Today we are speaking to Estela Quesada Zuheros, founder of Plenicidad and The Mindful Response. After working for 14 years in HR at IBM working with digital projects and solutions at a global level and involved in Corporate Social Responsibility, Estela decided to accompany business leaders and teams to become conscious and responsible leaders.
‘One of the biggest challenges is that we don’t stop. We have so many projects, objectives and tasks that we just end up running around like headless chickens due to heavy workload or periods of high intensity. But instead of being more productive we just switch to ‘autopilot’ and the result is that we’re less productive.’
We generally associate stopping (and giving ourselves space) with an existential crisis at specific moments in life. But when the crisis is over we simply return to action. But when we’re in action it is not so easy to stop, so maybe the best thing would be to stop every day for a little while to find ourselves again. As Estela explains, most of the time crises serve to show us that there is another way of doing things. Each person has a crisis at different times and now what to do with it is up to you.
It starts with small changes…
In her book ‘The Conscious Response’ Estela talks about the concept of ‘active withdrawal’. Many times we want to disappear, to let go, because we can’t take it anymore. Then we come back and nothing has changed, or we still do not feel comfortable. So instead what Estela advocates is making small changes in our lives, taking time to pause to review, to assess. And ask ourselves ‘really what are my values, what’s important to me, what’s my purpose, what’s my intention, what’s really important?
This becomes an even more pertinent question in the context of the pandemic as more and more people are working from home so a lot of people are suffering more stress because they are spending more time connected to their screens. Estela points out that often when working from home the hours when we are connected and the hours when we are disconnected become very blurred, which generates tremendous fatigue. If we don’t cultivate that ability to respond to what happens to us in the moment, what often happens is that we have a calendar full of meetings but no time to actually complete our tasks. So the fatigue is linked to the discomfort of not only having to be in front of a screen but also this habit of creating meetings that often do not contribute to anything. So when it comes to setting up meetings we should ask ourselves if it’s really important – and that we don’t simply switch to autopilot. The same happens with accepting meetings as it is difficult for us to say no – but especially for women.
It seems we can only say no when our agenda is full of meetings all day long. But before we get to that point, we have to know that we have a choice.
Even when we start to decide what is important and act in line with that, what is happening around us also changes and this means that sometimes we have to have uncomfortable conversations than those we have when we simply accept every task we are given. It is far easier to agree with someone than to disagree and say ‘do you think we can do this in another way that is more beneficial for you, for me and for the team or the people we are working with or our client?’ It’s about setting limits, of self-awareness, and being aware that there can be an overload of work. Often those who don’t work don’t have work, and those who work probably have much more than they can handle, so that’s where the difficulty lies : in managing it all.
That is why it is important to talk about responsibility towards ourselves that ability to respond to my own care, self-knowledge, because if we don’t communicate as team it won’t work, and we can’t deliver to our clients and be responsible professionals.
I’m not sure I have an answer for that and that’s why I like to talk about the conscious response, so that everyone can recognise what their own response is at any given moment. In my experience, the first mindfulness programme I did was for leadership and middle management and I felt overwhelmed with the pressures of what my team needed. The point is that we all have a boss, even in multinational companies so, in a way, everybody has somebody who is in charge. Now the question is, whatever level you are at, it is true that you have more power and influence if you are in one place or another. If they were in a more powerful hierarchical position, then you can probably do more.
But from my point of view, and what I can tell you, is that we all have the capacity to lead from wherever we are. The only thing I invite you to do is to recognise whether that is true or not, many times we are more likely to say no than we think.
You don’t have to sign a blank cheque every time you have to do something. I have allowed myself to say no to something or to say yes, but also following certain conditions, I have felt much freer and I have realised that this has allowed the other to know something that at that moment I didn’t know.
It is about taking small steps and many incidents that have to do with communication, I can’t tell you what you have to do. What I can tell you is that you have much more freedom and you can do much more than you think you can, that many times we are probably not authentic because we are afraid. When I have allowed myself to be authentic, to say no or to say yes and I have realised that I was also making a mistake in another way, because I was approached by another person in an honest way, things have worked out much better. I think companies are their people and the only thing we can do is to allow people to be. But what often happens to us is that we hire someone who seems very confident and is able to do the job well, but then we start to have a behaviour that shows the opposite, that maybe we are not trusting the other person so much because we are doing that micro management or because we are on top of them. The company is us, the people who make it up, the DNA of the company. There are values that may be embodied more or less in the company, but I think that the company is created by the decisions that we make from there, from wherever we are, especially if we are entrepreneurs, I think there is more opportunity to be authentic. I believe that companies that are authentic generate more positive, enriching dynamics among their workers and greater productivity; we must be aware that there is greater productivity. For example, we are saving a lot of money in medical leave but there are people who are present at the computer without being able to do anything, who are already burnt out, exhausted.
So, if you really care about growing your company, you have to care about the well-being of the people who make it up, and if you are the leader, then you will have to act like that.
That change is part of the fact that the leaders or the person with the most power have really touched those areas, stopped and realised that there are things that don’t work no matter how hard we push.
There are three steps that I think are key to summarise this:
Firstly, we need to be very clear about our intention, mission, vision, purpose, why, what I am here for? Secondly, attention, if my attention is dispersed, if I am not able to be present here in what is happening and I don’t do it with an open attitude to what is happening with an open mind, it’s mindfulness, isn’t it, that non-judgement towards the experience? If I allow myself to be present here, mindful with that attitude of not judging what’s happening and accepting it as it is, I’m already in that second step. The third step is to let go and let go. Many times we want to hold on to what gives us security, the mind will judge what is good and bad, and if it is good I want it and if it is bad, I want it far away. So we have to take that third step of relaxing, of letting go, of letting go of a result. I have done my best to work in line with my purpose, to work in line with that vision, to support the other person from an authentic point of view. But look, even if I have a seed and I’m watering it all the time, it doesn’t mean that the plant is going to grow faster, it could be that the plant has too much water and I’ve ruined the seed, so it takes an exercise of patience and wanting a result now.
It is so important we realise that being authentic means being vulnerable at times, recognising that I don’t know everything, being humble, approaching the other with courage also to be able to say what this part of me knows to be true and this requires work, personal work that no one can do for you and that requires, first of all, stopping the autopilot loop.
