Right-Minded Teamwork (RMT), inspired by and aligned with A Course in Miracles (ACIM), will place your teammates on a path to Do No Harm and Work As One.
Table of Contents
- This Article’s Purpose
- ACIM & RMT commonalities: Forgiveness for starters
- 4 Other Commonalities between ACIM & RMT
- How Right-Minded Teamwork came to be
- What is Right-Minded Teamwork and how it will help your team
- Reason, Ego, and you the Decision-Maker
- The Right-Minded Teamwork Myth – Ego’s tiny mad idea of separation
- Your Next Steps – If your inner voice wants to know more.
Forgiveness. Shared interest.
Thinking [your mindfulness] precedes behavior.
Ego’s tiny mad idea of separation.
All these concepts, and many others, that are cheerfully taught to us in A Course in Miracles, are also included in the Right-Minded Teamwork.
By applying Reason’s Right-Minded Teamwork philosophy and process, the happy ACIM learner [T.14.II] finds even more opportunities to practice their daily ACIM lessons at work which strengthens their commitment and ability to Do No Harm and Work As One.
This Article’s Purpose
This article’s purpose has two parts.
First, it introduces Right-Minded Teamwork and how it was inspired by and is still aligned with A Course in Miracles.
Second, if your intuition [your inner voice] encourages you to learn more about RMT and to explore ways to collaborate and “extend” ACIM through RMT, I would be delighted to make your acquaintance because I trust your inner voice to know what is right for you and those the Holy Spirit serves through you.
Remember that no one is where he is by accident, and chance plays no part in God’s plan. M-9.1:3
Note: this article is for everyone and yet for those who are currently practicing ACIM, the references will be quite familiar.
What does ACIM & RMT have in common? For Starters: Forgiveness
Forgiveness is the cornerstone concept taught in A Course in Miracles.
Every ACIM student endeavors to forgive in their daily lives. Why? Their ultimate benefit is inner peace.
The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is my one goal; the aim of all my living here, the end I seek, my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide where I am not at home. (ACIM, W-205.1:2-3)
A cornerstone concept in the Right-Minded Teamwork philosophy and process is the Choice Model.
It instructs teammates on how to forgive in their daily work life. Every teammate who has embraced the Choice Model also believes it is their mission to forgive which is, simply put, extending peace in their team. Why?
In addition to gaining more inner peace, it strengthens teammate collaboration and increases the likelihood of achieving 100% customer expectations.
When you have accepted your mission to extend peace you will find peace, for by making it manifest you will see it. (ACIM, T-12.VII.11:1)
Can you imagine how wonderful it would be if all your teammates extended forgiveness and corrected team interpersonal and process mistakes rather than spreading attacks and justifying blame?
Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? (ACIM, T-17.II.1:1)
Implement Right-Minded Teamwork and, in time, you won’t have to imagine it anymore.
I’ve used the Choice Model for 20+ years and I still live by the process today in my professional and personal life. It’s a great way to kick start a new team or invigorate a seasoned one. Ken McCall
4 Other Commonalities between ACIM & RMT
Shared interest
Here is a terrific definition: “Teamwork is a group of people working together to achieve a common goal.” A common goal is shared interest.
When teammates genuinely share that common goal, they collaborate. That makes shared interest an obvious benefit.
Both RMT and ACIM advocate teammates learning how to establish shared interests with others. The process of implementing RMT in your team will help you strengthen that skill. When you do that, it will be easier for you to transfer that skill to other parts of your life.
Earlier, you were asked to imagine what I would be like if all your teammates corrected mistakes instead of blaming others.
A similar question can now be asked. Can you imagine what the world would be like if all people genuinely sought to find shared interests?
If humankind is to ever find true peace, it must embrace shared interests.
Who knows, after you learn how to make it happen more often in your life, maybe you can help humankind find it too. At least you can do your part in your team. Right?
Each one must share one goal with someone else, and in so doing, lose all sense of separate interests. Only by doing this is it possible to transcend the narrow boundaries the ego would impose upon the self. (ACIM, P-2.II.8:4-5)
Thinking precedes behavior
In thirty-five years of team-building facilitation, I heard too many well-intention teammates say,
“That’s just the way I am. I can’t change.” That is simply not true.
