The Mindful Leader - Book Summary

Summary in Brief

Leaders need far more than skills training and techniques to lead from their greatest potential. They need a process that supports them to become consistently self-aware, self-regulating, values-based, innovative, open-hearted and balanced within.

Mindfulness, an ancient tradition that is now being proven by science, provides this process. In its simplest form, mindfulness means to maintain a non-judgemental, open-hearted awareness of our attitudes, thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations and environment in the present moment.

Despite its recent trendiness, mindfulness in the corporate world is often reduced to little more than a skill for stress reduction, increased focus and greater productivity. While this has value, it misses the full impact that mindfulness can have on leaders, society and whole systems.

Drawing from over two decades of disciplined mindfulness training, Michael Bunting shows how leaders can leverage the power of mindfulness to identify and overcome the core issues preventing them from leading from their full potential. He integrates proven mindfulness practices with well-researched leadership disciplines to create a refreshing model of conscious, authentic and compassionate leadership.

The ultimate purpose of mindful leadership is not just to increase productivity and profits, but rather to create great workplaces with more meaning, integrity, compassion and joy. Mindful leaders can do far more than boost the bottom line—they can make the world a much better place.

In this summary you will learn:

·      The science of mindfulness and how it affects leadership.

·      How mindfulness can boost engagement, and the profound difference that can make for your organisation.

·      The common traps that cripple unaware leaders, and how to overcome them.

·      How mindfulness offers a vision for leveraging the power of business for good, and ultimately can support the next generation of healthy business.

·      The seven disciplines of mindful leadership that can transform your life, team and organisation.

Mindfulness, Leadership and Engagement

Leadership is one of the most challenging endeavours we can undertake. While it can often elicit the best in us, it can also expose our fixated behaviours, avoidances, competitiveness, fear-based reactivity and values indiscretions.

There is a path that allows us to shed light on our “shadow self,” shed our fear-based tendencies, and access our whole, authentic selves to lead with awareness, courage, compassion and integrity. That path is mindfulness, which means to maintain an open-hearted awareness of our attitudes, thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations and environment. It is paying attention in the present moment purposefully and non-judgementally. It is experiencing and accepting reality as it really is—not how we want it to be, think it should be, or perceive it to be—but as it really is. Most importantly for leaders, it is the practical application of self-awareness that allows us to manage our behaviours in real time.

When Leaders are at Their Best

When asked, “What state are you in when you are at your best as a leader?” the responses from leaders are universal: Physically, they are relaxed, as opposed to tense. Mentally, they are clear and focused, as opposed to being plagued by racing, frantic thoughts of regret, doubt and worry. Emotionally, they are open-hearted and courageous, as opposed to closed, hardened or fearful.

In terms of neuroscience, in this state our brain is at its best too—we are operating from the prefrontal cortex, the seat of conscious decision-making, planning and judgement rather than the amygdala, the source of fear-based fight, flight or freeze reactions.

This grounded, peaceful state is the promise of mindfulness and the reason why it matters so much for leadership.

Developing as a leader is about cultivating our inner strength to stay aware and balanced under fire, to have the confidence to ask questions we don’t know the answer to, to stay grounded when our world is turning upside down, to stay kind and respectful when the heat of anger and frustration are rushing through our veins, to courageously hold ourselves and others accountable when we want to slip into avoidance and justification. And perhaps above all, it is to stay real, to keep coming back to honesty and humility.

Without mindfulness, we cannot cultivate these qualities to their fullest extent. Mindfulness provides the base of self-awareness and self-regulation that is essential to consistently accessing our prefrontal cortex and our best selves in the cauldron of leadership.

Why Mindfulness Matters for Leadership and the Bottom Line

           A critical factor in creating and sustaining job satisfaction, productivity and a healthy bottom line is workplace engagement. Organisations with high rates of engagement consistently outperform their sector benchmarks for growth across a range of financials. Great workplaces have substantially stronger bottom lines and are superior in performance.

