Did you Really ask 50 people to Meditate at a Corporate Meeting?
Joseph Rupp, Sugar High Motivation
We congregated in a long rectangular room at the Ayres Hotel in Mission Viejo, CA. Inside, the space fell quiet, in stark contrast to the groups typically boisterous and irreverent banter. No one moved. Everyone remained glued to their seats, heads forward, eyes closed. The faces of the attendees appeared relaxed and serene. Only the sound of the guides’ voice broke the silence. My team was practicing.
Spring had arrived in late April 2010. The weather cooperated for our meeting, typically perfect for South Orange County in early Spring — perpetual sunshine, lazy itinerant clouds dotted blue skies, highs in the mid-70’s. I suppose that description might always apply to the year round So. Cal climate. The days arrived beautiful and full of promise. And, even better, my team had arrived for our annual regional meeting.
During breaks, teammates wore sunglasses as they milled around outside by the pool. Many had not worn sunglasses for months. Some of them hailed from misty, cool Washington and Oregon, others from Montana, Utah and the Colorado Plains, still others from Arizona and New Mexico. And, of course, we had several teammates from California. Visitors also traveled from our New England Home Office, eager to embrace the sunshine. We were thrilled to oblige. It meant our visitors came happy to join us. That was a good thing. I had a surprise for them.
Long before mindfulness, meditation and breathing techniques became the rage (oxymoron?) and now regularly pop up on LinkedIn live sessions, I asked fifty of my team members to close their eyes, quiet their minds and release the tension. Of course, maybe they had to release tension I had caused!
In 2010, I fully reflected the stereotype. I earned it. I was the California guy, all the way across the country from our home office on the East Coast, asking my team members to consider wellness practices. Now, it’s a cliché. Then, not so much. Not at least at this company at that time. Interestingly, I had already been accused (in the nicest possible way) by a coworker from the Southeast of living in granola country where all the hippies huddled (the first words out of his mouth when he introduced himself was to emphasize how all Californians lived in a crazy alternate universe where to him, we all resembled a cluster of Deadheads!) I confirmed that we all indeed made our clothes from recycled organic material, sported a Prius in every garage and started our days with Hatha Yoga while facing the State Capitol in Sacramento.
In any event, I had a reputation to preserve. In one meeting, I asked my entire team to think about how improved habits (diet, physical fitness and sleeping habits) might increase their wellbeing outside of work and might also translate into feeling better and increase performance at work (my occasional habit of binge eating freshly baked Otis Spunkmeyer white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies at breaks, might have complicated that message — do as I say!) In another, I asked them to visualize the year ahead and create positive performance outcomes in the landscape of their minds (dude.) In yet another, we covered some simple breathing techniques as a warmup before we played a rugged game of softball as our team bonding activity in Phoenix at Big League Dreams — that was an awesome event!
To some, meditation was cool — a nice break from the meeting intensity. Others suspected I harbored a secret religious motive. I don’t think the Buddhist hemp bracelets we handed out helped. Maybe too much. Nevertheless, a colleague recently confirmed he still had the bracelet resting on a shelf in his home office. I sincerely hope the energy from that meeting still radiates from the artifact. You can imagine how happy it made me to know he kept the souvenir of the occasion.
At the time, introducing meditation seemed perfectly natural to me. I knew it would be different. No doubt, some of the team would balk at an utterly un- business like session occupying space at our valuable meeting. But, I had been meditating for years. I had experienced the benefits. My wife had been meditating since childhood and introduced me to the practice. I loved it, although I must admit, early on I would fall asleep more often than experience the euphoria of clearing and relaxing my mind. Like anything, the discipline required practice, repetition and frequency. And, when you master it, anyone can experience an incredible energetic vibration that must be felt to be understood. Good Vibrations (ruh, roh, I do sound like a Deadhead.) More importantly, meditation improves focus, concentration, mood, reduces anxiety and may elicit profound improvements in the brain.
Still, I thought I would ease into the experience. The first day of the meeting we followed a typical pattern which included opening exercises, breaking into competitive sub teams, brainstorming sessions, and outlining the themes and objectives for the three-day meeting.
In my opening, during the last piece of the presentation, I primed the pump. I introduced a series of slides outlining the benefits of meditation. I emphasized my objective: to learn a skill that could immediately alter their frame of mind and over time could bring another healthy habit into their lives. We all nurtured stressful jobs, long days typically on the road visiting business partners, fighting it out for new business, training, and answering questions on all types of subjects from billing to technology.
Our team, like all sales teams, became the voice and quarterback for the company on a range of issues to its partners. It’s a great thing, but it's highly demanding and competitive. Stress hits you in ways you might not notice until your body cries uncle. It was not unusual for our teams to travel all day long and then spend their evenings answering emails. I wanted to give them a tool that could instantly relieve some stress, even if the only thing they took away included the deep breathing techniques.
