What Does It Mean to Be a Mindful Leader?

Some people have asked me what I mean by presenting myself as a “Mindful Leader.” It seems that when people read the word mindful, they immediately think of some sort of spiritual trip or a catchy adjective to make our resumes more appealing. And guess what, they are NOT completely wrong. To some extent, being mindful is related to spirituality and is also a trending concept used by many to ride the wave of this “new age” idea of mindfulness.

Defining Mindfulness and Leadership

First, let’s define what the concepts mindful, mindfulness, and leadership mean before diving deeper into the main topic. From now on, I will use the terms mindful and mindfulness interchangeably, depending on the context of my writing.

The American Psychological Association (APA) defines mindfulness as “awareness of one’s internal states and surroundings.” They also state that “mindfulness can help people avoid destructive or automatic habits and responses by learning to observe their thoughts, emotions, and other present-moment experiences without judging or reacting to them.” This means that being mindful is being aware of everything happening here and now. I use this definition from an occidental organization like the APA to separate the spiritual “non-objective” from the scientific or “more objective” perspective of being mindful.

Now, let’s address our second concept, “Leadership.” What does leadership mean? To continue with the “objectiveness” of my article, I will use a definition from the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company: “Leadership is a set of behaviors used to help people align their collective direction, execute strategic plans, and continually renew an organization.”

Merging Mindfulness and Leadership

With both definitions understood (I hope), I will merge them to build my own definition of Mindful Leadership. Mindful leadership means developing behaviors and actions that inspire others to follow a collective direction to execute plans and achieve goals, but not at all costs. Being a mindful leader means being aware of the day-to-day emotions that arise from situations that may seem to threaten our ego. The ego is the main enemy of mindfulness. To become a Mindful Leader, one must realize that 95% of the time, things will not go as planned. It is normal and not wrong for things to deviate from our expectations. Imagine if everything went our way—wouldn’t it make our day-to-day work boring?

Embracing Challenges with Mindfulness

Mindful Leadership is about knowing that our decisions and activities will not always yield positive results, and that’s why we are here: to try our best, learn our best, and give our best to make things work for our company, group, team, department, or any human gathering to achieve the expected result, knowing that it won’t always work and feeling okay with that. It doesn’t mean falling into nihilism when things go wrong. It means that when things go wrong, we need to pause, analyze our thoughts and emotions, and consciously adjust our methods to get back on track. Being mindful means not reacting from our emotions, thoughts, and internal conflicts when a goal is not met, because we know that unmet goals result from numerous variables. Hence, it would be very “short-sighted” to think that all problems are caused by a few individuals. Most of the time, it happens as a “Domino Effect.” Instead of pointing fingers, we should have discussions to address the main causes and correlations of the problems that led to the shortfall, being careful not to confuse causation with correlation. Maybe I will write an article on that, but for now, you can “google” the main differences between both concepts if you have doubts.

Beyond Achieving Goals at Any Cost

As I said before, being a mindful leader is not about achieving goals at any cost. It’s more than just managing tasks and people. It’s about leading with intention and empathy, moving away from traditional, authoritative styles and adopting a more conscious approach. This means caring about harmonious working, leading teams in a balanced way, considering everyone’s wellbeing, so that everyone feels empowered to make creative decisions, enhancing teamwork outcomes.

Recognizing the Signs of Non-Mindful Leadership

What is the main KPI to understand that you are not being a mindful leader? Perceive if the people working with you are in a chronic state of burnout or if you find yourself working with many “workaholics” (a term applauded by many non-mindful leaders who do not see the dangers of causing poor physical and mental health to their partners due to constant stress). Stress is not something to take for granted; it must be avoided. Chronic stress leads to cortisol accumulation in the body, which can result in numerous illnesses. (Stress will be a topic for deeper analysis in another article.)

Characteristics of a Mindful Leader

For now, I will continue by mentioning some key characteristics of a mindful leader found on the Calm app, which is well-known for enhancing people’s wellbeing and reducing stress levels:

? Compassion

? Self-awareness

? Engagement

? Clear communication

? Respect

? Adaptability

? Patience

? Decisiveness

? Visionary Thinking

? Authenticity

Conclusion: The Path to Mindful Leadership

In conclusion, to be a Mindful Leader, you must feel passionate about what you do, passionate about developing young people and teams, loving what you do, and having fun at work. Create a holistic and harmonious way of working, with a personal purpose aligned with your work environment. Forget about pointing fingers and thinking errors are bad outcomes. Errors are valuable if well analyzed and represent our best opportunity to improve whatever we aim to do in life. So, when you make an error, big or small, do not try to hide it; instead, learn from it with awareness.

Remember, leadership and mindful leadership are not innate; they must be learned, exercised, and practiced to improve continuously in the challenging task of guiding teams, families, groups, and even corporations.

I will end this article with a quote by Alexander Den Heijer, a German writer on purpose and self-realization:

“Bad leaders believe their team works for them. Great leaders believe they work for their team.”

I hope you found this article helpful, and I will be very happy if I have planted a seed in you to learn more about this incredible topic. There is a lot of literature about it because now more than ever, the world needs more Mindful Leaders.

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“What you seek is also seeking you”