Deborah and I recently attended a classical music recital. As we were finding our seats, the orchestra members were coming on stage. After they’d settled in, each player picked up his or her instrument and started noodling around.

A multitude of notes: skills, arpeggios, and melodic lines rose from the stage like a swarm of fireflies swirling in the night sky. There was no coherence. No music. Just lots of notes.

This jumble of notes continued until just before the conductor walked onto the stage.

Tuning up and noodling was over. It was time to play the evening’s music. Every member focused on the same music. As the piece unfolded, each player added his or her part to the whole.

Is there a place in your organization for this kind of noodling around? Do you make time for brainstorming solutions, inventing alternatives, and exploring options? Because you need some chaos before the music.

When you invite everyone to throw his or her voice, ideas, opinions, and insights into the mix. This kind of conversation can be kind of a jumble. It can sound like a lot of unrelated notes. But, it’s needed if you want to generate new ideas and directions.

Some leaders have little tolerance for this noodling around.

The unstructured nature of kind of conversation makes them uneasy. If the team leader is uncomfortable with the creative chaos of brainstorming – she’ll tend to squelch this vital form of communication and push for closure or make a decision in order to relieve her discomfort.

This will teach the team to hold back – so the boss doesn’t get anxious.
Creativity drains out of such teams. It’s hard to focus on new products, designs, solutions, or processes when you’re trying to manage the boss’s anxiety.

Of course, noodling can’t continue forever.
At some point a direction needs to emerge. A decision needs to be made. And a plan needs to be developed – so everyone can play a part in bringing the vision to life.

How do you encourage noodling around in your team?
When you’re exploring ideas, as a team, are there people who dominate the conversation and others who remain silent?
How can you encourage all the voices to participate?

How comfortable are you with the creative chaos of brainstorming?

• If it makes you uncomfortable – how does this shape the way you behave, communicate, or structure your meetings?
• What are ways you can begin to encourage a bit more creative chaos?
• How can you become more comfortable with allowing ideas to generate – before making a decision?

One way is to realize that just as the members of the orchestra need time to tune and warm up their instruments – team members need time for freewheeling discussion, open dialogue, and creative brainstorming. It makes for beautiful music.

We usually think that good decision-making is a process of thinking. And it is.

But, the quality of your thinking depends on how you’re feeling.
To quote from a study by researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara “positive affect leads to greater cognitive flexibility and facilitates creative problem solving”. There’s a lot of neurobiology behind short statement. The neurotransmitter dopamine is involved.
The evidence is convincing and overwhelming: you and the people you work with are more effective when you’re feelin’ good.

And to feel good doesn’t require attending a James Brown concert.

Alas, that is no longer possible.

You can establish the degree of positive affect needed to enhance your problem-solving in under 60 seconds. Your brain doesn’t need a lot of prompting. Tiny mental shifts are enough to activate powerful neural pathways.

All you have to do is briefly focus your mind on something positive – creating a mental image that evokes, for you, a sense of beauty. Take three conscious breaths and feel the positive qualities of that image sinking into your body. You can do this with your eyes open of closed. It’s that simple.

For further teachings from James Brown go to:“I feel good!!!”

Each square is a mini-abstract painting filled with squiggles, globs, and dashes of color. The squares are beautiful and when viewed up-close appear to have no shared purpose.
It’s only when you step back far enough that the overall pattern, the relationship of the individual squares, is revealed.

Every square is a complete painting unto itself.
Yet, it also has a place in the larger canvas – as an element of the whole. A work of art reveals both the integrity of the part and the integrity of the whole. In a work of art, the part and whole enrich each other.

What would it mean to apply these two perspectives to your work?

1. The close-up perspective that focuses on the details and nuances of your individual work.
2. The big picture perspective that considers your work as one element among many in a broader purpose or plan

Both perspectives are important.

It’s important to be engaged and deeply focused on what you do.
You need to get up-close and personal in order to appreciate, hone, and enhance the details of your work. You need this intense focus to raise your performance to the level of mastery.

But, you get too close to your work, you can lose the sense of how what you do connects to a larger purpose. We’ve all met people who think that they’re piece of the puzzle is in fact the whole deal. They’re view is too narrow.

