Attention is one of our most valuable resources, and yet strangely we seldom pay attention to how we pay attention—unless we happen to be a meditator or a neuroscientist. These two perspectives, coming from East and West, are now beginning to “meet in the middle,” as Western meditators mature in their understanding and scientists expand their knowledge of how the brain works. This new knowledge has important application in the fields of management and leadership.

For example, scientists can now explain why the brain gets overloaded at work, and how we can manage or avoid this overload by using our attention resources differently. The part of the brain that performs complex problem-solving, the prefrontal cortex, uses large amounts of energy and literally gets tired from prolonged use. In the newly published Your Brain at Work (Harper Business, 2009), David Rock talks about some of the simple things we can do to manage our work rhythms so that we don’t overload this region of our brain. Some of these we probably already do intuitively, such as prioritizing at the beginning of the day when we are still fresh, using diagrams and stories to hold complex information, getting aerobic exercise which oxygenates the brain, externalizing information on flipcharts and notepads so that we don’t have to hold it all in memory, and allowing the thinking brain to return to a resting state at various points during the day.

Rock notes that the brain has other limitations, such as the capacity to perform multiple conscious tasks at once. The prefrontal cortex can only do one thing at a time. The term continuous partial attention refers to the common illusion of multitasking, which actually involves rapidly switching attention between tasks—an inefficient use of brain energy that leads to “intense mental exhaustion.” The only way to successfully multitask without draining energy and splitting focus is to combine automatic functions, which are taken on by other parts of the brain, with those requiring the engagement of the prefrontal cortex.

Accessing more of the brain’s functions is also a key to generating insight. According to Rock, research has shown that “sometimes the prefrontal cortex, your conscious processing capacity, is itself the problem. Get it out of the way, and the solution appears.” People who are particularly adept at generating insight have learned how to switch to alternative modes of thinking. They “don’t focus harder on a problem, and they are not necessarily geniuses…. They have more awareness of their internal experience. They can observe their own thinking, and thus can change how they think. They have better cognitive control and thus can access a quieter mind on demand.”

These glimpses into the workings and limitations of our brain lead to the conclusion that the mind’s capacity to be self-aware is key to becoming more effective in the workplace, particularly in complex environments. This capacity is called mindfulness. “To neuroscientists, mindfulness has little to do with spirituality, religion, or any particular type of meditation. It’s a trait that everyone has to some degree, which can be developed in many ways.  Mindfulness also turns out to be important for workplace effectiveness. When you listen to a hunch that you need to stop emailing and think about how to plan your day better, you’re being mindful. When you notice that you need to focus so you don’t get lost driving to a meeting, you’re being mindful. In each case you are noticing inner signals. The ability to notice these kinds of signals is a central platform for being more effective at work. Knowledge of your brain is one thing, but you also need to be aware of what your brain is doing at any moment for any knowledge to be useful.”

Recent neuroscience research has further confirmed what meditators have known for millennia: that there are two fundamentally different ways of interacting with the environment. One is centered in a self-referential process (“ego” or “me” or “personality”), which neuroscience calls the “narrative circuit”—it is the brain circuitry and information storehouse that holds together a personal narrative based on past experience, which then acts as a filter and interpreter for what is happening in the present. The other is called “direct experience” by both scientists and meditators. In this case, several different brain regions become more active and you are able to experience sensory information in real time. You are not just overlaying the experiences of the past onto the situation of the present.

Mindfulness not only allows you to notice the difference between these two modes, but also gives you the choice of which circuitry to be using. Further, the more you switch over to direct experience, the “thicker” and stronger this circuitry becomes.

Mindfulness is a leadership practice that you can do over and over, every day. The more you do it, the more likely you will reconnect with mindfulness in the midst of chaos, pressure, and conflict—in other words, at the times when you most need to be present and when you are most likely to have defaulted into a habitual pattern of response. Moreover, you will be cultivating the capacity to be fully present to the richness and depth of your life and work.

ALIA programs often incorporate mindfulness practices—not as an optional component but within the formal schedule, as part of our preparation for new learning and whole-person leadership. Sometimes this takes the form of sitting or walking meditation, sometimes mind-body exercises, and sometimes practices originating in the contemplative or martial arts.

Susan Szpakowski is the Executive Director of the ALIA Institute.

I want to share the story of a phenomenon that my colleague Mark Szpakowski dubbed the “Triple World Café”. I co-produced this event in late June of this year with Michael Chender, member of the Governing Council of the ALIA Institute, Mark Szpakowski, and other key ALIA & World Café members, as part of the Shambhala Summer Institute Program.

The Triple World Café experience was an extraordinary experience of collaboration, inspiration and magic among a large and loosely structured team – we learned an enormous amount, deepened old friendships and began new ones, got rave reviews and exceeded everyone’s expectations, but most of all we stepped out on a limb of sheer intention and imagination and felt it miraculously hold our weight.

Here’s how it happened:

ALIA Institute (formerly the Shambhala Institute of Authentic Leadership) and the World Café are long-time friends and collaborators – ALIA has embedded World Café conversations into their annual Summer Authentic Leadership in Action Conferences from their beginnings, and Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, Tom Hurley and other experienced World Café practitioners have led workshops at these gatherings pretty much every year since then.

Because of our history of friendship and collaboration, Michael approached the World Café for ideas about how to extend their Summer Programs to people who couldn’t be there in person, and to serve their alumni in particular. We’d never met, but after he and I had a wonderful two-hour conversation exploring the transcendent possibilities of virtual connection(!), Michael came back to me with the ambitious idea of three World Cafes held simultaneously - one at their gathering at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Canada, one on Skype, and one in Second Life. I was excited because I have been doing a lot more World Cafe work in Second Life, and agreed to help him develop the event as a prototype. The idea was that we would continue exploring together with the purpose of evolving and informing their ongoing Alumni programs.

Michael wanted these three World Cafes to be intimately connected with each other so that the participants would feel as if they were there together in one room, and together we devised a number of ways to weave the three strands together into one thread.

