For our latest blog article, we have a guest contributor from our community: Chad Nicely, a great friend and former colleague of mine who is an engineering leader at Flatiron Health and a lifelong mindfulness practitioner. Chad and I frequently discuss topics like developing high-performing teams, adventure travel, and mindfulness.
After reading my blog article on Silicon Valley’s loneliness epidemic, Chad reached out to me to talk about challenges and trends he’s seeing in the engineering and healthcare communities.
Chad recently came back from a meditation retreat in Nepal, and he’s written a blog discussing how developing a mindfulness practice within the workplace has helped him as a leader, and helped his team develop self-awareness and connection with one another.
I want to thank Chad for taking the time to write this blog and sharing his insights with our community. I hope you find his blog as insightful as I have.
- Derek
Mindfulness: A Solution to Loneliness in the Workplace
In his latest blog post on Silicon Valley’s Loneliness Epidemic,” Derek Ling describes the growing challenge of loneliness, and calls on us to consider its impacts on our health, and what we might do to address it. At the end of the article, he gives some tips on enhancing opportunities for connection at work, including seeking out volunteer opportunities, joining an employee resource group or social/interest group, and considering how we can foster socializing and community within our teams.
For some of us, the suggestion to reach out to friends or take a more active role in facilitating connection with our teams is a welcome and encouraging nudge. If the gap between where you are now and where you want to be seems small, and the solutions are readily available, it can even sound fun!
But for others, taking action could be a daunting prospect – particularly if you’re feeling stressed and disconnected yourself. From an empty well of connection, it can be tough to find the inspiration and confidence to act, or even to know where to begin.
In any case, developing a practice of mindful awareness can reveal where to start and how to proceed. Mindfulness can uncover the jewel of connection and meaning that can be so easily obscured by muddy layers of difficult emotions. With time and patience, these practices can reveal the transformational potential and wisdom that lies hidden within even the most challenging emotions.
But where to start?
Start Where You Are
In his post, Derek describes the experience of a member of his group recognizing feelings of loneliness in themselves ("This sounds like something that's affecting me”). Even acknowledging the presence of difficult emotions like loneliness can be distressing. To do this in a public environment amongst strangers can be downright terrifying.
A stable mindfulness practice can help us to be with these feelings rather than pushing them away or leaping immediately to “fix” them. Developing awareness of what is present in the moment makes it possible for us to take meaningful steps from where we are, here and now.
This opens the opportunity to take productive action without becoming overwhelmed by the narratives that our conditioned minds tend to weave, or giving in to the reactive habits that we have developed in a misguided attempt to protect ourselves from harm.
What does a mindfulness practice look like?
The answer is very personal. There are many resources to get started. Most include some form of breathing exercise, or “object-based” meditation. Since the breath is with us as long as we are alive, it is often the most accessible “object” to start with. Regardless, I’ve found the most useful guidance to be, “start where you are.”
If you’ve tried before and failed to develop a regular meditation practice, know that you are not alone. Take heart in knowing that you don’t need to be “good” at meditation for mindfulness practice to be profoundly beneficial. In fact, the best meditation can often be “non meditation.” As Mingur Rinpoche says in his video on Non Mediation and Non Distraction, “For meditation, the most important thing you have to know is don’t meditate, but don’t get lost.” (1)
By removing expectations about what the practice should be, and simply noticing what is, developing awareness can be as simple as taking a few minutes to simply observe what is arising in your body, or in the world around you.
There’s no need to find a particularly quiet place or a peaceful environment to begin this practice. Even the shortest, transitional moments throughout the day offer opportunities to engage with the practice of mindful awareness.
Rather than leaping into an habitual spiral of annoyance the next time your colleague is a few minutes late to a scheduled one-on-one, or rushing to complete the next task when a meeting ends early, simply make the decision to pause.
Notice the sounds in the room around you.
Is there tension in your body? If so, where? What does it feel like? Is there tightness? Heaviness? Warmth?
What does your body feel like in your chair?
Can you find your breath in the sea of sensations that surrounds you?
While taking the time to make such observations may feel like doing nothing at all, the simple act of being aware can open the door to a greater sense of connection.
