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Practice Leader:
Facilitator: Stu
Preparation:
Please watch &/or listen to this short video of Dr. Dan Seigel who describes the 5 types of empathy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdhMY_DNb1M

We will then discuss cultivating different types of empathy through practices.

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When: 2nd Thursday of each month
Where:

Physically @ WeWork, Capella Tower, Floor 39 (Specific Conference Room Varies)

Virtually @ Stu's Adobe Room

https://connect.capella.edu/siy/

Phone: 1-719-457-6443

Guest Passcode:          386967

Host Passcode:          3869672

If you experience issues are can't make it, contact Eric  at 612-245-1916

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Executive Summary

Today, like so much around us, the $11 billion self-care industry is heavily influenced by tech. Our focus is shifting away from the actual self - our bodies, minds, and spirits - and toward data about the self. With iEverythings around us at all times, we expect our steps to be enumerated, our REM cycles to be recorded, and our breathing patterns to be measured. It's not enough to just feel better - we need our devices to affirm that we are doing the work. This raises the question: Are we genuinely interested in feeling healthier and happier? It seems likely that the values driving us to be workaholics in the first place are also encouraging us to "optimize" ourselves by using metric-driven "hacks." We may idealize the actions we are able document and share, or the data we can collect and track, but there are plenty of times when what we need to do to feel better - and actually get better - is do less.

mark ralston/Getty Images

The United States is no stranger to self-improvement, from the meditation and essential oils of the 60s to the Jane Fonda aerobics tapes of the 1980s and the fat-free-everything 1990s. "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1841, sounding a bit like a modern SoulCycle instructor. From these deep roots, the $11 billion self-improvement industry has grown.

Today, like so much around us, that industry is heavily influenced by tech. Our focus is shifting away from the actual self - our bodies, minds, and spirits - and toward data about the self. With iEverythings around us at all times, we expect our steps to be enumerated, our REM cycles to be recorded, and our breathing patterns to be measured. It's not enough to just feel better - we need our devices to affirm that we are doing the work.

This dogged self-improvement quest is not the antidote. We are approaching the pursuit of work-life balance with the same obsessive (and oppressive) energy as we do our careers. Although the American Psychiatric Association reports that 39% of U.S. adults feel more anxious than they did a year ago, we continue to glamorize being overworked, busy, and stressed. Numerous studies support this - for example, the Journal of Consumer Research has published research showing that Americans associate busyness and stress with prestige and status. This might explain why counting our steps and recording our exhales are satisfying ways to measure the success of our self-care routine once we leave the office. But in this context, our high anxiety becomes just another thing to "work on."

This raises the question: Are we genuinely interested in feeling healthier and happier? It seems likely that the values driving us to be workaholics in the first place are also encouraging us to "optimize" ourselves by using metric-driven "hacks."

For type-A overachievers in particular, self-improvement bears a closer resemblance to work than to leisure. As a freelance journalist, I have also subsidized my life in New York City as a copywriter, editor, and consultant for a range of clients in the wellness space. I have led focus group discussions about meditation apps and created websites and content campaigns for prominent skin care lines, juice cleanse companies, and mental health apps. One of my clients recently told me her goal to start a meditation practice had short-circuited due to her tendency to turn everything - including self-care - into a chore. After trying out a 20-minute daily routine, she found that meditation ultimately caused more stress than it alleviated, which, in turn, made her feel guilty and bad about herself. Despite the fact that mindfulness meditation is now popular enough to be a billion-dollar business, the science behind it remains a work in progress. In a 2017 review of meditation studies from the past two decades, author and psychologist David Creswell, who directs the Health and Human Performance Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, examined the methodological limitations of recent mindfulness studies. He dispels the misconception that mindfulness is a proven panacea for anxiety, depression, chronic pain, stress, and more. Still, he points out some impressive findings: Mindfulness can reduce activity in the amygdala, the brain region responsible for the fight-or-flight response. Mindfulness meditation has also been shown to reduce levels of interleukin-6, a biomarker in the blood that is elevated in high-stress groups.