First of all, they planned to project images onto one of the walls in the conference room in Halifax - alternate views of the real-time World Café going on in Second Life and a map of names and geographic locations of the people in the Skype World Café.

That happened and was very effective at creating excitement and an inclusive atmosphere – in fact it had an unexpected consequence, which you’ll hear later.

As part of the weaving, we planned for the opening World Café introduction from the room in Halifax to be piped into the Skype World Café through an audio feed. With the help of the sound technician this was no problem. Hearing the familiar voice of the World Café host in Halifax was a powerful experience for the Skype Café participants (who were all, with one exception, Institute alumni) and allowed them to feel especially close and connected to the community gathering at the ALIA Institute’s center.

We also planned for all three World Cafes to address the same set of questions and follow the same timing and number of conversation rounds, and all three were organized to feed into the same final Harvest process so that insights from the Skype and Second Life Cafes could inform the graphic capture in Halifax. The graphic recording was to be reflected back into the virtual Cafes through photographs taken in Halifax, uploaded to Flickr and sent via link through text chat to both virtual platforms.

So as it turned out, everything didn’t exactly work out like that we’d planned it, but this was our blueprint, and I set to work using it to create the infrastructure guides, technical training, communications and scripts that would be necessary to support it all.

Each of the two virtual World Cafes called for carefully thought out logistics and a solid team. The team needed in both virtual World Cafés consisted of a World Café host, Table Hosts for each of the tables, a Tech Support Person to troubleshoot issues that come up during the Café itself, and a Liaison that was in the room in Halifax and simultaneously plugged into a Virtual Café.

Each of the Table Hosts in both mediums needed to be trained in the technology of how to call their table together and dissolve it and start a new one with each table change, and each of the Participants needed to receive some level of orientation to the conventions and technical requirements of their virtual World Café platform. In addition, they needed an AV technician in Halifax to help them connect the sound feed from the World Café introduction into Skype.

The detailed pre-event training sessions and logistical minutiae seem extreme to those of us used to producing face to face World Cafés, but the more practiced and organized the technological elements of a virtual World Café, the more fully the technology can recede into the background and “disappear”. The intent is to keep the focus off the technology and on the quality of the conversation, and that takes careful preparation and clear agreements.

Luckily Michael was not fazed by the daunting list of people and details that needed to be organized. In spite of being a self-professed “Luddite” he bravely took on the role of both Liaison and Host for the Skype World Café, and George Por, Carolyn Baldwin and Chris Grant, who served as the Skype Table Hosts, joined him. Their Tech Support person was Anthony Meyers, and they had additional support from the University person on sound tech duty that day.

I was the World Café Host in Second Life and the final in-world Table Hosts included Doon Bury (Mary Pat LeRoy), Anachie Easterwood, Ravi Amaterasu (Ravi Tangri), and Charlie Loxely (Alexandra Grant-Paul). Widget Whiteberry from Commonwealth Island, among her many contributions to the success of the event, served as Tech Support and Vivienne Cassavetes from the Peacemaker Institute, also, made huge contributions during key points in the process. Last but by no means least in this excellent team was Eos Amaterasu (Mark Szpakowski), who was ALIA’s advance scout already active in Second Life. Mark was an invaluable partner and we worked closely throughout the whole project. Mark was also present in the Halifax World Café, and he played the role of our Liason - we stayed in touch via a Skype line throughout the Triple World Café and linked our timing and the pace of what was happening in all three places.

So, as you can see we had a very tight Second Life team which had been working together for at least two weeks and already weathered a storm or two by the launch of the Triple World Café itself. Many of our participants were members of both the World Café and ALIA Institute communities, and we were all excited to see them show up. There were people there from all over the world, including one from Bangladesh where it was 4am!

There was a slideshow of images made from that day, taken from the ALIA Summer Institute blog they created to accompany the conference.

So let’s see, where shall I start with our learnings?!

Well, let’s start with the questions. Working with the idea of unity amongst the three World Cafes, the task of coming up with the questions was left with the team in Halifax, and they were to communicate them to the virtual hosts the day before the event.

The problem with this was that the questions that worked in the face-to-face conference in Halifax, where they had been exploring a thread of conversation over several days, did not translate well into a virtual environment where many were gathering for the first time. When the team in Second Life got the questions, we immediately knew they wouldn’t work for us. As we all know, finding the right questions is essential to the success of a World Café, so that was the first learning – to either involve the virtual teams when conceiving the questions, or allow them to be adapted to make sense within specific environments.

As it happened, we came up with a great set of questions that made sense for the Second Life World Café participants, and the Skype World Café crew were satisfied with a slightly different wording of the face-to-face Café questions.

Another practical learning was to have at least one run-through with each virtual team, and one with the key people on all three teams. The Skype team didn’t have a dress rehearsal and they ran into several “just in time” learning moments, including a storm that took out one of their Table Hosts. Michael had to pinch-hit as both Café Host and Table Host (Note to Self: assign a back-up Table Host). Thankfully they were able to think on their feet and rose to the occasion beautifully, and they also had the good luck to draw a Sound Tech person who had experience running Skype Conferences.

The Second Life World Café team did have a full dress rehearsal, at least two other training sessions for Table Hosts, and an alternate Table Host in place in case of emergencies. All that preparation helped - we only had a few minor tech glitches and for the most part we were able to leave the technology behind and enjoy a deep and probing World Café conversation.

Here’s an excerpt from my initial de-brief exchange with Michael:

“It sounds like you had the same exhilarating experience of alternating chaos and bliss that we experienced in Second Life! The Second Life learnings sound parallel to yours in many ways - prepare, prepare, prepare, back everything up and know things will go wrong SOMEWHERE anyway. As the host in Second Life I found I really needed to stay in the moment and adapt to the inevitable glitches with as much grace and ease as I could to keep the feeling of “hospitable space” flowing.

Something interesting happened in Second Life that we hadn’t foreseen, which was that two people from the face-to-face event in Halifax got so turned on to what they could see of the World Café in Second Life that they got out their laptops and joined us! This was very exciting, even though it was also a bit problematic since they were both completely new to Second Life, which has a definite learning curve!

