Self Leadership tools, skills, resources
These resources are all focused on your own journey as a leader - knowing that leadership is in every seat. Our CSL approach emphasizes that “we are the system”, and so the imperative for us as leaders is that we continue to be reflective and curious about how we are showing up and changing as we work within the systems we are intending to change. The work of systems change is courageous and demands that we build skills that allow us to be fully present, and open to working in deep relationship with others. We offer up the practices and tools here for you to try out, adapt and shape to fit you.
Table of Contents
Use the links to jump directly to a tool, or scroll to explore.
Mindful Listening & Speaking
Mindful Practices
Personal Journey
Personal Visioning
Power of Reflection
Self Compassion
Settling & Intention Setting
Mindful Listening & Speaking
There are many reasons that our communication can be ineffective.
In terms of listening capability, we often hear what we expect to hear rather than what is actually being said, leading us to jump to conclusions and reinforce old biases. Often our minds are busy listening to our own internal chatter or planning what we want to say rather than listening to another. Or we may just be too busy to slow down long enough to actually listen.
In terms of our speaking, we rarely slow down to reflect on what we really want to say. And so often, our words can be layered with judgement or even blame. Our words may not reflect what we are thinking and feeling: they may be our interpretation of other’s actions and feelings.
We use mindful communication as an introductory tool to address these challenges. It is a tool to practice as much as you can so that a habit of mindful communication can be developed. Mindful communication occurs when we are present in the interaction. It requires both the speaker and the listener to slow down, to reflect, and to be intentional in their actions and words. It is non-judgemental and has the potential to increase connection between those communicating.
Mindful communication is practiced in dyads.
Step 1: Take the time you need to reflect on the topic of conversation – journal or simply remain quiet and tune into your thoughts, emotions and physical self.
Step 2: Identify who will speak first and who will listen first.
Step 3: Allow the first speaker 2-3 minutes to simply speak, without interruption. The listener simply listens, with their full attention, without judgement, and with an intention to hold what the speaker is saying.
Step 4: Thank each other.
Step 5: Reverse roles and use the same structure as above.
Mindful Practices
Mindfulness has been growing in popularity in western cultures over the last couple of decades although its roots are in Buddhist traditions more than 2500 years old. Increasingly we are learning the benefits of mindful practices to our overall sense of well-being.
We drew initially on the work of Jon Kabat-Zin as an introduction to mindfulness. Kabat-Zin defines mindfulness as “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally, as if your life depended on it”. He reminds us that mindfulness is not a technique, but rather a way of being.
Every Day Mindful Practices
Mindful living: Participants are encouraged to identify daily habits such as hand washing, eating, or dressing, which they could intentionally increase focus and awareness as a way of enhancing mindfulness.
Mindful Communication: Building awareness as both a listener and a speaker are practices to which considerable time is dedicated in the training. We will look at this in more detail as part of the Interpersonal Tools.
Building a practice of Gratitude: The scientific benefits of practicing gratitude are well documented. In one experimental comparison, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). Within the training we typically close the day with a gratitude circle and we use a gratitude jar where participants can note their appreciations as they occur. Participants are encouraged to integrate gratitude into their mindful practices, either through journaling, meditation or sharing gratitude with others.
Beginner’s Mind: “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” (Shunryu Suzuki). To cultivate Beginner’s Mind, participants are encouraged to approach every situation as if they have never experienced it before and they have no knowledge or expectation of what the experience will bring.This can be particularly impactful in those experiences that participants have had multiple times and typically approach almost on automatic pilot – like a regular commute or a monthly staff meeting. With Beginner’s Mind, many new things can be learned and experienced in these daily events.
Mindfulness Meditation: Basic breathing techniques can be used by participants throughout the day to slow down and focus, calm anxiety or collect their thoughts before a difficult conversation.
