First Principles Based Leadership - How to Practice Mindful Leadership

Good leaders are students of human behaviour and psychology. In this short video, I share the insight on how our cognitive processing works and how learning this can help us become Mindful leaders.

One of the most important aspect of leadership is our ability to choose how we respond to any given situation.

Understanding how our cognition functions and where exactly in the process of cognition can we exercise choice has the potential to transform the way we respond to any situation.

I was at a meditation retreat a few weeks back and learnt this four step process of how our cognition works.

1. Perception of stimuli: We perceive a stimuli. Can be anything that we hear, see, smell, touch or taste.

2. Meaning Making: We attach meaning to this. Do we like this, is this safe, has this or something similar has caused pain or pleasure for me in the past.

3. Emotional Response: Based on the meaning, we experience an emotion appropriate to the meaning we have attached. If the meaning leads or points to pleasure, we might seek more of it and if it reminds us of pain, we might seek to avoid it.

4. Response to the Perception: Based on the emotion, we respond to the stimuli. The space where we have the ability to choose is the stage where we make meaning.

Every other step in the cognitive process is automatic with very little control possible.

So, if we really want to become "Mindful Leaders", we need to learn how to be intentional about how and what meaning we attach to our experiences (in other words - perceptions).

The ability to slow down enough to identify this meaning making happening in our cognitive process is what allows us the opportunity to become Mindful Leaders.