, dependability, meaning, and impact? Where are you doing well and where does your team need more attention? What changes and adjustments might you and your team make to support and increase successful collaboration?
MEETINGS: MINDFUL LEADERSHIP IN ACTION
Ah, meetings! Whenever I mention meetings, people often either roll their eyes or start to sweat a little. At every level at nearly every company I’ve ever worked with, people rarely hesitate to express disdain for meetings: “Too many meetings. I can’t get my work done!”
I love meetings! That is, I love meetings that are well planned, well executed, and treated as a vital part of the group’s functioning. Meetings are essential to forging great working relationships, to sharing information, and to solving problems. They are where the group manages the work of being a successful group, and where the group plans for and organizes what needs to be executed. They are where the positive culture of collaboration gets cultivated and embodied. This was one of my lessons in the Zen kitchen: Meetings provide opportunities for mindfulness that can be hard to find in the heat of working together, and when mindfulness flourishes in meetings, it shows up in the work everyone does together.
To me, the quickest and most sustainable way to shift a company culture is to change the way meetings are held. I firmly believe this, and I’ve expressed it to thousands of business leaders around the world. It really doesn’t matter what companies do or produce: If you want to shift or improve organizational culture, focus on the way leaders run meetings.
Or, you might say, the one activity that requires the participation of everyone in the group, and the one activity in which everyone has an equal stake in the outcome, is when the group meets to coordinate how the group will function, decides what needs to be done, and evaluates how well previous work has gone. On a practical level, meetings are usually where the group’s norms are established, and if mindful leaders are trying to cultivate a collaborative, cooperative, and supportive environment, meetings are the place to do it. They are an important place to practice “depend on others.”
When meetings accomplish what they are intended to accomplish, they become vital tools for a number of purposes. And the first decision to make is to clarify what type of meeting you are having. Meetings can serve a variety of goals:
• TEAM BUILDING: Meetings can focus on fostering connection and building trust.
• INFORMATION SHARING: Meetings can be held to better understand who is doing what (or perhaps how they are working) to identify problems and opportunities for success.
• PROBLEM SOLVING: Meetings can focus on finding solutions to specific, ongoing challenges.
• BRAINSTORMING: By mining the wisdom of the group, meetings can open up unseen possibilities.
• PLANNING AND COORDINATING: Many meetings involve coordinating upcoming work by setting clear timelines and goals and clarifying who is doing what by when.
• COMMUNICATION: If people aren’t communicating well, or the group isn’t collaborating successfully, meetings can address how the group is functioning, as well as specific communication issues as they arise.
Of course, no single meeting should try to accomplish all of these objectives, but this list includes key reasons to meet. Without this preparation, the work itself can’t be accomplished in the successful way every business and organization needs. Further, each objective requires a high level of mindfulness practice — incorporating, practicing, and embodying all of these seven practices.
How to Organize a Meeting
To me, successful meetings have two main components: norms and execution. The mindful leader’s presence, behavior, and attitude helps cultivate the positive team attributes described in Google’s Project Aristotle. These norms, especially psychological safety, are important factors not only for high-performing teams but for high-performing meetings. Without these norms, execution is irrelevant. Then again, well-structured, well-run meetings with a clear, meaningful purpose are what help build these healthy norms. When everyone expects meetings to be positive and productive, they arrive in a positive, productive frame of mind, which is obviously ideal for getting things done.
Successful meeting execution depends on three things: preparation, running the meeting, and follow-up.
MEETING PREPARATION: Before calling a meeting, clarify for yourself and others the purpose of the meeting, the type of meeting it will be, who should attend, and the agenda. A good test for clarifying the purpose of a meeting is to envision the intended outcome. Ideally, what will result from this meeting?
Then decide the type of meeting, using the list above as a guide. Will this be a meeting for team building, brainstorming, or problem solving? Experiment with different types of meetings, as needs arise. Avoid the pattern or habit of having the same type of meeting week after week (unless, of course, having the same meeting is necessary, compelling, alive, and useful for all involved). I’ve seen many teams get into the rut of having all meetings be about reporting what each person is doing. This can be useful at times, but not always, and it’s just one type of or purpose for having a meeting.
A critical and often overlooked aspect of meetings is deciding who should and who should not attend. Pay attention to having the right people and the right number of people to achieve the intended goals. Also important is deciding how often to meet. Experiment. I’ve seen teams shift from meeting once a week to once a month, and other teams discovered they needed to meet more often than they were.