Regardless of whether future scientific findings confirm the benefits of mindfulness, it's important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach for stress relief. If meditation feels like "work," it can become a restrictive, rather than expansive, practice. Treating meditation as a step needed to achieve the elusive goal of work-life balance keeps us dialed into the linear mindset of "checking things off our list." If we rigidly commit to a meditation practice without considering how we might react on days when we don't have time or aren't in the mood for it, we might end up mired in guilt or self-criticism. This is not to say that if meditation feels difficult, you should just give up. But it's important to see how this ancient tradition is being commodified by our culture as a tool for improvement. If your to-do-list mentality is a major source of stress in the first place, why add to it? The goal is to create space for yourself, to experience curiosity and explore without pressure. Take a few conscious breaths during your commute, or set an intention for your day before you leave the house. Remember: There is nothing inherently virtuous about torturing yourself (which, for the record, is an intention I frequently set for myself).

In more extreme cases, self-improvement can become an obsession. The rise of wearable devices like Fitbit that track our steps and sleep cycles can feed perfectionistic tendencies. UK-based marketing professors Rikke Duus and Mike Cooray conducted a study analyzing the effects of wearing a Fitbit on a group of 200 women. The women said the devices made them feel guilty whenever they fell short of their goals: 79% felt pressured to reach their daily targets, 59% went so far as to say they felt "controlled" by their devices, and nearly 30% referred to their Fitbits as "an enemy." Although knowing our daily step count may provide the illusion of control in our lives, quantifying the "work" we are doing on ourselves (and ostensibly for ourselves) not only reinforces the idea that self-care should be work but also presents excessive opportunities for self-criticism. With a progress report available to us at all times - whether related to steps, sleep, breathing, gait, or calorie consumption - quantified self-improvement encourages us to fixate on the moments we fall short of our most granular expectations. And while beating ourselves up often seems like the most effective way to crack the whip, self-criticism has been shown to preoccupy us with failure and contributes to symptoms of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and negative self-image.

Given how readily self-care can turn into self-criticism in this landscape, social media is a vicious trigger. Instagram in particular pressures us to share our personal victories and turn them into opportunities for self-marketing. The intoxication of getting likes on that photo of your colorful salad or post-workout selfie is a powerful source of motivation. A out of UCLA found that getting likes on Instagram posts activates a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which is also activated when eating chocolate or winning money. Yet, at the same time, this culture of compulsory sharing is what prompts us all to compare ourselves with everyone else. As I write this, I find myself comparing my daily routine with over 5 million Instagram posts invoking the hashtag #selfcare. These posts exhibit a range of photographed activities, from candlelit bubble baths to meal prep to inspirational quotes against monochrome backgrounds ("Say yes to you"). For all the buzz about #selfcare on Instagram, it isn't actually increasing our well-being. In fact, a recent study calls Instagram "the worst" social media platform for mental health, showing that it heightens users' feelings of inadequacy and anxiety by creating unrealistic expectations and instilling what the researchers call an attitude of "compare and despair." Or, as a friend said to me, "Vacation pictures make me feel poor. Gym pics make me feel out of shape. Food pics make me hungry, and anything well-curated makes me nervous that I don't pay enough attention to detail."

Of course, engaging in rituals of self-discipline for the purposes of "improvement" is an ancient pastime. Self-denial through fasting or extreme dietary restrictions exists at the core of most major religions, often as a means to achieve spiritual purity, atonement, or enlightenment. Even now, our attempts to exert control on our bodies and minds remain underpinned by a moral charge. Yet what's different in today's world of solutionism and tech is that prioritizing self-care - specifically with the aid of consumer goods like wellness apps and health food - is not just a testament to one's self-discipline or moral virtue. It is an emblem of success and cultural know-how. Last year, journalist Amy Larocca wrote an article titled "The Wellness Epidemic," in which she argued that, in the world of luxury meditation studios, ayurvedic cleanses, and sober morning raves, the mythical goal of wellness is only available to the rich, who have the time and resources to spend diagnosing their "maybe-kind-of-celiac disease" and purchasing $1,000 skin care protocols. "Spend a little time in the wellness world, and it seems like everyone has an official diagnosis," Larocca writes. Part of the irony of wellness culture is that it requires us to focus constantly on the specter of illness, as it's fueled by the (im)possibility of perfection. With green juice at $9 a pop, and luxury spin classes at $35+, the more aspirational self-improvement activities of our day are out of reach for most people. This further circumscribes self-care with values of conformity and achievement, as well as their shadow sides - feelings of inadequacy and self-criticism.