Developing the muscle of awareness on smaller and less complicated objects (breath, sights, sounds, etc.) allows us to approach the thornier emergence of thoughts and feelings with more clarity and stability, whether alone or in the presence of others. But it all begins with that simple and intentional choice to notice.
Act With Intention
Another important element of developing a sustainable mindfulness practice is articulation of a clear intention for our practice.
Traditional forms of meditation that come from various Buddhist traditions often focus on the “benefit of all beings.” While the reasoning for this is well-established in the context of these traditions, it may feel grandiose, abstract and maybe a little bit difficult to apply in the assault of daily experience. Let’s face it, it can be tough to wish that driver well who just cut you off, or to feel equanimity toward the mouse that just chewed a hole through your favorite sweater.
With regard to loneliness, however, it can be more relatable to think about the benefit that we wish for ourselves and those around us, including the teams we lead. Taking a moment before entering a meeting to articulate this intention to yourself can be surprisingly powerful – particularly when paired with a short period of meditation or other mindfulness practice.
Intention paired with practice has the powerful potential to produce the outcome that we seek.
Take Action
So, we’ve taken a moment to connect with awareness and to articulate a clear intention. But what’s next?
Many of the questions that Derek asks of us as managers appropriately challenge us to do more. And I do mean challenge.
When I hear the suggestion that I could be doing something to alleviate the sense of loneliness in myself or in my peers, there is a part of me that jumps into fixer mode: “What have I been doing?,” “What could I be doing?,” “Why haven’t I done anything yet?.”
In our default mode, a sense of anxiety can arise, clouding our judgment, or in extreme cases, hijacking our amygdala and leading to a sense of panic, even lapsing into blame. “How can I possibly create a sense of connection?," "Am I a failure?,” “Why am I expected to do so much? can’t other people take care of themselves?”
Without clarity, we may even take an action that does more harm than good. Or maybe the intervention itself is spot on, but the way we show up or engage with the activity is counterproductive. As we feel these reactions come up, we can remind ourselves to return to the beginning.
When we have developed stable awareness, options become available that we could not see before. This is a side effect of mindfulness practice that I have personally experienced over and over again. In a short segment from his Waking Up app entitled “Don’t Meditate Because It’s Good for You,” Sam Harris describes this benefit:
Meditation is a skill that opens doors that you might not otherwise know exist …
We largely become what we pay attention to. We are building our minds in each moment. We’re building habits, and desires, and worries, and expectations, and prejudices, and insights.
And mindfulness is just the ability to notice this process with clarity, and then to prioritize what you pay attention to.
Why not pay attention to those things that make you a better person? Why not free your attention from all of the trivial things that are clamoring for it?
The more you train in this practice, the more degrees of freedom you’ll find…
Taking skillful action, based on a recognition of the best available option produces better outcomes. But the ability to do that consistently comes only through practice.
Develop a Practice
It’s important to note that benefits of mindfulness do not come from simply thinking our way through concepts, however well we feel like we understand them. It can be our default tendency – especially as engineers, technologists, or simply members of modern Western civilization – to think that if something makes logical sense, then we should be able to apply and derive benefit from it. But this is not the case with the type of experiential practice that I’m describing.
Developing a lifelong practice can sound like a daunting mountain to climb. The prospect of achieving some form of enlightenment over “many lifetimes” can be discouraging when we’re just trying to make our way through this one. While patience and perseverance are required to develop stable awareness, I’m happy to say in my own experience that I notice the benefit almost immediately when I make the choice to sit for even ten minutes and to simply notice what is.
Furthermore, a practice like meditation can seem like a lonely or solitary endeavor. How could it possibly be useful to address feelings of loneliness through such an isolated activity? And isn’t this just one more thing that I have to add to my already overwhelming list of to-do’s? In a recent conversation about the “Stages of Practice,” Henry Shukman addresses these misconceptions directly:
“There’s a tendency for people to think of their meditation practice as just one more thing they’ve got to do in their self development project, and that you do it alone – in the same way you go to the gym and do reps, you get in your seat and do breath counting, or whatever your practice might be.
Whereas, actually, there is a world of connectivity that can come through practice, and there’s a way in which being open to sharing practice with others, practicing with others, receiving guidance from time to time…
All of that can be very much part of what enriches meditation.”
