Meditation Research
The German weekly news magazine Focus had a cover story last Saturday on mental training and the latest findings in science about stress and burn-out. Meditation and mindfulness turn out to be effective tools against stress and burn-out symptoms.
Very successful in the US is MBSR: Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, which is offered as an 8 week course in 250 clinics all over the country. It has been developed by the Center for Mindfulness (CFM) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School: “The central focus of the Clinic is intensive training in mindfulness meditation and its integration into the challenges/adventures of everyday life.” Jon Kabat-Zinn invented this methodology and made proof that it is medically effective. It is based on an ancient Buddhist meditation technique: Vipassana Meditation which is also called insight-meditation and aims at self transformation through self observation.
There is more and more evidence from research on the effects of meditation. Psychologist Richard Davidson worked closely with the Dalai Lama who connected him to Tibetan monks with whom he could do his medical studies of the brain as it relates to meditation. The outcome of his work can be read here: Mental Training Affects Distribution of Limited Brain Resources and Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation.
Sara Lazar at Harvard University found out that meditation influences cortical thickness of people who have meditated for a long time: “Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than matched controls, including the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula. Between-group differences in prefrontal cortical thickness were most pronounced in older participants, suggesting that meditation might offset age-related cortical thinning.”
In my previous blog entry I mentioned that meditation is still regarded as strange by many in our Western world. Although there have been already some meditation courses for executives in the past this type of mental training remains outside the corporate world. Through the type of research mentioned here this might change over time.
We see more and more adoption of Eastern philosophy in our Western world. Tools from Buddhism, Yoga, Ayurveda, chinese medical treatment... the list is long. Regularly there are features in the press or television about any one of these techniques. A probably more philosophical question is why we do not stick with our own techniques, our medicine, the belief in our religion? Apparently these are not able to fill a gap that has occured with the ever accelerating pace of the world around us which made us loose contact to our own roots, traditions, ancient wisdoms...??
Posted at
08:37PM May 14, 2008
by Volker Seubert in Personal |
Bookmark to del.icio.us |
Comments[2]
Brainstorming
Another really interesting learning I had over the past week was brainstorming with reverse assumptions. It may sound obvious or easy but a group doing it the first time needs a while to get into it. What would you say being part of a services group if you are NOT customer oriented? But exactly this provoking statement gets new ideas out of people. They start thinking about what this really means and things like bringing services proactively to the customer can arise – opening up to go beyond customer oriented!
Posted at
06:47PM Mar 20, 2008
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
Bookmark to del.icio.us |
Comments[0]
Leadership Styles Application
Let me come back to the Goleman Leadership Styles. How best use these styles to practically work with them helping a leader improve his leadership abilities? In an earlier blog entry describing our HR Organization I mentioned Sun's Organization Consulting group that built a simple tool based on Goleman's work that I want to share. Special thanks to Terry who designed it as part of an entire “Leadership Effectiveness Application Journal”!
The purpose of the tool is to identify a leader's strengths and improvement areas by assessing how he/she uses the variety of styles. So basically the coach starts to identify to what extent the leader uses each of the different styles referring to specific situations. All this will be listed in the table below. Then the actual situations would be compared to the situations you should use the style for and a gaps analysis is done that gives you the foundation for a development plan and discussion with the leader. I find this really compelling as it is so straightforward and easy to use!
Style | Points | Situations used | Appropriate Situations to Use | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Coercive | 3 | Under tight deadline | In a crisis, to kick-start a turnaround, with problem employees | High – personal stress causes use of Coercive Style |
Authoritative | | Never | When a clear / new direction is needed | High- this style was needed when integration of acquisition was done |
Affliative | | Never | To heal rifts in a team / to motivate people during stress | Low – team is generally not under stress nor does it exhibit rifts |
Democratic | 3 | To ensure high level of commitment | To build buy-in / get input from valuable employees | None - Low – seems to use this correctly |
Pacesetting | 4 | With new goals / programs | To get quick results from a highly competent team | Low – tends to get people quickly engaged in new programs or directed towards new goals |
Coaching | | Never | To help improve performance and develop strengths | Medium – some people seem to need coaching so this style would be helpful |
Total Points | 10 | | | |
Posted at
07:26AM Aug 10, 2007
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
Bookmark to del.icio.us |
Comments[1]