It’s equally important for you to step back and see your contribution in a broader context.
To recognize how what you do fits into a bigger picture and serves as simply one element in a larger purpose. This larger perspective can enrich daily tasks and mundane actions with a sense of meaning and purpose (See: What Can a Glass of Water Teach You About Leadership)

But, if you only take the broad view, it’s easy to lose an appreciation for the necessity and nobleness of small individual contributions. They can seem mundane or even disposable. The broad view, taken to extremes, ignores the significance of the little things. It’s all vision with no substance to back it up.

You need to take both perspectives on your work.
And help others do the same. Team members need to be passionately engaged with their individual work. To have an up-close and personal connection to the nuances and details of what they do work.

And at the same time, they need to embrace the broader vision of how what their contribution do fits into a bigger picture.

One perspective enriches the other. Together they make work into art.

Questions for Reflection & Action:

Take the up-close perspective:

• What’s a small aspect/detail of your work will you focus on today?
• How can you refine, polish, enhance that small aspect or detail?

Take the big picture perspective:

• What’s the larger purpose that your work supports?
• How does what you do contribute to the team, the organization, the larger community?

Make the connection:

• How does the small detail/aspect of your work fit into and enrich the bigger picture?
• How does the big picture support and enrich the detail?

You know how it goes – you’ve just finished your presentation and now you need input.
Questions. Ideas. You need people to get involved and engaged so you toss out a question to get the dialogue started.
And you smile expectantly, waiting for the conversation to kick off. But, no one talks.
Nada. Zilch.

Everyone sits there as motionless and mute as a bunch of rocks in a Zen garden.
But, this kind of stillness and silence doesn’t evoke tranquility.
Quite the opposite. As the seconds tick by you can feel the anxiety and irritation flooding through your body.

You know, full well, they have plenty to say.
And that the minute people leave the meeting – they’ll be talking up a storm.
So, how can you tap that “after the meeting energy” while everyone is in the room?

How can you generate the kind of freewheeling, authentic conversation that happens outside the meeting room walls?
Have a ménage-a-trois.
No, not that kind of ménage-a-trois!
I’m talking about clustering people into small groups to get the participation going. (It doesn’t have to be three people. It could be two, three, or four folks. But, no more than four.)

By breaking the team into small groups, you’re simulating the after-meeting environment during the meeting.
Here’s what happens when the meeting is over: people cluster and buzz. They break up into small groups, face each other and talk. It’s natural, comfortable, and feels safe.

Gathering together in small groups to talk, listen, discuss, and learn is a natural human activity.
It’s wired into our social neurology. It’s what we do. Intentionally using small groups mimics this primal structure. It promotes the flow of conversation, the openness, and the authenticity of the “water cooler” conversation and the coffee break kibbutz.

But, even though gathering in small groups is so natural, it can seem un-natural when introduced into a meeting.
If you haven’t used small groups in your meetings, people may hesitate at first. They’ve become used to sitting around the big table. And now you’ve introduced a change.
People may be uncertain about why you’re suggesting this break from the conventional protocol.

So, you need to explain why you’re suggesting this change.
After you’ve finished making your presentation, talk about your desire to have a rich and thoughtful discussion. And that you believe it is important for everyone to have a voice in the process.

Let people know that you want to energize the meeting.
Get more participation. Break out of habitual ways of thinking. And generate new ideas. And, that you hope breaking into small groups will:

• Stimulate ideas
• Make it easier for people to say what they think
• Spark creativity
• Make it safer to say things that feel “risky”

Explain that you’d like to try a structured way of getting everyone involved.
To make easy for everyone to participate in a way that is most comfortable and get the best thinking from the group. This means using a three-step process of:

• Breaking into small groups of 3-4 people.

• Talking & listening to each other. (It’s important to remind people that the small group process is not about reaching a decision. The focus is on increasing awareness, identifying issues, generating ideas, and exploring options, etc.)
• Reporting out: have someone from each group reports the key ideas of their discussion – so the whole team can benefit from their thinking. It can help to record their ideas on a flipchart paper or writing tablet – so they actually remember what they talked about.

Let them know how much time they’ll have for talking and listening, and remind them to be ready to report out.
Then, invite people to divide into small groups and let them buzz. It won’t be silent and still.

