Before you start your week, read this and try to remember it until Friday at least! Congrats to Ute for the ‘Best Moment Award’!
Category: Mindfulness
My “Best Moment Award”
I recently received the “Best Moment Award” from Moment Matters for my post “The fight for attention in communication”. I must say that receiving two awards in one week really made me feel happy about the fact that people around the world actually read and appreciate what I have to say. This post – as all the others I write – got kicked-off by a real-life event where I had to deal with people who asked for a meeting and then were not really interested about what I had to say (or maybe it is a new way of multitasking where one ear listens to the person sitting in front and the eyes and brain concentrate on what the hands are writing to somebody else per e-mail). 😉
For me writing about mindful leadership and intercultural communication, being a humble ‘beginner’ on the path of awakening and meditation, it felt like a milestone to have received this award. Somehow, I moved forward (or maybe sideward) in this journey called life trying to look inside myself in order to pull out a “new and improved” me or better: the knowledge and peace that sits there anyways and that I was simply not able to hear until now. The “Best Moment Award” actually goes to people who
“live in the moment,
The noble who write and capture the best in life,
The bold who reminded us what really mattered –
Savoring the experience of quality time.”
Let the journey begin! Every second of your life deserves to be lived at its fullest! Thank you Moment Matters!
Let me now award 10 people or posts as I don’t know more than that (yet). I have selected:
- The post “Teach peace” written by Gina
- The wind horse blog http://windhorseblog.wordpress.com/ inspiring, amazing and touching words
- The post “Feather Inspiration” by Ruby
- Evan’s post “An Inspirational Snack” and also his blog
- Business Life Asia with this post on the Lunar New Year in Hong Kong
- The Post on “Metta” by Khalil Bodhi
- The Post “What we long for” from Mindfulbalance.org
- “A call for mindful leadership” from Ellen Langer
- The “Zen of doing” by Leo Babauta
- “Connecting with nature” by Sakshi Vashist
How to effectively survive global ‘calls’
I guess at least some of you have already spent parts or even most of their day glued to a telephone or other device trying to participate in ‘global’ calls, brainstormings or discussions with various others. Being a virtual team member is far from being easy, even if you don’t have to lead a session in a particular moment, that is for sure.
The hardest thing to follow is actually when you have a group of people sitting together in a room and others participating on the phone in different locations. The team sharing a physical location has definitely an advantage over the other participants as its members can visually interact and see each others faces and gestures. It gets especially difficult, when not everybody can be clearly understood through the phone. Another tricky thing is that you might not even know who is speaking as you don’t know all the people on the line and hence cannot recognize the voices. Very few people actually state their name when they speak as they tend to forget that not all the participants can see them.
How do you make the most out of such sessions without giving in to the temptation of doing other things while your phone continues to speak, on mute?
As a participant you should look at the agenda right from the start, before the call has even started and identify the areas of interest to you. Write down a couple of points that you want to touch upon, or simply note some thoughts. This will help you to stay focused during the call especially for the parts that are important for you.
Remember: nobody can listen for hours in a row! If an agenda is set up in a right way, it will leave enough breaks to allow for the participants to re-focus. It will also take into account the different periods of the day the participants are in and hence move the parts where solid input is expected to reasonable times so that the people are still awake.
As an organizer, this website provides a helpful oversight over time zones and lets you easily schedule global meetings.
If you need participants from all over the world, I would also highly recommend scheduling various meetings having the same topic, even if it means that you have to repeat yourself. You will ensure that nobody will be expected to attend at an unusual hour, which makes people happier and hopefully they will contribute more actively. You could for example structure your meeting like a World Café, where every contribution actually builds up on the contributions of the previous sessions. By doing so, you ensure that even for you, it doesn’t get boring and the outcome will definitely be there.
Apart from that, if you can, try to make the sessions as short as possible. The shorter you time your meeting, the more attention you will get and the more focused your participants will be. Oh, and avoid lengthy power point shows, you will loose your audience in minutes. Write down bullet points of what is being said or accompany the discussion in a way that makes it more interesting to the participants, even those not being physically there!
