Quick Guide V : How to Apply Mindfulness to Business Relationships

When you give a top performer a target to aim for, they look beyond the target. Top performers stretch themselves. They set a range of targets. The minimum being ‘success’ as defined by others. Success is their target but their purpose is to be the best, and often be seen to be the best. Top performers seek fulfilment through a sense of completeness that they have acknowledged and dealt with everything that is ‘incomplete’ in their approach to business - specifically business relationships.

The Journey to Completeness (a ‘10 out of 10’)
The journey to completeness is a step-by-step process. Each step has both intellectual and emotional content. Getting a top performer to raise their game from say a 7 out of 10 (which is the median score top performers give themselves) to a 10 (where 10 is “perfect”) is a two-stage process.

1. Going from a 7 to an 8 out of 10 is a straight-forward and, by-and-large, an intellectual process. We can all work a little smarter. (If a coach can’t help you achieve a one point improvement in your effectiveness, find another coach!)
2. Going from an 8 to 9 to 10 is an emotional journey. The journey is filled with limiting (or disabling) beliefs ‘you’ (by ‘you’ I mean you, me, we, us) hold about yourself. If creating superior business relationships was purely an intellectual process (e.g. create the best business case and it will sell itself) then smart people, especially top performers, would already be there. The journey from 8 to 10 is an emotional journey that requires you to sit in and gauge the feeling of where you are right now, in the present moment. Specifically, you sense and deal with any fear that exists in you or the person with whom you’re forging a business relationship. Over time, you develop a more intuitive approach to business relationships, through mindfulness.

"Mindfulness means moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is cultivated by refining our capacity to pay attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and then sustaining that attention over time as best we can. In the process, we become more in touch with our life as it is unfolding." Jon Kabat-Zinn

Allow me to add my own business related definition. "Mindfulness is responding in the present moment without reacting through anger, shame, hurt or (the most likely feeling) fear."

Instead it’s about having faith-in-self to use your intuition to respond with passion, curiosity to learn, composure, patience, compassion, harmony, and timing to complete whatever is incomplete in your approach to business relationships.

Responding to what or whom? Answer - to whatever ‘the future’ brings to you in the present moment. And one of the future’s gifts to you is everything that is incomplete in your approach to business relationships. This booklet describes a mindful approach to building more harmonious business relationships, starting with yourself. They will be profitable. They have to be for business partners to be happy, do they not?

Paul C Burr is a business coach, author, speaker, visiting lecturer and 'energy healer'. His Facebook pages have amassed a total of over 22,000 followers. Burr has over 30 years experience in corporate sales, consulting and coaching, during which he spent 16 years with IBM. He has a PhD in Statistics and a First Class Honours Degree in Mathematics from Brunel University. He is a Certificated Master Practitioner in NLP.

Profile by Professor John Ditch, York, UK...
"Paul Burr is an incredibly interesting man. I met him in 2005 when he agreed to be my 'career coach'. At the time I held a senior position at a UK university and it was rather fashionable to undertake 'management training'; every member of our senior team was expected to devote time to 'continuing professional development'. I approached Paul because he offered something different, something a little more challenging. We met regularly over the course of a number of months. Paul was a good listener and quickly identified a number of issues that we could work on together. That was part of his style: he didn't teach, he didn't preach, he had no axe to grind. What he had was insight, humour and a remarkable capacity to facilitate self-questioning and reflection: he had a 'tool-kit' but he didn't carry spare parts. Our 'sessions' were always well organized and when I'd done my 'home-work' thoroughly they were both demanding and rewarding. Paul is a seriously bright 'numbers-person' (he has a PhD in statistics) and can do all the technical stuff that management consultants come out with. But he is more than that: he is also in touch with the right (creative/emotional) side of his brain. Thinking back there were three things that Paul facilitated or encouraged in me: first, he supported me to think about (or imagine) ways of 'doing things differently'; second, he emphasized the importance of 'authenticity'; third, he helped me develop additional capacity for 'resilience'. Time with Paul was all time well spent."