VIDEO RESOURCES
Sahuna Shapiro on the Power of Mindfulness - TedTalk (14 mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeblJdB2-Vo
John Kabat-Zin on mindfulness (5 ½ mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmEo6RI4Wvs
Richard Davidson on meditation - TedTalk (18 mins) https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_j_davidson_how_mindfulness_changes_the_emotional_life_of_our_brains_jan_2019?language=en
BOOKS
Goleman D. & Davidson R. (2017) Science of Meditation: How to Change your Brain, Mind and Body
Goleman D. & Davidson R. (2017) Altered Traits: Science Reveals how Meditation Changes your Mind, Brain and Body
Personal Journey
The rationale for this exercise is to emphasize that no one comes to this work an empty vessel. We all bring our experiences, our passions, our dreams, our values and our assumptions. Bringing these into awareness provides a deeper understanding to our roles and influence as actors in the broader system.
Instructions
This is a simple exercise: participants are asked to depict the answer to the following questions:
What key people, places and events have led to you to today?
What values and beliefs have underpinned your journey? Have they shifted over time?
Were there intersection points where you made important choices?
Did you ever double back or lose your way?
The depiction of the journey can be done in many ways. Some participants choose to simply write the answers, others to make small diagrams and others to produce large and colourful drawings. Any of these is appropriate.
At the completion of the journey exercise participants are asked to share with the larger group. As the content may be quite personal, participants are free to share as much or as little as they are comfortable with. With one group the sharing of personal journeys took much of the day and was an important foundation in their being able to deeply engage with one another throughout the training process. Other groups were much shorter in their presentation. It can also be effective to have participants share in dyads or triads, particularly with larger groups.
Personal Visioning
Having a clear personal vision for your life supports us to act in alignment with that vision. Too often, the role of personal aspiration in career choices is underestimated. There is a disconnect between personal and professional vision, negating the potential to wholly engage with work that is personally important. Unearthing a personal vision for all aspects of our lives and aligning that vision to the work that we do, enables us to more fully leverage the power of our passion and commitment and to monitor whether our actions remain aligned to our vision as we progress.
“I call the relationship between the vision and current reality structural tension. During the creative process, you have an eye on where you want to go, and you also have an eye on where you currently are.” — Robert Fritz
Steps to Facilitate a Personal Vision
Our visions are not something that needs to be created—they already exists within us. We just need to get in touch with them. Our vision is the big picture of our desired outcomes. It’s an internal representation of what is most important to us; it’s exciting, inspiring, compelling, and filled with positive emotions.
Often when we undertake visioning as an individual or group, we set our sights high. It is not uncommon to develop visions, like “live joyfully”, that have no possible path or structure that links the vision to the current reality. That is why so often personal aspirations or visions are not obtained. They are not grounded. Fritz proposes that the space between the reality and vision creates a tension that propels you to act. When we achieve our initial aims, setting further intentions recreates the tension for continual progress.
The personal visioning exercise is done in three stages:
STEP 1: Guided Visualization: we lead participants through a guided visualization during which they reflect on a variety of aspects of their life – career, personal development, relationships, environment and physical health. The visualization can be adapted to just focus on one or on any number of these areas.
Each participant gets into a calm and alert state using a breath focused meditation. Participants are asked to think, not about what they want to achieve, but rather what their life will be like in their vision. They are invited to use all of their senses in the visualization process (what will things smell, feel and sound like). We guide them through the visualization with specific questions in each area. Here is a sample script with questions for each area. This script can be modified to fit the context of any facilitated session. Typically visualizations require 15 – 20 minutes. When each of the areas has been considered, we prompt participants to return to the breath and then slowly return to the room.
Career:
I want you to think about your ideal job. Where are you working? What are you doing? Is it the same job you are doing now or something different? Is this your own business or do you work in an organization? Who are the people you work with? Are you spending time with children and families? Do you work mostly in an office? How long is your work day? How do you get to work – walk, ride your bike? What is your compensation?
Personal Development:
Now let’s think about your own development. Is there any specific education or training you are taking? Do you have a daily reflective or meditative practice? Do you have any personal goals like running a marathon, writing a book or playing a musical instrument? Do you see yourself traveling? Where are you going?