If you have any more insights to share or tipps and tricks on how to ‘survive’ long calls, let me know!
Have an excellent morning, afternoon, evening, night! Jenny
Further reading:
Related articles
- Getting people face-to-face will increase collaboration at Yahoo! (forbes.com)
- 3 ways to succeed in your pajamas! (jennyebermann.com)
- Integrating face-to-face and virtual communication strategies (i-ReConnect)
A mindful approach for dealing with procedures and processes
If you ever worked in big structures, be it in the private or in the public sector, you will have encountered a lot of procedures and processes. Imagine you need a specific software or an upgrade to an existing programme in order to carry on with your work. Normally, you can’t simply buy the latter yourself but you have to follow a certain procedure, i.e. find, fill in and submit a form somewhere and then hope that you get what you wanted as quickly as possible. Or you want to hire the services of a specific vendor and thus have to work yourself through procurement and other regulations in order to be able to pay the bill after the job has been delivered.
I am sure you all know loads of examples where you had to overcome – in your opinion – unnecessary hurdles to be able to simply deliver what you have been hired for in the required time frame. It is true that on first sight, procedures are complicated, slow down what could have been a straight forward job and might even end up in a lot of frustrations, if things get stuck somewhere and nobody knows anymore why and what to do to solve the problem.
Well, let me tell you one very important thing: take it easy! You cannot change the way things are set up anyways and usually there is a reason behind the procedures even if sometimes it is quite difficult to see this. Instead of losing your precious energy in the process, focus on tackling it in a mindful way. As I have outlined in one of my previous posts about the basics of mindfulness, patience and letting go are two main ingredients on your path to positively dealing with a tough situation.
Hence, if you encounter a process which is tedious and long and you have the impression that nothing moves forward:
- Take a step back and smile at yourself
- Remember that behind every procedure, online form and ‘hotline’ there are people just trying to do their job as much as you want to do yours.
- Be friendly with these people, it will make your life easier
- Concentrate your energy on things that you can influence and where your impact can be felt. These might be very small things, like helping a team member or pursuing another task.
- Pay close attention to what the frustration does to your body, i.e. how the stress can be felt and where.
- Let it go!
- Now you can write a message to your internal stakeholders telling them that there is a delay in delivering your objectives because of xyz reason but that you are doing all you can to speed things up.
- Let the things unfold, watch and breathe
Please try this out for yourself and let me know what you experienced. I have to say that for me it works very well… life itself is short, so enjoying every part of it and focusing on things that matter and that you can influence should be your main concern! Enjoy the rest of your week! Jenny
The fight for attention in communication
Lately, I had again the ‘pleasure’ of sitting in front of people who were checking their various devices and answering e-mails whilst talking to me. I don’t know how you react and feel in such a situation but I can say that it leaves me:
- Angry
- Disappointed
- With a sentiment of ‘emptiness’
Whereas with people you know and you usually interact with, you can easily voice your discontent in a nice and polite way, with people you don’t know, this is quite more delicate. Especially in a situation where your counterparts are in fact assessing or testing you, you don’t want to risk getting bad marks or being excluded from further processes. And still, the fact of not being attentively listened to actually has a very ‘sour aftertaste’, where you find yourself actually wondering whether what you had to tell was
- Interesting
- Worth being told
You might even think that maybe your performance or appearance was not as it should have been.
Let me tell you something: this is completely untrue! Every human being deserves being listened to, no matter what he or she has to tell. When setting up an appointment, even a telephone one, you ought to show respect and attention. It cannot be stressed enough how the course of interaction can be altered and positively affected if basic rules are understood and put into practice.
So, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation as described above, whatever the context and the circumstances, you might want to pause for a moment until you get the attention of your counterpart and politely ask for quality time. It will give you satisfaction and a sense of value even though you might not be able to change other people’s future behaviour.