Conversely, I would argue, meditation and mindfulness practice have the potential to enrich our relationships. In seeing the “degrees of freedom” available to us, we can choose modes of interaction that produce the best available outcomes – not only in the sense of connection and well-being that we experience, but also in our collective impact on our teams, organizations, and the world.
In his post, Derek asks, “What types of products will depressed, lonely, or isolated people make? And the inverse of that question: What types of products will happy, connected people make?” I would extend this question to the practice of mindfulness as well.
How would a team of individuals who have meaningfully and intentionally adopted mindfulness practices perform?
What would engagement and the sense of fulfillment look like on a team like that?
It’s hard to imagine that a team of self-aware, mindful contributors wouldn’t outperform their peers on the whole. An ever-growing body of research seems to support this intuition (with some predictable caveats). (2)(3)(4)
But how do we bring these mindfulness practices into the workplace setting? The suggestion to introduce a ten minute silent meditation at the beginning of sprint planning, for example, seems unnatural and impractical at best.
Instead of adopting something completely new or seemingly non-sequitur, I have found it useful to introduce mindfulness as an improvement to activities that we already do every day – that is, communication.
In his book, Say What You Mean (5), Oren Sofer distills the practice of mindful communication into three essential directives: 1) lead with presence; 2) come from curiosity; and 3) focus on what matters. I highly recommend checking out his work in depth, but even these three simple reminders con go a long way.
As leaders, we have an opportunity to set the tone of our group interactions and to lead by example. The nudge to “lead with presence” can be as unobtrusive as taking a moment to connect with the present experience of everyone in the meeting:
“What’s on your mind?"
"How is everyone feeling after that SEV1 incident this morning?”
“What feels distracting for you today?”
Engaging the team in this way turns focus into the seat of attention, allowing people to engage in the topic at hand with more awareness, no matter what they may be experiencing (including feelings of loneliness).
I’ve found that the reminder to “come from curiosity” can be even more overt. Entering into a meeting, people may be focused on the gripe that they would like to raise during sprint retrospective, or the design proposal that they worked late into the night to finish.
In these settings, it can be a critical and effective reminder that we are here as much to listen to each other as we are to speak. An explicit reminder to listen gives space not only for more authentic and engaged interaction, but also for the best ideas to surface.
Paired with the more obvious practice of focusing the team on the desired outcome of a meeting, I have found mindful communication to be an accessible form of awareness practice that can be readily applied in the workplace, and – anecdotally – produce better interactions and outcomes … even in the midst of the most challenging individual and organizational circumstances.
Finding Wisdom in Difficult Emotions
So, in developing the practice of mindful awareness, and facilitating this awareness in others, we are able to be with difficult emotions, to discern useful actions from our default tendencies, and ostensibly to deliver better outcomes and team engagement. But the benefits go much further.
The potential of mindfulness to transform difficult emotions, and to uncover the innate gems of wisdom carry far beyond the workplace and more deeply into our human potential, and our sense of well being. The poet David Whyte describes loneliness in this way:
“Loneliness is the very state that births the courage to continue calling, and when fully lived can undergo its own beautiful reversal, becoming in its consummation the very horizon to which we were drawn that then answers back.
In the grand scale of things, loneliness might be a privilege.
Human beings may have the ability to feel aloneness as no other creature can, with a power magnified by intelligence and imagination.
Animals may feel alone in an instinctual way - moving naturally and affectionately towards others of their kind.
But human beings may be the only beings that can articulate, imagine, or call for a specific life they feel they might be missing.” (6)
Such an orientation to difficult emotions can be found throughout the wisdom traditions, and is the hidden value of experiences that can feel so daunting on the surface. In the first steps of practice we develop the capacity not to turn away so quickly. But as we progress, the true nature and insight offered by these experiences is revealed.
Stay Connected
Would you like to discuss your own experience with meditation or other mindful awareness practices?
How have you found them to be helpful in your personal or professional life?
Have you wondered how best to apply them in the workplace?
If you’d like to discuss any of these topics, feel free to connect with Chad or book a call with Derek.
References:
5. Oren Jay Sofer, Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2018)
6. David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (Langley, WA: Many Rivers Press, 2015), p138.