A group is working on a business challenge. The group members are under pressure. They have a lot to accomplish and a limited amount of time. After first attempting to develop an overview of their common task, they try to make a plan to ensure an efficient group process. The planning is proving difficult. We’ve all been there. We are in a working group or at a meeting, discussing a topic or a challenge, and all the while, as a separate track running underneath our conversation, there is a subtext that no one explicitly addresses. This is an example of ‘the elephant in the room.’ Most of us notice the elephant, it gets in the way, and it’s difficult to deal with until someone points at it and says, ‘There it is, let’s take a look at it and reduce its impact.’
With an engaging use of examples and questions, the book addresses how we can best deal with the elephant and thus promote job satisfaction, creativity, and productivity. In the context of action, what we notice often recedes into the background and gradually slips out of focus until we eventually reconnect with our need to reflect and recreate a space for it. This book addresses the challenge of focusing on, holding on to, and acting on what we notice ‘in the middle of it all.’ Maintaining a simultaneous focus on task and process – what we do and what we notice – is what I define as ‘double awareness.’ Double awareness is not only a core capacity but also a core challenge.
The aim of the book is to promote understanding and awareness of this core challenge and to inspire both reflection and action in anyone wishing to improve their capacity for double awareness. How can we define and understand the practice of mindful avoidance? And can we, as members of groups and organizations, begin to practice mindful action by engaging in and acting on what we notice, in real time?
Author(s): Lotte Svalgaard
Publisher: Routledge/Productivity Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 245
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
About the Author
Introduction
Reader’s guide
Testimonials
Theme 1 Double awareness
Chapter 1 What is double awareness?
The importance and challenge of reflective spaces
The double task
Challenges related to the double task
The challenge of the reflective space
Why is the reflective space in the middle of it all so essential?
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About anxiety and learning
About reflection-in-action
About the double task
About action learning
About leadership in the middle of it all
About ‘soft is hard’
Chapter 2 Being mindful of what is above and below the surface
Process awareness of what is below the surface
Practising mindful awareness
Emotion as data: above and below, inner and outer
Reading and carrying
Engaging our assumptions
Deep underlying assumptions as competing commitments
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About working below the surface
About basic assumptions and competing commitments
About mindful leadership
Chapter 3 Difficult feelings, negative capability and defences
Embracing and examining all sorts of feelings
The challenge of not-knowing
Defences and defensive routines
Anxiety, doubt and uncertainty as aspects of learning
Practising negative capability
On the look-out for defence mechanisms
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About negative capability
About the meeting between psychodynamics and mindfulness
About defensive routines
About the alternative learning circle
About working with defence mechanisms
Theme 2 Mindful avoidance
Chapter 4 The practice – and consequences – of mindful avoidance
Wilful blindness
The challenge is not mindlessness
How can we tell that we are practising mindful avoidance?
Why mindful avoidance?
Navigating without data
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About presence and wilful blindness
About defences in performance cultures
About mindful avoidance
Chapter 5 Emotions as disturbance and loss of control
Putting emotions into words
Keeping emotions pent up
The short-term reward of pretending everything is fine
Worrying about emotional and relational messiness
The pressure to act quickly …
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About working with emotions in organizations
About purpose … and the challenges involved in finding it
Chapter 6 Not-knowing as a competence
Questions as a condition for learning
Acting means fixing
How can we act on not-knowing?
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About not-knowing
About double-loop learning and defensive routines
Theme 3 Mindful action
Chapter 7 Truth
Insight into truth in the moment
The past is included in the present moment
Making data accessible
The feeling of succeeding with mindful action
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About Theory U
About working with awareness
About asking questions rather than looking for answers
Chapter 8 Transparency
Transparency and clarity
Being authentic
From splitting to transparency
Mindful action does not mean acting on everything that moves
Rock the boat, but not so hard that you fall out of it
Mindful alertness
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About authenticity and integrity
About working with awareness
About power and politics in organizations
Chapter 9 Trust
From doubt to trust
Daring to embrace vulnerability
How trust emerges and is maintained
Having control
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About trust
About vulnerability
About holding
Theme 4 From avoidance to commitment
Chapter 10 Identifying and avoiding mindful avoidance
Mindful Logs
Assumptions versus facts
Life stories and role biographies
Immunity to change
Awareness in action
From brainstorm to question storm
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About methods for distinguishing between facts and assumptions
About methods for developing awareness in the moment
About working with defences
Chapter 11 Mobilizing the three Ts
Meaning as you see it
Reflective spaces as a daily routine
Putting emotions into words
Handling taboos
Dynamic tension
Transparent rather than polite feedback
Setting the pace
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About your purpose and meaning
About reflective spaces as a daily routine
About putting emotions into words
About dealing with difficult taboos
About action that makes a difference
Chapter 12 Consequences for leadership and organizational development
Moving from sequential to simultaneous tracks in design
Practising double awareness
Your own negative capability
Points from my research
Reflection: what is your personal experience?
Reflection: what is your experience as a group?
Recommended reading
About focus points in the design of development programmes – how and why
About how to work below the surface
Final reflections
Index
