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7 Practices for TransformingYour Leadership,Your Organization

and Your Life

COMPANION WORKBOOK

Michael Bunting

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard

to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that the publisher

and author are not engaged in psychological, medical or therapeutic services.

If therapy, psychological support or advice, or other expert assistance is required, the ser-

vices of a competent professional should be sought. To the maximum extent permitted by

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directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the informa-

tion in this publication.

Published by WorkSmart Australia

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Copyright ©2016 Michael Bunting

All rights reserved.

First Edition

Typeset in Bembo 13/16.5 by Kassandra Bowers (Lakazdi)

This companion workbook is designed to be used in con-junction with the book The Mindful Leader (Wiley 2016) au-thored by Michael Bunting. More courses, videos and audios can be found on www.mindfulleader.net

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7 Practices for TransformingYour Leadership,Your Organization

and Your Life

COMPANION WORKBOOK

http://www.mindfulleader.net

Contents7 Essential Practices for Mindful Leaders

1. Be here now 1

2. Take 200 per cent accountability 2

3. Lead from mindful values 2

4. Inspire a mindful vision 3

5. Cultivate beginner’s mind 4

6. Empower others to shine 5

7. Nourish others with love 5

Be Here NowIdentifying Absentmindedness 7

Experiencing Presence, Establishing Mindfulness 13

Reflection on Presence and ‘Love’ 14

Mindful Eating 16

Leadership Presence 17

Take 200 Per Cent AccountabilityTaking Personal Accountability 20

The Stories in Our Minds 23

Cultivating Inner Kindness 26

Taking 200 Per Cent Accountability 28

Lead From Mindful Values Define Your Personal Values 30

Translating Values Into Behaviours 36

Define Your Personal Leadership Philosophy 38

Assessing Your Organisational Values 40

Inspire Mindful Vision Mindful Livelihood Check 43

Mindful Vision and Employee Engagement 45

Creating a Shared Vision 48

Cultivate Beginner’s Mind Identifying Expert’s Mind 51

Creating a Learning Culture 54

Shifting From ‘Initiatives’ to ‘Experiments’ 57

Empower Others to Shine Bringing Out the Best in Others 62

Cultivating Compassion 68

Identifying and Dissolving Enemy Images 71

Wisely Wielding the ‘Fierce Sword of Compassion’ 74

Nourish Others With Love Cultivating Lovingkindness 78

Seeing and Connecting With Your Team Members 80

Recognising and Rewarding Team Members 86

Conclusion

About the author

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Introduction

7 Essential Practices for Mindful Leaders1. Be here now

We spend most of our time lost in thoughts about the future and the past. This habitual absentmindedness pulls us from reality, which prevents us from seeing things clearly, within

ourselves or others.

We can overcome the detrimental effects of absentmindedness by becoming truly present to each moment. Through mindfulness we develop, both in-ternally and externally, a clear-eyed view of the world. We see reality as it is, not as we want or don’t want it to be. We are present to what is happening in front of us, right now, at this very moment.

When we are in the present, we are calm, clear, open-minded, open-hearted, relaxed, engaged, productive, ‘in flow’. We’re able to manage our behaviour and emotions in real time. Being mindful of the present moment allows us to observe and experience painful emotions without being sucked into them or allowing our behaviours to be dictated by them. It releases us from the oppression of incessant thoughts. It sheds light on things we’ve been resisting and gives us the courage to stop resisting.

When we learn to see and experience what is happening clearly in the pres-ent moment we notice things in ourselves that we’ve never seen before. The beauty of real presence is that it reveals ourselves to ourselves—not through theory, but in reality. It is a self-transforming practice.

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2. Take 200 per cent accountability

When not taking accountability, we engage in thinking and be-haviours like rationalisation, defensiveness, denial, aggressive-ness, blame, isolation, stonewalling, passive-aggressive retreat/

withdrawal, and/or deflection. By doing so we cause ourselves more stress and suffering, even despair.

We find solutions and relief only as we turn inward and take full accountability for our behaviour. Taking responsibility is about empowering ourselves to become the captain of our own ship and our behaviour choices. When we are mindful, we don’t waste time and energy defending and rationalising our actions. We take a good, undefended look and get on with re-engaging in the healthiest possible way.

Mindful accountability involves neither attacking ourselves nor rationalising our behaviour. The key is being kind and compassionate toward ourselves and to see our underlying needs that are not being met.

After taking full accountability for ourselves, we then learn to hold others accountable. The blame for dysfunction and poor performance can’t be laid solely at the feet of either the leader or the team. Everyone shares responsi-bility, and everyone must take full accountability—but only for that which they control. The equation is 100 per cent from the leader plus 100 per cent from the team equals 200 per cent accountability.

3. Lead from mindful values

To believe in you, people have to know (1) who you are and what you stand for, and (2) whether or not they can trust you. In other words, leaders must walk their talk, and in order to do that, they

must have a talk to walk. Values are your talk, and living in accordance with them through your behaviour is your walk.

The beginning of your leadership journey is defining clearly who you are, what you stand for and what your deepest values are. Knowing your val-ues and being able to articulate them is extraordinarily important for trust building, and without trust there is no leadership.

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According to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), ‘Values are chosen concepts linked with patterns of action that provide a sense of mean-ing and that can coordinate our behavior over long time frames … Values … serve to give us purpose or direction in each instance of behavior.’ In other words, values are essentially our personal code of conduct. They are the compass by which we determine our daily choices and actions. The most important value for leaders to live by is honesty.

Living and leading from wholesome values truly transforms us. Our fun-damental source of wellbeing has shifted from the fluid and unpredictable external world to an inner compass of goodness. The journey challenges us to the very core, but we set out courageously in order to gain the wisdom and peace that can only come from living in alignment with our most fun-damental, life-serving values.

4. Inspire a mindful vision

Inspiring leaders envision the future by imagining exciting and even ennobling possibilities, and enlist others in a common vision by ap-pealing to shared aspirations. Mindful leaders tap into and awaken

our innermost yearnings for meaning and purpose. They create a mindful vision for their teams and organisations—a vision focused on making a positive difference and alleviating suffering in the world, doing something that is good for everyone, not just for shareholders at the expense of other people or the planet.

We all have a deep yearning to contribute and make a positive difference. If we’re not doing this, there is something missing in our lives. If a purpose or vision doesn’t involve making the world a better place, it cannot nourish us. It is in our DNA to want to make a difference and create a legacy, and ‘maximising shareholder wealth’ does nothing to tap into that yearning. A mindful vision is so engaging for us as human beings because it recovers meaning in business.

A mindful vision is created using this criteria: Does the vision and un-derlying intent of our organisation support connection, wellbeing, joy and love for ourselves and all our stakeholders? Does our core purpose support

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mindfulness, as defined by a deep sense of heartfelt engagement and pres-ence, or does it stand in the way of engagement, thus leading to alienation, disconnection and suffering?

5. Cultivate beginner’s mind

To maintain the status quo as an organisation in the modern world is to decline and die. Successful organisations are those that can continually flex, learn and adjust, and do so nimbly and quickly.

This means leaders must be in touch with the ever-changing flow of life. They must learn to pay attention, to connect the dots and recognise patterns before others do. They must be equipped with the right tools for dealing not only with uncertainty itself, but also with their own mindset and fears in relation to uncertainty.

‘Beginner’s mind’ is the key. Beginner’s mind is viewing the world and our experiences with an innocent mind devoid of preconceptions, expectations, judgements and prejudices. It is to explore and observe things with a deep sense of openness, much as a child explores the world with curiosity and wonder and no fixed point of view. It is to lose our ‘expert’s mind’, which tends to be rigid, fixed and calcified. When we view the world through ex-pert’s mind, we think we know all the answers and are therefore closed to new possibilities. We are prone to confirmation bias and sunk-cost bias.

The most important thing a leader can do to deal with complexity is to cultivate beginner’s mind. This enables experimentation and quick learning. We explore the world around us and our circumstances with open-minded and open-hearted curiosity. We try things and see what works, then quickly adjust when things don’t work.