Leadership is the cornerstone of engagement. According to research, nothing else has statistical significance on engagement apart from the behaviour of leaders. As much as 37 per cent of employee engagement can be attributed to leadership behaviour. Leaders who more frequently exhibit exemplary behaviours have employees who are significantly more committed, proud, motivated, loyal and productive than other groups.

When leaders fail, it is rarely related to technical competence. The “x” factor in leadership is behaviour. And the key to transforming leadership behaviour is the cultivation of genuine mindfulness integrated with leadership research and practice. This enables you to truly see and manage your behaviour in real time, which is when it really matters.

The formula is simple: Highly engaged organisations are more profitable and effective. The key to improving your organisation’s engagement is your leadership behaviour. And mindfulness—the practical application of self-awareness—is the most effective method to ensure your leadership behaviour is exemplary.

Mindfulness is Much More than Observation

It’s often said that mindfulness means to observe our current states non-judgementally. While that’s part of it, it goes deeper. In mindfulness we’re both observing and involved. Being mindful is to simultaneously observe and feel our body, our emotions and our experiences. A mindful life is one of deep attention to and intimacy with everything. It is a full embracing of life as it is.

Mindfulness isn’t about moving away from or rising above our fears, insecurities and worries. Rather, it equips us with the strength to move towards them and embrace them. In doing so, we learn about ourselves. We see the root causes of our reactivity and fear, as well as our false assumptions and unexamined beliefs. It is only by moving towards our sources of stress that we can really deal with them with a genuine insight that truly transforms us.

The purpose of mindfulness isn’t to make us more stoic or dispassionate in the face of adversity and suffering. Rather, it is to make us more open, sensitive, balanced, compassionate and caring.

In short, true mindfulness doesn’t make us harder and more impervious; rather, it makes us less defensive and more authentic. And paradoxically, by so doing it actually makes us stronger.

The Research on Mindfulness

Mindfulness has been shown to literally change the structure and function of the brain and provide the following benefits:

·      Stress and anxiety reduction.

·      Improved cognitive skills, including improved executive functioning, sustained attention, visuospatial processing, working memory, our ability to focus attention and suppress distracting information, and increasing our information processing speed.

·      Enhanced creativity. Mindfulness practice can reduce “cognitive rigidity,” thus enabling us to respond with greater flexibility to situations where we might otherwise be blinded by past experience.

·      Stronger relationships, including reducing social anxiety, improving our ability to communicate our feelings, increasing empathy, and decreasing emotional reactivity.

·      Increased compassion.

·      Spiritual benefits, such as enhancing self-insight, morality, intuition and fear modulation.

·      Health benefits, including depression prevention, increased immune functioning, pain control, improved sleep patterns, greater ability to curb and overcome addictions and binge eating, and improved heart health.

All of these benefits clearly have a profound impact on leadership. When leaders are focused in the present they are calm, clear, open, relaxed, engaged, productive and “in flow”—precisely how they need to be to function at their best.

The Seven Disciplines of Mindful Leaders

Just being mindful is not enough. Even with serious mindfulness training we can still be poor leaders. When mindfulness is fully integrated into leadership, exponential progress can be made.

This book marries research-based mindfulness practices and leadership behaviours to provide a practical model for improving your leadership and your life. These leadership behaviours include the following:

1.    Be Here Now: Mindful leaders learn to train their minds to stay in the present moment, thus increasing their inner peace and equanimity and enabling them to make wiser decisions, treat people better, and proactively manage their behaviour.

2.    Take 200 Per Cent Accountability: The worst thing leaders can do is blame other people and/or circumstances when things go wrong. Mindful leaders take accountability, but without taking on the burdens of others. They hold themselves 100 per cent accountable for their actions and responses, while holding their team members 100 per cent accountable for theirs. This equation, 200 per cent accountability, is how leaders eliminate dysfunction in teams.

3.    Lead From Mindful Values: To believe in leaders, people have to know who they are and what they stand for, and whether or not they can trust them. Leaders must know their core values, and then live in accordance with them. Mindful values create trust, collaboration, connection and engagement.