Another learning was that you need a little more time for each round in a virtual World Café to accommodate the inevitable extra minute or two each round that it takes to change tables physically and get the technology for each table working. We were a bit behind schedule in Second Life and our harvest came in too late to be counted in the initial sharing, and as it turned out the harvesting process in Halifax was a several step process that gathered individual reflections and clustered them for further face-to-face conversation over the next two days.

One of my favorite surprises came from The Skype Café’s innovation in communications conventions. When I say “communication conventions” I mean the little gestures we agree to use in virtual World Cafes when we are about to speak, or when we have finished speaking - in lieu of the more immediate indicators that we can use in our face-to-face conversations. So for example, we would say/write “next” when we wanted to begin “speaking” in Second Life (which in this case was actually writing in text), and “done” or “dfn” for “done for now” when we had finished.

Borrowing from the Shambhala traditions, in the ALIA Institute programs they are used to bowing to each other as they start and finish their sessions, so they used the word “bow” to indicate they were ready to speak, and again when they were finished. I found that delightful!

I could go on and on, as this was a rich learning ground and we had an amazing team and substantive de-briefing process that was fed from many directions. Some of the feedback from the Skype Cafe participants is up on their blog, and wonderful reading. Everyone felt it was a great success, and I too was very happy with what happened.

In closing, I want to share this video that the talented Arthur Thomas made showing the beauty of this extraordinary event:

Shambhala Summer Institute 2009 from ALIA on Vimeo.

What a Wonderful Crisis!

Although the future may seem to be painted in varying shades of grey, some leaders are seizing the opportunity that always accompanies a crisis. They are focusing their people with positive energy and fierce determination on the few things that can make the biggest difference.

As Matthew Key, Chairman and CEO of O2 Europe told me, “Let’s not let this crisis go to waste”. Key is directing the companies under his leadership to increase their focus on innovation, to enter new markets, to eliminate waste, to develop new technology services and generally to strengthen their relationships with employees, customers, the community and other stakeholders. He says, “Although no one would have asked for it, I believe that the global economic meltdown can be a good opportunity for us. It is a forced opportunity to positively drive changes for the customer that might have otherwise taken years. We’re making the most of it.”

Many are now realizing that this crisis is not all about loss. Although many who have been personally affected may resist the idea, it can also positively alter the trajectory of their businesses and personal lives, communities and our environment. The global economic meltdown is forcing us to reevaluate our priorities and intentions and finally enter into conversations that we have been avoiding for years.

Focus & Execution
Success lies in the leader’s ability to focus clearly and act decisively. Both rely on the quality of relationship between the leader and those who must execute the strategy. However brilliant this strategy, if it is based on false or ill-informed assumptions about the situation, it will probably fail. You will only know what’s really going on when you are in conversation with and listening to colleagues and those in the field. This requires humility and acceptance of the fact that you don’t have all the answers. Above all it requires that you demonstrate awareness of how best to get your teams behind you – you need to align your people with your strategy.

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf defines leadership as “a potent combination of strategy and character, but if you have to be without one, be without the strategy”. Character is the critical link between strategy and execution. The character of the leader is what engenders belief, not clever ideas and fancy rhetoric. The character of the brand is what engenders customer loyalty, not clever advertising. People aren’t stupid. They quickly discern what is authentic from what appears to be empty propaganda. People (customers, voters, employees, shareholders) discern character by sensing ‘intention’.

Character = Intention x Attention x Consistency
Be clear on your intentions. Your character is illuminated by the coherence that exists between what you say and what you do … consistently, day in day out.

Ask yourself: what is my purpose in this situation? What is my real intention? Is it to give, or to take? Is what I am about to do driven by what’s in the best interests of all, or will it serve only in my own interests? Does it align with my sense of decency and integrity? What values are driving this decision?

If people sense that your intention is right, they will be with you – even forgiving stupid mistakes and clumsiness. If they doubt your intention, no matter how polished the spin, they will switch off and trust will be gone. The conversation will be over and so ends the relationship – if it even began. This applies as much to brands as it does to people.

The leader who marries intention and attention and who resists being blown off course is well-placed to obtain the support of his or her teams. This kind of leader demonstrates a high level of self-knowledge and doesn’t shy away from taking the time for reflection. You’ve got to be clear on what your own values and purpose are if they are going to be clear to others around you.

This is leadership from the inside out, as described by Akzo Nobel Managing Director, Tex Gunning, in his message to his top management team in February this year:

“We all intuitively know what “great” looks and feels like. We instinctively know what makes a great family; we know how great organizations should look and feel; and we know how great leaders should act. However, in many cases we’re not able to live up to the ideal picture and we face a gap between the current reality and the ideal situation we call “great”.

To understand what’s preventing us from being great leaders, we need to understand what causes those gaps. What are the barriers, what are the patterns, what are the underlying causes that prevent us and our business from being great? We must become conscious about what has shaped us, what blocks us and what our underlying motivation and attitudes are that we bring to our leadership. This crisis will force us into a conversation with our self. Building a meaningful relationship with our self will support us to define ourselves from the inside out, instead of the outside in. The quality of the relationship that we build up with our self equals the quality of the relationship that we build up with those that we lead. If we are able to lead ourselves in this authentic way, we will truly be able to mobilize those we lead, unlock the potential of the organization and turn it into growth for our business. Together we will build a community which can be characterized as cohesive, inclusive, respectful, trustworthy and inspired.”

Of course it’s not all about what’s going on inside. Balance is needed. We also need to be conscious of how others see us, and be responsive to the external environment. We need to be open for feedback and not lost in our own internal world. That would be the other extreme. According to George Herbert Mead, “Identity is the conversation between what others say of us and what we know ourselves to be.”

Leaders need to be clear on the vision and values that drive them in both their professional and their personal lives. If your attitude is wanting, chances are that you’re in trouble; if you’re in trouble, chances are that the organization you lead is in trouble too.