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6. Empower others to shine

Extraordinary leaders empower others to bring out their best and realise their potential in the pursuit of a common goal. Our job as leaders is to make others shine. When we help our team members

be the best they can be, without feeling threatened that they will shine brighter than us, they will give their best because they want to, rather than because it’s expected of them.

We empower others by cultivating generosity and compassion.

Through generosity, we move from command-and-control mode to coach-ing-and-mentoring mode to bring out the gifts in others. We give people our time, attention, insights and wisdom to help them become the best they can be. We learn to let go of control and to give people space, autonomy and responsibility to step up and contribute more.

Mindful compassion in leadership is to wish for all your team members, boss and colleagues to be free of suffering, to thrive in their positions, to be hap-py and fulfilled, just as you wish for yourself. When we are compassionate we sense and connect with the other, and we feel their pain as if it was ours.

As leaders, our job is not to fix people. Our job is to see the inherent good-ness in people and to empower them to become what we see in them. The best leaders constantly ask themselves, ‘How can I make others feel more powerful, competent and able to do more than they think they can?’

7. Nourish others with love

The best leaders are always looking for ways to recognise and praise their people. They truly see their people and notice their contri-butions. They never take them for granted—and people can feel

that from them.

Three heart-based mindfulness practices give us the awareness to see and con-nect with people authentically: lovingkindness, empathetic joy and gratitude.

For a leader, lovingkindness is to deeply and sincerely care about your peo-

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ple, to be emotionally invested in their progress and success. And it is to show how much you care about them by regularly and consistently express-ing appreciation for their efforts. It enables us to elicit the best in others because it allows us to see the best in them.

Empathetic joy means being every bit as conscious of people’s happiness as we are attuned to their suffering. It’s not enough just to offer support when someone is grieving; we must also extend joy when they have succeeded.

Gratitude for leaders is a catalyst for recognition. It makes us constantly look for the good in people and feeds our desire to share our gratitude for a job well done. It is a light we carry with us that people are drawn to because they feel good about themselves when they are around us.

Gratitude, appreciation, recognition and encouragement increase trust and fos-ter cooperation. We feel better about ourselves, we perform better, and we enjoy working more with people who encourage us and recognise our contributions.

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Exercises

Be Here Now

Exercise 1.0:

Identifying Absentmindedness

Absentmindedness, defined as being inat-tentive or distracted or zoning out, pulls us from the present moment, which prevents us

from seeing things clearly, within ourselves or others. Absentmindedness commonly shows up as mental habits like worrying, internal conversations, judge-ments, dwelling on thoughts of future happiness (‘I’ll be happy when …’), and regrets about the past.

We are all well-practiced experts in absentminded-ness. We can eat, drink, sit through meetings pretend-ing to listen—all while fixated on our own thoughts about the past and future. We can arrive at our desti-nation in the car and not recall the journey at all.

Because it’s such a thoroughly ingrained habit for most of us, we rarely question when and how we’re being absentminded, and whether or not it’s actually serving us.

Here are a few questions that may help you reflect on the value proposition of absentmindedness.

“Leadership is both a priv-ilege and a burden. It is in-cumbent on leaders to be well and to lead from a cen-tre of wellness and non-re-activity. Leaders set the tone for the whole team or or-ganisation: when they are calm, confident, open and relaxed, the team is more likely to feel the same. Like-wise, when they are stressed, fearful and closed, it breeds the same emotions among team members.”

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1. What are your top three worries in life right now?

(These could be simple, everyday worries like, ‘I hope it won’t rain today’ or ‘I hope I’m not late to my meeting today’, or they could be deeper life issues like, ‘My marriage is really struggling right now’ or ‘I worry that I’m not living on purpose’. It doesn’t really matter what you list, just list something to work with.)

a) How does worrying help you solve your current problems?

How does worrying serve your life? (e.g. Does it make you more focused and calm? Does it help you make better decisions? Are you actually ad-dressing the issues during your ‘worry’ time?)

b) Every moment of our lives we are cultivating a state of body, mind and heart (through our thoughts and actions).

Through this cultivation we become habituated and used to these states. What kind of physical, emotional and mental state are you cultivating while you are engaged in worry?

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c) Do you want to cultivate more or less of this state in your life?

d) Can you find one good reason to hold onto these thoughts that are causing you to worry?

(Do your best to actually come up with a reason. If you find something like, ‘If I did not worry, I would not care’, then ask yourself, ‘While I am worrying, am I actually achieving my one good reason?’; e.g. ‘While I am worrying, do I actually demonstrate care?’)

e) Can you find any reasons to let go of these thoughts?

2. What are your top one or two regrets in life?

a) Is there anything you can do to change the past—to change what did or did not happen?

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b) Can you find one good reason to hold onto these thoughts that are causing you to feel regretful?

(Do your best, and if you find something like, ‘If I didn’t dwell on my re-grets, I would never learn’, then ask yourself, ‘While I am lost in thoughts and feelings of regret am I actually growing and learning?’)

c) Can you find any good reasons to let go of these thoughts of regret?

3. I’ll be happy when …

List three to five things you really believe will make your life truly com-plete and happy. These are things you dwell on in an absentminded state at times (e.g. more money, bigger house, newer car, better position at work, new job, more caring spouse, closer connection with your children, etc.).

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a) If you were to achieve all of these things, do you believe your happiness would be permanent? Everlasting? Do you believe you will be fully satisfied?

b) Do you need any of these things to be relaxed and at ease, even satisfied, now in this moment? And I mean, right THIS mo-ment. NOW.

c) If you are not satisfied right now, are you actually present? Or is your mind busy with thoughts about this moment, the future or the past (i.e. are you engaged in absentmindedness?)?

d) There is a Chinese story of a farmer who used an old horse to till his fields. One day, the horse escaped into the countryside and when the farmer’s neighbours sympathised with the farmer over his bad luck, he replied, ‘Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?’ A week later, the horse returned with a herd of horses and this time the neighbours congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, ‘Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?’

Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very

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bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, ‘Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?’

Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and conscripted ev-ery able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer’s son with his broken leg, they let him off. And the farmer thought …

Do you think the farmer was wise? If yes, what exactly is his wisdom about?

e) Can you make a link to this story and your ‘I’ll be happy when’ list?

f) Final reflections: What, if anything, did these short reflections reveal to you about the val-ue, or lack thereof, of absentmindedness?

“By choosing to act in a spir-it of mindfulness we simul-taneously help ourselves while contributing to a more peaceful, healthy and whole planet for everyone. It brings much deeper meaning to business leadership than simply growing the bottom line. It’s not melodramatic to say that your work as a leader can have a profound impact on the evolution of humanity.”

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Exercise 2.0

Experiencing Presence, Establishing Mindfulness

We know that being present is essential to emotional intelligence, self-regulation, per-formance, connection and happiness. The

two key questions we want to investigate here are:1. How to be present?

2. How to be mindful?

Are they different? The following exercise, taken from my book A Practical Guide to Mindful Meditation, in-vites you to practise presence and then explore mindfulness:

* * * Exercise: Feeling hands

• Sitting quietly, hold your hands together. Then ask yourself, ‘Can I feel my hands?’ (Your answer will probably be ‘Yes.’)

• Now ask yourself, ‘Am I making any particular effort to feel my hands?’ (Your answer will very probably be ‘No. It’s simply obvious.’)

Here you are directing your awareness and attention towards the feel of your hands. You are in effect ‘present’ with your hands. Focused and clear. Now let’s add continuity of attention—that is, mindfulness.

* * * Exercise: Mindfulness and feeling hands

• Set a timer for two to three minutes. Now sit quietly, holding your hands together. Feel your hands.

“The brief pain we may feel from a mindful re-alisation is far more de-sirable than the endless struggle we experience from remaining un-mindful.”

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• At the end of this time ask yourself, ‘During the past couple of minutes, did I at any point lose the feel of my hands?’ (Your answer may very well be ‘Yes. I stopped feeling them when my mind wandered off to something else.’)

As you reflect on this experience, you may notice that the mind wandered off the moment you forgot the feel of your hands. In that moment you lost the continuity of attention. The key is feeling, as it is one of the five senses. The five senses are a key toolkit for helping us stay present in our lives. In a sense, they are the present. You cannot smell two seconds from now; you cannot see three seconds ago. You can only engage with the senses now. The difference between just a moment of presence and mindfulness is that con-tinuity of attention.

