Team awareness training

8-week course in meditation & mindfulness for a team. Published under the Creative Commons License.

The goal of this course is to increase focus and stress management skills.

Update May 7, 2017

I have more and more started to rely on the group's specific obstacles. This means that I no longer come in with a specific theme each week. This new way of working is still very much in progress. You can follow the development here: The Lightly Method.

Update April 21, 2016

I have updated my teaching in the past months, but haven't come around to update everything here on Github. It's in my backlog. I've listed all the updates I want to do in the todo section below. Feel free to email me in the meantime and ask anything you'd like to. My email address is mattis@lightly.io.
Since I've also posted my workshop here on Github, I figure it's not necessary to keep material related to both products updated separately. I'll keep all links on research, apps, books, etc. updated in the workshop repository only.

Course setup.
Teaching requirements.
The teachers job.
Sessions.
Tools.
Credits.
License.
Todo.
AAQ.

Course setup

Eight participants meet once every week for a 60 minute session. A teacher will teach them new methods and facilitate reflection and learning. The course runs for eight weeks. Between sessions the participants will do homework on their own - mostly meditation practices.

The course will have a scientific viewpoint as a starting point. Everything taught should be verified in clinical trials and/or the participants own experiences. The teachers measures KPIs such as stress and focus before and after the course.

Target outcomes

This course aims to lower stress and increase focus in all participants. Target number depends on the team. A decrease of stress by 25%-30% is a good starting point. Focus should increase by 30% or more.I've been able to reproduce that result consistenly over my last courses. If you don't get boosted focus as a result of this course, re-iterate.

The results are dependent on the amount of effort every participant puts in. These practices are more practical than theoretical. Just reading about them will not help. Just knowing them will not help. They have to put in the work. It's like physical exercise, in that way.

Requirements to be a teacher

To teach this course, you need to

Have the time to do it. Every course demands 32 hours from the teacher.
Have the time to stay up to date on research. The teacher need to be on top of stress, producitivity, leadership, and organizational theory. This takes ~8 hours every week.
A meditation practice of your own.
And of course, a passion for teaching.

You don't need any certificates or permission to start teaching these methods. Any education is helpful, but beware the brands that are trying to make money out of this.

Session setup

Start by taking turns. Each participant tells the group about what his/hers main obstacle to be calm & focused is. If it's not your turn, start by just listening and asking questions. Don't jump to solutions too fast. It's more important to know the root cause of the problem, and it might take a while to get there. Each participant should leave the session with homework targeted towards their specific root cause.
After taking turns, the teacher comes in with this sessions theory & methods. See contents for specific sessions below.
Meditate together.
Finish up by taking turns and reflecting upon this weeks session.

The teacher's job

Pre-course

Let people in the office know you want to help them be more calm and focused.
Sign up 8 participants.
Book a room for all 8 sessions.
Send meeting invites.
Send pre-course evaluation form along with course information.

Every session

Facilitate the exercises.
Teach new methods and tools.
Be an active listener and ask questions.
Stay a while after to answer questions from participants that they either didn't have the time to discuss during the session. Or that they want to ask 1-on-1.
Write down the key points from the session and email them to the group.
Also: the teacher should meditate for at least 20 minutes before the session. Hanging out with calm people makes you calmer.

Post-course

Send out anonymous feedback form.
Compile feedback and set it to the group as a PDF, including the measurements of KPIs before and after.

Session overview

Tools

You can use OfficeVibe to measure stress levels of the participants during the course. It's helpful to do some A/B testing with another team that is not doing the course but with a similar situation.

You can also set up a Slack channel for the course. The group can bounce ideas, give feedback, motivate each others and ask for help there.

Credits

Course created by Mattis Erngren. Reach me on @mattisern and mattis@lightly.io.

But that "created by" ... that's not really true.

This course is based on the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course created by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Google's Search Inside Yourself course. This is a remix. Or a best of. I've also stolen methods from buddhist scripture, science on happiness and well-being, and flow. There's really nothing new in this course except maybe the particular mix of teachings and the process.

I strongly encourage you to make your own remix based on your own experience.

License

This course is published under the Creative Commons license. You are free to copy it and use it for commercial purposes. Well, as long as you publish your own work under the same license.

Please don't be shy to do pull requests as well. I'd love to update this course based on your ideas.

Todo

Update form based on latest live version.
Update recommended books to a link to the book list in the workshop repo.
Link to research in the workshop repo.
Use Grammarly to identify spellning and grammar errors.
Update all sessions based on learnings in the last year.

AAQ (Anticipated Asked Questions)

Can anyone run this course?

Yes! As long as they have the time and the motivation.

Even if they aren't a Super Certificed Aware Mindfullness (SCAM™) coach?

Yes!

But my swami says this should be kept to just a few selected people ...

I don't think so. It's kind of like jogging. It should be available to everyone. If you know a bit of jogging - teach someone how to jog.

It's not rocket science.

Of course, you could teach advanced techniques, methods and theories. But from my perspective, a lot of people are in desperate need of just the basic method. Sit down, watch your mind, watch your breath.

Or perhaps we can compare it to dieting. Most people don't need any advanced dieting regimes. Just move your booty and stay away from that candy and pizza, and you'll be OK. Anyone can teach that. The teaching is not the hard part.

The magic is more in the process. As a group, we hold each other accountable. As a teacher, you motivate. By measuring, we can see tangible results and that feedback loop helps you keep on going.

So, no, I don't think it should be kept a secret.

If you want to, you can make up your own certificate and give it to yourself.

So it doesn't matter who teaches this course?

It does matter. A more experienced teacher will get better results than a less experienced one. What I'm saying is that you don't need to pretend that these methods are mystical and should be protected. And that you don't have to pay someone to start teaching meditation. You can just go ahead and do it. Someone made it up in the first place, you know.

lightly-io / team-awareness-training