It’s all about relationships
To make the most of this crisis, think about the relationships that are most important in your life. For each relationship, think about the conversations you most need to have. Develop a plan to begin the conversations that you have been avoiding… those which if you could have them, would have the biggest and most significant impact. The conversation is the relationship. If the conversation stops, so does the relationship. Before you begin any conversation with another person, deal first with the most important of all: the relationship you have with yourself.

Your self-image
The relationship you have with yourself is tied to your self-image and sense of security. For most people, their self-image and sense of security is largely formed outside-in. In other words, the information they have on themselves isn’t balanced and anchored by an internal conviction of truth or a deeply held belief. Self-image is most often linked to what is going on in the world outside….most often a person’s job, ‘what they do’, their material possessions and how they think they are seen by others.

People with an outside-in obsession also have their sense of security linked to situations outside of themselves; hence they often look and feel out of control. This is disastrous for a leader. During times of crisis, the external environment is chaotic and uncontrollable… a person may lose his job, or feel unable to do a good job, or be thrust into a position beyond his ability to succeed. He may feel inadequate to the task. So, if one’s self-image and sense of security is linked to the external environment he will be in turmoil internally to an even greater extent. Why? Because fear is an illuminator and exaggerator of truth.

Intense fear of failure is an inevitable condition of those whose self-image is based on this outside-in illusion. How will I look? What will people think? Can I make it work? Are the conditions right for me to succeed? What if I fail? What is plan B? These are not the right questions for a leader.

The leader who outperforms during times of crisis is the one whose strength and conviction is generated from the inside-out, not the outside-in. The one who will not be swayed by flattery, fear or force, that’s the fellow we will follow, in spite of his flaws.

A few good questions to help define your purpose and what generates meaning: What story do I presently tell myself and others about who I am? What drives me? What motivates me to keep going? What is my passion? What are my most valuable assets? What is most valuable to me in life? What can I rely on, even if everything else is taken away? How can I change my story to be more aligned with what I know is true?

The economic crisis is here. You don’t have a choice in it happening or not, but you can choose the attitude you adopt towards it. This year will inevitably mark the beginning of a new chapter. There are outside factors, of course, but whether it will be the best chapter ever, or perhaps the worst, will, to a great extent, depend upon the attitude you choose.

Choose to do the “right thing” and one day you will look back and say “What a wonderful crisis that was.”

* * *

Brian Bacon’s colleague, Lasse Wrennmark, will offer Leading through Turbulent Times – the Art of Effective Execution at ALIA Europe, 10-16 January, 2010. This module will help participants find their own answers to the questions raised in this article as they develop action plans around work, family, and personal development. 

On a bleak February afternoon, a curious e-mail appeared in my inbox with an invitation from Barbara Bash to visit her visual blog.  What caught my attention were the words Barbara used to describe the process she would be using to create it: “I will be posting more images from my sketchbooks occasionally, following the path of slow blogging.”

Hmm, what a concept, “slow blogging.” My interest piqued, I immediately visited the web site to find an intimate view of the world through the eyes of an artist. Reminiscent of her illustrated books, Barbara’s blog consists of fluid images complimented by minimal yet striking words.

The process of entering the Internet world was not an easy step for Barbara.  She recalls numerous attempts to find a way to offer her quiet illustrative expression into the fast electronic world: “I felt like I was holding a delicate little leaf at the edge of this huge rushing river. And I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to toss my gentle offering in there? I don’t think so!’”

Over the years, Barbara has kept illustrated journals and many friends and colleagues saw the potential of using the Internet to share this work with the bigger world. “People visit my studio, look through my sketchbooks, and respond to the intimacy of the form. My book True Nature explored this journaling form further, on-the-spot, fresh in the moment, visual and verbal. It has become a path of slowing down and self connection that I wanted to offer out to a world where everything is moving so fast.”

A friend of Barbara’s suggested she post her images from past sketchbooks. But she realized that she wanted the work to be new like fresh bread, created in this moment, in this season. “It was riskier and more interesting to open to the unknown. This fresh immediate voice seems to be the nature of the blogging form. My own version has become a kind of visual haiku.”

This past winter, Barbara was looking through the Sunday New York Times and discovered a piece about people doing “slow blogging.”  The article deeply resonated with her: “rather than having blogs where you post everyday, people were using them as a form of meditation, a chance to self connect, to post at a slower pace.”

Just the idea of slow blogging was the counterbalance she needed to enter the speed and force of the Internet.  “The name slow blogging gave me some permission to trust my voice. It gave me a place to enter.”

But she still didn’t start her own web page, though the idea rumbled and ruminated within. Then in January, Barbara went to Obama’s Inauguration in Washington DC. “Even though it was going to be bitterly cold a friend suggested I take my sketchbook. And I got a few things down - with cold fingers and wide eyes - walking down to the Mall. I caught some details and rode the energy!”

The illustrations from this amazing event proved to be the starting point for Barbara’s slow blog. “The inauguration got me going - that sense of stepping into a new world. And I wanted to create something very text light, like a haiku. It’s a format where I can offer something up and then hear back from people right away. I’m really enjoying creating something that is meeting a need for taking a break, taking a breath. It takes stepping into uncertainty to say, “I’m going to see what happens when I walk outside. I’m going to be open to what shows up, and record that.  It’s about staying with your experience. If it helps me connect with myself, it might help someone else connect with themselves.”

And why is slow blogging so important to Barbara?

“Right in the midst of each moment, there is a space to be aware of ourselves. That is the true ground we stand on. I want to do that for myself and offer that reminder to others through this blog. From that slower view we might take a fresh look, and appreciate this precious world.”

Check out Barbara’s slow blog - True Nature - at: http://barbarabash.blogspot.com

Barbara will be leading creative process sessions at ALIA West and the Shambhala Summer Institute.

