Marc Lesser's Blog, page 20

Mindful Leadership: Living In Two Worlds

A coaching client last week asked me to define “mindful leadership.” I’ve been studying and teaching (and aspiring to practice) mindful leadership for much of my life. Mindfulness is an enormous body of work and a practice worthy of a lifetime of study and practice, as is leadership. There is no set or proscribed way to define the practice of mindful leadership.

In this instance I described mindful leadership as having two distinct aspects, of cultivating the ability to live simultaneously in two distinct worlds. The first world is the practice of becoming intimately familiar with and engaging with your creative gaps – the gaps between where you are and where you aspire to be, externally and internally. The second is to understand and embody the world where there are not gaps, that there is nothing lacking, nothing to change or gain.

Starting with the first world, examples of external gaps are, where you are and where you aspire to be in:

number or type of customers or clients
revenue projections
building an effective and aligned team

Examples of internal gaps are:

developing more self-awareness
cultivating greater confidence
becoming a more skillful writer or presenter

Peter Senge, in The Fifth Disciple, his groundbreaking book from 30 years ago, calls these gaps Creative Tension, and goes on to say that identifying, and not avoiding the discomfort of staying with these gaps might be the most important skill of a leader. This is one way that leaders grow and develop; how leaders engage with and respond to change, difficulty, and adversity. Mindful leadership involves using all parts of our lives, especially these gaps, as opportunities to learn and grow.

The second world is strange, paradoxical, and obvious. There are no gaps. It’s like the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki’s statement “You are perfect just as you are, and you can use a little improvement.” I don’t think he was making a joke, even though it sounds humorous.  As impossible, improbable, and paradoxical this may sound, mindful leadership means embodying this quality – letting go of gaps, understanding that there is nothing missing. It means embodying that you and the world are beyond judgment or improvement.

In practice this looks like knowing, deeply knowing that you will act for the benefit of others – in work, relationships, and in all parts of your life. You don’t need to be scanning for threats, since you are not consumed by fear. It means that you are totally satisfied, since nothing is lacking or missing right now. And it means that you are radically connected, that you are open to feeling a lack of distinctions between you and others, between you and life. 

And, of course, these two worlds are actually one world. Together, these practices are one perspective on the practice of mindful leadership.

How can you cultivate these qualities of a mindful leader? Practice.  Starting with meditation practice. Meditation encompasses both of these qualities.  What brings us to meditate is recognizing the gaps between where we are and where we want to be. Once we stop and sit, there is nothing to gain. You are perfect, just as you are.

Two mindful leadership practices:

Identify creative gaps; gaps between where you are and where you aspire to be – in your work, projects, relationships, and inner qualities such as awareness and confidence.
Practice letting go, cultivating the ability to understand and embody that there are no gaps. 

Notice how these practices influence your mood, your way of being, and your effectiveness. How do these practices impact your ability to respond to change and challenges?

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Finding Our Way

“As long as we have some definite idea about or some hope for the future, we cannot really be serious with the moment that exists right now….there is no certain way. Moment after moment we have to find our way.”

– Shunryu Suzuki (from Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind)

This is a time when our usual assumptions, routines, and expectations have been upended. As a result, we have less to rely on. Way less. There are no maps or guidebooks. We don’t know how this situation will unfold. The pandemic will end, but we don’t know how or when. The changes coming are unknown. It’s easy to feel uncomfortable, to want this time to end, and to imagine and hope for some better, more perfect future.

This is natural and it makes sense to hope for a better future. What might emerge if we also try on, and practice giving up hope?  What if, this is it?  How might it feel and what might we learn by “being serious with the moment that exists right now.” What is there to learn from trying on becoming more familiar with our fears, resistance, and our hope?

So much of being a business person, an entrepreneur and a human being is exploring finding our way, creating how we want to live within the limitations, and possibilities of our circumstances. Some limitations are inevitable, but these retreat-like, uncertain circumstances make them more obvious. 

So often, we resist our circumstances and can, without noticing resist our lives. We wash the dishes to get to the important things. When we are with our children or relaxing, we think about needing to work, and at work we think about relaxing or needing to be with our children. Anything would be better, more acceptable, and more comfortable than our current situation. The shadow side of hope is not seeing, feeling and being with what is.