Exercise 2.1

Reflection on Presence and ‘Love’

1. Consider the two or three things you love doing most in life, such as surfing, skiing, meditation, hanging out with loved ones, working, eating, movies, etc. Jot those down here.

a) We are assuming you could say you love doing these things, e.g. ‘I love golf ’ or ‘I love movies’.

“Mindfulness is the key to liberating ourselves from the incessant push and pull of our physical sensations, emotions and thoughts.”

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Now consider this: Do these things you love support you to be more engaged and present? Do you find that your absentmindedness eases or even stops while engaged in these activities?

b) Here is a proposal for you.

It’s the engaged presence that creates and supports the feelings of ease, joy and love. In other words, if you could train yourself to be less absent-minded and more present in general, you might ‘love your life’ a whole lot more. What do you make of that?

c) If the jury is still out, get up right now and just try and do one simple activity like cleaning the dishes, or going for a walk around the block with a commitment to being 100 per cent present in the activity.

Something you would not ordinarily ‘love’ doing. Then jot down your reflections. Was it easier, harder, more enjoyable, less enjoyable?

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Exercise 2.2

Mindful Eating

Mindful eating is more than eating slowly, without distraction—it is also eating with intention and attention:

• Eating with the intention of caring for yourself

• Eating with the attention necessary for noticing and enjoying your food and its effects on your body

Schedule a meal to eat mindfully, using the following steps:

1. Eat slowly. Take time to savour your food.

2. Turn off your phone, shut off the TV, and eliminate all other distractions.

3. Savour the silence. This may be difficult if you have a family with children, so you may need to adapt as necessary.

4. Pay attention to flavour and texture. Note the tanginess of a lemon, the spiciness of arugula, the crunch of a pizza crust. Pay attention to all the details of the experience.

5. Know your food. Even if you don’t know where your food has come from, ask yourself questions like, ‘Who grew this?, Where did it come from?, How did it get here?’ Notice that by doing so you’ll gain a deeper appreciation for your food.

Notes

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Exercise 3.0

Leadership Presence

Being a leader means connecting with people, uplifting people, ensuring people know they matter and that their opinions matter. Many leaders are so overwhelmed with tasks and complexity that

they are constantly obsessed with their thoughts or in a rush to get con-versations over so they can get on with their tasks.

This also often results in the myth of multitasking: leaders think they can get more done by multitasking, when in fact it diminishes their productivity and effectiveness. In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the Uni-versity of London, that found workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.1

This results in behaviour that is bad for engagement and leadership effec-tiveness and is just downright bad for the leader’s health and wellbeing too!

Please explore this set of questions and take action on them:

a) Imagine you had a boss you regarded as a very mindful, present and engaging person. How would they communicate with you?

(e.g. would they listen to you with undivided attention? Would they finish sentences off for you? Would they check their understanding before they made assumptions, etc.?) Just pick the two or three things you believe a tru-ly mindful communicator would do well, things that are important to you.

1 Christine Rosen, ‘The Myth of Multitasking.’ The New Atlantis thenewatlantis.com.

Spring 2008. Web. 14 Apr. 2011

http://thenewatlantis.com

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b) What two or three kinds of things would they NOT do while en-gaging with you? (think of the worst boss you have ever had …)

c) Now consider what you might need to practise to become a more mindful communicator, and by doing so ensure your team is getting the quality of attention (not necessarily quantity) they deserve and need.

Here is a quick list of some examples of my clients’ commitments over the years in this area:

• One leader always got up from his desk when people walked into his office, and then either stood while speaking with them, or sat at a little side table in his office where there was no phone.

• One leader decided to switch off her computer and phone for all meetings.

• One leader decided to consistently check her understanding of what people had said so she could ensure she really had heard them.

• One leader decided to stop finishing people’s sentences off for them.

• One leader decided that if he did not have time to listen to people fully he would be honest with them and reschedule a time when he could.

• One leader decided that if anyone was not listening to them they would simply stop speaking until the person did listen. This was a gen-tle way to ensure a quality of presence in his interactions.

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Your commitment statement:

In the context of becoming a more mindful leader and commu-nicating with my team more mindfully my one commitment is:

Final Note: The most important thing you can do to cultivate greater presence as a leader is to formally and consistently meditate. For help with this, get my book, A Practical Guide to Mindful Meditation, and down-load my Mindful Minutes app on your smartphone.

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Exercises

Take 200 Per Cent AccountabilityExercise 1.0

Taking Personal AccountabilityThe thinking and behaviours we engage in when not taking accountability for our actions typically take one or more of these forms:

• rationalisation

• defensiveness

• denial

• aggressiveness

• blame

• isolation (running away)

• stonewalling

• passive-aggressive retreat/withdrawal

• the PR spin (e.g. we are told we are not delegating well, but rather than changing we ‘sell’ ourselves by pointing out how excellent our results are)

• deflection

“Leaders who cultivate the courage to take an honest look at themselves find that taking accountability can have far greater im-pact on their business than any strategy, initiative or marketing campaign.”

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a) Have you given someone feedback or requested them to change their behaviour and been met with this kind of behaviour (ra-tionalising, defensiveness, denial, etc.)?

(e.g. ‘Every time I tell my boss they are not listening to me, they just deny it and insist they were listening.’ On a personal level this might be telling a loved one they are upsetting you and they reply, ‘Well, I am only be-having this way because you were upsetting me first’—the ‘you started it’ argument.) Jot your example down here.

b) How does this behaviour affect your relationship, levels of en-gagement and trust with them?

c) If they are a leader. what is the net effect of this behaviour on their credibility as a leader?

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d) If the person in your example behaved in a way that was more mindful and accountable, what would that look like?

e) What do you think their behaviour is giving them? What is their reward for rationalising, defending, denying, etc.?

f) Is this reward worth the lack of growth and learning, the loss of trust and credibility that comes with this habit?

g) Do you engage in these kinds of behaviours?

If you can remember one now jot it down, otherwise just answer yes or no here (hint: if you are writing no … well … that is likely a serious level of delusion.)

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h) If you cannot identify any behaviours, go and ask those around you for feedback on how you do this. Note their response here:

i) Finally, what kind of behaviour could you cultivate that would be the ‘antidote’ to this behaviour? (Your answer might lie in how you want others to behave toward your feedback.)

Exercise 1.1

The Stories in Our Minds

When we are mindful we are objective and clear, and we tend to see through our habits, our assumptions and thoughts. We

can see when the thoughts and stories in our mind are helpful or unhelpful, true or false. None of us are perfectly mindful and so we are always engaging in unhelpful thinking. The real skill here is to identify the unhelpful thinking and then instead replace it with mindfulness, inquiry and clarity.

“When we are mindful, we don’t waste time and energy defending and rationalising our actions. We take a good, unde-fended look and get on with re-engaging in the healthiest possible way.”

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Let’s investigate that for a moment. For your own benefit, it’s important you don’t skip ahead. Respond to each question before reading ahead or moving ahead.

a) List the three to five things that stress you the most at home and/or work (e.g. my boss, traffic, etc.).

b) List one or two complaints or secret wishes you have about these (e.g. ‘I wish my boss would be fired’, ‘I wish I lived closer to the city’, etc.).

c) If you were to divide up the causes of your stress into Internal (i.e. ‘stress caused by my thinking, assumptions and conditioning’) versus External (‘stress caused by factors outside of me’), what percentage would you give them? (e.g. 80 per cent internal, 20 per cent external)

d) If you now go back and mark each of your causes of stress in the first question with an ‘I’ for internal versus an ‘E’ for exter-nal, and tally it up, does it reflect what you wrote in terms of percentages above?

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e) If not, why not? Here is a hint: Mindfulness is a way of being more objective about our experience, and in that clear, sober see-ing what we thought was true can be revealed to be patently false.