Relationships:
Now let’s turn to how you envision your relationships. What is your relationship like with your family – your partner – your children and grandchildren – your parents and siblings? Who are you friends? What do you spend time doing with your friends and family? How are you supported in these relationships? Are you in love?
Environment:
What kind of home or location do you live in? Be specific in picturing your home environment. Is it in the city or the country? A condo or a large home? What do you see when you go through your front door? What do you see when you look out the window? Try to picture each room in your home. What kind of car or vehicle do you drive? Do you have more than one vehicle? Maybe a boat or RV?
Physical Health:
Envision your ideal body. Do you exercise regularly? What sorts of exercise do you do? What is your diet like? How are you sleeping? Do you have any health challenges?
STEP 2: Writing Your Vision and Your Current Reality: Following the visualization, we ask participants to take out their journal and write down in as much detail as possible what they visualized in each aspect of their life.Following this we invite them to reflect, again in specific detail, on their current reality in respect to each part of their vision.At this stage in the training, time is not taken to begin to plan or develop the structures needed to progress towards vision.This is a simply a mechanism to create the state of structural tension that is returned to at a later stage of the training.
STEP 3: Dyad Sharing: The final stage of the personal visioning exercise is to share whatever seems appropriate with another member of the group. Each participant relates the work that they have done and more generally how they experienced the visioning exercise. The other member of the dyad listens without judgement or feedback. As always, participants share only as much as they are comfortable with.
Power of Reflection
Reflection is a powerful personal and leadership tool. It can take many forms, some written (eg. journaling) and others more meditative (eg. reflection while walking). What is important is the time devoted to pausing, making sense of events, and building an opportunity for learning and growth through this.
Self Compassion
Self-compassion is: the ability to notice our own suffering, discomfort or pain; to see this on the context of common humanity and how others are connected to us through a shared experience; and our own willingness show ourselves the same kindness that we would a good friend or loved one.
Self compassion is an essential capacity to be able to sustainably extend compassion to others in our personal and professional lives, and to ground generative conversations and connections between people. Noting and understanding our own reactions to situations, realizing that are reactions are completely normal, and that we can treat them with care is an essential foundation for the courageous work of systems change.
Dr. Kristen Neff has developed a self-compassion scale that anyone can use to get a sense of how self-compassionate they are. Given the importance of nurturing our own self-compassion, this is a very helpful tool to guide and focus our own practice.
https://self-compassion.org/test-how-self-compassionate-you-are/
Settling & Intention Setting
The most important part of entering into connection and relationship with others is to pause, gather your sense of your energy and intention, and settle to be fully present and engaged. There are many ways to undertake this exercise but the key is to provide a mechanism for all to arrive into the session with awareness and intention. The focus is on creating a pause in the day, to check in with how you are doing, so that each person can bring their full selves into the process.
There is a a significant body of science that demonstrates the power of taking a mindful pause (self-regulation) and intention setting. Some resources to point you toward this science are included below.
In Indigenous practice, a pause before meetings is often offered through an opening meeting and a prayer. Another method suggested for settling in the CSL approach is a breath-focused settling and intention setting: a 3 - 5 minute guided meditation.
Settling Meditation Sample Script
“Close your eyes and place your hands comfortably in your lap. Sit up straight. Imagine a string is tugging the top of your head. Feel your self firmly sitting in the chair and your feet firmly on the ground.
Begin by taking three deep, slow, conscious breaths. Follow your breath to the end of the inhale, notice the small pause and then follow it all the way to the end of the exhale. Now just turn to the natural rhythm of the breath. Allow the breath to be your anchor, your resting place.
(Here pause for a minute of silence).
Now think about your intentions for our time together today.
(In order, speak each of these questions and give time after each one for silent consideration)
What would you like to leave with today?
What would you like to let go of? Worries, recurring, planning, thoughts…..
What values you want to express in your interactions today?
(After each question has been asked and considered)
Now return to the breath. (Pause here)
When you are ready come back to the room in your own time.”
The final stage in this process is to ask participants to take out their journals and write about the intentions they set for the day, before entering into a check in to share this with another participant.
Explore the other resources & tools
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Interpersonal
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Systems Thinking