From this place of giving up hope, really giving up hope, new possibilities can open up.  Possibilities that we missed previously might emerge. We can shift from being tossed around by our hopes to feeling the power and possibility of being fully alive, fully present for whatever comes our way. From this place, everything is alive, fluid, and rich with possibility. From this place, we can find our way.

Shunryu Suzuki goes on to say:

“Each one of us must make his own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way. This is the mystery. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself.”

What are you hoping for during this time? 

What if this is it; not hoping for anything different? 

What is there to learn about yourself from giving up hope? 

When you give up hope, what new possibilities emerge?

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Appreciating Our Jewels and Sweating Horses

There is an expression from the Zen tradition: 

“Behind each jewel are three thousand sweating horses.”

During these extraordinary times I’ve been even more aware and appreciative than usual of the jewels in my life as well as reflecting on the sweating horses, all those that support me and have supported me from the past. 

There are jewels everywhere, beginning with things that are easy to overlook and take for granted, like my ability to see and think and smell and hear. I’m having more time to recognize my family and friends as jewels. This is not something new, but now accentuated through the lens of uncertainty. Looking out my window I see jewels, pretending to be leaves on trees, shimmering in the wind and the sound of a misty rain. Everything is shiny and alive.

The sweating horses in some way are also the jewels, just looked at from a different perspective; from the perspective of support, commitment, and hard work. These days, weeks, and months of sheltering-in-place provide more space, more stillness, to recognize the many sweating horses – the doctors, health care workers, cleaning and support crews working tirelessly around the world. As well as those growing, moving, and delivering food and other essentials. 

“Sheltering-in-place” allows for more spaciousness to reflect on all the support I’ve gotten in my life. I hate to think of my parents as sweating horses, but I’m sure there was a good deal of sweat and tears and effort to guide and support my education and my life. I think about my many teachers, in school, and college, and graduate school, and the various mentors I’ve had in many parts of my life.

I think about and recognize all the support I’ve head in my Zen training. I’ve had some exceptional teachers, starting when I was in my early 20’s till the present. And those Zen sweating horses go back in time thousands of years. For me, from the early days of the San Francisco Zen Center, to the rich traditions in Japan, China, and India – to the historical Buddha more that 2,500 hundred years ago.

And I think about all the support, all the sweating horses from my business life. From NYU business school, to investors in my companies, to employees, and customers, and vendors. So much sweat! So much support. All jewels.

I know these times are uncertain, filled with stress and challenges, sometimes bringing up dread and fear; often longing for something that feels more normal. 

This is also a time to reflect on the jewels in our lives and the sweating horses. What do you think? What and who are the jewels in your life? What and who are the sweating horses?

This topic reminds me of part of a poem called, You Reading This, Be Ready by William Stafford

 

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life.

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

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Three Questions To Ask During Difficult Times

During painful, unusual, and uncertain times when it feels easier to retreat, shut down, or be swept away by fear, dread, or distractions, I find it useful, and actually quite important, to ask myself some straightforward, yet penetrating questions. The practice of asking ourselves questions can support us in living with our full energy, in working more effectively, and in being more connected to ourselves and others.

Here are three surprisingly simple questions that I find particularly useful:

What brings me alive?

What do I have to offer?

What action will I take next based on the previous two responses?

Let’s look at these questions, and each one’s specific purpose, in more detail now.

What brings me alive?

Mindfulness practice involves a shift from being on auto-pilot to living with greater choice and freedom. It takes intention, practice, and some courage to let go of our old, safe models and limitations, especially in times of great uncertainty.

The question – what brings me alive? – can be life-affirming, love-affirming, and is a way of shedding any old habits or stories of being powerless, or a victim of circumstance. It can be a way of moving in the direction of discovery and owning your inner power. This question reminds me of a quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder…”

What happens when you allow yourself to wonder?

What do I have to offer?

This is such a great question. It needs to be asked with some kindness, directness, and of course, with some humility. Reflecting on what we have to give reframes our thinking and our approach so we start to deviate from feelings of needing, wanting, or lacking. It takes us from a mindset of scarcity to abundance, right in the midst of whatever challenges, fears, or even potentially catastrophic situations we might be facing. We almost always have something to offer whether it’s a kind word, a specific skillset, an act of generosity, or simply our attention. All over the world right now, people are volunteering their time to do things like making protective masks, creating content that uplifts people, preparing meals to donate, and looking out for others that are vulnerable. Many of these offerings are new or novel, and inspired by this uniquely challenging period in human history.