In the 1990’s the world of business and organization discovered that having a high IQ (Intelligence Quotient) by itself does not make a person a great leader. EQ (Emotional Intelligence) emerged as the new paradigm for developing leaders. The notion that human relations are as important as managing data became the main tenet of leadership competences. This idea evolved into a movement that spread to the far corners of the planet. Mind and emotions area vital part of our capacity to engage with the challenges of today’s demands but they are not the whole of who we are nor do they represent our full potential of human possibility.

We are also a body that communicates and processes information on a sensory level far more encompassing than our cultural view leads us to believe. We have access to an immense intelligence that informs us through all of our multi dimensional ways of being. Research has shown that 70% to 90% of communication is non-verbal. We are exchanging information all the time even when we are not speaking. The process of discovering how we communicate non-verbally and accessing intuition – information that comes from intelligence beyond what is already known – is the field of Somatic Intelligence. Somatic Intelligence is the study and practice of what unites mind, emotions and intuition – the body.

Personality and Center

Our ability to unite mind, emotions and intuition in the body, rests on our understanding of the energy patterns that keep us from living in such unification on a day-to-day basis. In order to make a distinction between the energy patterns that support unification and those that inhibit unification we will name these parts of ourselves ‘center’ and ‘personality’.

Personality is the part of us that references on managing the stuff of life –relationships and things. It is triggered around issues of safety, approval and control. To be clear, in this exploration we are interested in how the pattern organizes not why it came to be. Our assumption is that everyone has a survival pattern that arose in an attempt to manage the relationships and things in their life. From the point of view of this study all personality patterns are equally unskillful and will fail to bring about happiness and security. This is because all personality survival patterns are referenced on safety and security in a world where we can never be entirely safe and secure. Ultimately everything in the universe is subject to change – everything is impermanent. Like Sisyphus, continuously rolling the rock up hill, personality is constantly trying to achieve security in and insecure world.

Center is the part of us that references on unification – the recognition of interconnectedness. In center we experience effortless action and stillness with the same even regard. When we are in the zone or the flow state we experience unification as a natural strength or intelligence moving through us. The state of center, sometimes called the zone, is often described as an experience where there is plenty of time and space and a difficult task becomes effortless. Center is referenced on the whole of life while personality references on the individual segments. Because the centered part of us is not cluttered with survival concerns and needs there is space for insight, creativity and innovation to arise through intuition.

Our interest in making this distinction between personality and center is to be able to closely examine the process of development in the personality’s pattern. The more we can actually notice, the more we become aware of how the pattern begins, the easier it will be to effect the pattern. In other words, if we catch it at the beginning before too much momentum has gathered, we will be able to choose to activate the alternative – a more centered pattern based on unification. This shift does not occur because we wish to become more centered. It happens because we have done our homework. We have practiced strengthening the pattern of center.

Strengthening the pattern of center is the second practice we engage in because if we focus on developing the unified centered state first we will tend to default to the more positive alternative and try to skip or suppress the personality’s pattern. If this happens then we will be unable to look closely at the small incremental shifts that make up the momentum of personality’s pattern and we will miss the opportunity to discover how it originates and begins to develop into a full-blown survival reaction.

Becoming attuned to the way our energy moves allows us to work with ourselves before the patterns becomes thought. Small children and animals can tell when a person is upset before the people know it themselves. There are dogs that can tell when a person is going to have a seizure thirty seconds before the onset of the seizure. The dogs bark so the person can get them selves in a safe place or make a phone call. By paying close attention we can use the same principle, we can train ourselves to be able to tell when we are beginning to react. Once the reactive thoughts come to our field of awareness the momentum of the pattern is already quite strong. If we study ourselves closely enough we will begin to discern how the pattern originates before it shows up as a thought.

We need courage and a sense of humor to be able to expose this unskillful behavior to ourselves, in Conscious Embodiment our training partner is also a witness. As a coach our partner can add helpful feedback to illuminate aspects of our pattern that are often invisible to us. This practice is the unique piece that Conscious Embodiment brings to the area of Somatic Intelligence. Rather than offering ways to layer helpful skills and behavior on top of a potentially activated survival pattern, Conscious Embodiment directs the focus to uncovering the process of the survival pattern. It is by bringing the light of awareness, by examining in great detail the way the energy moves within the pattern, that the choice point can arise. When we actually see the beginning of personality’s survival pattern emerging we recognize the cues and consciously shift attention to the energy pattern of center. With practice we can access this alternative more centered way of relating with the situation. Over time the move from personality to center becomes more fluid.

The Art of Leadership

Leadership requires more than skills and business acumen, great leadership is an art form that requires qualities that signal a capacity for relational and intuitive processes. Presence, compassion, integrity and inquiry are qualities that enhance leadership in today’s fast moving, complex world of organization. Presence is the embodied capacity for expansion, the ability to extend energy that carries the context and meaning of the organization and what it stands for in a global perspective. Compassion is the authentic awareness that our lives are interconnected and the embodied message - ‘we are all in this together’. Integrity is manifested through transparency and provides a basis for credibility and accessibility. Inquiry is the ability to tolerate uncertainty as an arena of possibility and innovation.

The recognition that all of us have a personality that is driven by a survival pattern is baseline for the Conscious Embodiment process. The most challenging part of becoming aware of our actions is to recognize one of personalities favorite strategies, self-deception.

For a leader, the capacity to be aware of a survival energy pattern emerging creates transparency and a choice point. She can choose to make a shift in energy. Self-deception shows up as an impulse to control others and the outcome without taking one’s own behavior into account. Remember, the personality references on control, approval and safety. Rather than looking inward to become aware of how we are participating in a difficult situation the personality looks out at other people and sees how they need to adjust their behavior. A leader who is willing to acknowledge this and make a shift in her energy pattern brings a combination of humanity and centeredness to the challenges of attending to the immediate details of the moment within a sense of the larger context of past, present and future.

Conscious Embodiment

One of the most important aspects of the Conscious Embodiment work is examining the way the body organizes energy when it shifts to survival or senses a threat. In other words we look at how our survival pattern shapes our body. One of the ways the survival pattern is activated is through physical pressure.