Consider this story:

Two people stuck in traffic on their way to work. Both of them will be late unless the traffic eases up, yet neither of them has any urgent meeting to get to. Their external world is very similar. One of them is calm and relaxed, knowing full well that getting stressed won’t make the traffic go faster, nor will it serve his wellbeing. The second is frustrated, angry and stressed. He’s honking his horn, anxiously checking his watch every couple of minutes, cursing other drivers. The stressed person is caught in the assumption that the traffic is the cause of his stress. If our external world were the actual cause of stress, it would create stress for everyone in equal measure. Yet in this example the cause is clearly not external but within us.

f) What does this mean for you and your way of dealing with stress? Please remember: when we are fully present, all stress drops away.

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Exercise 2.0

Cultivating Inner Kindness

Mindful accountability involves neither attack-ing ourselves nor rationalising our behaviour. The key is being kind and compassionate

toward ourselves. Kindness allows us to examine our behaviour with non-judgemental curiosity and honesty when we have let ourselves down. It helps us to bear the truth rather than ramping up our distress. In doing so it helps us to see the why behind such actions—and our underlying needs that are not being met.

Write down the last time you felt like you failed as a leader. What specific behaviours did you engage in that frustrated and/or disappointed you? Did you harm oth-ers? If so, how? Be specific (e.g. ‘I spoke from reactivity and anger when people missed a deadline’).

Without judging yourself for your behaviour, gently inquire into the experience.

a) What was the underlying emotion that created the behaviour?

Deep down, were you afraid of something? Perhaps you felt disrespected? (e.g. ‘When I spoke from anger I was scared that people were not respect-ing me and the job would not get done’.)

b) What were your underlying needs that caused the behaviour?

Were you needing respect? Appreciation? Validation? (In the ongoing ex-ample, it’s likely the need is for some sense of security as the lack of de-livery would feel threatening to the person’s job.)

“What can be more inspir-ing than seeing a human being choose responsibil-ity, compassion and gen-erosity in the face of chal-lenge? The best leaders inspire us to become bet-ter people through their own example. This is the primary role of leadership, as well as a core ethos of mindfulness.”

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c) Take the time to look deep and really see yourself.

See the goodness and legitimate needs underlying your behaviour in this circumstance. What is the goodness in yourself that you find as you anal-yse this experience? Write it down. (In the ongoing example, it could be the goodness that the person who got angry really cares about delivering things on time, cares about not letting others down.)

d) Now that you can see the needs behind your behaviour, jot down a behaviour choice that would have been more likely to get your needs met.

(In the ongoing example it could be, ‘I should have spoken to them with re-spect, inquired why the deadline had been missed, and then either given them a warning if their reason was not legitimate, done with respect, or helped them with more support or resources if they had a valid reason. This choice would far more likely result in ongoing high performance in the team’.)

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Exercise 3.0

Taking 200 Per Cent Accountability

The blame for dysfunction and poor performance can’t be laid solely at the feet of either the leader or the team. Everyone shares responsibility, and

everyone must take full accountability—but only for that which they control. The equation is 100 per cent from the leader plus 100 per cent from the team equals 200 per cent accountability.

A partnership in which one person takes full account-ability and the other takes only partial accountability is dysfunctional. It simply doesn’t work. If you hold your-self accountable without holding your partner accountable, you create a narcissist. The saying ‘It takes two to tango’ applies here. It takes two to cause dysfunction, but it also takes two to x that dysfunction. And of course this principle applies to whole teams and organisations.

1. Write down the name of one of your direct reports whom you feel is not being accountable:

a) What specific behaviours is he or she engaging in that demon-strate a lack of accountability?

b) Is this person aware of how they are not being accountable? Do they know exactly where and how they are falling short? If so, how can you be certain of this?

“Mindfulness gives us both the insight to recog-nise that we are account-able and the tools for shifting into a new way of being, behaving and see-ing the world that reduc-es our suffering and that of others.”

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c) What is your accountability in this situation?

d) Are you being 100 per cent accountable in this situation? Why or why not? How might you be contributing to their lack of accountability?

e) What needs to change in order for you both to be 100 per cent accountable? What conversation do you need to have with this person? Write down your answers in detail:

“We cannot inspire change in others until we learn to change ourselves. We cannot maintain presence, aliveness or credibility if we blame others or rationalise unmindful behaviour.”

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Exercises

Lead From Mindful Values Exercise 1.0

Define Your Personal Values

To believe in you, people have to know (1) who you are and what you stand for, and (2) whether or not they can trust you. In other

words, leaders must walk their talk, and in order to do that, they must have a talk to walk. Values are your talk, and living in accordance with them through your behaviour is your walk.

The beginning of your leadership journey is defining clearly who you are, what you stand for and what your deepest values are—in short, your leadership philoso-phy. Knowing your values and being able to articulate them is extraordinarily important for trust building, and without trust there is no leadership. In a research study conducted by my co-authors of my last book, people who rated their leaders as ‘almost always’ clear about their leadership philosophy indicated trusting them more than 66 per cent more than those who said their leaders were ‘almost never’ clear.

Tony Simons at Cornell University, author of The Integrity Divide, writes, ‘Organizations where employees strongly believed their managers followed

“Living and leading from wholesome values truly transforms us. Our funda-mental source of wellbe-ing has shifted from the fluid and unpredictable external world to an inner compass of goodness. The journey challenges us to the very core, but we set out courageously in order to gain the wisdom and peace that can only come from living in alignment with our most fundamen-tal, life-serving values.”

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through on promises and commitments and demonstrated the values they preached were substantially more pro table than those whose managers scored average or lower.’ Knowing and demonstrating your values is how you create trust among your team members, and trust is essential for organ-isational effectiveness.

One study investigated whether employees’ perception of their manager’s behavioural integrity influences job satisfaction, engagement, turnover, ab-senteeism, stress, work/ family conflict, health and life satisfaction. The re-searchers found numerous correlations between perceived behavioural in-tegrity and employee performance. Leaders with high perceived behavioural integrity lead teams that are significantly more satisfied in their job, less like-ly to be absent and less stressed, and that report greater overall health and wellbeing and life satisfaction.

Russ Harris, an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) therapist, coach and teacher, explains that values are your heart’s deepest desires for how you want to behave as a human being. Values are not about what you want to get or achieve; they are about how you want to behave or act on an ongoing basis.

There are literally hundreds of different values, but below you’ll find a list of the most common ones. Probably not all of them will be relevant to you. Keep in mind there are no such things as ‘right values’ or ‘wrong values’. It’s a bit like our taste in pizzas. If you prefer ham and pineapple but I prefer salami and olives, that doesn’t mean that my taste in pizzas is right and yours is wrong. It just means we have different tastes. And similarly, we may have different values.

“Living in alignment with wholesome values will bring you home to yourself. It will help you find a deep peace and ease with who you are and what you do in the world. It is no exag-geration to say that values support a deep level of discovery of what integrity means. And integrity, a sense of wholeness, is something we all long for.”

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Read through the list below (which was provided by Russ Harris), and write a letter next to each value: V = Very important, Q = Quite important and N = Not so important.

Acceptance: to be open to and accepting of myself, others, life, etc.

Adventure: to be adventurous; to actively seek, create, or explore novel or stimulating experiences

Assertiveness: to respectfully stand up for my rights and request what I want

Authenticity: to be authentic, genuine, real; to be true to myself

Beauty: to appreciate, create, nurture or cultivate beauty in myself, others, the environment, etc.

Caring: to be caring towards myself, others, the environment, etc.