There are infinite opportunities for personal growth, self-care, and genuine stress relief that don't require money or clenched fists, but instead enable us to take a genuine break from goal-oriented and metric-driven thinking. What about cutting ourselves some slack on the days we don't get as much done as we had planned? Or reminding ourselves that laughter is healing? We may idealize the actions we are able to document and share, or the data we can collect and track, but there are plenty of times when what we need to do to feel better - and actually get better - is less. For better or for worse, there is no app or amount of money that can help with that.

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Executive Summary Today, like so much around us, the $11 billion self-care industry is heavily influenced by tech. Our focus is shifting away from the actual self - our bodies, minds, and spirits - and toward data about the self.

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Practice Leader: Stu Finkelson

Facilitator: Eric Larson

Preparation:

Please read "How Self-Care Became So Much Work" by September 30th

Please live in the following questions to prepare for our discussion:

What initial thoughts and judgements - positive, negative and neutral - did you experience as you read the article?

Did your thoughts and/or judgements transform as you took the ideas into your day-to-day life?

In what ways have you experienced turning something you value into just another "have to"?

When you observe others - colleagues, direct reports, clients, learners - making choices that you perceive as harmful, how do you automatically react? How do you choose to respond? What are the results?

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Transformational experiences backed by world experts in neuroscience, mindfulness, leadership and emotional intelligence.

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Hyperdrive Agile Leadership (powered by Bratton & Company)

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Agile Camp Silicon Valley 9/21/13 Page 1 of 2 Presence-Based Coaching Jeff McKenna and Roger Brown Agile Camp Silicon Valley 9/21/13 Definitions from Doug Sils...

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There are countless executive coaches I would never hire for myself, no matter how wise, insightful, dynamic or experienced. Admittedly, I'm a hard guy to please, so what I require might not be a good guide for others. However, if a coach can't create an environment that dissolves the limitations of history, expectation, and assumption, I'm not interested.

How does a coach do that? By creating in the conversation with the coachee a sense of open, reflective exploration. The coaches who expand my mind, emotions and performance come to the coaching relationship from a place of inner calm. They have quiet minds. They are not beguiled by fancy techniques or elegant coaching models. They are midwives for the narrow, messy emergence into a larger world - and they rely on habits of mindfulness to accomplish that.

As you may have noticed, there's been an explosion of information in recent years on neuroscience and how the brain handles change - and it's fueling an interest in mindfulness. If you are a coach or are searching for one to boost your performance, remember this rule: mindful coaching is better coaching. And mindfulness practices have shown benefits for clients in health, decision-making and leadership.

Mindful coaches perfect a form of conscious and comfortable simultaneous attention to themselves, their coachee, the relationship between them, and the mental, emotional, and relational dynamics occurring in the moment. There are three aspects of mindfulness that have particular pertinence to leadership coaching:

1) an empty mind

2) non-reactivity

3) permissive attention

An empty mind. For the coach, mindfulness is characterized by an empty mind, a stilling of the persistent chatter and the cognitive ticker-tape of commentary. This is a challenge for most Westerners because of our devotion to activity and terror of being alone with ourselves. An empty mind is key to letting something happen in someone else. It is the essence of coaching. Like falling in love or falling asleep, it can't be achieved through greater effort or more action.

As coaches, a busy mind sabotages our efforts to let others express themselves. Think about your conversations with co-workers or with family. How often have you had the feeling that someone was not really hearing you, not really attending to you? You may have told someone about the challenge you were facing, only to find that they couldn't keep themselves from telling you how you should think about it, or that it shouldn't bother you so much, or how they have had similar experiences.