Conscious Embodiment allows us to trigger the discomfort of the survival pattern in a controlled environment. By holding the wrists and applying a quick and constant pressure the body automatically goes into its survival pattern. Acting out a pressure situation triggers the energetic shape for irritation, anxiety etc… so you can observe how it presents as an energy pattern in the body. While the pressure is sustained it is possible to observe how energy is organized in three areas - the head and neck, the arms and chest and the hips and legs. This is useful because we may think that how we are responding is limited to what we are thinking. What we discover in the exercise is that our emotions and below that, our gut (belly), may be responding in a very different manor. This awareness helps us realize why, when we think we are being so clear about something others react as if we are giving them different information - and often we are doing just that. We are saying one thing, feeling another thing and below that we may have a deep sense of commitment to safety.

Once the observer is awakened it shifts the way we see ourselves in relationships. When the survival pattern is brought to the surface and seen in a non-judgmental way, there is less self-deception. Because our reactive pattern is no longer hidden we can say to ourselves, “Oh, look at me - my personality wants to be in control. I want respect and appreciation.” Then instead of pursuing the story, we can stop and shift our attention to the concentration of the centering process.

The centering practice can manage the discomfort of recognizing the story with more dignity and wisdom. The shift is from awareness - recognizing personality’s reaction, to concentration - the elements of centering. The short version for centering - exhale down, lengthen the spine up and open out, then relax; or the longer process - focus the attention on relating with the vertical core, exhale into the earth, inhale up, balance your energy; back, front, left and right; let the pressure of gravity soften your jaw and shoulders and inquire… what if there were a little more… (generosity) in my being? The centering process shifts the body’s energy pattern to a more calm, stable state. This centered state communicates a different message into the environment - a message of strength, inclusiveness and awareness of what is being communicated.

Leaders have a responsibility to be models for the community they influence. Somatic Intelligence recognizes the body is a vehicle to unify mind, emotions and intuition as a path to empower leadership. Conscious Embodiment is a somatic process through which leaders can model strength and humility through the embodied practice of inclusiveness, confidence, compassion and transparency. Understanding is not enough. If understanding was enough, then the smartest people would be the best leaders. We now know it takes more than IQ to be a great leader. It is time to move beyond the limitations of understanding and insights. The embodiment of insights, both emotional and cognitive is the next paradigm in the evolution of leadership.

Wendy Palmer will be leading modules on Embodied Leadership - Empowered Life at ALIA West and the Shambhala Summer Institute. Wendy has been teaching and coaching the Conscious Embodiment model for over twenty-eight years. She is a sixth degree Black Belt in Aikido and she teaches at Aikido of Tamalpais in Sausalito, California. Wendy is author of two books a DVD and a CD: The Intuitive Body: Discovering the Wisdom of Conscious Embodiment and Aikido (Blue Snake Press, 1994) and The Practice of Freedom: Aikido Principles as a Spiritual Guide (Rodmell Press, 2002) DVD Conscious Embodiment 2006, CD Recover Your Center 2008. She offers coaching in embodied leadership for individuals, groups and teams. Her clients include NASA, Genentech, Oracle, McKinsey and The US Forest Service. For more information go to: www.consciousembodiment.com

We all strive for balance:  Work/life, expansion/stability, asset/liability, risk/reward, freedom/responsibility.  We think of balance as bringing physical health, emotional resilience, organizational sustainability, team productivity, and community stability.  In all these contexts we find it much easier to talk about balance than to achieve it.  More often than not, potential clients call me because they recognize something in their world is out of balance.  They hope that I, as an external observer and experienced consultant, will be able to help get them back into balance again.

Like many things in complex adaptive systems, though, balance is more interesting and challenging than it appears at first glance.  Balance is complicated enough in chemical and biological systems, and it can be completely confounding in human systems.  Human systems dynamics has several tools to help assess and influence balance for individuals, teams, organizations, and communities, but the most important thing is to understand what “balance” means in the context of a complex human system. 

The technical definition of balance is equilibrium. 

The traditional understanding of equilibrium assumed that it was the endpoint of most spontaneous motion.  If a closed system was left alone, it would tend toward equilibrium.  Differences across the system would balance out, and the system as a whole would come to rest when energy was equalized from one part to another.  Hot and cold blend, and the whole becomes luke warm.  High energy dissipates across the system, until the whole ends up with a homogenous distribution of energy.  Resources flow from high concentrations to low, until all parts of the system are the same, then change ceases. 

This process makes sense in physical systems, but it doesn’t always work in human systems.  Because human systems are open and their causal relationships are nonlinear, we seldom see situations where excitement, information, money, or other critical differences distribute themselves easily across a whole community. Instead, we see human patterns where differences increase over time.  The rich get richer; the smart get smarter, and excitement (or fear) builds over time, rather than dissipating.  These non-equilibrium seeking patterns match our experience and common sense, but they require a nontraditional understanding of how the desire for balance shapes change in human interaction. 

Nonlinear dynamics deals with two critical distinctions in equilibrium, both of which are critical to understanding balance in our personal, professional, and organizational lives. 

Static or dynamic.  Static equilibrium describes an object at rest, where all the forces are equal, balanced, and unchanging.  We see this sometimes in human systems when people are deadlocked in conflict or when confusion brings about inaction.  We often talk about systems being “stuck” when they’ve fallen into a static equilibrium situation.  To get the system moving again, something (like power, information, innovation) must be introduced to disrupt the current balance and get the system moving again.

Dynamic equilibrium describes an object that is moving, but moving in a perfectly predictable way.  Think of a rock at the end of a string that swings around and around, an efficient assembly line, or a high performing team. This kind of equilibrium also holds until it gets an external shock, but the change it experiences is going from ordered to disorderly motion.  Shifting into dynamic equilibrium is the sometimes subtle change of going from bumpy and surprising to smooth and predictable motion.

