Leaders need persistence, focus, and patience in their work.
Leadership is an interpersonal sport, and people are complex and unpredictable. Leading well requires sustained engagement, open exchange, mutual learning, and influence. It involves loss and change, and change takes time. High-impact leadership cannot be forced: you don’t want to cross the line into bullying or assume you can go it alone. Both have their costs. You want to stay firmly grounded yet open to new possibilities – relaxed yet vigilant with an eye on continued progress toward the prize.
How can you develop habits of the mind that underpin the kind of calm, focused, non-judgmental persistence required? Sound complicated? It really isn’t.
You have undoubtedly experienced moments of “flow”[i] – when you feel “in the zone” and so deeply engaged in an activity that the world around you disappears. Time seems to fly. Professional musicians aim for this in their performances;[ii] and NBA coaching great, Phil Jackson, designed his entire coaching strategy around helping his players get there[iii]. But you don’t need to be a professional athlete or musician to intentionally train and direct your mind to be more focused yet relaxed. Your attention is like a muscle. Work it with regular mental exercises to make it stronger. A bit of neuroscience explains why and how[iv].
The mind is never at rest. The idling brain is as active when you are “vegging out” as when doing a crossword puzzle! Unless you direct it, your brain will do what comes naturally: neurons will fire spontaneously with thoughts about you – your problems, woes, and what ifs of life, spinning internal dialogues and stories that randomly weave together your past, present, and future. The idling mind is a wandering mind, easily distracted by things other than what we are doing or wanting to think about[v]. Three things about this are important for our discussion here.
One, it is as important in learning to better focus your attention that you know how to turn off parts of your brain as it is to turn on others.
Two, you can turn off dysfunctional or energy-wasting ruminations by choosing to engage in an externally-oriented, goal-directed, chosen task.
Three, what helps you refocus your attention in the short term retrains your brain over time. Neurons that fire together stay together, hardwiring your brain.[vi]
You want habits of the mind that “right-wire” your brain. That’s the benefit – and the joy – in attention training.
Dr. Amit Sood of the Mayo Clinic offers strategies for “right-wiring” your brain, and suggests practicing simple attention-focusing techniques four to eight time a day during your training period. You may have to undo life-long cognitive tendencies, and “just as a river needs time to carve a canyon, resilient new brain pathways depend on repetitive and deeply felt experiences.”[vii]
His suggested activities ask you to notice and enjoy your world more deeply, connect your thoughts and senses, look for novelty in the everyday, and suspend judgment. Important for our purpose, each can be used to disrupt unhelpful or distracting ruminations – and remind your idling brain that you are in charge! Many take but a few minutes to practice, and they bring the added benefit of increased pleasure and joy. Joy refuels the soul for life’s uphill climbs!
Try this[viii]: Let me suggest a few personal favorites from Dr. Sood to get you started. Commit yourself to a few weeks of brain retraining, and let me know how things are going. Email me at theprof@theleadershipprofessor.com
Find novelty in an ongoing relationship: greet another as if meeting after a long time; devote time to sharing something new or newly rediscovered for each of you
Find the extraordinary in the ordinary: pay attention to some detail around you in a new way – the blue of the sky, different shades of green in the grass, the pattern in the rug you have walked mindlessly on so many times. Let each new discovery of beauty or novelty wash over you!
Start and end your day with gratitude: use it to turn off the stress in waking up to your usual to do and dread lists or in hitting the sack focused on everything on the lists for tomorrow.
Notice nature: as the Buddhist adage goes: Spend 10 minutes each day quietly in nature. If you are very busy and overloaded, spend 20 minutes.
Eat, walk, or exercise mindfully: pay attention to time, place, pace, posture, and other sensory experiences in everyday acts. And mindful eating is a good way to control weight and food choices!
Try small random acts of kindness: kind attention is externally-focused attention, and kindness toward others will boost your mood.
Find something in another to be impressed by: The Hindi word namaste means the divine in me salutes the divine in you. See the divine in those around you. Namaste!
[i] Mihaly Csikszentmyhalyi (1997). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.
[ii] John Whiting (2008). YoYo Ma: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
[iii] Phil Jackson (2006). Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior. New York: Hyperion.
[iv] Amit Sood (2013). The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-free Living. Boston, MA: DaCapo Press, chapters 2, 5, 6, 7.
[v] Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert (2010). “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind.” Science 2010: 330-932.
[vi] Donald Hebb, as quoted in Sood (2013), p.10. Hebb is the father of neuroscience, and American Psychologist named him one of the 20th century’s most eminent and influential theorists in the realm of brain function and behavior.
[vii] Amit Sood (2013), p. 66.
[viii] This post is adapted from material appearing in Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos (2016). Engagement: Transforming Difficult Relationships at Work. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. https://www.amazon.com/Engagement-Transforming-Difficult-Relationships-Work/dp/1119150833/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1517320130&sr=8-2