What is true is their refusal to change their minds.
When they believe they can’t change, they are giving “autonomy” (ACIM, T-2.VI.2:7-8) to their behavior. When that teammate finally realizes their wrong mind is in their way of happiness and inner peace, it will be important for you, as a Right-Minded teammate, to be there to help them.
You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of willingness. (ACIM, T-2.VI.3:4)
The body can act wrongly only when it is responding to misthought. (ACIM, T-2.IV.2:5)
Teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now, because they enable you to change your mind and help others to change theirs. Refusing to change your mind will not prove that the separation has not occurred. The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming is not really healing his split mind. You dream of a separated egoEgo is the negative, wrong-minded teacher who continually tells you how difficult the world is and how you must constantly fight to survive. and believe in a world that rests upon it. This is very real to you. You cannot undo it by not changing your mind about it. (ACIM, T-4.I.4:1-6)
Right-Minded Teammates bring illusions to the truth – their Ego to Reason
Think of it this way. The teammate who claims they “can’t change” believes that illusion of themselves.
Ego demands the teammate’s Decision-Maker to accept that the “they-can’t-change” illusion as their truth.
That means the Ego wants ReasonReason is a mythological character and symbolic guide who shows you how to think and behave in a Right-Minded way. As your Right-Minded teacher, Reason helps you differentiate and choose between Right-Minded and wrong-minded attitudes and behaviors. [i.e. the truth] to come to it and accept this illusion as true.
Reason does not comply, because Reason knows every teammate can change their mind.
When a teammate struggles, they need to learn to bring their illusion of themselves to the forgiving nature of truth. When they do that, Reason’s positive intuition is more readily heard and available to help the teammate.
Now, the teammate’s Decision-MakerThe Right Choice Model uses the term “Decision-Maker” to describe the part of you that chooses to listen to Ego or Reason. finds new solutions. They successfully change their mind. Because they change their thoughts, they will easily change their behavior. Moreover, they recover from their struggles.
When you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real, and keep them by justifying your belief in them. (ACIM, T-17.I.5:4)
Work Agreements – living them means everything
Creating Work AgreementsA Work Agreement is a collective teammate promise to transform non-productive, adversarial behavior into collaborative teamwork behavior. is important but if they are not lived, they are useless.
The ACIM lesson,
To say these words is nothing. But to mean these words is everything. (ACIM, W-185.1:1-2)
can now be paraphrased: To create work agreements means nothing; to live our work agreements means everything.
I’ve seen toxic and dysfunctional team relationships transformed because teammates truly lived their Work Agreements.
They did not half-heartedly live them. They truly let go of the Ego’s negative thinking by learning how to listen to their positive Reasonable intuition.
How did they do that?
The most important step was to periodically meet to review their agreements. In those reviews, they acknowledged what was working well and they identified those agreements that needed to be modified.
Those reviews always ended with a recommitment to living them going forward.
How Right-Minded Teamwork Came to Be
Here’s the short answer.
It evolved from the blending of my love of teamwork and team facilitation, plus my deep desire to learn ACIM lessons from (and through) people like you.
Most of the teams I facilitated were stuck in conflict and dysfunction. This RMT method helped them rise above those ego-based “battlegrounds” [T-23.VII].
Those countless hours in workshops, interviews, and coaching sessions, were not only my classroom for learning the basics of how to live ACIM principles, they were also the lessons that evolved into Right-Minded Teamwork’s Do No Harm philosophy and the many practical team-building processes offered there.
Harm is impossible for God’s teachers. They can neither harm nor be harmed. Harm is the outcome of judgment. … It is a verdict of guilt upon a brother, and therefore on oneself. It is the end of peace and the denial of learning. (ACIM, M-4.IV.1:1-6)
And now for a longer answer.
In 1986, after conducting various training programs for six years, I facilitated my first team-building workshop for a promising young computer software company that was working on the new hyperlink technology. Didn’t we do a terrific job in that workshop? Hyperlinks are an international success.
OK, I can’t take any credit for hyperlinks, but I can tell you unequivocally I fell in love with the idea of becoming a real-world team-building facilitator.
Since then, I facilitated over 500 teams, oftentimes I stayed with a team for two or more years, through multiple workshops in the USA and seven other countries.