Stable or unstable.  In addition to static or dynamic, equilibrium can be either stable or unstable.  A system that is in a stable equilibrium will return to its initial position after it is disturbed.  Think of holding the eraser end of a pencil and letting the pointed end dangle.  Push the point to one side, it will swing a bit and eventually return to where it started.  In human systems, this is called “resilience.”  A child is resilient (stable equilibrium) when he or she can absorb shocks and return to stability quickly and completely.  The same is true for an employee, a team or a whole workforce.  Today, our hope is that the world economy was in a stable equilibrium before the shocks of late 2008.

Unstable equilibrium, on the other hand, is where the system is disturbed from either rest (static) or predictable motion (dynamic) and does NOT return to its original state.  Balance the pencil on its point, and you’ll have a perfect unstable equilibrium—if you move it even slightly, it will fall over completely rather than bouncing back to where it was before.  Process and system breakdowns, violent conflicts, and competition in an immature market all show signs of unstable equilibrium. 

So, when you are searching for balance in your life and work, consider which of these you may already have, which one you might want, and the many options for action that could help you shift from one to another.  We will be glad to help you keep or shift the balance of your own far-from-equilibrium system!

Glenda Eoyang and Wendy Morris will lead “Coping with Chaos: Tools and Practices from Human Systems Dynamics” at the 2009 Shambhala Summer Institute.

By Aftab Erfan

There is something about the Institute’s new name, ALIA, that makes me very excited, and I am pretty sure it is the final “A” - standing for “Action”. There are many stories of new action, collective action, innovative action and brave action that have germinated at the Institute. It is one such story that took me down to South Africa this past February.

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The invitation that convinced me to make the 26-hour journey from Vancouver was for a day-long event called Conversation across the Socio-Economic Divide. The event, which took place on a hot summer day in a simple school gymnasium in the middle of a township on the edge of Cape Town, was the brainchild of Myrna Lewis. Myrna has been on faculty at the Institute for the past couple of years, teaching an advanced facilitation methodology called Deep Democracy. While she was at the Institute in 2008, Myrna was struck by the pervasive talk about the troubling situation in the “third world” and how the Institute’s faculty and participants, predominantly members of the privileged “first world”, wanted to do something to help. She was inspired to host a conversation that would bring the well-intentioned “haves” of the world to Africa and introduce them to the “have-nots”, so that the two groups could meet, explore and be in relationship together, instead of talking about each other from their own corners of the universe.

South Africa, as I would soon find out, is a particularly fascinating setting for a conversation among the haves and the have-nots, as divisions are visible on several different levels. As a third world country, South Africa is identified as a have-not nation on the world stage. But within South Africa there is also a distinct division between a majority that lives below the bread-line and a minority that lives in luxury. Historically, the division was closely associated with race, reinforced by the segregation policies under the Apartheid Act which separated various ethnic groups physically, socially, economically and psychologically. Despite the efforts to build a more egalitarian society over the past 15 years, the gap between the rich of poor continues to widen, characterized by the emergence of a new upper class made up of blacks and people of colour. The Conversation Across the Socio-Economic Divide was as much about the first world meeting the third, as it was about the whites meeting people of colour, and the privileged meeting their under-privileged country men and women, sometimes for the first time.

About 100 people showed up for the conversation, exceeding expectations and the supply of name -tags at the registration desk. The group was clearly diverse in many ways according to race, age, language, class, ability and gender among other factors. As a Canadian, among the 25 or so over-seas guests, I entered the conversation space with trepidation. How would I come across? Would I be seen as a spoiled North America university-educated kid by the people who could not afford to send their kids to school with a full belly? Would I be attacked for selfishness, for the failure of my country to even live up to its foreign aid obligations? Would my admiration for the local culture be interpreted as blind romanticization, my attempt to sympathize as false, and my desire to help as patronizing?

It became clear early in the check-in process that I was not alone in my discomfort. Many of us were struggling with our feelings. Some white South Africans talked about what it had took for them to come to the township that day, a place that they had been told all their lives was unsafe for their kind. They talked also about the shame that they carried with them from the Apartheid era and their embarrassment at living exclusively white lives within a “rainbow nation”. The people from the township on the other hand spoke about the anger and helplessness they felt at their situation. Some were noticeably shy, struggling to enter the conversation, finding it strange to be asked to give their opinion or talk about themselves.

Given the depth and variety of feelings and the amount of emotional baggage we all brought into the room, it is rather remarkable what happened next. Using the methodology of Deep Democracy, we were lead first into a conversation on feet (a special technique called the Soft Shoe Shuffle) and then into a full-blown facilitated argument. Lucky for us, Deep Democracy has been developed specifically for working with emotionally charged situations. It is “democratic” in the sense that it gives as much value to feelings as it does to rational thoughts. It is also democratic in the sense that it creates a safe space for the inclusion of every voice. The methodology allows people to feel themselves part of small groups, as opposed to isolated individuals. It also allows people to experience arguments between positions or points of view, not between individuals. This means that participants feel less embarrassed and less hesitant to say the hard things that really need to be said. As a result sensitive subjects become easy to talk about and groups quickly find themselves in the midst of direct and honest conversations about topics that may seem unapproachable in other situations.

A foundational idea in Deep Democracy is that any position or feeling that exists for one person in a group is also present in every other person in some shape or form. It is through making these positions and feelings fluid, allowing everybody to step in and out of them, that stuck situations begin to shift. A real fluidity of feelings and positions was what we experienced at the Conversation across the Socio-Economic Divide. As we began to talk it became clear that the terms “have” and “have-not” did not mean all that much, as those of us who felt ourselves to be “haves” began to get in touch with those parts of ourselves that are deprived and needy, while those who initially identified as the “have-nots” began to own their own wealth and ability. I remember listening with envy to one woman from the township who declared: “We may not have money but we know how to take care of ourselves. We know about local remedies. We know about ubuntu (an African concept meaning, roughly, interconnectedness). We know how to love.”

