Is your team working hard but still not succeeding as much as you hoped? The “Cultivating Attention for Teams” workshop helps your team build the powerful practice of paying attention to make your collaborative work more effective.

Based on the book Cultivating Attention: The Paradoxical Secret of Team Success by Joseph H. Anderson, this 4-hour to one-day workshop teaches you practical tools for improving your attention in four domains:

• Stable Attention so your team can focus on what’s important.
• Connectedness so your team can collaborate effectively.
• Open-Mindedness so your team can make good decisions.
• Self-Awareness so your team can find resilience in the face of change.

Both the book and the workshop help individuals and teams build and apply the practice of paying attention to make their collaborative work more effective.

Workshop Summary

   Introduction:  why attention matters for team alignment

   The paradoxes:  trying harder does not get better results.

   Motivation:  zero in on your reasons for paying better attention.

   Obstacles:  why your brain makes it hard to pay attention.

   Core practice:  the one simple thing you need to change.

   Building the habit:  micropractices to make the habit of attention stronger every day.

   Making it relevant:  application to what matters to you, your team, and your organization.

The Paradoxes
   You’ll use the power of paradox to to shift business-as-usual thinking.

Motivations
   You’ll examine change drivers for yourself and your team.

Obstacles: The Four Brains
   You’ll become more aware of how your brain naturally gets in the way of paying attention.

   The Busy Brain:  attentional spotlight, default mode, executive function

   The Tribal Brain:  social danger, facial recognition, oxytocin, Theory of Mind

   The Biased Brain:  negativity bias, wishful thinking, confirmation bias

   The Reactive Brain:  fight/flee/freeze response, metaphors, the amygdala, constructing emotions

Core Practices
   You’ll experiment with techniques for sharpening your attention in each domain.