Consciousness is made of attention and intention. Attention helps you see more clearly, like when you shine a flashlight in a dark room. That flashlight is also healing. Wherever you focus with acceptance, you heal, including in yourself and others. Intention transforms the energy of attention into information. Inquiring into your own attention and intention enables you to get to know who you are. 

You are not your thoughts. You are not what you do for work. Our personalities are a fiction. We get attached to this story, but we can get behind our egos to understand our real needs and wants. Our life becomes more joyful and fulfilling when we remember who we really are. In addition, this clarity helps us become more flexible, effective and impactful as leaders. 

Meditation is self-focused attention with empathy. 

Experiment: Self-inquiry meditation 

Experiment: Experiencing subtle forms of communication

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Coaching is a powerful skill for leaders and professionals. Mindful coaching is about helping others reflect in the context of a safe relationship. Silence and Caring are at the heart of mindful coaching. When coaches provide accepting attention it is healing in itself. 

There are two phases of mindful coaching: Assessment and Goal-setting. Assessment is about seeking understanding and has two key components: 

• Active listening 
• Focused Inquiry

Goal-setting is about planning and action and has two key components: 

• Brainstorming 
• Committing to action

There are three levels and modes of operating as a mindful coach:

• Sounding Board
• Skills Development Trainer
• Transformational Agent

Generally we avoid giving advice because our goal is for clients to learn to think for themselves. Questions help us avoid taking over and invite reflection. However, if a client is about to make a costly mistake that could affect their career, we can temporarily step out of our neutral stance and go into expert mode to provide advice. 

Experiment: Receiving coaching

Experiment: Providing coaching 

Experiment: Increasing the power of questions 

Experiment: Giving constructive feedback

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In this chapter I tell the story of an organization that successfully engaged employees in a bottoms up goal-setting process. This involved two MindShifts: moving from Personal Accountability to Organizational Accountability, and moving from Task Analysis to Market Analysis.

I outline a five-step process to set and implement an organization’s goals:

1.Participative goal-setting: soliciting employee involvement in establishing goals.

2.Communication: articulating goals and validating understanding.

3.Execution: planning and implementing effective strategies and processes.

4.Accounting: setting up appropriate measures to keep track of progress toward goals.

5.Reflection: periodically reviewing results and modifying processes.

Experiment: Setting goals within your organization

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Goals are helpful in focusing attention. However, when we get too attached to goals our focus narrows and we lose track of our process. Goals are a reference point, but not helpful as an ongoing focus. Checking the score too much while playing the game is a surefire way to psych yourself out. A good development plan keeps you focused on how you are going to reach your goals and what skills you want to learn on the way. I provide a sample plan and show you how to articulate SMART goals, actions and metrics. 

Development plans are different from performance goals. Development plans are about the ‘how’. Performance goals are the ‘what’. Unfortunately, most organizations focus employees on performance goals that are set top down, rather than inquiring into employee aspirations and setting bottom up development goals. 

Don’t worry about creating the perfect plan. Just take one step and commit to one action at a time. You can evolve and elaborate your plan over time. Development plans are best thought of as living documents rather than one and done activities. 

Experiment: Completing your development plan

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We manage time and priorities best when we focus on managing ourselves and our attention. 

There is one fundamental time management question and two key follow up questions:

What is the most important thing to do right now?

What are the full range of my choices?

What are the consequences of pursuing any one goal or activity?

Experiment: Creating a self-management system

Experiment: Self-management and time management checklist

Experiment: Avoiding overcommitment 

Experiment: Aligning tasks and purpose

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We can increase our self-control and ability to focus. In addition, we can improve our ‘executive functions’. These enable us to organize ourselves and manage the demands of our lives. Multitasking is seductive but makes us error prone and makes it harder to focus in the future. It is essentially neurotoxic as it thins our prefrontal cortex. We need to intentionally set boundaries on technology, for example, how often we check our email. And we need to decide whether we need to respond instantaneously. If we are clear on our limitations we can use technology to help us focus rather than be its slave. 

Experiment: Mindful consumption 

Experiment: Email and communication breaks

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We live with constant uncertainty and change in modern life. To be able to be effective we need to learn to ride the waves of our feelings and use the information we get from them. We can learn to trust our inner process as well as group processes. Change has a predictable series of stages along with emotional responses and behavioral signs. Empathy and communication help us and our teams through the process of change:

• Denial
• Anger/Depression/Anxiety
• Disorientation 
• Acceptance

Experiment: Softening impatience & frustration 

Experiment: Distinguishing control from choice

Experiment: Helping yourself and your team through change

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The pervasiveness of negativity in our culture and in our minds is a habit we can break free from. The first step is become aware of the pattern. Then, we can adopt a beginner’s mind to undo the impact of assumptions and personalization. An objective and supportive stance towards our own thinking pattern shifts our attention away from negativity. Generosity and giving, especially without the expectation of a return, are proven ways to boost our mood and positivity. Ultimately, how we treat ourselves is the most important habit to build to undo negative and irrational thinking. 