If you want silence and stillness go to a Zen garden. If you want interaction and participation in your meetings – use small groups.

It’s the regularity – even of a loud obnoxious noise – that causes your brain to stop paying attention. In scientific language it’s called habituation. And when your brain enters the habituation zone, even a loud noise can fade into the background.

Anything that happens again and again at regular intervals – can trigger habituation
If it occurs repetitively, the odds are that you’ve habituated to it.
What are some of the regular/repetitive events in your life?
How about that weekly staff meeting? Ever notice how many people seem to slip into their chairs and the weekly meeting and . . .. check out.
Why?

Because meetings are perfect environments for fostering habituation
Most meetings are so repetitive; so regular. Same time. Same place. Same people. With the same issues and disagreements.  (Did I mention that they’re repetitive?)
And so, the brain learns to stop paying attention. It habituates. The brain shuts down, loses touch with what’s happening and wanders away into it’s own thoughts. .
Faced with repetitive stimuli the brain habituates. It loses focus, drifts, and daydreams. It checks out.
Not a very productive or creative state, to be sure. But, one that persists week after week in meetings that you attend.
It’s not inevitable that you habituate, however.

Not all brains go to sleep.
Some brains stay awake. Some brains stay alert and focused – even in the presence of repetitive stimuli.
These brains are trained in the fine art of being mindful. These are brains that have learned how to meditate.

The brains of meditators don’t habituate.
That’s the result of a 10-year study * – meditators’ brains don’t lose focus, drift away, and ignore what’s happening around them. Quite the contrary, according to the study, the brains of experienced meditators encounter, even the most repetitive stimuli, with a sense of freshness and focus.

And, they do this while staying quite relaxed,

It’s the best of both worlds
For most of us being relaxed and being highly focused preclude each other. I’m either mellow or manic. Drifting or driven.
But, experienced meditators have cultivated a state of mind that integrates the restful qualities of deep relaxation with a state of heightened alertness and awareness.
They are able to stay focused without getting fatigued.
They’ve broken out of the habituation zone – and experience the world (even the world of repetitive stimuli) with alert enjoyment.

If you want to wake up the brains at weekly meeting, you have two options.
One is to introduce an unexpected crisis into the process. Because random drama – like a fire drill – breaks people out of the habituation zone.
Haven’t you noticed how crisis mobilizes peoples’ attention? How it gets them energized and into gear?
At least for a while.
Unfortunately, when a culture is plagued with repeated fire drills and regular “emergencies” brains soon habituate and stop responding with urgency.
The other way to bring more life and energy into regular meetings is to practice mindfulness.

How do you practice mindfulness?
By paying attention to the little things – like your breath.
It can be as simple as this – focus on your breathing. Notice the rhythm, the texture and temperature of your breath.

Or by taking a few moments of silence during the day. Before you leave your desk to go to a meeting – just sit still. Take 3 minutes and be still. Be quiet.

A few moments of mindful breathing or still sitting will re-invigorate your brain, enliven your attention, and bring you more fully into the present so you can skillfully address the issues of your day.

Some people worry that by practicing mindfulness they will be detaching themselves from their environment.
But, research says that the exact opposite is the case. It’s the habituated mind that has lost contact with what’s happening. The mindful brain is totally present.
The trick is to build your mindfulness “muscle” – to strengthen your brain so that it breaks out of the habituation habit.

And that requires a few moments of consciously focusing attention on something simple – like the breath – so you can return to your work (and life) with greater awareness and creativity.

The key is regular practice.
Begin to incorporate moments of reflective silence and meditative stillness into your schedule. Make time – even for only a few moments – to release your mind from the bustle of the day

Take 3 minutes before you go to that weekly meeting and practice mindful breathing. That way, when folks around you are checking out – you can gently and mindfully bring them back into the conversation.

Rather than joining them in the habituation zone.

* http://www.enabling.org/ia/vipassana/Archive/Science/buddhismAndScience.html

It takes effort – focused, conscious effort – to achieve anything in life. But, just applying effort isn’t enough. Relentless effort can become a mechanical process that mires you in a rut.

To breakthrough to a new level of creativity and productivity requires effortlessness as much as effort.