4.    Inspire a Mindful Vision: The ability to inspire people with a shared vision is a primary task and critical competency of leadership. Mindful leaders create a mindful vision for their teams and organisations, which is a vision focused on making a positive difference for all stakeholders who are touched by the organisation’s activities.

5.    Cultivate Beginner’s Mind: The best leaders are those who constantly push us to find new and better ways to do things, to explore and discover, to conquer limitations. To accomplish this, mindful leaders cultivate “beginner’s mind,” which allows them to explore and observe things with a deep sense of openness, much like a child explores the world with curiosity and wonder, with no fixed point of view. This is the heart of an innovation mindset.

6.    Empower Others to Shine: The point of leadership isn’t to get glory for ourselves, but rather to enable and inspire teams to accomplish what we could never accomplish alone. Mindful leaders compassionately and generously make others shine by empowering them to bring out their best and realise their potential in the pursuit of meaningful goals.

7.    Nourish Others With Love: People need encouragement, appreciation and recognition to perform at their best. But this must be done authentically to have any real meaning. Mindful leaders cultivate the attributes of loving-kindness, empathetic joy and gratitude to nourish their people with love and make them feel valued.

1. Be Here Now

Through mindfulness we develop, both internally and externally, a clear-eyed view of the world. We see reality as it is, not as we want or don’t want it to be. We are present to what is happening in front of us, right now, this very moment. Right now is real. Everything else is memory of the past or imagination of the future. Reality is always now. And mindfulness is living in and being fully present to the now.

The Opposite of Mindfulness

           The opposite of mindfulness is absentmindedness. We spend most of our time either ruminating about the past or worrying about the future. In this state, we can neither be self-aware nor truly aware of others.

           Absentmindedness manifests in our lives as aversion, craving and clinging, delusion, and fear. It keeps us irritated, frustrated, angry, anxious and numb—the very opposite of the qualities needed for effective leadership.

           To overcome the detrimental effects of absentmindedness we must learn to cultivate our capacity to be truly present to what is happening in ourselves and the world in real time.

Presence: The Antidote

When we’re present, we’re able to manage ourselves. It’s only when we’re present that we truly have the gift of choice—otherwise, we’re ruled by habit. The irony is that, more often than not, in a desperate search for the benefits of presence, we do everything but stay present.

Being mindful of the present moment allows us to observe and experience painful emotions without being sucked into them or allowing our behaviours to be dictated by them. It releases us from the oppression of incessant thoughts. It sheds light on things we’ve been resisting and gives us the courage to stop resisting. When we learn to clearly see and experience what is happening in the present moment we notice things that make us think to ourselves, “How did I ever miss that?” or “Why have I been acting like that for so long?” It is only possible to manage ourselves in real time by being aware of what is happening in real time—and mindfulness gives us that capacity. It is the literal application of self-regulation and self-awareness.

Kim Phillips from the pharmaceutical company AbbVie explains that, “It is such a relief when I remind myself that I can only be here now. When the workload is overwhelming I remember that the best thing I can do is just be present and do what is in front of me. It is so incredibly helpful. The stress melts away and I become so much more productive.”

Kim’s experience is far more than anecdotal. Thousands of research studies provide concrete evidence that mindful meditation training leads not only to subjective improvements in wellbeing, but de facto changes in the brain at the cellular, structural and functional level. Mindful meditation is more than a placebo effect. There is a cause and effect relationship between the practice of meditation and neuro-plastic changes in the brain that lead to improvements in depressive symptoms, feelings of happiness and executive function.

2. Take 200 Per Cent Accountability

The story is told of a princess who was walking barefoot in her father’s kingdom when she stepped on a thorn. In pain, she demanded of her father’s advisers that the entire kingdom be carpeted. One adviser made her a pair of sandals and kindly encouraged her to wear them instead of carpeting the kingdom.

Like this princess, we often believe our conditions need to be okay for us to be okay. This mindset is at odds with the accountability needed for great leadership. Our “carpet” becomes our team, our customers, our boss, the economy, etc., and we can fail to put on the sandals of accountability.

