14-week Integrative Inquiry/Mindful Compassion Course for Leaders

This 14-week course, designed, facilitated, and evaluated by Marilee Bresciani Ludvik, should meet for one-hour per week with one 18-20 minute online video to prep participants for the exercises they will experience in their online face-to-face environment.

Designed for those who have a desire to heighten their own self-awareness and optimize organizational transformation, this course intends for participants to achieve the following outcomes:

• Increased ability to direct attention to the desired object of attention on demand
• Increased ability to manage emotions, particularly difficult emotions on demand
• Increased ability to regulate stress and anxiety on demand
• Increased awareness of the relationship of thoughts to bodily sensations, emotions, and choices made
• Increased compassionate dialogue
• Increased compassionate interactions
• Increased awareness and acceptance of the consequences of choices
• Increased resilience
• Increased collaboration, creativity, and productivity among diverse workgroups
• Increased pro-social behavior • Decreased implicit bias, implicit racism, and stereotype threat
• Increase openness to the practice of restorative justice

Week 0- Orientation
 Online overview of the neuroscience that supports this curriculum design and creating the container for the course.

In the face-to-face process of creating the container for this learning environment (course), the participants will discuss their expectations for the way in which they desire to be with each other within the context of this course. Often times in the work environment, we focus on what needs to be produced and spend very little time discussing our expectations for the environment we desire to co-create so that work goals can be met.

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Week 1 – Introduction to Stress and Anxiety 
Online overview of the neurobiology of stress and anxiety and an introduction to positive ways to mitigate the maladaptive impact of stress. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will explore various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to mitigate the negative impact of typical stress experiences.

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Week 2 – Attention Regulation
Online overview of the neurobiology of attention and an introduction to various methods that can train attention. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will explore various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to train their attention on demand.

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Week 3 – Emotion Regulation
Online overview of the neurobiology of emotion and an introduction to various methods that can positively regulate emotion without suppressing, avoiding, or denying emotion. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will explore various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to regulate their emotion on demand.

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Week 4 – Self-Compassion and Emotion Regulation
Online overview of the neurobiology of self-compassion and an introduction to various methods that can cultivate self-compassion and therefore aid in the process of emotion regulation. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will explore various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to cultivate self-compassion.

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Week 5 – Overcoming the Negative Bias of the Brain and Cultivating Gratitude
Online overview of the neurobiology of negative bias and an introduction to various methods that can cultivate gratitude. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will explore various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to cultivate gratitude and overcome the natural negative bias of the brain.

Week 6 – Cognitive Regulation/Flexibility
Online overview of the neurobiology of cognitive regulation/flexibility and an introduction to various methods that can cultivate awareness of thoughts in relationship to experience. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will explore various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to heighten their awareness of thought and that thought’s relationship to current experience, thus empowering the opportunity to select the next empowering thought in the next moment.

Week 7 – Compassion Cultivation
Online overview of the neurobiology of compassion and an introduction to various methods that can cultivate compassion for others; therefore, aiding in the process of emotion regulation as well as the decrease in implicit bias, stereotype threat, and implicit racism. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will explore various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to cultivate compassion for others, particularly members of their perceived “out-group”.

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Week 8 – Active and Empathetic Listening and Non-Violent Communication
Online overview of the various methods that can cultivate active and empathetic listening as well as nonviolent communication; therefore, aiding in the process of emotion regulation as well as the decrease in implicit bias, stereotype threat, and implicit racism. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will practice various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to cultivate active and empathetic listening and non-violent communication.

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Week 9 – Difficult Conversations
Online overview of Stone, Patton, and Heen’s Difficult Conversations process. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will practice this process that they can adopt and use daily to cultivate compassionate dialogue, increase self-awareness, and decrease implicit bias behavior.

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Week 10 – Introduction to a Trauma–Informed Workplace
Online overview of the neurobiology of trauma and an introduction to various methods that can heighten awareness of working with trauma survivors in the workplace. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will explore various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to heighten awareness of working with trauma survivors in the workplace, particularly, during these times when so many people are becoming traumatized by what they witness in the news or via social media.

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Week 11 – Resilience, Reverence, and Vulnerability
Online overview of the definitions of resilience, reverence, and vulnerability and an introduction to how heightening an awareness of the practices that can cultivate these skillsets can create a transformational work environment. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will explore various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to cultivate resilience, reverence for others’ lived experiences, and vulnerability to authentically be with what is arising within the work place.

Week 12 – Integration of Strengths and Opportunities to Improve
Online overview of the process of integrating personal strengths and opportunities to improve as opposed to trying to “get rid” of what we don’t like about ourselves or others. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will explore various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to cultivate the integration of their strengths and known opportunities to improve. This may open the door to becoming more aware of “blind spots.” In this module, participants will be invited into the power of knowing which question to ask and how to ask it in order to empower themselves and others into improvement and action.

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Week 13 – Visioning and Prioritizing the “Dream” Goals
Online overview of the importance of noticing our frustrations and dissatisfaction and how that noticing can be harnessed to design some dream goals that we may have been afraid to articulate. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will put into practice various no-cost exercises that they can adopt and use daily to transmute frustration and desire for something better into a vision for a better life or workplace environment.

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Week 14 – Integration into Daily Life
In the final week of this class, the online portion will introduce various resources that participants can leverage in their way forward to support their continued learning of outcomes gained from this class. In the face-to-face portion of this class, participants will craft their “way forward” plan, specifically outlining how they will integrate class learning into their work environment.