How Can I Be More Grounded At Work?
Learning to show up with good presence at work is the focus of a somatic orientation toward leadership development. You want to feel your connection to the ground in order to create presence both as a felt sense within yourself and a sense that can be felt by others. Being grounded during difficult workplace meetings, for example, also means being connected to your center and extending out toward others with a blend of warmth and assertiveness. Let’s take a look at how you might practice some of this, as well as what this all might look like in the workplace setting.
Getting grounded
In somatics, we always want to move away from terms like “grounded” as mere concepts and practice them as felt experiences in the body. Being grounded means feeling your feet on the ground and feeling your legs. You know you’re feeling your feet and legs when you feel sensations such as pressure, tingling, or temperature.
As a practice, sit comfortably in a chair with some good length through your spine, seated on your sit bones, with your feet under your knees. Jostle your feet up and down, picking one foot up off the floor just a half an inch or so and then the other. Move quickly such that it has the effect of lightly stomping your feet on the ground in quick succession. Now stop and feel your feet and legs. Almost certainly you will feel some sensation, such as a tingling or a movement sensation. This is being in your legs - you are connected to the aliveness that is always available to us, if we choose to pay attention.
Next, in the same seated position, gently press your feet into the floor. Press down with only 10-15% pressure. Hold this for a few breaths and then let go of the pressing and relax your legs and feel. Can you feel the shape of your feet on the ground? As a practice, see what it’s like to sit, walk, and stand while paying attention to the felt shape of your feet on the ground. What would be different for you if your attention was more in your feet during workplace meetings?
Getting centered
The centering practice is a standalone practice described in detail in previous blog posts. For our purposes here, it can mean feeling that space, roughly two inches below your belly button in the middle of your body. Like with grounding, we want to practice centering not as an idea, but rather as a practice rooted in sensation. What’s it like to stay connected to this area of your body while in conversation with others? Do you feel a lot of sensation at your belly center or do you feel more numb? Is it easy or challenging to put your attention there? What do your answers to these questions reveal to you? As you move about and walk, can you move from this place of center such that you are not pitched forward getting ahead of yourself or leaning back avoiding a difficult conversation?
Leadership development through extension
The quality of our extension determines how others feel our presence. Imagine, feel, or sense your energy moving out into the room and get curious about how far it goes and what it would feel like for others to feel or sense it. We can practice extension by reaching out with an arm and noticing the quality of our extension as experienced in the tissue of the body. Are you tensing and rigid in a body of, “I need to get this done and effort my way through this”? Are you limp and tentative in your posture and in a body that communicates, “I am trying but I can be easily pushed around”?
Next, notice how you extend with your eyes. Are they tight and focused and beaming out as if to say, “I really want you to see me right now”? Alternatively, are they pulled back and withdrawn as if to say, “I’m here but I really don’t care”? How about the quality of your voice? Booming and shutting out others, or is it tucked in and contained such that others can’t hear your power?
These are just a few examples of how we are all always extending (or not extending) into the room and into the world. Effectiveness as an executive or leader at work means being aware of how you extend and the effect it is having on others.
If you’re interested in somatic coaching as an approach to executive coaching, leadership development, or simply for the sake of taking a stand for your life, schedule a no-cost consultation. Sessions are available both online and in person in Petaluma, Ca.