On day two in the afternoon we introduced the practice after lunch. I knew this was risky given the potential for postprandial slumber (I could not resist the alliteration!) So, we dove right in. We lowered the lights to create the mood. We turned on low, spa like music to make it even more groovy. We asked everyone to turn off all electronic devices, focus on their posture, breathing and the present. If they fell asleep during the session, no problem!
We started with easy breathing practices I had learned as a teenager. Incidentally, I learned this practice during summer school at a university I attended after my Junior year in High School. The course focused on how to improve learning habits. The professor devoted one valuable lesson to this practice: to increase focus on the present and relaxation. The breathing techniques mirrored what you might learn in the first phase of a meditation. I asked the team to warm up by simply counting the in breath to six beats, pause and hold in the air for eight beats and then exhale slowly, counting to around twelve beats, ensuring the breath fully and evenly expelled. We repeated the exercise around five times. That was the warmup — and if you try that at home you will find it both relaxing and potentially exhilarating. The side benefit of this practice? The deep breathing helps to clear up your lymphatic system.
The other exercise we taught them involved a common technique which combined the deep breathing practice with slowly tensing and then relaxing every part of your body moving from your head to your toes sequentially. Again, you close your eyes, put yourself in a comfortable position (some in our group even laid down on the carpet in the room), begin with the deep breathing and you might even imagine a white light hovering over year head and then slowly imbuing every cell of your body.
Now, it just so happens that I wanted to make certain my voice was not the only one in their heads. I had asked one of my direct reports (who did an excellent job) and one of my colleagues from our Home Office to narrate parts of the meditation — and it was like the latter person came straight out of central casting. He was all in on the exercise. He had a perfectly calm, mellifluous voice, matched perfectly to the mood we wanted to create. After warmups, he took the team through a series of images including the popular garden and forest landscape narratives. We had two sessions, one devoted to the breathing techniques and another devoted to the guided meditation.
What happened? Why am I sharing the story? Of course, I thought it was awesome! The only negative comment I heard came from an individual who apparently saw this as a threat to his faith. I clearly did not adequately explain the non-secular nature of the practice. No problem. I understood. On the other hand, we had one team member, a 7-foot former professional basketball player, who made my heart sing. He loved the experience and would often tell me at subsequent meetings that he would carry on the practice at home with his girlfriend. Others acknowledged the intention behind the introduction. I think my team understood that we wanted them to know we cared about them beyond the hard results of numbers — that if we could cultivate a whole person mindset, we would create greater buy-in, wholeheartedness and engagement.
I would love to say the experience created better performance. I have no metrics-based data to share. I do know that it likely improved our engagement scores (I will shamelessly share, those scores were very good.) I can add that the experience made it clear to our team that we cared about the whole person, not just the one that showed up on the stack rank report.
Two years after this experiment, I introduced the practice virtually by scheduling calls dedicated to it. This time I combined meditation into a package of development activities as part of a program we called Develop U. The sessions were completely voluntary. My team worked remotely. And the calls were well attended initially and then dropped off over time, the casualty of competing interests and likely a confused experience. It was extremely hard to do it virtually at the time given our webinar capabilities. And you really need the discipline to focus exclusively on the moment without the potential distraction of the computer monitor staring at you. Still, I think it can be done successfully and I learned a great deal from the experience.
I also used the technique while I led a project team working on reimagining our sales model. We met in person, a small group of 8–10 and would often meditate at the very beginning of our sessions as a way to mentally breathe before our creative work. Given the imaginative context of the work we were doing, this practice fit right in. We meditated for about 5–10 minutes.
My suggestion for anyone that would like to duplicate it, would be to set strong guidelines and a robust framework. Make attendance voluntary. If you are interested in introducing it to your teams — keep the sessions short in the beginning, perhaps focused on your breathing exercises first and then layer in different elements of meditation. It can be done effectively in short segments of time.
The connection to Sugar High Motivation stems from my focus on leveraging visualization in my program the way athletes and musicians use it to create better performance. My training system includes a 6-step process to create effective goal achievement and transformation. One of those steps involves leveraging visualization. Keep in mind, meditation and visualization techniques are very closely related. You can create active meditations. But I would emphasize the word active as it relates to creative visualization.
If you are interested in learning more, check out my website — www.sugarhighmotivation.com or my Facebook page (@iamjosephrupp) for details around events we are hosting to learn how to do it. There is no great mystery to the practice, but it helps to work with someone for tips and guidance — or to simply leverage a protected time slot!
Thanks for reading. Feed Your Mind!
