How to Get Relaxed Attentiveness in Your Team
Relaxed attentiveness is what you’ll see in a team that is doing its best thinking together. Team members exhibit a state of relaxation, not anxiety, and a calm attentiveness — they’re not multitasking. Team members have made a choice to give the team’s work their attention. That choice is enabled by repeated confirmation that the team’s work is worth their attention and that they matter at the table — the team, and they personally, will benefit from giving this work their attention.
Relaxed attentiveness is similar to the term “relaxed readiness” often used with professional athletes. It connotes a present state of mind, one unhindered by anxiety or attachment. Relaxed attentiveness is a term often used in reference to meditation, where one achieves a state of calm without being “zoned out.”
I was facilitating a leadership team meeting last week where relaxed attentiveness was the invisible secret sauce that allowed the team to have productive conversations about the team development work that lay ahead in order to lead its organization well. It did this in a way that increased alignment and trust, even when there were potentially controversial topics discussed.
If I could back-calculate the conditions I believe created and allowed this leadership team to remain in a state of relaxed attentiveness, I would say it was the following:
They trusted that they each had a voice, and that if they wanted to speak they would be heard. The team has a culture of deep listening. Having a skilled facilitator, whether internal or external, helps a lot with this, because there is someone designated to ‘hold the space.”
The meeting wasn’t rushed. We had created a tone of patience that allowed contemplation, which often comes with some silence. This team development work was a journey and there was a sense of trusting the process. The team seemed to share a less-is-more planning philosophy where they prioritized one topic with enough space to get it handled well and clearly, rather than five topics that get touched upon quickly with no real pull-through.
We were together in an online document where team members could watch what they were creating in real time. This gave their work a tangibility that supported greater clarity and comprehension. It avoids the confusion states that heighten one’s anxiety.
I’m sure there are other reasons, in addition to those above, that allowed this leadership team to work in a state of relaxed attentiveness, but these three are a great place to start with your team.