Central to the argument that developed in the room was the relationship between those with wealth - whether financial, social, psychological etc. - and those who desire wealth. There was a real human cry from one side of the room that said: Give me the golden key that got you to where you are, so that I too can have what you have. And a second human cry that responded frankly: No, I won’t give you the key - because either I don’t know what key you want, or I don’t trust you with the key, or I am afraid that if I give you the key I will be forever immersed in your problems, or that I run the risk of getting blamed for the key not being all you want it to be, or simply because there is no golden key! - Each position was given time and space to spill out without interruption, while others listened. As the two positions argued with each other - blatantly, passionately, with tears at times and laughter at other times - we all began to understand each other a little bit better.

At the end of the argument there was a noticeable shift in the energy of the room. People who had been strangers hours ago, had become neighbours. They had moved from hesitation to bluntness, they had aired out their grievances, they had been exposed to new knowledge, and they had genuinely “met” others. The day ended in the sharing of our new understandings, our “grains of truth”. They included acknowledgement of the sadness about our divisions, the admission that despite our good intentions we often don’t take the time to help each other, the realization that we tend to push people away when they try to help us, the hopeful notion that our “keys” may actually be complimentary to teach other, and that ultimately what changes the world is a person giving another person a break - a small chance for breaking out of the structures that inhibit us.

The conversation ended with a strong request for continuing to have more of this type of dialogue. The event was seen to be an important part of the healing that needs to happen in South Africa, perhaps continuing in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation but bringing it to the level of the community and individual healing. Myrna and her colleagues in South Africa have now implemented similar events in the townships around Johannesburg. There is an intention to continue, and I can only hope that us foreigners may be invited in again someday.

***

Following a plenary presentation by Myrna at the Institute in 2008 I had an interesting conversation with one of the participants who was hearing about Deep Democracy for the first time that night. He told me that he saw the different conversation techniques he was learning at the Institute as different vehicles for making meaningful relationships between people. “If Deep Democracy was seen as one such vehicle”, he suggested, “it would probably be a jumbo jet!” I find that to be an accurate description of my experience with Deep Democracy. It takes you fast and it takes you deep, and it takes you to places you have never been able to go before as a facilitator or participant in a group. It also requires the rigorous training of a pilot to be able to handle this vehicle.

To be honest, learning to use the tools of Deep Democracy has been difficult. At times I have wanted to give up and I know others have felt the same. Conflict, after all, is so messy and to be in the middle of it as a facilitator is sometimes just too much. And yet there is something so powerful about Deep Democracy’s empowering impact - its ability to create one tiny empowerment at a time- that makes the hard work worthwhile. This was epitomized for me in the words of one 14 year-old girl from the township in Cape Town, who offered this in her check-out: “When I came this morning I felt like a lighty (South African slang for “the young one”). I felt timid because of my age. But then I felt that I was able to talk and people actually listened to me. For once in my life people actually heard what I had to say. For the first time I felt I was heard.” She sealed the day with that statement, along with a little tear in her eyes.

Aftab Erfan is a social activist with multiple hats: urban planner, facilitator, environmentalist, student. She has been studying Deep Democracy over the past 2 years and is currently working on a PhD dissertation on the application of Deep Democracy in community conflicts in Canada.

Myrna Lewis will be leading a module on Deep Democracy at the 2009 Shambhala Summer Institute.

It’s daunting to talk to knowledgeable, insightful people who are so sure things are going to fall apart, and also sure that a little better version of the same old thing won’t be enough. Yet each of them, and each of the many people they cite, sees promise. Not a dewy-eyed, mushy kind of promise, not love without power, or a grand ideology to rally round, but a realistic promise that in crisis we will find resilience, that we will be thrown back on ourselves and our communities and what counts. That’s the way of nature, including human nature.

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This is a short excerpt from the Shambhala Sun article Why We Need New Ways of Thinking.
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What I find striking is how close their view is to the core Buddhist principle of interdependence, the teaching that there are no self-sustaining, permanent, inherently existing entities; that everything emerges as part of a great web of interlocking relationships. Suzuki Roshi referred to it as the interplay of “dependency and independency.” Environmentalist Stephanie Kaza wrote in the March, 2007, issue of this magazine that “the experience of a systems thinker, who brings awareness to all their relationships with specific human and non-human beings” is equivalent to what a Buddhist might call the “penetrating experience of interdependence.”

In Buddhism, however, the philosophical understanding of interdependence is coupled with the practical understanding that we need a mind discipline to break the habit of treating entities as permanent and independent. To get us out of our mess requires more than an intellectual understanding of what’s wrong and what’s right with civilization.

Mindfulness-awareness meditation, which allows us to quell the anxious roiling of our mind and to see the world and ourselves in all of their slow-creep splendor, is precisely the tool to cultivate Homer-Dixon’s “prospective mind,” to help us act “emergently,” and to attune ourselves to the rhythms of our surroundings and our fellow community members. Frankly, it’s hard to conceive of how we can genuinely change our view and way of acting without such a discipline. Without it, how, in the face of chaos, uncertainty, and fear, will we not fall back into fighting for dominion over what we imagine to be “our world”?

Read the entire Shambhala Sun article Why We Need New Ways of Thinking here.

I’m constantly trying to bridge what is so beautiful and so special in the great classical music, and I’m fighting for the role of these arts within the dilemmas of the modern world.

Great art should be there where the real problems are, especially there where people are solving those problems, who are making the tough decisions… These people need help, so I always say the artists have to come and help them.

Miha will be joining us for ALIA Europe 2010, and also playing at the Cathedral of Chartres in May 2009. His website is mihavision.com.

Miha Pogacnik - The Art of Gentle Warriorship from ALIA Institute on Vimeo.

by Pema Chodron

“You start looking for answers, but none of the usual things work. And so you start looking for spiritual answers, but you’re still hoping that the spiritual answer will bring the bubble back for you.

To the degree that the old ways aren’t working… to that degree you start to look for answers of a different kind.”

Pema Chödrön is a leading exponent of teachings on meditation and how they apply to everyday life. She is widely known for her charming and down-to-earth interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism for Western audiences.

Recordings of Pema’s teachings are available through Great Path Tapes. The video clip below is from The Doorway to Freedom program in Berkley, California.