Challenge: to keep challenging myself to grow, learn, improve

Compassion: to act with kindness towards those who are suffering

Connection: to engage fully in whatever I am doing, and be fully present with others

Contribution: to contribute, help, assist, or make a positive differ-ence to myself or others

Conformity: to be respectful and obedient of rules and obligations

Cooperation: to be cooperative and collaborative with others

Courage: to be courageous or brave; to persist in the face of fear, threat or difficulty

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Creativity: to be creative or innovative

Curiosity: to be curious, open-minded and interested; to explore and discover

Encouragement: to encourage and reward behaviour that I value in myself or others

Equality: to treat others as equal to myself, and vice-versa

Excitement: to seek, create and engage in activities that are excit-ing, stimulating or thrilling

Fairness: to be fair to myself or others

Fitness: to maintain or improve my fitness; to look after my physi-cal and mental health and wellbeing

Flexibility: to adjust and adapt readily to changing circumstances

Freedom: to live freely; to choose how I live and behave, or help others do likewise

Friendliness: to be friendly, companionable or agreeable towards others

Forgiveness: to be forgiving towards myself or others

Fun: to be fun-loving; to seek, create and engage in fun-filled activities

Generosity: to be generous, sharing and giving, to myself or others

Gratitude: to be grateful for and appreciative of the positive aspects of myself, others and life

Honesty: to be honest, truthful and sincere with myself and others

Humour: to see and appreciate the humorous side of life

Humility: to be humble or modest; to let my achievements speak for themselves

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Industry: to be industrious, hard-working, dedicated

Independence: to be self-supportive, and choose my own way of doing things

Intimacy: to open up, reveal, and share myself — emotionally or physically—in my close personal relationships

Justice: to uphold justice and fairness

Kindness: to be kind, compassionate, considerate, nurturing or caring towards myself or others

Love: to act lovingly or affectionately towards myself or others

Mindfulness: to be conscious of, open to and curious about my here-and-now experience

Order: to be orderly and organised

Open-mindedness: to think things through, see things from oth-er’s points of view, and weigh evidence fairly

Patience: to wait calmly for what I want

Persistence: to continue resolutely, despite problems or difficulties.

Pleasure: to create and give pleasure to myself or others

Power: to strongly influence or wield authority over others, e.g. taking charge, leading, organising

Reciprocity: to build relationships in which there is a fair balance of giving and taking

Respect: to be respectful towards myself or others; to be polite, considerate and show positive regard

Responsibility: to be responsible and accountable for my actions

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Romance: to be romantic; to display and express love or strong affection

Safety: to secure, protect, or ensure safety of myself or others

Self-awareness: to be aware of my own thoughts, feelings and actions

Self-care: to look after my health and wellbeing, and get my needs met

Self-development: to keep growing, advancing or improving in knowledge, skills, character or life experience.

Self-control: to act in accordance with my own ideals

Sensuality: to create, explore and enjoy experiences that stimulate the five senses

Sexuality: to explore or express my sexuality

Spirituality: to connect with things bigger than myself

Skilfulness: to continually practise and improve my skills, and ap-ply myself fully when using them

Supportiveness: to be supportive, helpful, encouraging and avail-able to myself or others

Trust: to be trustworthy; to be loyal, faithful, sincere and reliable

Insert your own unlisted value here:





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Once you’ve marked each value as V, Q, N (Very, Quite or Not so important), go through all the Vs, and select out the top three that are most important to you. Mark each one with a 3, to show it’s in your top three. Finally, write those three values out below, to remind yourself this is what you want to stand for:

My Core Values:

1.

2.

3.

Exercise 1.1

Translating Values Into Behaviours

For them to be meaningful, values must translate into observable, measur-able behaviours, e.g.:

• Value: Integrity

• Behavioural Standards:

o I follow through on commitments, do what I say I will do.

o I speak factually, even if it’s painful for others to hear.

• Value: Curiosity

• Behavioural Standards:

o I ask questions constantly and encourage everyone to ques-tion why we’re doing things and how we can do them better.

I experiment and allow myself and others to fail. I learn from my failures by asking the right questions.

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For each value you listed above, list at least two key behaviours associ-ated with the value. What does this value look like in action? If you’re living the value, what does it actually mean in terms of behaviour?

• Value:

• Key Behaviours:

1.

2.

• Value:

• Key Behaviours:

1.

2.

• Value:

• Key Behaviours:

1.

2.

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Exercise 2.0

Define Your Personal Leadership Philosophy

When leadership experts Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner ask leaders how clear they are about their leadership philosophy,

those who fall into the top 10 per cent on this leader-ship behaviour have quite different work attitudes than their counterparts in the bottom 10 per cent. Their overall attitudes toward the workplace are significantly more positive. When asked to rate their effectiveness as a leader, the scores of those clear about their leader-ship philosophy are 25 per cent higher than those who report not being very clear about their leadership philosophy.

The impact that the leader’s clarity of leadership philosophy has on his or her people is even more dramatic. When asked how effective the leader is, the scores from those working with leaders who are seen as being clear about their leadership philosophy are more than 40 per cent higher than the scores received from the people who view leaders as not very clear about their leadership philosophy.

The evidence is clear: to be most effective, every leader must learn to find the voice that represents who he or she is. When you have clarified your values and found your voice, you will also find the inner confidence necessary to express ideas, choose a direction, make tough decisions, act with determination and be able to take charge of your life, rather than im-personating others.

Consistent leadership action and behaviour requires a clear leadership phi-losophy; your leadership philosophy determines how you react to people and how you react to situations. Your leadership philosophy affects your behaviour and ultimately your leadership effectiveness.

“Leading from values is about so much more than boosting the bottom line. It’s about creating a culture of wholeness and wellness. It’s about bringing out the best in ourselves and others. It’s about being true to ourselves. Ultimately, it’s about creating peace in our hearts.”

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Our leadership philosophy is a set of beliefs and principles that strongly in-fluence how we interpret reality and guide how we understand the way the world works. It’s our philosophy, our understanding and interpretation of leadership, that affects how we react to people, events and situations around us. How we think determines how we behave.

You should by now have your values relatively clear. Can you now translate those values into a leadership philosophy statement? Something you can share with others? I’ll provide an example to help you:

1. Values: Love and honesty

2. Leadership philosophy: I believe in telling people the truth no matter how embarrassing or painful. That includes sharing informa-tion. Honesty is the cornerstone of trust and without trust there is no leadership. Leadership to me is also genuinely caring about your people and demonstrating that care through enabling, developing and recognising them, and even sometimes giving tough love in the form of feedback and accountability.

My leadership philosophy:

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Exercise 3.0

Assessing Your Organisational Values

All values-based leadership development efforts will flounder or fail if your organisation does not have a clear mantra around values. Fur-

thermore, if the values are not immediately accessible to people’s conscious memory they will have little or no bearing on daily actions, and will not be a key lever for cultural health and market superiority.

Challenge #1: Without talking to your colleagues, write down your organisational values:

Challenge #2: How are these values embedded, rewarded and rein-forced in your organisation?

Your team?

“Values give the mind and heart really import-ant guidelines. They are a structure to orient our mindfulness. They serve as guideposts on our jour-ney to reveal to us when we’ve strayed from the path. They are a container, a context for mindfulness.”

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Challenge #3: What are the consequences for not living the values in your organisation?

Your team?

Challenge #4: What specific behaviours are you expected to engage in, in order to be seen to be living the organisational values?

What behaviours are you expected to engage in at the team level?

Challenge #5: What unwritten or unspoken values are rewarded in your organisation?

(i.e. what is ‘really rewarded around here’ … but is in contradiction to the stated values of the organisation and / or leaders.)

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Your team?

Conclusion: What actions or projects need to be implemented as a result of doing this exercise?

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Exercises

Inspire Mindful Vision

Exercise 1.0

Mindful Livelihood Check

Mindless or unconscious livelihood is easily identified as anything that involves lying, cheating, stealing, or doing harm to oth-

ers or the environment. A mindless livelihood creates suffering for ourselves and others. Mindful livelihood is more than the absence of these destructive practices; it is the active and conscious pursuit of a better life for ourselves and others, and by extension the planet and communities that support our wellbeing.

Thich Nhat Hanh says, ‘[Y]ou have to find a way to earn your living without transgressing your ideals of love and compassion. The way you support yourself can be an expression of your deepest self, or it can be a source of suffering for you and others ... Our vocation can nourish our understanding and compassion, or erode them. We should be awake to the consequences, far and near, of the way we earn our living.’ Mindfulness teacher S. N. Goenka adds, ‘If the intention is to play a useful role in society in order to support oneself and to help others, then the work one does is [mindful] livelihood.’

Following the principle of mindful livelihood is how we find meaning in our work rather than just earning a salary. It is what we do to alleviate suffering through our work. When we connect our livelihood to making a positive difference for others, we are much more engaged and happy in our work. We make ourselves happier by making others happier. We transcend selfishness, rather than remaining mired in the pursuit of endless consumption.

“The secret to high per-formance and satisfac-tion is the deeply human need for freedom, growth and creativity, and to make our world a better place. It’s simply not ex-citing, inspiring or mean-ingful for people to work hard merely to increase “shareholder value”. Such a goal, promoted so often in the corporate world, does not inspire people to give their best.”

