Joel and Michelle are Senior faculty members for the International Center for Organization Design, Founders of Seattle-based InnerWork Technologies, Inc., Joel and Michelle Levey weave personal mastery practices like this one into their work with leaders, teams, and organizations.
Purpose: To help people develop skills of wholehearted presence and mindful awareness. (Most people have already mastered mindlessness and distraction!) This exercise is based on the premise that choice follows awareness: that any individual's capacity for thinking creatively about complex systems is directly proportional to the quality of his or her "quiet mind" skills.
Overview: People spend 15 minutes before key team activities, clarifying intention and focusing their attention.
Participants: Members of any work process, continuous improvement, organizational learning, or strategic team.
Facilitator: It is helpful to have either an experienced facilitator or someone who "sits out" the session, to talk or pace the group through the steps of this exercise, by reading aloud this text as people practice. A different participant might facilitate each time.
One of the first steps in focusing the mind is to be clear on intention &emdash; on the aspects of your life that are important to you. To accomplish this, bring to mind the circle of "stakeholders" who would be influenced by your decisions: your co-workers and loved ones supporting you back home; your suppliers and customers spread all over the globe; the investors who have staked your efforts and risked their livelihood on your success; the members of your local and regional communities who would be influenced by your work; and the generations to come who would live with the impact of your decisions.
Now focus your attention on the natural flow of your breath. As you inhale, simply know that you are breathing in. As you exhale... simply know that you are breathing out. As you breathe, begin to collect all your wandering thoughts, and to arrive fully focused right here and now in the flow of the present moment.
As you use your breathing to help you get focused, stay relaxed. If you have a tendency to try too hard, one strategy to keep from taking yourself too seriously is to hold a sort of half smile to your self inwardly as you enjoy your breathing. Stay with this mindful breathing for about 10 minutes in order to quiet, calm, and focus your minds.
As you are mindful of your breathing, be attentive to the emergence of distracting thoughts. If or when your attention wanders off, notice if it is drawn to a fantasy of the future or to a memory of the past. Make a mental note of the distraction, and then as you inhale, simply draw your attention back to focus mindfully on what you are doing, being mindful of your breathing.
If you find it particularly hard to break the chatter of internal dialogue, we suggest experimenting, by synchronizing your breathing with the quiet mental repetition of two words. Since the mind is busy thinking or talking to itself most of the time, using a quiet mental recitation is an effective strategy to harness and focus mental activity in a more intentional and productive way. Thus, with each inhalation you might make a brief mental note, "Here..." and when you exhale, breathe out the mental note, "Now...". "Here.... Now..... Here..... Now...". As an alternative you might experiment with other mental notations such as: "Focus... Flow...", "Receiving... Radiating...", or as a gesture to your own sense of centerdness, "Arriving..." on inhale, and "Home..." on exhale.
Now, individually, train your attention quietly, deeply and clearly on the work and strategic challenges of the meeting you are about to hold (or the rest of your day). Contemplate and reflect upon the qualities you intend to bring to your work, and reflect upon the outcomes, strategies, and pathways to achieving your objectives. If your mind wanders to unrelated thoughts, be mindful of the distraction, and use discipline to return the focus of your thoughts to the subject you have chosen.
At the end of these 15 deep and quiet minutes, group members often find it valuable to debrief, and to discuss the insights and inspirations that had emerged for them.
Over the years, we have conducted exercises like this with many different types of people. For some, such inner work is a new frontier of personal and team development. For others, such simple exercises are familiar and integral disciplines. But, as one refinery engineer commented, "I've done this kind of mental fitness training on my own for years, but never with a group of people that I work with. I've always wondered how it would be to work with a group of people who knew how to get focused and work in a more focused mind state together." People are often surprised to find that "other people I work with are interested in this inner work, too." And they move from this quiet time into action with a more focused sense of clarity, purpose, and common sensibility.