I don’t know the source of this quote, but it fits well here: “Love without an invoice.”

What action will I take next?

“Those who can, do” is a saying I’ve got lodged in my memory from somewhere. The third question – what action will I take next? – turns this saying around to “Those who do, can!” (I think this saying may come from my friend Patricia Ryan, and her wonderful book, Improv Wisdom.) Essentially what this saying means is that by taking action, by making a choice, you shift from possibility to actuality. There is power in doing, in making choices. Even if you choose no action, that is a conscious choice, and may be the best choice for now.

So now, over to you – try on these three simple questions:

What brings me alive?

What do I have to offer?

What action will I take next?

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Resilience: Accepting What Is and Working For Change

To “accept what is” and “work for change” is one of my favorite paradoxes. A paradox is something that seems impossible but may in fact be true. The time we find ourselves in now often seems very impossible – we’re contending with a mysterious and lethal virus, enormous levels of pain, social distancing, a plunging economy, and tremendous uncertainty.

And, in so many ways we humans are paradoxical and impossible beings by our very nature. One aspect of the paradox of being human is the tension and contrast between acknowledging our humanness and our hearts, and at same time, skillfully navigating the world of business, entrepreneurship, and getting things done. From the context of business and entrepreneurship, accepting what is and seeing clearly is essential. And, at the same time as leaders and business people we are always planning, envisioning, and working toward change.

A key skill and practice in our personal lives and business lives, when working with what often seems challenging or at times impossible, is resilience. Resilience is the ability and the capacity to be responsive and to stay aligned with your purpose and vision, in the midst of uncertainty and challenges.

Resilience is both a mindset and a practice with three core areas – relationships, well-being, and purpose and meaning. Let’s unpack these a little:

Relationships – make the time to have one-to-one conversations where you can be open and vulnerable. It’s also valuable to participate in small groups in order to practice speaking and listening openly. This is the practice of supporting others and being supported. Consciously making time for relationships is a core part of supporting well-being and cultivating responsiveness; ways to cultivate resilience.

Well-being – during these times, it feels especially important to return to the most obvious and essential well-being practices – getting enough sleep and exercise, conscious eating, and energy management. These are all interconnected and critically important for our health, both physical and mental. These are “sharpening the saw” practices – taking the time to stop and take care of you (you are the saw) so that you can act and get more done with less effort. A sharper saw is so much more resilient than a dull saw.

Purpose and meaning – find ways to step outside yourself and help others. Cultivate a “beginner’s mind” when it comes to having a daily meditation practice, spending time in nature, and cultivating curiosity and kindness. Cultivating purpose and meaning is the practice of reframing; seeing that the ordinary is extraordinary; moving toward seeing what actually is, helping us to be more responsive and resilient.

Resilience practice, accepting what is, and working for change are terrific, life-long practices that offer myriad benefits for us personally and professionally.

Some resources for further exploring resilience:

American Psychological Association: Building Your Resilience
Linda Graham: Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being
Anne Hillman: We Look With Uncertainty

We look with uncertainty

beyond the old choices for

clear-cut answers

to a softer, more permeable aliveness

which is every moment

at the brink of death;

for something new is being born in us

if we but let it.

We stand at a new doorway,

awaiting that which comes…

daring to be human creatures,

vulnerable to the beauty of existence.

Learning to love.

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What is the Most Important Thing for You Right Now?

“To express yourself freely as you are is the most important thing, to make yourself happy and to make others happy.”

–Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

During these most unusual and extremely challenging times, distractions are easy. Forgetting takes little effort. Sometimes it takes adversity, pain, a pandemic, and social distancing to focus our attention on how we want to use our time and our energy. Many of us are looking more carefully at how we want to work, play, live, and love. We’re remembering the importance of making ourselves and others happy.

I feel really lucky that I’m in the “remembering” business. Remembering is a kind of waking up, from being on auto-pilot to noticing the aliveness and richness of everything, internally and externally. The Pali word sati, translated as mindfulness, literally means to remember – to be here, present, alive, curious, kind, happy, and as much as possible, fearless. To remember to stop, breathe, and open to the pain and suffering, the joy and wonder. The current level of isolation and uncertainty has a way of focusing the mind, helping us shed thoughts and distractions that are less important. This can be a time to remember what matters most. Whatever that might be for you.