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1. Analyse your current company and position.

Which parts of your company and job are in alignment with the principle of mindful livelihood, and which parts are not aligned? Write them down:

a) Ways in which my company/position are aligned with mindful livelihood:

b) Ways in which my company/position are not aligned with mindful livelihood:

2. For the second question above, detail exactly why you feel this way, both about your company at large as well as your particular position.

In what specific ways are you and/or your company causing suffering for communities, the environment, suppliers or customers? (e.g. ‘We pollute

“A mindful vision makes people whole again and awakens the best in them. When we know our organisation is mak-ing a positive difference, it opens our hearts to be present with the purpose of the business.”

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the environment’, ‘We take advantage of low-income and poorly educat-ed people’, ‘We conceal critical information from our customers’.)

3. What can/should you personally do to change any of these?

Be specific. (e.g. ‘I can spearhead an initiative to start recycling all our paper waste’, ‘I can have an honest discussion with my boss about the specific issues that bother me’, etc.)

Exercise 2.0

Mindful Vision and Employee EngagementPeople are looking for more than a salary from their work.

They want work that engages their whole selves—not just their minds, but their hearts too. People want work that fulfils social needs and is therefore mean-ingful and psychologically rewarding. They want to see their work as a calling.

“As our mindfulness grows through sustained prac-tice, we become increas-ingly sensitive to the im-pact we have on the world through all our activities, economic and otherwise.”

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a) How is your company making a positive difference for the world?

b) How is your team making a positive difference to others within the company and outside of the company?

c) Do your team members understand this, and are they really en-gaged with it? If so, what evidence tells you this?

d) What can you do to connect you and your team to a more meaningful way of doing work?

Brainstorm this with them. Ask them questions like, ‘What can we do so that we can be more proud of working in this team?’ (e.g. ‘If you went home tonight and told your kids what we have been doing what would you tell them so you knew they would be proud of you?’) ‘What can we

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do to ensure we leave this place better than we found it’? By ‘this place’ we mean the company, suppliers, customers and, of course, the environment.

For more ideas on how to become more aligned with mindful livelihood, take the B Corp

Assessment at http://bimpactassessment.net/.

“Through mindfulness we practise tuning in, reconnecting, engaging and being intimate with reality as it really is. And as we do we realise the self-evident truth of interdependence. In truth, there is no separation. Every word we speak and action we take has a tangible impact on us and on everyone else. Our level of consciousness—or lack thereof—makes a difference in the world.”

http://bimpactassessment.net

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Exercise 3.0

Creating a Shared Vision

For a vision to be truly powerful, it must move from personal vision to shared vision. The lead-er’s team and/or organisation must be aligned

and engaged with the vision. The vision must live and breathe in the hearts of all team members. A leader must learn to translate what they see into something every-one can see, engage with and get excited about. A great vision is a shared vision. In other words, a leader cannot impose what’s important to them exclusively. They must tap into meaning that everyone is excited about.

What is the vision you have for your company/division/department/team? Imagine it’s five years from now and you are leaving your role after incredible success. Jot down what you have done in the following areas:

a) What kind of culture have you built?

b) What have you actually achieved, e.g. what have you challenged, disrupted or created?

“Another way of thinking about mindfulness is as care-fulness. Mindful live-lihood means being full of care for the people with-in our organisation, the customers we serve and everyone on the planet, as well as the planet itself. It is caring about more than money and profit and per-sonal gain; it is about being conscious of and sincerely caring about the impact we have on the world.”

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c) If you overheard people from your team saying they had LOVED working in this team for the last five years, what would you hear them saying?

d) If you went home to your family and in a moment of reflection shared with them why you were so proud of what you and the team had built and achieved, what would you share?

e) Have you shared this with your direct reports? In what forms and how often?

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f) Have you asked them about what they want to achieve? What their dreams for working in this team are? In what forms and how often?

g) What more can you do to inspire your direct reports with a shared mindful (engaging) vision?

“Strength comes from opening up and facing discomfort. And when we avoid what we fear, we shut down and lose the fresh open mind that is beginner’s mind. We cling to the illusion of safely “knowing” and being “right”. Our curiosity dies.”

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Exercises

Cultivate Beginner’s Mind Exercise 1.0

Identifying Expert’s Mind

Most of the time, when we think we know, we don’t really know at all. All we know are our past impressions of a situation that

is happening now, the conclusions we came to on pre-vious occasions, or judgements about similar events or circumstances that happened in the past. ‘I know’ can actually be a great handicap that keeps us entrenched in the past and out of the present. It allows for noth-ing new—no surprises, insights or discoveries. Fresh insights and wisdom remain elusive because we are locked into fixed judgements of the past.

a) List the one or two major shifts that have occurred in your busi-ness and/or industry over the past few years:

“In expert’s mind, we are terrified of “I don’t know”. But in beginner’s mind, we recognise that “I don’t know” is powerful, for it is the beginning of wisdom. Whenever you admit that you don’t know some-thing, it’s a good sign that new insights and under-standing will follow.”

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b) What about these shifts have surprised you?

What about them has clashed with what you thought you knew and made you completely change your fundamental views? (e.g. In our work we are suddenly seeing ‘large mindfulness conferences’, most of which are booked out. This has clashed with my idea that the biggest group size should be 12 people if you want high-quality learning in the area of mindfulness.)

c) Did you find yourself resisting these shifts?

If so, explore the feeling. Where did the resistance come from? (I resisted it a lot, and it came from sensing that maybe my ‘expert opinion’ was wrong, and if I was wrong, was I an expert after all? Feelings of insecurity.)

d) What are your top three challenges as a leader right now?

(e.g. you might have a team that is underperforming, or you are losing your best people, or you can’t get the best people.)

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e) Do you know exactly how to overcome these challenges and solve these problems?

If you answered yes, ask yourself why you’re still struggling with them in that case. Write down your answer:

f) Do you feel any internal resistance to admitting, ‘I don’t know exactly how to solve these issues with one neat solution’?

g) Write down the last two or three times you found yourself en-gaged in a heated argument (or at least a ‘lively discussion’) with someone at work (e.g. ‘I know this is the right way to go!’):

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h) Looking back on these experiences, do you notice if these were caused by any fixated opinions on your part?

If so, explore how you felt during the experiences. Were you defensive? If so, what does that tell you about your opinions?

Exercise 2.0

Creating a Learning Culture

The organisations that will thrive in the mod-ern technological world are those that can in-novate, learn and adapt fastest. So how can lead-

ers create a culture of innovation? How can they inspire people to constantly push the boundaries of the known, to enter the scary and risky territory of the unknown? How can they maintain that delicate balance between holding old ground and gaining new ground? How can they create new wins and open up new opportunities and markets without jeopardising their existing business? First, they must create a safe learning environment.

“Fixed or expert’s mind in-dicates a mind that is not relaxed and at ease. When we work with our minds and hearts, we develop a capacity to be flexible and open. But it takes being free from fixed mind and not getting caught in our strongly held views and opinions.”

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a) What specific organisational or team values and/or policies do you have in place to encourage learning?

b) Suppose someone on your team were to make a costly mistake, however innocently. What would you do? How would you handle it?

c) Identify the last two or three times a direct report did make a costly mistake. What did you do about it?

d) Looking back, would you say that your response encouraged or stifled learning? Why or why not?

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e) Without prompting them, ask your top three to five direct re-ports whether or not they fear making big mistakes in your team, and how they would feel about making a mistake. Record the responses you receive:

f) Now consider a mistake you have made (maybe more than one).

Have you shared these mistakes or covered them up? Jot them down and make sure you share them with your team, along with what you have learnt (and keep sharing). The more you share your mistakes the safer they feel to admit theirs and learn and grow. Your behaviour makes a difference.

“We will never have all the answers and to assume that we do is incredibly dangerous. The best we can do is to explore the world around us and our circumstances with open-mind-ed and open-hearted curiosity. We can try things and see what works, then quickly adjust when things don’t work.”