When not taking accountability for our actions, we engage in rationalisation, defensiveness, denial, attack or blame, which makes us lose our mindfulness and our credibility.

Mindfulness practice brings us in touch with the truth of things and provides us with a level of profound honesty. In doing so, we cannot continue with our blaming and denying. We realise we are often the authors of our difficulties and so we look to change our own behaviour first, and in doing so inspire others to do the same.

What is “200 Per Cent” Accountability?

When leaders recognise how they have been blaming others for their difficulties, they often then swing to the opposite side of the scale and take 100 per cent accountability for everything that happens in their team or organisation. The truth is that neither the leader nor the team is 100 per cent accountable. The equation is 100 per cent from the leader plus 100 per cent from each team member equals 200 per cent accountability. This is almost always the truth of things.

           A partnership where one person takes full accountability and the other takes little or no accountability will not work in the long term. Moreover it assumes perfection in one human being but not the other—a delusional view of reality.

Distress Intolerance and Equanimity

One of the primary reasons we avoid taking accountability is because when we do we usually begin to feel emotionally uncomfortable (fear, shame etc.) If we cannot bear these feelings (known as distress intolerance) we move back towards blame and rationalisation in order to numb the feelings. This arrests our growth and narrows our life choices.

Fortunately, mindfulness helps us develop equanimity, an inner steadiness and balance that supports us to navigate these difficulties and stay on track.

Taking Accountability Requires Inner Kindness

Taking accountability can become a form of harsh self-judgement and inner torment.

Mindful accountability is neither attacking ourselves nor rationalising our behaviour. It’s just plain, objective truth. The key is being kind and compassionate with ourselves. Kindness allows us to look with non-judgemental curiosity and honesty at our behaviour when we have acted poorly or transgressed our values.

3. Lead From Mindful Values

Knowing your values and being able to articulate them is extraordinarily important for trust building, and without trust, there is no leadership.

Values are our personal code of conduct, our compass that determines our daily choices and actions. Values give us personal clarity when those around us are being driven by fear, anxiety or other less-than-wholesome qualities.

Numerous studies have shown that when we are not living in alignment with our values we are prone to anxiety and depression. Living in accordance with our values, being in integrity with ourselves, is about more than leading well. It’s also about feeling happy with ourselves and our lives.

Values are a Container for Mindfulness

Wholesome values are not a restriction or a set of rules to follow. Rather, they are a wonderful container for the development of mindfulness. They give our mindfulness an easy reference point, an orientation to what wholesome and healthy looks like when we need it. In fact they are an essential support for a happy, peaceful life.

We don’t follow values from the perspective of looking good to or being approved by others, but because they produce the states of mind that mindfulness produces: wholeness, wellness, trust, respect.

The Most Important Value for Leadership

As research shows, people want honesty from their leaders more than anything else. But we are failing miserably in this imperative. In 2014, the public relations firm Edelman gathered data from more than 33,000 respondents to discover that only 20 per cent of people trust business leaders to tell the truth, and only 13 per cent trust government officials to tell the truth.

After interviewing thousands of leaders, Michael Bunting has yet to meet a leader who has stated that their team/organisation does not trust them to tell the truth. Since on average four out of five business leaders are not trusted, it seems a lot fewer know they are distrusted. They clearly have a different story of themselves than those observing them. This is because the human mind has an extraordinary capacity for self-deception.

Mindfulness gives us the ability to “make the unconscious conscious” so we can see where we are out of alignment with our values. We learn to become honest with ourselves and others, which in turn creates credibility and trust.

Internalising Our Values

Living according to our values is a profound development process, which takes extraordinary courage. To consistently live and lead in alignment with our values we need to find the strength to follow them in the face of mild to extreme discomfort. It means we have realised that our internal state of integrity is of more value than status, approval, comfort or even our financial success. Leaders who embody this level of integrity win the trust and deepest loyalty of their teams. They are rare and remarkable.  

To refer back to the analogy of the carpet versus the sandals, if we only follow our values when the carpet is soft and pleasant, then we have not truly developed an inner resilience and a genuine, conditionless integrity. “Putting on sandals” means following our values and keeping our inner integrity no matter how thorny or rough the ground may be.