Effortlessness frees you from your habitual focus. Being effortless opens you up to receive information, inspiration, and direction from sources outside the boundaries of your effort-full focus. Whether those sources are other people, books, the unconscious, the spirit – or all of the above!! – it is  effortlessness that allows you to take them in. But, effortlessness, by itself won’t generate breakthroughs.

Too much effort and you get tight, rigid, and constricted. Too much effortlessness and you become diffuse, vague, and directionless. It takes both to generate breakthroughs.The place where effort and effortless meet – is the breakthrough zone.

Bill Russell, the legendary basketball great, describes his experience of breakthrough and the paradoxical brilliance that occurs when effort and effortlessness unite:

“At that special level all sorts of odd things happened. The game would be in a white heat of competition, and yet somehow I wouldn’t feel competitive — which is a miracle in itself. The game would move so quickly that every fake, cut and pass would be surprising, and yet nothing could surprise me.”

Questions for Reflection & Action

• Where do you want to create a breakthrough in your work or life?
• How much effort are you applying?
• How much effortlessness?
• What does this tell you?
• How can you adjust the balance of effort/effortless so that they merge into breakthrough?

What is anxiety? Fritz Perls, developer of Gestalt Therapy, used to tell his clients that:

“Anxiety is excitement without breathing.”

What a practical definition! The more constricted the breath – the more anxiety.
Something exciting is happening and you need to breathe.

What’s a situation where you are experiencing some anxiety? Where even just thinking about it triggers anxiety? Rather than suffer through or avoid the situation, try breathing.

Here’s the practice:

• Bring the situation/conversation to mind.
• And breathe . . . breathe . . . breathe.
• Keep holding the situation in mind and enjoy breathing.

How does that change your experience?

Where’s the anxiety, now?

And until her husband (father-in-law) started tuning into Fox News – she was a lot of fun to talk with. Then Fox News started taking over her brain. It was blaring day and night. Droning on and on – sweeping into her mind. Shaping her worldview.

Now she’s less fun to talk to.
At least for me.
When she gets on a roll – I start hallucinating that Bill O’Reilly is in the house.  It makes it hard for me to listen. And when my listening shuts down – my capacity to learn goes out the window.

Why would I want to listen to someone I disagree with so vehemently?
Because I want to keep learning and growing.
I want to expand my vision of what’s possible and deepen my understanding of how the world works.
Not that there’s a lot I expect to glean from recycled O’Reilly sound bites.
Rather, I want the capacity to stay open, curious, and attentive when confronted with ideas, points of view, and values that differ from my own.
I want to keep an open mind.
Not to necessarily believe what I’m hearing.
But, at least to be able to hear what they’re saying.

The best way to develop listening & learning muscles is by having conversations with people who don’t think like me.
It’s not easy.
In fact, it’s uncomfortable.
It’s easier to put up defenses. Erect the cognitive barricades. Argue. Make snide remarks.
All these strategies protect me from the uncomfortable discipline of loosening my grip on the reassuring sense of “I’m right”. Which doesn’t mean that I’m wrong.
The attitude that works best is epitomized in Ken Wilber’s insight that “everyone is partially right”.

No one is completely wrong. Everyone is partially right.
Imagine what it would mean if the people in your next project meeting (not to mention family gathering) were to adopt this attitude.
Rather than battering each other with “certainty clubs”  – people would be able to shift their focus from argumentation to exploration.

Try it out yourself – right now.

Think about someone you are habitually disagree with.
Now, take a mental step backwards and imagine yourself and the other person sitting next to each other. You can picture yourself – over there. You can picture the other person – sitting next to you.
It’s like you’re in the balcony of a theater looking down on those two people over there.
From this observing perspective inwardly say, “You’re partially right.”
Inwardly say to the other person (over there), “You’re partially right.”
Inwardly say to yourself (over there), “You’re partially right.”
Notice what that’s like.
How is it different telling yourself or the other person, “You’re partially right”?

Now, take the next step.

Identify what’s partially right in their point of view and your own.
Acknowledge the partial rightness in your opinion. And theirs.

Be specific. Focus in a real, concrete, aspect of their perspective that is partially right. Do the same for yourself. Appreciate the partial validity inherent in the opposing points of view.