Finally, another obvious and often overlooked aspect of well-executed meetings is the agenda. What’s the plan and what are the priorities? How much time is being allocated to each part of the meeting? Be specific, and let people know the agenda, so they can come prepared.
RUNNING THE MEETING: Transitions are important, so open and close meetings in ways that encourage presence and focus. When possible, I suggest starting with silence. Even thirty seconds or a minute of sitting quietly can focus and settle the room’s energy and encourage mindfulness. When possible, I suggest creating some kind of check-in where everyone gets to speak and express what’s going on for them (separately from the meeting’s agenda), even if it is only one or two words.
Then, close the meeting in a similar way. Just as opening a meeting is important to the meeting’s success, the way a meeting ends also matters. I like to hear from everyone in the meeting again, even if it is just one word, or to end with another brief period of silence. Experiment to find simple opening and closing rituals that foster mindful awareness and create a sense of safety, connection, and care.
As for the meeting itself, ensure that someone is responsible for facilitating the discussion and keeping the group focused and on track, so that the meeting flows and stays aligned with the agenda. The facilitator is not necessarily the leader but another designated group member. Skilled facilitation means mindful facilitation — keeping an eye on the energy, feelings, and emotions of the group, managing any conflict and disagreement, and making sure the discussion addresses what it’s meant to.
Once it’s time to end the meeting, and before any closing ritual, summarize the outcome and any action items. Be explicit and share with the group what has been decided and what remains to be decided. Be clear about who is doing what by a specific date.
FOLLOW-UP: I generally suggest following up meetings with a group communication that names the action items that resulted and the next steps. This isn’t a review of the entire meeting, like sharing the minutes, but a reminder and summary of what needs to be done and who needs to do it. This is essential so that meetings are part of the ongoing development of projects and moving toward achieving overall goals and vision.
GOOD MEETINGS EMBODY A MINDFUL CULTURE
Experiment and explore how to make meetings work in your company, work environment, or group. Preparing for meetings takes time, but in my experience, it is well worth it. Good meetings embody the mindful culture that leads to success for any business and all involved.
For example, Plantronics is a publicly traded company in Santa Cruz, California, that was one of the first companies to participate in the Search Inside Yourself mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training outside of Google. And one of the main changes they made was how they conducted meetings, which led to significant positive results.
At that time the SIY training met each week for seven weeks. At Plantronics, the participants were the top fifty leaders and managers of the company, including the CEO and the head of human resources. Over these weeks, we were able to create a safe and caring space. Many participants reported that, despite working together for ten or even twenty years or more, they had rarely or never spoken with one another in ways that were vulnerable, open, and fostered a spirit of trust and connection.
The impact of this was immediate and often quantifiable. After the seven-week training, the company reported that their meetings were much more focused and productive. They were accomplishing more in less time, which resulted in a significant cost savings. Leadership also said that employee morale improved, meaning that the company was achieving more and becoming a better place to work, in large part because they were improving their meetings. Not all the changes were the result of meetings, but it never fails to strike me how relevant and impactful mindfulness practice can be.
TRY THIS: Evaluate the meetings where you work. Whatever your role, how might you incorporate mindfulness and help meetings function better? Ask yourself the following questions.
Is the purpose of each meeting clear? If not, how might you help clarify the purpose?
Are all meetings the same type? How might you vary the types of meetings so each aligns with its purpose?
Do you and your team look forward to meetings? If not, what steps can you take to improve expectations and the experience of meetings?
What are the cultural and behavioral norms in your workplace and in your meetings? What is the level of trust, vulnerability, and joy? What stands in the way of these?
How might you use and integrate mindfulness practices with your meetings to improve any and all of these aspects?
KEY PRACTICES
• In your role as a leader, explore and focus on coaching, empowering, and listening to others.
• Notice your resistance to depending on others and embrace interdependence.
• Meditate with and for others to help develop a regular meditation practice.
• Do a brief audit: Who depends on you? And how do you depend on others?
• Consider your work style — visionary, organizer, people person, or doer — and the work styles of others when building a group or team.
• Seek to cultivate positive group norms of psychological safety, structure and clarity, dependability, meaning, and impact.
• As necessary, change the way meetings are conducted to foster mindfulness and a collaborative, cooperative, supportive environment.