Alternatively, when someone hears us with an open, empty mind, we sense our own substance and value. No matter how 'helpful' someone wants to be, advice or correction always implies that we lack something. We have to persuade ourselves that someone cares when they give us the impression that they think we can't figure it out for ourselves. Unfortunately, more than a few coaches enter the profession because they've never been heard themselves. They picture themselves giving important advice to powerful people and receiving their gratitude. That guiding image will never benefit the coachee.

Non-reactivity. Meditation and quiet thoughtfulness help coaches sense that, as they work, they are operating in a vast mental and emotional space with clients. No reaction is required, no matter what the provocation. Instead, coaches are free to perceive the needs of their clients and respond - without escalating the emotional content or misinterpreting any intent. Still, fostering a non-judgmental attitude as a coach does not mean surrendering judgment. Mindfulness in fact leads to wiser judgment about what's important and what is not. A coach who practices mindfulness doesn't make things worse Non-reactivity on the part of the coach gives the person being coached room to roam from perspective to perspective, from one incomplete thought to another until they begin to become whole thoughts and the basis for growth.

Oddly, non-reactivity is often experienced quite positively by people who are being coached. I say, "oddly" because so much energy is expended in our culture in empty encouragement that does not actually encourage. Coachees often find that space to think and feel and explore while staying in relationship is invigorating. In addition, this dynamic makes true collaboration possible. The mindful coach creates an emotional space without land mines, where the coachee isn't worried about being manipulated or controlled.

Permissive attention. A brilliant - and almost pathologically internally-focused - engineer was sent to me for coaching. In the first session, he assured me that he could never benefit from coaching because he couldn't tolerate a conversation with someone longer than a couple minutes. When he predicted the demise of our session, I let on that I was quite curious to see that, and that we could both be watching for it. "Do you suppose you will see this change as it is coming along, or do think you are likely to be surprised by its sudden dramatic entrance?" I asked. He was made curious by my curiosity and new possibilities were suddenly available to him. I call it permissive attention because I chose to draw our attention to his certainty of this coming disaster as a matter for discovery rather than trauma. He went on to a productive and long-lasting coaching engagement because the spotlight was never on him, but on his growth.

A mindful coach can draw a person into a moment of connection in which all distractions disappear. It doesn't matter whether the distractions are in the room or in the street outside or in unbidden thoughts or feelings from within the coachee. The ultimate challenge for most leaders is staying focused for more than a moment on any serious line of thinking, perceiving, judging or acting. The coach is repeatedly able to draw the attention of the coachee to those things of importance to him and return the attention to it without coercion.

Modern brain research has shown that we move in and out of various states of focused or unfocused attention throughout our day. Coaching allows someone to stay on a line of thought until it yields new perspectives and answers. It proves especially powerful when these are questions that might have stymied us for a long time. The coach wants to create an encounter in which the two people are in synchronized attention and vast amounts of mental and emotional energy can be directed at the development of the person being coached. This is a kind of mutual trance state, along the lines of being "in the zone" in sports, and most people have experienced it only briefly. The mindful coach can elicit this state and maintain it for the growth of the coachee.

As coaches, we are privileged to serve as midwives to human change - and can impact the performance of entire organizations. How do we contribute to the possibility of change? How do we serve as catalysts for turning experience and reflection into more effective, meaningful lives? Mindfulness offers a powerful alternative to the coercive and linear assumptions that have dominated our thinking. It might be that individual change is not so much driven as permitted. The question for the coach is this: how can I prepare myself to create a mental, emotional, and relational space in which someone may grow and develop? Mindfulness practices prepare coaches to really help instead of just trying to be helpful.
Douglas Riddle is director of the global coaching practice at the Center for Creative Leadership, a top-ranked, global provider of leadership education and research.

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Three Keys to Mindful Leadership Coaching

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By Douglas Riddle There are countless executive coaches I would never hire for myself, no matter how wise, insightful, dynamic or experienced. Admittedly, I'm a hard guy to please, so what I require might not be a good guide for others. However, if a coach can't create an environment that dissolves [...]