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Exercise 2.1

Shifting From ‘Initiatives’ to ‘Experiments’

In their book The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner write, ‘Leaders make risk safe, as paradoxical as that might sound. They turn experiments

into learning opportunities. They don’t define boldness solely in terms of go-for-broke, giant-leap projects. More often than not, they see change as starting small, using pilot projects, and gaining momentum. The vision may be grand and distant, but the way to reach it is by putting one foot in front of the other ... Of course, when you experiment, not everything works out as intended. There are mistakes and false starts. They are part of the process of innovation. What’s critical, therefore, is that leaders promote learning from these experiences.’

1. What are the top two experiments that your team are engaged in right now?

“The ability to learn quickly has become more important than capital, market share or almost any other factor. Creating a culture of perpetual innovation is far more important than any business strategy you could devise.”

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a) What are the top two initiatives that your team are engaged in right now?

b) Which of the two questions above was easier to answer, and why?

“The one consistent thing about great leaders is that they get the best out of others. They know leadership is not a solo endeavour. This is done through generosity of heart and spirit, generosity of sharing and supporting, of recognising the contributions of others.”

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Initiatives Versus Experiments

Initiatives Experiments

With initiatives, we’re stuck in the par-adox of wanting to innovate but being fearful of making mistakes. We feel the pressure to maximise shareholder val-ue and profitability. We use terms like ‘best practices’, ‘benchmarking’ and ‘standards’. But there’s nothing new in best practices; they’re simply what has worked in the past. That’s not inno-vation. Initiatives are often subject to confirmation bias and sunk-cost bias because of the pressure leaders feel to make them work, even when the feed-back tells them that something needs to shift. Initiatives often devolve into forced attempts to prove an idea or strategy right. Leaders feel a respon-sibility to make them succeed, which often leads to a refusal to recognise when they are not going well. Initia-tives are also often an attempt to cre-ate certainty in an uncertain world. In this framework, there is no beginner’s mind; there are only egos and experts who ‘know’ and then deny and defend when things don’t turn out how they had predicted.

In an experiment, when something goes wrong we don’t immediately jump into blame and defensiveness mode. Experiments remove ego from the equation. We’re simply observing and analysing with beginner’s mind. The idea of an experiment isn’t to force anything to succeed, but rather simply to learn. When experiments don’t go as planned, we try to under-stand what this is telling us. Rather than imposing our ideas of what should be, we’re letting the reality of the ex-periment tell us what actually is. We’re playing around in a lab and watching what happens.

2. After reading these definitions, are you currently engaged in any experiments? If so, list them:

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If not, brainstorm your ideas for the top two to three experiments you be-lieve your team/ department / organisation should engage in immediately:

3. What makes failure safe in experiments is boundaries.

Just as we would set up safe boundaries in a science lab, we can create safe boundaries in business experiments. Don’t do anything that has the potential to break your whole company. Make it safe to fail. Get really objective about the risk you’re taking on. What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen? Quantify it. Ask yourself if you can live with that failure. If not, change the parameters and boundaries. If so, then you can relax and move forward, ac-cepting that the worst-case scenario is a real possibility. When that worst case happens, no one will be blamed or punished—we’ll learn from it together. In fact, when we really understand the power of experimenting, we actually reward people for intelligent applications of failure. Getting the monkey of failure off your back gives you the space and mindset to learn.

a) After listing your proposed experiments, now detail the following for each:

Experiment #1:

What ‘safe boundaries’ need to be put in place for this experiment?

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• Experiment #2:


• Experiment #3:


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Exercises

Empower Others to Shine Exercise 1.0

Bringing Out the Best in Others

In a leadership context, generosity isn’t about giving money or even volunteering time, but rather about giving of our cooperation, respect, attention, care and

efforts to our colleagues, boss and direct reports. A leader moves from being an individual contributor to getting things done through others. The one consistent thing about great leaders is that they get the best out of others. They know leadership is not a solo endeavour. This is done through generosity of heart and spirit, generosity of sharing and supporting, of recognising the contributions of others.

In the spaces below, write down the following:

• The names of all your direct reports.

• What you believe are this person’s greatest gifts.

• Ways that you see this person could leverage their natural gifts more effectively to improve their behaviour and performance.

• What you commit to do to helping each person take their lives to the next level.

“As leaders, our job is not to fix people. If we have that attitude, we can be certain that we’re see-ing them as broken and therefore deficient. Noth-ing good ever comes from that view. Our job is to see the inherent goodness in people and to empower them to become what we see in them.”

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Example:

Direct Report: John

His/Her Greatest Natural Gifts:

Creative, great with technology. Loves exploring new things.

What might this person need to stop/do less of or start/do more of to leverage these gifts to make a greater difference on your team and in your organisation?

They need more time for creating solutions for making customer service

more efficient, especially in the area of our systems. They need to stop being

asked to do constant maintenance and troubleshooting small problems and

be given space to do development.

What do you personally commit to do to help this person do the things you’ve listed above?

I personally commit to finding a way to get the maintenance tasks eased

for them, and create space, expectations and resources for time developing

the system.

“When we help our team members be the best they can be, without feeling threatened that they will shine brighter than us, they will give their best because they want to, rather than because it’s expected of them.”

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Direct Report:




* * *

Direct Report:



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* * *

Direct Report:




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* * *

Direct Report:




* * *

Direct Report:



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* * *

Direct Report:




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Exercise 2.0

Cultivating Compassion

Compassion dissolves barriers and helps us to reconnect with our lives and with others. One effective way to cultivate deeper compassion is

to use an exercise called ‘just like me’. We often create enemy images of others and see how they are so much different than us. But the truth is that we’re all more alike than we are different. We all want to be happy and avoid suffering. We all want to be accepted, respected, valued and loved. We don’t want to feel inadequate, lonely or depressed.

Whenever you meet someone who seems much different than you, or whenever you get into conflict with someone, think ‘Just like me’. ‘Just like me, she wants to be respected’. ‘Just like me, she doesn’t want to be blamed for things’.

This simple exercise draws us closer to others and helps us to really see them in their struggles.

a) Write down the names of three team/organisational members with whom you’ve been frustrated in the past for poor behaviour and/or performance, followed by what each person did specifi-cally to cause your frustration:

Team Member:

What S/He Did to Disappoint/Frustrate You:

“The whole point of leadership isn’t to get glory for ourselves, but rather to enable and inspire teams to accom-plish what we could never accomplish alone. It is to empower others to bring out their best and realise their poten-tial in the pursuit of a common goal.”

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Team Member:


Team Member:


b) Now, mindfully explore each scenario that frustrated you. First, iden-tify your underlying judgemental assumptions about this person re-garding the scenario. Why you believe s/he acted this way? (e.g. ‘She’s lazy’, ‘He tries to get away with everything’ or ‘He just doesn’t care’.)

Team Member:

My Judgements About Why S/He Acted This Way:

Team Member:


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Team Member:


c) Finally, use the exercise above to consider new ways of seeing this situation. Assuming the best in this person, what legitimate reason can you find for this person behaving this way? What were they hoping to gain? What were they afraid of? What were they hoping to avoid? If explored honestly, these should all be reasons that you can wholly relate with.

Team Member:

The Valid Reason Why This Person Behaved This Way (‘Just Like Me’):

Team Member:


Team Member:


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* Note on this exercise: Just because you are now more compassionate with that per-son does not mean you condone or agree with their behaviour. It just means if you cannot change their behaviour you are happier and at more peace, and if you can, your request and communication style will be far more effective in the long term, and create engagement and connection, even if it’s a tough message. Compassion can be fierce, but it’s never judgemental, self-righteous or angry.

Exercise 2.1

Identifying and Dissolving Enemy Images

When our hearts are closed, a sense of separateness governs our perceptions and behaviours. With that disconnectedness comes a tendency to view ourselves and others as objects that we use

to achieve our goals. Even worse, we start seeing others as enemies. If people get in the way of our goals, we can very quickly close our hearts and go into avoidant, compliant or aggressive behaviour. And we further dehumanise them with labels like ‘idiot’ or ‘selfish’.

When we are mere objects to each other, we can’t see the hurt and confu-sion underlying poor behavioural choices, and neither can we see the light and beauty that is the essence of who we are. And our actions follow from that delusion. All physical and emotional violence is based on seeing ‘the other’ as unreal, inhuman objects who are different and separate from us.