Powerful, poignant words in the form of quotes can be a valuable way to help us remember. They can touch us, re-focus us, and help us stay more curious. I’m biased about the power of quotes, since I consider myself to be a professional quote collector. I founded and was CEO of a greeting card and calendar company for 15 years and often spent many hours combing through books, just to find meaningful quotes that I wanted to offer and publish as cards or calendars. 

According to the opening quote here by Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki , the most important thing is to express yourself freely, to make yourself happy, and make others happy. What does that look like for you? How do you express yourself freely? 

When I reflect on what it means to express myself fully I realize this is what motivates and inspires me to practice meditation each morning. Just sitting, breathing, allowing my feelings, and stories, and sensations to come and go. Just breathing in and out. This is one practice, perhaps the most basic practice of expressing ourselves freely. Just sitting, expressing myself freely feels like the most important way to begin my day. 

I sometimes think that our lives are simply about sitting down and getting up. That’s perhaps the most common way that we transition from one task or experience to another while awake. If sitting down meditation is a way of expressing ourselves freely how do we transition from meditation to activities such as cooking or eating, or engaging with family, work, and our other relationships, with as much free expression as possible? Perhaps remembering to ask these three questions is the most important thing:

What is most important to me, right now, today, this week?
How am I making myself happy?
How am I helping to make others happy?

Expressing ourselves freely, making ourselves happy, and making others happy – especially when things are challenging, painful, and shifting – feels more important than ever to me. What about you?

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Webinar: Being Calm is Highly Over Rated

Social Venture Circle hosts Being Calm is Highly Over Rated led by Marc Lesser. Let’s sit together, be where where are, and see what happens when we drop agendas and access our hearts. Allow yourself to be present in an atmosphere of acceptance and connectivity. Watch below.

The NEXT Economy Live series is in partnership with ZBA Associates, the American Sustainable Business Council, Opportunity Collaboration, and Intentional Media.

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What Happens When We Shift From Action Toward Connection

I’ve noticed, especially in the midst of these stressful pandemic days, that many leaders, and people in general, tend to have a bias toward action when feeling stressed. In my coaching practice, I have been encouraging clients to reflect on the idea of shifting from a bias toward action toward a bias toward connection when feelings of anxiety arise. I have seen countless times the ways in which decisions and actions grow out of connection, with the “side effect” of creating greater trust among teams, greater alignment with goals, and better end results. Acting before or without connection often has the opposite effect, resulting in lack of trust and a lack of shared vision about what success looks like.

It’s easy to fall into the pattern, when you feel stressed or fearful to have a bias toward action. Whenever you experience anxiety, or tightness, or don’t know what to do, your inclination may be to act, and to act with greater speed and effort than usual. Leadership and getting things done can be stressful. Living, working, and leading in the midst of a pandemic can add to the already stressful demands that many of us feel. 

Of course, you might have the opposite bias when stressed – the bias of inaction or freezing. Again, a skillful response is to notice, and move more toward connection.

These recent events have gotten most of us to travel less, move less, and have often seemed to slow down time. Though this period can be more stressful than usual, the pace, as well as the contrast with our “usual” lives can, in a strange and profound way, support greater reflection – regarding our biases, and can create openings to work in a way that embraces our humanity and inspires greater alignment and connection.

A bias toward action is often expressed as moving more quickly — to complete projects, or to begin new projects, or to put more pressure on team members to work with increased effort and energy. What’s different now, during this most unusual time, is that it can be easier to notice this bias, and observe, especially in this new reality that we find ourselves in, that this bias is often counter-productive. It doesn’t usually lead to more results. Instead this bias for action may get in the way of something more essential and more important. This bias for action, or for inaction can be a way of covering up, and not allowing feelings of stress, anxiety, or emptiness. It can get in the way of empathy, and of seeing from a wider perspective.

These conversations I’m having with leaders have been surprisingly rich. When I raise the topic of shifting from a bias toward action to a bias for connection, I can feel the leaders I speak with stop and reflect, and can feel that there is some shifting, insight, and impact.

One of the benefits of finding ourselves in this new environment, that includes less physical movement, as well as an awareness of the impermanence of everything, is the possibility of gaining more insight into our biases, being able to see ourselves and our patterns with more clarity. Though potential distractions are everywhere, there is also a sense of being drawn to working and living with more depth, meaning, and purpose. 