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Posted by Liz Hall | November 13, 2013 | Comments (19)

When I first started practicing as a coach five years ago, I already had an established mindfulness practice but it took some time before I felt I could emerge from the closet. Other "secret meditators" shared how they too were reticent about discussing their practice with clients.

Times have changed, and we're currently witnessing something of a mindfulness revolution. Mindfulness is widely viewed as an approach suitable and adaptable within a wide range of secular settings, including education, healthcare, the workplace, even politics- and more recently, coaching.

There hasn't been a great deal of research yet on mindfulness in coaching, although plenty in other arenas with implications for coaching. We know, for example, that mindfulness helps us be more emotionally intelligent, more present, more creative, better able to make better decisions, better able to manage stress, and become more resilient.

One coaching study (Spence et al, 2010) found that mindfulness training combined with solution-focused coaching helped clients attain their health goals.

My own research, which included an online survey among 156 coaches from regions including the US and the UK, revealed the top reasons why coaches practice mindfulness: to help them live more in the moment (74%), be more self-aware (73%), manage/prevent stress (67%), and be more present for their clients (65%). And the main reasons they use mindfulness explicitly with clients: to help the clients become more self-aware (70%), be calmer/less anxious (59%), better manage stress/be more centered (55%) and better manage reactions/responses (51%).

So there are plenty of reasons to be "mindful coaches." What does this involve? Here follow my top tips:

1. Undergo the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction or Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy program. Research shows just practising mindfulness for eight weeks literally rewires our brains.

2. Practice mindfulness (including meditation) regularly (preferably daily).

3. Take a systemic approach to coaching, "being mindful" of the wider systems in which you and your clients operate.

4. Approach coaching (and life in general) with non-judgment; open-ness; curiosity, and compassion.

5. Prepare mindfully for each coaching session- this can take as little as a few minutes. For example, walk mindfully to your coaching session, or sit in the park and pay attention to your breath for a few minutes.

6. Share mindfulness practices within coaching sessions and as "homework" where useful and appropriate for the client. You don't have to call them mindfulness- you can call them Centering practices, or talk about exercises that help us become more resourceful and creative, more emotionally intelligent, more able to be resilient and manage stress- the research backs all of this up. You might, for example, suggest both of you do a "breathing practice" when the client first arrives to help you be more resourceful and present.

7. Attend (not solely) to the present in all coaching interactions (thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, happenings- both on your part and on the part of your client). Be curious about everything that arises, turning towards the "difficult" as well as the 'easy.'

8. Don't be overly-attached to outcome, for yourself or your clients. It can be incredibly powerful, particularly for leaders, to sit with not-knowing, to be open to whatever emerges in a non-judgmental, curious, compassionate way.

9. Be compassionate to yourself and your clients. Practicing mindfulness helps us develop compassion, which I believe is a central component of coaching. It can be incredibly hard to be self-compassionate, but well worth the effort.

10. Have fun! In the West, we often take things far too seriously and can learn a great deal from Eastern teachings. Yes, mindfulness helps us manage stress, be more creative, improves our cognitive functioning and thus our "performance" but ultimately, for me, mindfulness is about bringing joy back into our lives and those of our clients.

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Ten top tips for being a mindful coach - International Coach Federation

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When I first started practicing as a coach five years ago, I already had an established mindfulness practice but it took some time before I felt I could emerge from the closet. Other "secret meditators" shared how they too were reticent about discussing their practice with clients.

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1. October 11
Practice Leader: Stu Finkelson
Facilitator: Eric Larson

2.  November 8
Practice Leader:
Facilitator:

3.   December 13
Practice Leader:
Facilitator:

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With leaders everywhere searching for ways to be mindful, Janice Marturano is the definitive guide to becoming a mindful leader. If you follow her practical advice and easy-to-adopt exercises, this material will change your life.

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With leaders everywhere searching for ways to be mindful, Janice Marturano is the definitive guide to becoming a mindful leader. If you follow her practical advice and easy-to-adopt exercises, this material will change your life.