Focus and attunement to the quality of connection

Appreciation is about noticing what’s working well, and saying that aloud more often than expressing what’s not working. Appreciation practice lays a foundation for creating a highly motivated team who has the capacity to meet challenges with skill and grace. It contributes to resilience by creating a sense of confidence that each person is seen for their contributions. Appreciation is actually a form of positive feedback: it is about knowing what works in clear and specific terms. This level of clarity and sharing makes collaboration easy.

Being heard and seen is a core need for everyone and especially important in the work environment. When each team member trusts that their voice is heard and respected, contentious arguments transform into synergistic dialogues. Empathy is a competency that builds this confidence that everyone can be heard.

Empathy also contributes to healthy differentiation and emotional security. With empathy, you can truly be a companion and support for another without taking on their struggles as your own.

Empathy is the capacity to hear what matters most and to let the other person know you heard them. Empathy means giving your compassionate curiosity to another’s experience without having an agenda. It usually involves reflecting back what you heard and verbally guessing another’s feelings and needs. For example, when someone shares about a difficulty at work, instead of immediately trying to problem solve, you learn to first make an empathy guess like, “Are you feeling discouraged because you need support?” Offering empathy before problem-solving may seem more time-consuming, but it is actually incredibly more efficient. Empathy opens the door to deeply understanding what’s happening for another. With this clear and subtle understanding, solutions become precise and effective.

Honest expression is a rich and subtle practice that empowers you to live in alignment with your deepest values. It often feels vulnerable, as it requires awareness and direct expression of what matters most and explicit acknowledgement of interdependence through specific and doable requests, and negotiation with others. It helps you to truly collaborate with others while fully maintaining autonomy and self-responsibility.

Honest expression includes the following:

•Awareness of your intention when speaking

•Awareness of the quality of connection in a given moment, both with yourself and another

•Taking responsibility for reactivity by learning to recognise it and then name it aloud and/or taking time to get grounded before continuing to engage in dialogue

•Expressing feelings and needs with full self-responsibility by making specific and doable requests of yourself and/or another

•Taking responsibility for thoughts, speech, and reactivity by discerning the difference between what you actually observed and the interpretations you made

•Knowing the difference between universal needs and related preferences and strategies for how needs are met

•Communicating specific and doable requests as the starting point for collaboration (and negotiation)

Self-empathy is an essential ingredient for developing self-responsibility in the workplace. To have a compassionate and conscious relationship with another, you also need to have a compassionate and conscious relationship with yourself.

In addition, self-empathy helps you find relief from internal conflict, criticism, and doubt. You will learn to greet each part of your experience with compassion and acceptance, which gives you access to wise discernment and effective self-care.

Self-empathy is an aspect of taking responsibility for your experience by gaining the skills to identify observations, thoughts, feelings, needs, and requests. Being able to sort your experience in this way opens the door to staying true to yourself and honest with others.

Recognising reactivity means freedom. The moment you can recognise reactivity arising, you can be free from its grip on you. In addition, when you learn to track reactivity in yourself, you can more easily recognise it in others. This means you can take effective action to prevent harm/wounding/trauma, escalating arguments and ruptures in relationships.

Reactivity is defined as the misperception of threat to one or more needs. It can be recognised by at least three main characteristics:

1) A change in physiology, such as heart rate or breathing

2) A stuckness or narrowing of view

3) A loss of access to creativity, skills, broad perspective, wisdom, and compassion

Recognising reactivity means becoming familiar with the many signs and symptoms that it is arising. When you fully know reactivity, it can’t take over. Instead, you have a choice to practice skills in regulation and return to work with clarity and perspective.

When you learn to manage reactivity effectively, a whole world of possibility opens up for you and your relationships. Reactivity can come and go without causing major ruptures in connection. You see it as normal and trust that it can be managed. Lastly, when you are not walking on eggshells fearful of another’s reactivity, your relationships have space to grow and evolve in new ways.

Once you learn to recognise reactivity, it becomes your cue to engage the skills you have for managing it. Managing reactivity includes skills such as regulation strategies, anchoring, interpersonal de-escalation strategies, empathy, self-empathy, naming, recognising blame and shame, working with tender needs, and engaging in healing work.