Experiment: Keeping a rational thinking journal 

Experiment: Deactivating core fears: The NO FEAR approach

Experiment: Cultivating positivity, perspective and gratitude

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We can build true self-confidence from the inside out by cultivating self-acceptance. We undermine our sense of self-worth by trying to measure ourselves by external benchmarks and trying to cultivate self-esteem: how much money do we make, what is our position in the hierarchy, are we getting a lot of recognition and approval, and do we have more or less than those around us? This outcome orientation makes us worried about evaluation and potential failure, and so we are vulnerable to worry and psyching ourselves out, both in sports and in work. We can complement this by a process orientation, which is about how we are learning, getting better at our work and enjoying our activities. This approach helps us feel good about ourselves and the journey, and is the key to cultivating self-acceptance. We can’t control outcomes, but we can control how we focus on feelings, experience and process.

Self-esteem is vulnerable to outcomes we don’t control in four areas:

1. Stuff
2. Status & Approval
3. Accomplishment
4. Fantasy

Self-acceptance is solid and sustainable, and is based on four factors:

1. Alignment with our values and purpose
2. Self-compassion 
3. Self-regulation 
4. Opening to reality 

Experiment: We can replace Worrying with Planning, and free ourselves from unproductive and draining anxiety. 

Experiment: Getting into Flow—we can learn to ‘get in the zone’ and temporarily drop our focus on outcomes.  

Experiment: Befriending ourselves is the practice of supporting, trusting, taking care of and loving ourselves.

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The paradox is that we have free will but are in many ways creatures of habit. If we focus on it, we can consciously choose how we think, feel, and act. Yet much of our behavior is initiated unconsciously, automatically, and repetitively. In other words, it is a habit. We depend on habits to live. However, when our lives become too full of habits, we become less conscious and able to make choices.

Experiment: Watching Habit Cycles

Learning to pay attention to your habits so you can become more conscious of them

Experiment: Charting Habits

Tools to track and change your habits.

Experiment: Taming Addiction

Ways to undo the most difficult and destructive habits.

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The first task in forming a team is to figure out where are you all going, in other words, to identify a shared goal. Leading the team is about managing the team’s attention so everyone is focused on how to support and achieve that goal. To do this you must clearly articulate the team’s direction and regularly communicate about the goal.

Experiment: Roles & Responsibilities Charting

A simple technique for accomplishing this is to create a roles and responsibilities chart.

Experiment: High Performing Team Survey 

This tool helps team members assess and then close gaps regarding how well the team is functioning on a number of dimensions:

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Relationships are the core of business. To be successful we not only need to be able to build individual relationships, but to make the mindshift to networking, which is building a broad network of relationships with teammates, customers, subordinates, peers, vendors, board members, community and government representatives. 

Experiment: Key Constituent Mapping

We can map out our key constituents and build a plan to invest in each relationship.

Experiment: Collecting 360 feedback 

Understanding others’ perspectives is key to building relationships and influencing.

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Working with emotions can be scary, and we are taught to suppress our feelings in order to work in organizations. We can learn the science of emotions in order to tap into their power. 

Emotional intelligence (or EI) is the ability to use the information in emotions to make decisions and reach goals. Because leadership involves working through others, it is not surprising that EI is more predictive of leadership success than IQ or personality characteristics.

These skills ​​underlie the MindShift from Self-Awareness to Interpersonal Awareness. Interpersonal awareness allows you to communicate, negotiate, and influence effectively, as well as build strong relationships and create effective teams.

Experiment: Understanding and Using Feelings

1. Labeling emotions and letting them shift
2. Using breathing and meditation to work with feelings
3. Moving from meaning to action--deciding what to do with your feelings
4. Practicing principles of assertive communication

Experiment: Empathy and Emotional Attunement

Using non-verbal cues to track and read emotions.

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Effective communication involves making the mindshift from exchanging information (Giving and receiving information) to communication (Creating a two-way dialogue with a wide constituent group about your organization’s activities). A dialogue is a creative process where we are open and do not have a preconceived idea of where we will go. Communication shares the same root as “communion.” Thus, at its core, communication is about connecting, sharing, and community. The heart of communication is caring about another person and making the intention to connect. 

Experiment: Mindful Dialogue 

Mindful Dialogue is speaking and listening with careful attention, and is based on two essential components: Deep Listening and Focused Speaking. The exercise involves 3 steps: preparing ourselves to listen, developing our self-awareness in the moment, and developing our message. I present principles for each of these steps.

Experiment: Listening with Beginner’s Mind

To listen with an open, beginner’s mind takes practice. It involves suspending our biases and preconceptions. 

Experiment: Speaker/Listening

In speaker/listener, two people practice listening to each other with the intention to go to the 4th level of listening. 