In the corporate world, we may not be physically violent with each other, but the subtle violence that comes from dehumanising one another is an ever-present problem nonetheless.

“Seeing people through the eyes of compassionate equality, we shed our impatience and our controlling mindset. We see ourselves as servants of our team members. We get in tune with our innate desire to help them experience joy and fulfilment.”

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a) Write down the names of three people in your organisation with whom you’ve had conflict in the past, followed by your judge-mental labels of how you perceive him or her:

Name:

How You Perceive Him or Her (be petty and judgmental, e.g. ‘selfish’, ‘lazy’, ‘condescending’, domineering’, etc.):

* * *

Name:

How You Perceive Him or Her:

* * *

Name:

How You Perceive Him or Her:

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b) How do your judgements and labels of these people influence how you interact with and treat them? Be honest with yourself.

c) If each of these three people were to do this same exercise to-ward you, how do you think they would respond? Don’t try to defend yourself here—really get inside the heads of the other people and see things from their perspective.

Name:

How They May Perceive Me Based on Our Interactions:

* * *

Name:


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Name:


d) What have you learned about these relationships by doing this exercise?

Exercise 3.0

Wisely Wielding the ‘Fierce Sword of Compassion’

Western culture teaches us to view compassion as soft and, frankly, weak and passive. We think that some-

how being compassionate makes us spineless wimps who allow others to take advantage of us and who never take a stand. But nothing could be further from the truth. Compassion actually enables tough conversations because it allows us to conduct them without anger—to hold people accountable with purity of intent.

“You will be amazed by what people can do when they feel safe, valued and important. By watering the ground of their be-ing with sincere, heartfelt praise and encouragement, you will be able to watch them flower from within. You will bring out the best in them. Your organi-sation will perform better than it ever has. And the greatest reward of all is the feeling of peace, warmth and happiness you will create within yourself.”

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a) Write down the names of one to three team members who are fall-ing short and with whom you may be avoiding a tough conversation:

Team Member:

Specific Problematic Behaviours:

* * *

Team Member:


* * *

Team Member:


b) For the benefit of these people, what needs to be said to them in order for them to improve their behaviour/performance?

Team Member:

The Honest Feedback S/He Needs to Receive:

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Team Member:


* * *

Team Member:


c) How can you give this feedback to each person kindly and compassionately? Write down a compassion conversation for each individual:

Team Member:

Compassionate Feedback:

* * *

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Team Member:


* * *

Team Member:


d) Finally, make a commitment to have this conversation with each of these individuals.

Notes:

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Exercises

Nourish Others With Love Exercise 1.0

Cultivating Lovingkindness

For a leader, lovingkindness manifests as thinking of the welfare and happiness of the whole. It is to deeply and sincerely care about your people, to be

emotionally invested in their progress and success. And it is to show how much you care about them by regularly and consistently expressing appreciation for their efforts.

1. Write down the names of your top three to five direct reports or colleagues if you don’t have direct reports:

“For leaders, gratitude is a catalyst for rec-ognition. It makes us constantly look for the good in people and feeds our desire to share our gratitude for a job well done. It is a light we carry with us that people are drawn to because they feel good about themselves when they are around us.”

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2. Think of each individual and identify at least three reasons why you sincerely appreciate this person:

Name:

Three Reasons Why I Appreciate Him/Her:

1.

2.

3.

* * *

Name:


1.

2.

3.

* * *

Name:


1.

2.

3.

* * *

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Name:


1.

2.

3.

* * *

Name:


1.

2.

3.

Now, commit to sharing the thoughts you have written above with each of these individuals.

Exercise 1.1

Seeing and Connecting With Your Team Members

1. Write down the names of your three direct reports whom you know the least and as much information as you can about them:

“As we come home to our-selves and give ourselves that lovingkindness we long for, we discover within ourselves a limitless capacity to love. We find that the more love we give, the more we gener-ate and the more we receive. Love truly is the source of our greatest strength, the qual-ity that elicits the best and purest in us, that fortifies us against all hatred, negativity and challenges.”

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Name:

• Is s/he married?

• If so, what is his/her spouse’s name?

• Does s/he have children?

• If so, what are his/her children’s names?

• What are his/her hobbies?

• What are his/her talents and skills that may not be used/seen at work (e.g. playing guitar, dancing, painting, etc.)?

• What are his/her most important life goals/aspirations?

• How does s/he spend his or her free time?

• If s/he were to teach a course or write a book, what would it be about?

• Where does s/he see him or herself in five years?

• Why did s/he choose this career?

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• Why did s/he choose this company?

• How does s/he want to be remembered?

* * *

Name:









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* * *

Name:






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2. After completing this exercise, were you surprised by how little you knew, or pleased by how much you knew about each individual?

a) What is your commitment to getting to know each of these three people better? Write down a detailed plan for each person:

Person 1:

Person 2:

Person 3:

“Great leaders bring out the very best in others. Care is an essential element of this. If you don’t feel connected with your boss, how can they inspire you or push you beyond your limits?”

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Exercise 2.0

Recognising and Rewarding Team Members

Researcher Emily Heaphy and consultant Mar-cial Losada examined the effectiveness of 60 leadership teams at a large information process-

ing company. ‘Effectiveness’ was measured according to financial performance, customer satisfaction ratings and 360-degree feedback ratings of the team members. They found that the factor that produced the greatest difference between the most and least successful teams was the ratio of positive comments (‘I agree with that’, for instance, or ‘That’s a terrific idea’) to negative comments (‘I don’t agree with you’ or ‘We shouldn’t even consider doing that’) that the participants made to one another. (Nega-tive comments include sarcastic or disparaging remarks.)

The average ratio for the highest-performing teams was 5.6 (i.e. nearly six positive comments for every negative one). The medium-performance teams averaged 1.9 (almost twice as many positive comments as negative ones). But the average for the low-performing teams, at 0.36 to 1, was al-most three negative comments for every positive one.

Gratitude, appreciation, recognition and encouragement are the oil that greases the wheels of organisations. They increase trust and foster cooperation. Simply put, we feel better about ourselves, we perform better, and we enjoy working more with people who encourage us and recognise our contributions.

“The best leaders are always looking for ways to recognise and praise their people. They truly see their people and take notice of their contributions. They never take them for granted—and people can feel that from them.”

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a) Describe in detail your formal recognition system for your team and/or your organisation:

b) As you look at this, do you feel like it’s enough?

List three to five ways that you could formally recognise the contribu-tions of team members better:

c) How do you recognise people, personally and informally?:

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d) Do you feel like you’re doing these things enough?

List three to five ways that you could informally recognise the contribu-tions of team members better:

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Conclusion

Thank you for completing this workbook and I hope you have tru-ly benefitted from it. If you wish to deepen your journey or sim-ply continue on with the good work you have done so far, con-

sider doing our online video and audio programs on www.mindfulleader.net or even attend a live event. You can also download our app Mindful Minutes from the Google or Apple App Store and enjoy a supported pro-gram for ongoing mindful leadership practice in the form of meditations, talks, writings and interviews.

May you be well and deeply happy,

Michael Bunting



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About the author

Michael Bunting is the founder of the leadership consultan-cy WorkSmart Australia. WorkSmart consults to organisations ranging from global multinationals through to medium-sized

businesses in the area of leadership, mindfulness, engagement, alignment, values and culture. He is the author of The Mindful Leader and co-authored A Practical Guide to Mindful Meditation with Patrick Kearney and Extraordi-nary Leadership in Australia & New Zealand with Jim Kouzes and Barry Pos-ner, the world’s premier researchers and authors in the field of leadership. He also teaches Mindful Leadership for Sydney University’s award-win-ning Global Executive MBA.

Michael regularly contributes articles for industry magazines including CEO Magazine, BRW, SmartCompany and Inside HR. He has also appeared on Sky Business News and several radio stations. He delivers large-scale keynote presentations at industry events, trade shows and company off-sites.

Michael has kept a disciplined personal mindfulness practice since 1994 and has taught mindful leadership to businesses and government since 1999. Michael holds two business degrees and a postgraduate diploma in mindful-ness-based psychotherapy.

He lives with his family in Sydney, Australia.

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