“Tolerance, inter-cultural dialogue and respect for diversity are more essential than ever in a world where peoples are becoming more and more closely interconnected.”
Seen on Goodreads
Illustrating how cultural faux pas happen
This little video really illustrates quite impressively how we function as human beings, taking only one little example (holding hands). Imagine how many other gestures, words, behaviours etc. can be misinterpreted and misunderstood in the intercultural context and what consequences this might have… you might want to remember this next time you meet with or work with somebody from a different culture. Being mindful, open and non-judging is a first step to train your brain to react differently! Enjoy!
Mindful leadership applied to virtual teams
Lately I wrote a post on what it takes to lead multicultural teams. It now struck me that many of us don’t just lead multicultural but also “virtual” teams; this adds a lot of complexity to something that is already not so easy on its own.
What actually is a virtual team some of you might ask? Following Wikipedia, a virtual team is “(…)a group of individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology”. In clear it means that you might be sitting in one location, like me in Switzerland for example, and you actually lead and work with people all across Europe or even around the globe. It also means that you might not even see these people physically throughout the year. Additionally, it might be that you are not the direct line boss of some of these people but ‘only’ the matrix with less direct possibilities to motivate your staff as you are not the final ‘evaluator’ and ‘bonus giver’.
So, how do you then communicate and how do you walk the fine line of what is acceptable in one culture and what is not? I have to say that at first and being a coach, it was very difficult for me, not so see people as the non-verbal and paraverbal components of face-to-face discussions usually tell me the whole and hidden story and let me intuit the truth behind spoken words. Video communication through web cams or other means would have helped a lot but unfortunately this was not available. So what to do?
First of all and especially concerning team members from cultures I did not have had any work contacts before, I informed myself about the habits, the style and the usual work behaviours from colleagues who were willing to share. I also spent a lot of time speaking to my team and of course listening to them, in order to find out more about them as persons, their lifestyles etc. Very often I also asked open questions like: “What does this mean for you”? Or “how do you interpret this particular objective or task”. Creating a trusting and open relationship where all partners and team members feel comfortable is extremely important. Of course I made mistakes, as we all do I am sure, misinterpreting things or inadvertently creating a situation that for others could be quite uncomfortable. Learning from these mistakes, discussing and exchanging are the ingredients to successfully setting a viable basis for virtual work relationships. Interesting enough, when you listen emphatically, mindfully and with attention and when you are truly interested in what your counterpart has to say, you will quickly find that the tone of voice alone can tell you stories about the state of mind of the other person.
It actually is a skill to be able to listen and direct a conversation when there are so many things competing for your attention in the office at the same time. What is your experience with virtual teams? What works and what not? Looking forward to your thoughts!
Basic thoughts on communication
Communicating in today’s environment is not easy; not only are we constantly ‘followed’ by technical devices asking for an immediate response, a mail or a call but as the global world suddenly sits with us in our living rooms and offices, intercultural exchange and dialogue has become so ‘natural’ that we tend to forget its rules. Having to juggle with so many priorities at the same time, we respond, in the best possible manner without thinking too much as our mind is already preoccupied with the next task. So it then happens, that suddenly a message that was intended as a collection of feedback – no more and no less – to be discussed on the phone at a later stage creates a reaction at the other end of the world where it was sent, which was not foreseeable by any means and not stoppable as rumors already started to spread… well, a tsumami of mails and a couple of strange feelings later we come to a point where we ask ourselves these questions: WHAT HAPPENED HERE? And: COULD THIS HAVE BEEN AVOIDED?
The answer clearly is: yes! As even though people all speak English and we are all ‘one family’ speaking virtually together at any time of the day: before sending out a message or a communication, the ramifications should be thought of. No time doesn’t mean no mindful e-mailing! Well, let’s print this out and put it up on a prominent place so that it can be seen… taking the time to think things through actually saves you time that you need to spend afterwards to repair the broken vase after the fact! Have an excellent evening, morning, day, Jenny