Eight years earlier [1978], while attending Unity Church, I listened to Ken Wapnick and Judith Skutch talk about A Course in Miracles. Here too, I can unequivocally say, I fell in love with this moral and psychological spiritual path. Since then, I’ve aspired to live it.
Early Years: “There must be a better way.” [T-Preface. vii]
Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way. (ACIM, T-2.III.3:6)
During my first year of team-building facilitation, it became clear there were three team-building approaches. Some even think there is a fourth.
The three are education, and experiential, and the best approach — the real-world method. The so-called fourth are socials. For further explanation read this article: 10 Worst Team Building Exercises.
At the end of that year, I dedicated my young practice to becoming a real-world team-building facilitator. For the next year, I searched for a continuous-improvement team-building method I could adopt as my own. I could not find one.
This was when I declared [as Helen and Bill did] that there must be a better way to conduct team building.
So, using other methods like Six Sigma and Total Quality as a template, I created a 6 step process called Teams That Work as One.
That model evolved. It is now Element #4 in the RMT Framework.
Finally, Right-Minded Teamwork Emerged
What happened next gradually took place over many years. It was a gentle waking up in that I more often heard, listened, understood, and followed Reason in living ACIM concepts and in growing my team-building practice.
And having started, will the way be made serene and simple in the rising up to waking and the ending of the dream. (ACIM, T-28.III.1:5)
Early in that period, I met Mark Samuel. He was and still is one of the best team-building consultants. He taught me the basics of what I named Work Agreements. His Victim model was so inspiring I used it to create the RMT Choice Model.
Mark was the perfect teacher and mentor for me. I was so happy to have found him because his team-building approach was part of the better way I was looking for. For the next five years, I adopted and facilitated his team-building process called Agreements for Excellence.
Remember that no one is where he is by accident, and chance plays no part in God’s plan. (ACIM, M-9.1:3)
After my time with Mark and his organization, the Right-Minded Teamwork five-element framework and the continuous improvement process slowly emerged. The process continued to improve with each new team-building assignment. By that time, I had facilitated over 300 teams. I had evidence. Right-Minded Teamwork worked.
After more than a decade of facilitating and perfecting the implementation plan above, in 2013 the first edition of Right-Minded Teamwork: 9 Right Choices for Building a Team That Works as One was published.
Now retired from active team-building facilitation, I continue to write and offer support for implementing this method.
What is Right-Minded Teamwork and how will it help your team
Ken Wapnick shared this wonderful ACIM definition in one of his terrific workshops.
A Course in Miracles is a psychological approach to spirituality where forgiveness is the central theme and inner peace is the result.
His definition inspired this definition of RMT
Right-Minded Teamwork is a business-oriented, psychological approach to team building where acceptance, forgiveness, and adjustment are teammate characteristics and 100% customer satisfaction is the team’s result.
In case you’re wondering, Right-Minded Teamwork is a secular, business-oriented, and emotionally-intelligent team building system.
It is a Do No Harm & Work as One teamwork process that strives to achieve 100% customer satisfactionCreating 100% customer satisfaction is a primary goal of Right-Minded Teamwork. as its primary goal. Teammates practice forgiveness which means they do no harm to others and they get real work done for their customers.
There are no silly so-called team-building games in this system. That means your team benefits from addressing its real issues which ensure you create and sustain Right-Minded Teamwork.
From an individual perspective, Right-Minded Teamwork encourages you to change your mind about how you see your team. Specifically, you are asked to see your team as a classroom and your teammates as fellow students.
In this classroom, you learn how to think right-mindedly and how to work collaboratively.
From an ACIM perspective, your team is a place where you bring your perceived “illusions” to the forgiving “truth”— a familiar instruction. T-17.I.5.1-7
Reason, Ego & You – the Decision-Maker
Every ACIM student is familiar with these three entities that influence your daily choices as a Right-Minded Teammate. These three are Ego, Reason, and the Decision- Maker.
Ego and Reason are your teachers and guides. The Decision Maker is the part of you that decides who you will listen to and follow.
You, the Decision-Maker, are a student in this world’s classroom. This classroom takes many forms. Your team is one of them.