4. Inspire a Mindful Vision

Research shows next to honesty, being visionary is the second most admired characteristic people look for in leaders.

The “why” of mindfulness is the reduction of suffering and the increasing of connection, wellbeing, joy and love for ourselves and those whose lives we touch. Mindful leaders leverage this “why” by tapping into and awakening our innermost yearnings for meaning and purpose. They create a mindful vision for their teams and organisations, which is a vision focused on making a positive difference and alleviating suffering in the world—doing something that is good for everyone, not just something that makes shareholders wealthy at the expense of other people or the planet. A mindful vision makes people whole again and awakens the best in them.

When it comes to considering what a mindful vision for a leader or organisation looks like, it’s rather simple criteria: Does the vision and underlying intent of our organisation support connection, wellbeing, joy and love for ourselves and all our stakeholders? Does our core purpose support mindfulness, as defined by a deep sense of heartfelt engagement and presence, or does it stand in the way of engagement, thus leading to a sense of alienation, disconnection and suffering?       

Mindful Livelihood: The Basis of Mindful Vision

Mindful livelihood is the active and conscious pursuit of making life better for ourselves and others, and by extension the planet and communities that support our wellbeing.

It doesn’t make any sense to meditate regularly while running a company that causes suffering for communities, the environment, its suppliers or customers. Mindful livelihood is the integration of our personal mindful practice with how we lead and operate our organisations. It is a truly holistic approach to awareness.

Another way of thinking of mindfulness is carefulness. Mindful livelihood means to be full of care for those within our organisations, the customers we serve, and everyone on the planet as well as the planet itself. It is to care about more than money and profit and personal gain—to be conscious of and to sincerely care about the impact we have on the world.

5. Cultivate Beginner’s Mind

           To lead is to step into the unknown. Leaders break boundaries and take us to places we have never been before. The art of discovery is the heart of great leadership. No organisation ever became a leader by following the best practices of others. We can learn from and build on the lessons and successes of others, but ultimately, a leader must blaze a trail into unknown territory.

The best leaders are those who constantly push us to find new and better ways to do things, to explore and discover, to conquer limitations. They take initiative. They accept risk as an opportunity to learn and grow. They are constantly innovating.

Mindful leaders cultivate “beginner’s mind” to create a culture of innovation.

Beginner’s Mind: The Foundation of Innovation

Beginner’s mind is viewing the world and our experiences with an innocent mind devoid of preconceptions, expectations, judgements and prejudices. It is to explore and observe things with a deep sense of openness, much like a child explores the world with curiosity and wonder, with no fixed point of view. It is to lose our “expert’s mind,” which tends to be rigid, calcified and fixated. When we view the world with an expert’s mind, we think we know all the answers, and are therefore closed to new possibilities.

In expert’s mind, we are scared of “I don’t know.” But in beginner’s mind, we realise that “I don’t know” is a powerful position, for it is the beginning of wisdom.

For so many leaders, the feeling of “I don’t know” is scary because we’re supposed to be the one with the answers. We’re the ones people are looking to for guidance. So we often pretend to have the answers because we think that having the answers is what gives us credibility and confidence. In fact, the exact opposite is true.

One CEO, Kevin Pickhardt, explains, “If we’re going to err on one side of how we view ourselves, as expert or beginner, I’d rather err on the side of being a beginner. As soon as we see ourselves as experts, learning begins to slow. I like to embrace learning—it keep us young and sharp and helps us create the culture we want, which is let’s not assume we know the answers.”

Releasing Bias and Accepting Reality

           When we are not living mindfully, there are two common cognitive biases that we often fall prey to: confirmation bias and sunk cost bias. Both of these biases are the expert’s mind in action. The expert’s mind appears to be secure in its knowledge, but is actually deeply insecure. Its desperate clinging to its perceptions and conclusions is evidence of its fear of being wrong. It holds on tightly to its beliefs and “knowledge” because that’s what gives it the illusion of stability in an unstable world.