This is a great time to notice, whether your bias is toward action or whether your tendency is to retreat and pull inward when stressed. Experiment with becoming more aware of how you respond to stress, and to learn more about your attitudes and relationship with stress. And, it’s a good time to explore allowing yourself to connect, to reach out, to not hide your stress and anxiety. Whether your bias is toward action or toward inaction, an interesting and useful practice is to shift your bias toward connection, to listening, to being closer with those you work with or live with.

A core part of shifting your bias toward connection is to start by connecting to yourself, being curious about what you are feeling, and how you respond when you feel relaxed and comfortable, and how you respond when you feel uncomfortable and stressed. Whatever you might be feeling, to notice and stay with yourself. A core aspect of mindfulness practice is cultivating kindness and curiosity, especially during times like these.

Try this: Experiment with noticing what your bias is when you feel stress or pressure. Do you have a bias toward action, or a bias toward freezing, or other reactions? 

Explore what happens if you shift toward a bias toward connection – reaching out, listening, being with others. At work or in leadership roles, see if a bias toward connection fosters greater alignment, and better results.

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Finding Confidence and Humility Amid Uncertainty

Be confident, Question everything is one of my favorite paradoxes. (It was actually the original title to one of my books, which was published as Know Yourself, Forget Yourself.) Being confident and questioning everything is an essential attitude and practice for engaging with uncertainty. Right now, there is no shortage of uncertainty. This is probably always true, but is more in our faces and on our minds in the midst of this pandemic. Engaging means to face uncertainty directly, with confidence and with humility. It means to question everything, to be open, curious, in awe, and present, all at the same time.

I’m appreciating and enjoying an article in today’s New York Times by journalist Siobhan Roberts, entitled Embracing the Uncertainties. She quotes Dr. Anthony Fauci as saying, “I will say what’s true, and whatever happens, happens.”  That is a great expression of confidence and humility.

A key point in this article is that during times of uncertainty, we want to know the truth, as best as it is available, including just how uncertain things are. “Being trustworthy depends not on conveying an aura of infallibility, but on honesty and transparency” according to the director general of the Office for Statistics Regulation in the U.K. Honesty requires a certain level of confidence. Transparency requires humility, and the ability to question ourselves, with assertiveness and agency. I think of these qualities, confidence and curiosity, as essential leadership and life skills and practices.

The article describes two kinds of uncertainty:

1) Epistemic uncertainty refers to things we don’t know about the past and present but that we in theory could come to know, through measurement. This refers to the trends and forecasts of how many people have gotten ill and therefore are likely to be infected, as well as the measurements and forecasts regarding deaths.

2) Aleatory uncertainty refers to unknowns about the future due to randomness, indeterminacy, chance, or luck. This could take the form of winning the lottery, getting injured when engaged in a seemingly harmless activity, meeting someone new at an event who becomes an important relationship.

Most uncertainty contains some combination of both types of uncertainty. Could this pandemic have been predicted or was it random? When will the pandemic end? Will the economy recover, and in what timeframe? What does the future hold for each of us – our relationships, our careers, or any part of our lives? The fact is, if we are paying attention, everything is uncertain. The future is a mix of trends and randomness, and some things may contain more of one type of uncertainty than another.

The article also quotes a doctor who states that risk and uncertainty are normal parts of life, that we face daily. Sounding to me like a good Buddhist, the doctor states that “We are all going to die sometime” and concludes that the odds of our death increase from one day to the next, with age.

Mindfulness practice and meditation practice could be described as engaging with and cultivating being confident and questioning everything, finding our own presence and ground, and at the same time embracing the reality of uncertainty, the reality of change and impermanence.

What to do?

Acknowledge that uncertainty is the way things are. Find your confidence and questioning, open stance.  Explore what it’s like to be completely confident and completely uncertain, the best you can.
Acknowledge that uncertainty is the great connector. We all swim in the same sea of change and impermanence. We are all, quite literally, in this together.
Write about your confidence, presence, and ability to meet whatever comes. And, write about your questions, how much you don’t know, and how humbling it is to be a human being.

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Guided Meditation: Be Confident. Question Everything

The practice of meditation is about cultivating an attitude of curiosity and of not knowing – being open to not being an expert, to the mind of a beginner. Marc Lesser leads this 20 minute guided meditation, “Be Confident. Question Everything” via Mindful.org’s Mindful@Home series. Watch below.

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