I love this terrific ACIM definition of teamwork from Ken Wapnick. It is a psychological approach to team building where forgiveness and inner peace are the goals!
Wapnick is a clinical psycholo-gist who worked closely with Helen Schucman, the person responsible for channeling A Course in Miracles from an entity she believed to be Jesus. He founded the Foundation for A Course in Miracles and teaches workshops and academy courses on its principles.
1. Right-Minded Teamwork
For team leaders and team facilitators who want to learn a real-world team building process that actually works, this book provides practical teamwork tools that create a continuous improvement system for transforming a dysfunctional team into one that truly functions as one. Unlike popular pretend workshops such as games, outdoor exercises and social events, Right-Minded Teamwork (RMT) directly addresses a team’s most pressing issues in a non-confrontational and compassionate manner to produce proven and reliable results.
Right-Minded Teamwork is a psychological approach that focuses on the development of a shared thought system, work agreements and an operating system for accomplishing business goals. It helps a team to identify its core values and beliefs, adopt and practice “right-minded” thinking, develop and strengthen interpersonal behaviors, and achieve consensus on work processes and goals.
This book introduces RMT’s 9 Right Choices with simple, straightforward, and engaging teammate and leader exercises. It also includes The Right-Minded Teamwork Myth, a short story that illustrates RMT’s underlying teamwork philosophy and approach. Designed for busy, experienced team leaders and facilitators, this book teaches a pragmatic and deliberate process for implementing RMT in your team using a step-by-step approach. It is the first of a series of eight books that will teach you how RMT methods fit together to form a self-evident and dependable teamwork process for achieving any goal. Printed on demand, this ebook package includes Reusable Resources that are only available on this website.
4. Right-Minded Collaboration
A key element of right-minded collaboration is team members establishing mutual goals and expectations. This can be achieved by providing regular access to decision makers, implementing open-door policies and setting clear channels and guidelines for non-meeting dialogue in person or online. Managers can also set the tone for collaborative culture by modeling collaboration skills and encouraging teammates to share constructive feedback.
Developing right-minded collaboration is especially important in teams that must work together seamlessly to achieve business goals. acim teaches that in order to do this effectively, teammates must establish shared interest and trust one another. In other words, teammates must genuinely care about each other's well-being and be willing to take risks and compromise when necessary in order to ensure success.
ACIM advocates a secular, business-oriented approach to team building that addresses a team's real issues and produces proven results. This system is called Right-Minded Teamwork, or RMT. It's a compassionate, yet highly intelligent teamwork system that teaches teams to address interpersonal conflicts, improve work processes and achieve 100% customer satisfaction.
The core of this system is a mindset change, which includes seeing teammates as fellow students rather than rivals. It also encourages a belief that forgiveness is the most important action for teammates to take in their daily work life. Download the free ebook package, Reason, Ego & the Right-Minded Teamwork Myth: The Philosophy and Process for Creating Teams That Work As One, to learn more about this business-oriented approach to teamwork.
5. Right-Minded Acceptance
A right-minded person is able to accept other people’s opinions and beliefs. He is also able to recognize that these opinions may not be right for him and accept this fact without being upset about it. This is the core of being a right-minded person, and it contributes to the development of trust.
To help develop a right-minded acceptance of others, have groups of people record their fears anonymously on pieces of paper and then place them in a hat. The members of the group can then draw a fear from the hat, read it aloud, and share how they imagine the person who wrote that fear would feel. This helps the group members to experience empathy and may provide a foundation for discussion of how trust is built in teams.
Another way to understand this concept is to use a research study that asks participants to choose which of two avatars to trust. Each avatar has a different similarity value and a differing amount of mimicry, and the results show that participants tend to select the avatar that exhibits more mimicry. This indicates that mimicry plays a significant role in the decisions that people make about who to trust.
6. Right-Minded Forgiveness
A cornerstone of the Choice Model process is for teammates to actively practice forgiveness in daily team life. The idea is to allow teammates to consciously choose to let go of anger, hostility and bitterness against their teammate who wronged them. This allows the development of empathy and compassion for that person, which helps to heal the hurt feelings as well.
Forgiveness is an internal process and requires courage and a willingness to face fear. It also involves resilience which enables you to follow what feels right to you, even when those around you may be averse to the concept of forgiveness.
Research has shown that forgiveness can help reduce stress and improve physical health, as well as enhance emotional regulation and interpersonal competence (McCullough & Witvliet, 2002). However, forgiving is not the same as pardoning, condoning or excusing the offense. These actions are actually a form of denial or suppression that create more stress.
Another challenge is that if it's forced, forgiveness can become harmful and reinforce power imbalances. For example, in the case of atrocities such as those committed in Burundi, the rhetoric of forgiveness has been used by politicians to avoid accountability. Forgiveness as a duty can also be psychologically harmful for victims of atrocity who feel pressured to forgive without feeling ready or able. The process of forgiveness involves a personal journey and is best achieved through individual storytelling.