Don’t try to resolve anything.
That’s not the point of this exercise. Resolution comes later.
First develop your capacity to listen and learn. To appreciate the partial rightness in any point of view. And to recognize that your own understanding is also only partially right.

The more you appreciate the partial rightness inherent in widely divergent views – the more you are able to learn and the more perspectives you can adopt. It’s this capacity to appreciate multiple perspectives that helps you learn from life – and particularly from those forms of life that are most different from you.

Who can you learn from?
Do you protect yourself from people with opposing points of view? Or do you use those uncomfortable conversations as a chance to strengthen your listening and learning muscles. It’s this capacity that sets the stage for constructive dialogue and authentic collaboration.

It’s good for business.
And it makes the mother-in-laws visit a lot more fun.

Inner practice to develop your capacity to listen & learn

1.    Think of someone you habitually disagree with
2.    Take a mental step back into the observer position
3.    Picture you and the other person sitting next to each other.
4.    Mentally acknowledge to each, “You are partially right.”
5.    Identify specifically something partially right about both viewpoints (yours & theirs).
6.    Generate a sense of appreciation for the partial rightness of both viewpoints.

Greatness isn’t born overnight.
It is, in part, a matter of “duration”. The time factor.

If you’ve been playing the piano or studying the market for a month – you’re not going to be great. Put in around 10,000 hours and you have a shot at mastery.

But, just putting in the time isn’t enough.
Doggedly hanging in there and patiently applying the duration factor – on it’s own – won’t do it. It’s not just a matter of time. There’s also the factor of intensity.

What is intensity?
Intensity is focus.
Your capacity to focus fully and without distraction – is the measure of your intensity.
The deeper your focus – the higher your intensity factor.
The more scattered your focus – the lower your intensity factor.

The highest level of intensity is when you can completely and effortlessly put your attention on what you’re doing. Distractions – internal or external – fade away and you’re fully absorbed in the task.

That’s what intensity is.
But, it’s also important to understand what intensity isn’t.
Because many people confuse emotionality with intensity.

Emotionality isn’t the same thing as intensity.
Getting emotionally revved-up about what you’re doing is different from being intensely focused.

Look at the fans at a Sunday football game. Faces painted with their team colors. Screaming.
Attend a political rally. Flags waving. Tears flowing.
Or a rah-rah motivational seminar.

If you get swept up in the atmosphere of those events, your whole body can be churning with excitement. Being pumped-up, emotionally high can be a thrilling experience.

But, this kind of emotional fervor rarely translates well into sustained focus. And it takes sustained focus to be good at anything. To realize your goals.

Emotionality dissipates energy.
Intensity focuses energy.

Emotions are inherently unstable and changeable.
It’s their nature. Sometimes happy. Sometimes sad.
Emotions wax and wane. Ebb and flow.
And when your attention is directed by emotions – then it waxes and wanes with the swings of your mood.
Which makes for inconsistent focus. Thus, inconsistent action.

In terms of creating results, emotionality is unreliable.
What works is deep, sustained focus.

When you combine deep focus (intensity) over time (duration) – you have a formula for developing mastery.

So, it’s not just putting in the time. It’s the quality of attention that you bring to the time you put in. Intensity matters.

Questions for reflection & action:

1.    What are you giving your attention to in work and life?

1.    What are you intensely focused on in your work and life?
2.    What distracts you?
3.    What important goals or tasks deserve more of your deep undivided attention?
4.    How can you structure your day to create opportunities for devoting time & undivided attention to what matters most?

But, there is another set of issues that also need attention.

These other issues are non-technical. And they point us back to different understanding of what recovery requires of us emotionally, morally, spiritually.

This understanding of recovery comes from a particularly American form of spirituality known as the 12-step program. Originating in the AA program, the core wisdom if the 12-steps has proved effective in many contexts where people seek recovery.

Maybe we as a nation ought to consider this hard-won and well-proven wisdom as we seek economic recovery.

The first step in the recovery process is one of profound acknowledgement.

“We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.”
This is the first step. Before action – comes admission.

The price of admission must be paid before the recovery begins.

Without this admission and the 11 other steps that follow – sustainable recovery is unlikely. Temporary symptom relief – yes.

But, without doing the work of emotional, moral, and spiritual transformation – recovery is out of reach.