Why should leaders practice mindfulness? Leaders face many complex and interrelated challenges. The daily pressures and demands can result in many leaders becoming locked in a mind-set of needing to be ‘on’ non-stop and being responsible for everything. Their minds have conditioned their nervous system not to switch off and as a result, they do not know how to pause, reflect deeply and to step back from the intensity of constant demands and needing to react quickly.
This is, of course, easier said than done. However, due to the neuroplasticity of the brain, leaders can literally ‘change their mind’. And now, more than ever, it’s time for organisations to have uninhibited, mindful and compassionate leadership.
What then is mindful leadership?
Mindful leadership is about relationality, the deep understanding that we are not separate but always in relationship with ourselves and others and attitude, the attitude we bring to ourselves, others and our organisation, networks and the world.
Mindful leadership is different from the more traditional style of leadership which is often individualistic, centred around the person and focused on behaviour, performance and productivity rather than on inner skills (listening, self-reflection and self-awareness) and attitudes such as kindness, compassion, empathy, trust, authenticity and humility.
Mindful leadership is about ethics and understanding the interconnectedness of all life. As leaders we determine, influence and shape company culture by what we model, how we show up, how we act and how we are. We always have an impact on others and organisational life. As leaders, we can create conditions that allow and encourage others to be well, grow, develop and flourish. The opposite is also true.
The things that arise in this world do so because of the conditions that gave rise to them. And when those conditions change, those things change too.
It’s also about intentionally and voluntarily paying attention to the body, emotions, thoughts, others and our surroundings so that we can become more present to what’s happening in the moment inside of us and outside of us.
The core skills at the heart of mindful leadership
- The first core skill is about Allowing our experience to be what it is with kindness and openness.
- The second core skills about Inquiring into and exploring our experience with curiosity. What is my experience right now? Am I calm, anxious, stressed, fearful? Is my body tense or relaxed? What am I thinking?
- The third core skill is about developing Meta-awareness, observing our thoughts, emotions, sensations and impulses non-judgementally – compassionately.
Allowing, inquiry, meta-awareness are essential skills that allow a leader to pause, to reflect deeply, to drop beneath their cognitive understanding to a place where they can hear their own quiet voice. This is the place of meaning, it is where they see both deeper and beyond the noise, distractions and demands of day-to-day life.
From this space leaders can respond (vs react) with wisdom (vs cleverness), creativity and compassion. It means:
- Leaders are more able to emotionally self-regulate vs acting in a short tempered way. For example, if someone notices frustration, stress or fear arise in their body and mind, rather than withdrawing or taking it out on staff members, they are able to pause, to check in with themselves with curiosity, kindness and self-respect, to take three conscious breaths and acknowledge their emotion (vs berating themselves for acting unskilfully), feel it in the body and move into a place of calm, poise and clarity of mind and heart.
- Leaders can take a broader perspective on things and understand others perspective and viewpoints better.
- Leaders are more able to empathise with others, to imagine and tune into the emotions of others and remembering our common humanity.
- They can become more flexible and adapt to change more easily.
They can focus on one thing at a time.
And these skills in turn can help leaders:
- To collaborate more effectively through deep listening, understanding and dialogue.
- To better lead in complex, uncertain, volatile and ambiguous contexts.
- To become resilient, i.e., to bounce back from adversity more quickly.
A word of caution here: resilience does not mean being strong and tough, it means knowing one’s own mind and responding wisely and compassionately moment by moment. Part of practising resilience is becoming more and more aware (mindful) of three vital things:
1. Your circadian rhythm: what are your low points in the day? What do you do then? How do you react to and recover from periods or bursts of intense output of energy? When do you feel most vital and sharp: morning, afternoon or evening? When do you rest?
2. Personal triggers: what causes you stress? Is the trigger certain types of demand, certain people or situations or times? Or is it an accumulation of tasks? How do you deal with stress? Withdrawal, anxiety, anger, compensatory activity (eating, complaining/moaning/ranting, offloading to a friend or colleague, sleeping)?
3. Relationship with the external environment:
- What places help you to be your best?
- What environments bring you pleasure, feel light and which feel heavy or toxic?
- What refreshes you?
- How much do you build this into your life?
- Where do you think best (desk, café, both, nature, museum, forest, while fishing etc).
- Where do you feel at your most creative?
- Where do you hold work meetings (in a meeting room, over lunch, while walking, in a green space…)?
Mindful leaders know how to regularly come back to their senses – moving from conceptual awareness (band x in the diagram above) to perceptual, sensory, embodied awareness (band y), where they communicate, feel, act, think from their present moment, directly felt experience. In this place they are more aware of their unconscious biases, are able to slow down to listen to others and create dialogue from which shared values can emerge. They are able to set targets that arrive from fruitful, deep reflection vs knee-jerk, short-tempered reactions.
Slowing down to speed up
At the heart of mindfulness there lies a paradox. When leaders can truly recognise it, then mindfulness can be transformational.
The story of Thomas Edison illustrates this very well: Thomas Edison was a genius who invented the phonograph, the motion picture camera and the electric light bulb. But he was also a terrible fisherman. He used to spend an hour almost every day fishing but he never caught a fish.
Someone once asked him why he was such a poor fisherman. He replied: “I never caught any fish because I never used any bait.” When they asked him why he’d fish without bait, he responded, “Because when you fish without bait, people don’t bother you, and neither do the fish. It provides me my best time to think.”
This quote from Margaret Wheatley, American living systems scientist illustrates this important of stepping back from what’s going on:
When we are caught in the pressures and complexity of rapid change, linear solutions fall apart. The impulse is to move faster and work harder, but the reality is that we need to step back, think more deeply and broadly, and learn to see and act in new ways.
Engaging in a regular mindfulness practice sustains the spirit and helps cultivate and maintain the quietude that many leaders crave. It helps strengthen the capacity for ‘not-knowing’ – a capacity to tolerate and to be with the chaos of constant change, uncertainty, ambiguity and to take intelligent and wise action with the head and heart equally engaged.
Mindfulness theory and practice offer invaluable practical tools to leaders to train their minds and hearts so they can live more meaningful, balanced, connected and satisfying lives in the midst of a complex, uncertain, volatile and fast-moving world.