As the Decision-Maker, you always have free will to follow either Reason or Ego. It is your choice, and only yours.
Because you have free will, you are 100% responsible for what you think and choose to do. Each morning, whether you are conscious of it or not, your Decision-Maker decides what kind of day [T.30.I – Rules for Decision] you will have by choosing which teacher to follow: Ego or Reason.
Ego is a negative influence who believes your team is like a battleground [T.23.4]. Ego is continuously talking inside your mind, urgently telling you it’s a desperate and dangerous world out there. You hear the Ego say that people are murderous and out to get you. Ego reminds you that it is everyone else’s fault (not yours!) that you are stuck in this constant battle, endlessly suffering within your team.
Ego is a noisy, wrong-minded teacher, telling you to attack and blame. And if you don’t listen and follow Ego’s thought system and do what you’ve been told, Ego attacks and blames you for not adhering to its advice.
At work, your Ego sees all your team’s challenges and encourages you to respond with attack or blame. Ego talks to you like this.
I can’t believe they’ve all screwed this up. How could you be such an idiot as to stand with them? I said they were out to get you. We should have done our own thing. I told you they were going to blame you for this.
Reason – the Teacher You Want
Reason, on the other hand, follows a different thought systemWhat you believe is your thought system. Pause and reflect on this truth, and above all, be thankful that it is true.. Our guide is quiet, gentle, kind and is ready to partner with you to show you how to behave in a Right-Minded, collaborative way.
You and Reason both know you and your teammates will be much better off when you rise above the battleground and work together as a unified team. According to Reason, your team is a wonderful and safe classroom where you re-learn how to live and work as one.
Reason waits quietly while Ego rants, causing fear, guilt, and anxiety to mount inside you. When it gets too painful, you, the Decision-Maker, finally say to yourself, There must be a better way! We need better teamwork!
Expressing your genuine desire for change means you are ready for a moment of Reason [T.15 – same as the Holy Instant].
As you open your mind, looking for a new way, Reason steps gently into your awareness. You begin to wake up. You remember the attitudes and behaviors you long ago committed to living [your team Work Agreements] before you followed Ego’s advice and fell into the dream.
As those Right-Minded attitudes and behaviors return to you, you soon find better ways to work and interact with your teammates. Together, you grow and evolve, making your collective experience and results better for everyone.
True Teamwork: An Origin Story
In the short story known as the Right-Minded Teamwork Myth, you will meet Reason, Ego, and the Decision-Maker. Each plays a key role in creating or destroying teamwork.
Audio Clip – Listen to the Right-Minded Teamwork Myth Short Story
Below are the opening paragraphs of the story. You can find the full story in our FREE ebook – Reason, Ego & the Right-Minded Teamwork Myth: The Philosophy and Process for Create a Right-Minded Team That Works Together as One.
The Myth
Once, before we lived in tribes, we all naturally worked together as one.
All our needs were met. There was no sense of want because there was no need. Peace, abundance, and collaboration were normal. Instead of “yours” and “mine,” we shared with each other simply and effortlessly.
There was no leader, either, but there was a clear, guiding spirit that emanated from our collective cooperation. We named that shepherding spirit Reason. Reason continually and gently reminded us of our caring thoughts and feelings for one another.
With Reason’s guidance, there was no fear. There was no doubt as to who and what we were. We were one. And were always there for one another. We needed and wanted each other. We had everything we could ask for.
But out of nowhere, a tiny, mad idea crept into our collective minds. For just an instant, we began to wonder, Is there more to be gained than what we have achieved by working together as one unified team? This moment was the birth of separation.
Your Next Steps
Remember that no one is where he is by accident, and chance plays no part in God’s plan. (ACIM, M-9.1:3)
First, if your inner voice encourages you to learn more about RMT and to explore ways to collaborate and “extend” ACIM through RMT, I would be delighted to make your acquaintance because I trust your inner voice to know what is right for you and those the Holy Spirit serves through you.
Write me a Dan.Hogan@RightMindedTeamwork.com.
Second, download our FREE ebook – Reason, Ego & the Right-Minded Teamwork Myth: The Philosophy and Process for Create a Right-Minded Team That Works Together as One.
~ Dan Hogan, Certified Master Facilitator, Co-creator of Right-Minded Teamwork