Companies improve the work environment through the teaching of monks and coaches’
Mauricio Vincent Madrid 6 ABR 2014
Lobsang Namgyel, former australian businessman, today he is a monk.
A Buddhist monk and a coach working together to train businessmen and senior managers. Meditation and mental control techniques to improve productivity. Worker happiness as an alternative to layoffs and job insecurity. What until recently seemed like science fiction, is establishing itself strongly in organizations. “It is proven: Companies that have a good work environment and positive motivation of their employees are a 40% more productive”, says Pascual Olmos, who for the last nine years has been commercial director of Repsol. Olmos —who just retired— give another information: “According to a study in the magazine Fortune, Companies that have the most motivated staff have a stock market value of a 50% superior to the others”.
Con 17 years of work at Ford and 20 a Repsol, where had 11.000 employees in charge, This former manager is one of the 250 students who have gone through Mind Workshop in recent years, the workshops offered by the Buddhist monk Lobsang Namgyel and the coach Fernando Iglesias, with the purpose of “transforming the mind and developing wisdom” of those who have power and can influence the most in the business world and society.
“When the mind is not calm, such as when it is conditioned by a destructive emotion, We usually make decisions we regret.. “It is very difficult to be angry with someone and have a clear mind to act in a way that is beneficial to the whole.”, Iglesias assures, one of the founders of Evocalia, company that provides advice to firms such as Hewelt-Packard, buy it, Gallina Blanca or Repsol.
Iglesias says that in his work coach of businessmen and managers, He realized that many senior officials were dissatisfied despite their position of power and that on multiple occasions this negative energy was transmitted to the group under his command., damaging the results. Interested in Tibetan Buddhism for a long time, and looking for what fountain to drink from to improve your work, Iglesias traveled in 2006 at the Kopa monastery, in Kathmandu, and attended a course for foreigners.
“I was wondering what makes these people so happy with so little., and how is it possible that they do not hold a grudge when they are attacked or even tortured?, remember.
El ‘lifting’ by Rosa Cruz
in 2008 Rosa Cruz worked as head of distribution for Southern Europe for the multinational Juniper. (con 8.000 employees in the world and 9.000 million euros of turnover) and I had stress that was going up the walls. “At work I was upset and yelling all day., “I was always hoarse”, remember. Rosa had had Fernando Iglesias as coachand he had understood well with him, That's why when he told him about an experiment in Toulouse with a Buddhist monk, he was encouraged to try it.
Rosa had once practiced yoga and little else, but the retreat with the venerable Lobsang Namgyel, His teachings and the practice of meditation “opened his eyes”. “The same day I returned to work I had a management meeting, and my boss told me: “I see you younger ¿you have had a facelift?”. I replied no, "I had done something better". Cruz assures that that experience marked “a before and after.”” in your life and in your work. “I don't scream anymore, I solve everything in another way. People at my new company tell me that they can't imagine me getting upset and talking out loud.…”.
From 2008 Cruz has attended all the Mind Workshops organized by Iglesias. This year they will be held in El Escorial in the month of May —Now they last three and a half days— and Rosa is already registered. They have passed close to 250 students, many senior managers of companies such as Bodegas Torres or Repsol.
Pascual Olmos sent his entire management team when he was commercial director of Repsol, and in 2012 together with Alex Rovira he published the book The life you deserve, that proposes an alternative to the current system based on the search for a path that harmonizes the material with the spiritual, productivity with personal satisfaction, profitability with an economy that takes care of the planet.
The person who led his retreat at Kopa Monastery was Venerable Lobsang Namgyel, a former Australian businessman who converted to Buddhism after a serious accident —takes already 30 years as a monk in India— and today he is a reputed teacher in charge of the Root Institute in Bodh Gaya. During the course there was affinity between both, and later Iglesias proposed to his teacher to offer initiation workshops for senior executives, convinced that “transforming the minds of those who have the most power, “You can influence the world more so that it is sustainable and better”.
The first experience was carried out in 2008 in the city of Toulouse and consisted of a week-long retreat for eight managers from small and large companies. Lobsang Namgyel's teachings were combined with meditation and silence sessions, as well as with pure activities of coaching led by churches. “The success was absolute”, remember Iglesias. “The majority repeated later and many have sent the teams in their charge to subsequent workshops”.
“A wise mind is an altruistic mind and this begins with the development of generosity”, says Rosa Cruz, attended that first course in Toulouse and who has not missed one since then. Cruz works in the telecommunications infrastructure sales sector —until recently as head of distribution for Southern Europe for the multinational Juniper, and now for Cisco—, and explains that during the workshop you learn “to better manage pressure and stress.”, and when one feels individually satisfied, improves the work environment and also productivity.
When we talk about an altruistic mind we are not talking about not expecting anything for oneself.. “It is about, rather, of the intelligent selfishness in contrast to idiotic selfishness, according to the terms coined by the Dalai Lama”, says Fernando Iglesias. “It is normal that one wants to do well, and feel satisfied, but it is smart not to forget and understand that a large part of that desired well-being comes from, by the principle of interdependence, of the others; of the set”, continue. Idiotic selfishness would be seeing situations in a narrow and short-term way., seeking self-interest without regard to the system.
Olmos agrees.. He considers that in the process of self-knowledge that is experienced with Buddhist practice one learns “to have patience and to look at the long term.”, to rethink priorities, to reorient motivations, and this is beneficial individually, but also for the company”. Improving the work environment makes results better, says Olmos, and gives objective data referring to Repsol. "In 2006 We asked that the work environment be rated as 1 a 100, and the workers evaluated it in 47. in 2008 the rating was raised to 57 and in 2011 came to 72. And productivity improved significantly.”.
