Introduction
I think of mindfulness as the ability not to be yanked around by your own emotions,” says Dan Harris, ABC Nightline anchor and author of 10 Percent Happier. “That can have a big impact on how you are in the workplace.”
As a leader, one is expected to have a lot of skill sets: self-awareness, empathy, optimism & a high Emotional Quotient (EQ) are a few musts!
As Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author of Emotional Intelligence describes it: “Star leaders are stars at leading themselves, first. If you can’t fine-tune your own actions – keeping yourself from blowing up or falling to pieces – you’ll be poor at handling the people you deal with.”
Ultimately, mindfulness gives you the ability to manage yourself more effectively, which then allows you to manage your team to the best of your ability. Remember: Your team follows your example, so you must start with yourself to lead others well.
What Our Program Does
‘Mindful Managers’ is a Gamified Corporate Programme that is based on carefully researched scientific mental models & curated in collaboration with some of India’s top Corporate Coaches. 6 modules spread over 6 months, this programme is a sure-shot way to develop star leaders within your organization!
Driving with Trust
Employees who trust their leaders will move mountains for them and be more engaged in the business. In today’s business environment, building trust might just be your most important responsibility as a leader.
Outcomes Achieved:
- Identify adversarial situations, when a lot of people choose what they think is best for them individually, but the sum total of the decisions creates a worse outcome for everyone.
- Use mental models like MRI, Hanlon’s Razor in their professional and personal life to help empathize.
- Detect mental models that explain common errors in thinking like fundamental attribution error, and self-serving bias, and re-assess situations.
Mental Models:
- MRI
- Nash Equilibrium
- Prisoner’s Dilemma
- Hanlon’s Razor
- Fundamental Attribution ErrorCreate product and sales strategy
- Tragedy of the commons
Creative Lateral Thinking
This is the most valuable skill in difficult times. Lateral thinking is solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.
Outcomes Achieved:
- Use the principles of Lateral Thinking to approach situations/problems in a creative way.
- Distinguishing integrative and distributive negotiation, and explore strategies to ‘Expand the Pie’
- Evaluating the needs of all competitors, and assessing their alternatives
Mental Models:
- Science of Persuasion
- Non-zero sum game
- Zero sum game
- 5 Why
- Divergent Thinking
- Lateral Thinking
Big Picture Thinking
Communicating the big picture acts as the North Star. It serves to reinforce the real reason for the activities people do everyday. Big-picture thinking can be crucial for achievement in the workplace because knowing what to focus on can help you budget your time efficiently, manage stress levels and create actionable, achievable goals.
Outcomes Achieved:
- Define group culture and consistently engage in winning hearts and minds towards your desired culture and associated vision
- Assess and identify challenges with respect to lack of big picture thinking and/or attention to details.
- Identify activities leading to short-termism, technical debt, and devise a plan to overcome them in the long run.
Mental Models:
- Circle of Influence, Circle of concern, Circle of control
- Critical Mass
- Frame of Reference
- Boiling Frog, Short-termism, Technical Debt
- Perfect is the enemy of Good
- Murphy’s law
- Hindsight Bias
- Winning hearts and minds
Outsmart Your Bias In Decision Making
When making decisions, we all rely too heavily on intuition and use flawed reasoning sometimes. Lets learn to fight these pernicious sources of bias by learning to spot them and using research driven techniques to overcome them.
Outcomes Achieved:
- Identify and detect various cognitive / unconscious biases affecting our day to day thinking and decision making.
- Recall Parkinson’s Law and use forcing functions strategically to avoid analysis paralysis.
- Select proven strategies to overcome cognitive biases.
Mental Models:
- Ladder of inference
- Perception Bias
- Confirmation Bias, Backfire Effect, Disconfirmation Bias
- First conclusion Bias
- Halo Effect
- Group Think and Bandwagon Effect
- Forcing Functions, Parkinson’s Law
- Hindsight Bias, Recency and Availability Bias
Effective Delegation & Art of Feedback
If you’re not providing timely and effective feedback, you are not being the best leader that you can be. Learn the brain science of feedback, including how our brains learn and why we are wired to connect to each other.
Outcomes Achieved:
- Watch out and identify common psychological failure modes like imposter syndrome and the Dunning-Kruger effect
- Appraise and give feedback that challenge directly, care personally.
- Properly delineate roles and responsibilities using the model of DRI (Directly Responsible Individual)
Mental Models:
- Imposter Syndrome
- Dunning Kruger Effect
- Pygmalion Effect, Golem Effect
- Entropy, Learned Helplessness
- Hindsight bias
- Maker’s Schedule Vs Managers’ Schedule
- DRI, Peter Principle
Mastering Persuasion
Persuasion is a delicate art form. Persuasion power can help you get more of the things you want faster than anything else you do. It can mean the difference between success and failure.
Outcomes Achieved:
- Evaluating the needs of all stakeholders, and assessing their alternatives
- Classify deals with respect to Lewicki and Hiam’s Negotiation matrix
- Convince people to join your side by persuading them through use of influence models like reciprocity, commitment, liking, social proof, scarcity and authority, and watch out for how they are being used on you.
Mental Models:
- 6 Principles of Science of Persuasion
- Lewicki and Hiam’s Negotiation Matrix
- BATNA
- ZOPA
- Anchoring
- Availability Bias
