FIVE ROUTINES LEADERS CAN IMPLEMENT TO RAISE THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS AT WORK.
When leaders take an active role in raising their consciousness, they help raise and connect their entire organization's consciousness. While navigating the continued transformation of how we work, employees rely on leaders to be beacons of light, guiding us to a brighter future. How will you lead the evolution of workplace culture?
Reflection of Thought:
Reflect on your thought impulses before giving direction to employees. It sounds simple, but when moving in fast-paced work environments, leaders often get an alert from our mind or email, and in turn, act quickly and provide misguided direction to employees with the hopes of forcing a project along without taking the time to define the task and objective.
How long should you reflect before taking action? When a thought impulse or fire drill to move something forward kicks in, wait at least 10-15 minutes before acting on it. A quick meditation or mental rest will always help clear the mind to create a purposeful way forward. When leaders take time to direct their consciousness to a direct outcome, it becomes much easier for the teams to get there.
Expressing Gratitude:
Leaders pride themselves on having high expectations of their employees, and that's all good, but many fail to recognize the sacrifices and valuable contributions their employees regularly make. Should your employees be grateful to have a job working for you, or should you be grateful to have dedicated employees?
Simple acts of gratitude like a personal note of appreciation or some time off after working long hours goes a long way in the workplace. Our success relies upon one another and appreciating each other's talents helps connect human consciousness, creating highly effective and top producing work teams.
Active Listening:
The past year has been a transformative time for business culture, and the future of how an organization decides to do business is reliant on feedback from the workforce. It's a good idea to get a pulse on what's working in the current ecosystem of both culture and business to explore what can be improved. Active listening can be through one-to-one coaching with departments or extended to the entire organization.
Just because we have become comfortable with specific ways of working during COVID does not mean they are the most effective and engaging ways of working. Often, employees shy away from making simple suggestions that could make a big difference, learn to ask questions, and listen regularly.
Practicing Humility:
Leaders unconsciously need to feel important, which can inflate their sense of self. Humility places low importance on the unconscious mind's needs for power and fame while emphasizing other team members' contributions for achievements. Being a humble leader also humanizes oneself among employees, leading to increased loyalty through empathy and trust.
The gift of humility help leaders remain open to personal growth and development opportunities in all aspects of life and is a quality that employees deeply admire. Humility is not about being meek or weak. In contrast, humility lives in concert with purpose, confidence, and courage. It's also a well-known characteristic attributed to human genius.
Transcend Negativity:
We live in a culture that is a construct of the unconscious mind. The mainstream media will always keep humanity gripped with headlines that focus on worry, fear, and uncertainty about the future, even when there is a light at the end of the tunnel. All the negativity we consume in the feed can quickly lead many people to believe that the world is falling apart, causing drastic decreases in employee morale and workplace performance.
Rise above the negativity, gossip, and constant complaining by directing your consciousness to the vision of how your organization helps to serve the needs of humanity. Bring positivity into the workplace and create ways for employees to engage with the causes you support.
How will you raise consciousness in the workplace?