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We need challenge to learn and perform at our best. But when there is too much we get overwhelmed. Our fight or flight responses get activated, reducing our flexibility and ability to think clearly. Chronic stress wears down our bodies and leaves us vulnerable to a wide variety of mental and physical illnesses.  

We can become better at managing stress with a set of focused strategies. One key is our experience of autonomy and control over our lives and work. Another key is increasing our access to feedback. Mindfulness can unlock both of these keys. 

Experiment: Identifying Sources of Stress

We think of stress as coming at us from external pressures, but a lot of our stress comes from how we think about things. It can help to separate out where our stress is coming from and objectively label each source. 

Experiment: Building a Plan Using the Top 100 Mindful Leadership Strategies

The most important ways to work with stress, and to build your leadership skills, fall into six categories of Mindful Leadership — Spirit, Mind, Emotion, Body, Connecting, and Inspiring. I outline my Top 100 of favorite strategies for you to build a plan to increase your resilience. 

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Value is created by innovation and drives business. We can change our perspective to see new strategies and possibilities. The customer’s perspective is the most important because any innovation must serve a human need to be valuable. 

Experiment: Creative Problem-solving using Perspective Taking. 

Creative thinking strategies:

• Using symmetries (flipping problems on their head) 
• Channel changing (using different media and genres to see things with fresh eyes)
• Unlimited resources (going beyond realistic constraints)
• Playing (having fun creating new rules)
• Brainstorming (having teams generate ideas without judgment) 
• Self-hypnosis (letting our unconscious guide us)
• Team structure (creating a diverse team and providing them with a safe environment) 

Everyone can become more creative by challenging their self-definitions and self-limited assumptions. What are the factors in yourselves and your organization that get in the way of calculated risk-taking? 

Experiment: Learning to go into trance using self-hypnosis and visualization. I provide guidelines for you to go into a restorative and creative trance. 

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Everyone can learn to be more strategic and create a vision. This key skill enables you to align and mobilize your teams. I tell the story of a leader who learned to be more strategic by practicing the four Ps of strategic thinking:

• Peripheral search (scanning the environment)
• Percolating (creative reflection) 
• Participative Leadership (bringing others’ ideas in)
• Persuasion (getting others on board)

Strategic thinking depends on zooming out and widening your attention and making two MindShifts:

• Task Analysis to Market Analysis 
• Personal Accountability to Organizational Accountability 

Leaders need to make their vision actionable using tangible objectives and milestones. Your vision also needs to be connected to your purpose. This ensures your team will understand why you care about it and why they should get behind it. 

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When we align with our values and purpose we are more motivated, enjoy our work more and have a greater chance of success. When we align with our organization’s values and purpose we help it succeed. We can create meaningful ways to have employees reflect on their values and connect them with their organization’s purpose. These efforts can lead to as much as a 29% improvement in business results. This demonstrates the power of sincere reflection and alignment on an individual and organizational level. To create a meaningful values statement, organizations need to facilitate bottom up dialogues that include all employees. 

Experiment: Clarifying your values. Outlining and prioritizing your values enables you to align with them. 

Experiment: Envisioning purpose. What gives your life meaning and what do you want your legacy to be?

Experiment: Living our values. We can create organizations that live our values, and these are the organizations where we are inspired to work.

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As you go from Doer to Leader you need to change where you focus, what you value, and how you measure success. This is MindShifting. Once you are clear on what your job is, you can decide how you want to focus to do that job effectively.

You need to ask different questions as you define your priorities, and the 7 MindShifts helps you clarify these: 

1. Doing to Leading
2. Exchanging Information to Communicating
3. Relationship Building to Networking
4. Self-development to Coaching and Team Development
5. Personal Accountability to Organizational Accountability 
6. Task Analysis to Market Analysis 
7. Self-awareness to Interpersonal Awareness 

Experiment: The MindShifting Assessment helps you determine where you are on each of the seven dimensions and know where you want to focus your development as you go from Doer to Leader.

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You can learn to focus both inward and outward to build your leadership skills. Once you can focus, you can change your perspective using framing and multiple vantage points.

I review the following key concepts:

• Understanding politics in a positive light using perspective taking. 
• The positive and negative sides of habituation--tuning things out consciously and unconsciously. 
• The danger of being an expert and how to use ‘beginner’s mind’ to combat habituation. 
• The ‘one-down’ position to facilitate learning. 
• Challenging ourselves with new experiences to facilitate learning. 

Experiment: tiger eye meditation--meditating with your eyes open to develop your ability to focus both inward and outward.

Experiment: noticing different types of distractions and learning to manage them; creating gap time by taking a media holiday. 

Experiment: mindful reading--taking in ideas with curiosity and openness rather than judgment. 

Experiment: positive sensitization to open your mind and cultivate greater awareness.

Experiment: using ultradian rhythms to recharge and changing channels to refresh yourself on your body’s natural cycles.

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