           Cultivating beginner’s mind is how we get unstuck from the rut of bias and embrace reality in an open, curious state.

6. Empower Others to Shine

If leaders are not invested in building and lifting their team members, their leadership efforts will be significantly hampered. People will feel their insincerity and ulterior motives, and as a result will be less engaged.

The whole point of leadership isn’t to get glory for ourselves, but rather to enable and inspire teams to accomplish what we could never accomplish alone. It is to empower others to bring out their best and realise their potential in the pursuit of a common goal. Our job as leaders is precisely to make others shine. People won’t give their full effort if they don’t feel like their leaders care about them and want them to grow. The more our leadership efforts are about us, the less effective we are.

We learn to empower others by cultivating two attributes of mindfulness: generosity and compassion.

Cultivate Generosity to Release Insecurities and Empower People

When we operate from generosity, what we give returns to us. The more generous we are, the more our heart opens, the more joy we experience. Ultimately, generosity is the cultivation of connection, from which grows happiness, cooperation and wellbeing.

Generosity practice is a key antidote to clinging, and clinging robs us of a clear, relaxed, open state of mindfulness. Through generosity, we move from command and control mode to coaching and mentoring mode to bring out the gifts in others. We give people our time, undivided attention, insights and wisdom to help them become the best that they can be. We learn to let go of control and to give people space, autonomy and responsibility to step up and contribute more.

Cultivate Compassion to Truly See People

Compassion is cherishing other living beings and seeking to alleviate suffering not just in ourselves, but also in everyone else around us. Mindful compassion in leadership is to wish for all your team members, boss and colleagues to be free from suffering, to thrive in their positions, to be happy and fulfilled, just as you wish for yourself. It is to truly see others’ struggles and be naturally moved to support them.

Compassion can be seen as a full-hearted embracing of the present. It is impossible to fully embrace life as it is, with its pains and struggles, without compassion. It is a deep sensitising to the experience of life, and in that we become more and more skilful in dealing with distress in ourselves and the systems we work in.

7. Nourish Others With Love

Every person in every position is doing work that matters. They matter. But too often, they don’t know how much they matter because they’re rarely told.

The best leaders are always looking for ways to recognise and praise their people. They truly see their people and take notice of their contributions. They never take them for granted—and people can feel that from them.

Three heart-based mindfulness practices give us the awareness to see and connect with people more authentically than we ever have: loving-kindness, empathetic joy and gratitude.

Loving-kindness: The Heart of Mindfulness

           As a leader, loving-kindness manifests as thinking less of your own personal ambitions and more on the welfare and happiness of the whole. It is to deeply and sincerely care about your people, to be emotionally invested in their progress and success. And it is to show how much you care about them by regularly and consistently expressing appreciation for their efforts.

The more love we give, the more we generate and the more we receive. Love truly is the source of our greatest strength, the quality that elicits the best and purest in us, and that fortifies us against hatred, negativity and challenges.

It’s also the quality that enables us to elicit the best in others because it allows us to see the best in them. It improves our skills as a mentor more than any other factor because it gives us a heartfelt presence that becomes a real force for uplifting others. 

Empathetic Joy: Authentic Encouragement From the Heart

Empathetic joy means finding joy in the happiness, success and good fortune of others. It eliminates jealousy, envy or resentment and opens our heart to praise and encouragement. Jealousy feels contracted in the body and is based on the belief that we are not enough and that we don’t have enough—in other words, it is an argument with reality, and it’s an argument we can never win.

From a leadership perspective, if compassion means “to suffer with,” empathetic joy means “to celebrate with.” It means being every bit as conscious of people’s happiness as we are attuned to their suffering. It’s not enough to just offer support when someone is grieving—we must also extend joy when they have succeeded.

Gratitude: The Gift that Always Comes Back to Us

Just as mindfulness opens our heart to love and connection, so too does it naturally produce a profound, and habitual attitude of gratitude. Mindfulness is about seeing reality as it is, and when we do so, we can’t help but see the awe-inspiring beauty and miracles that we’re immersed in every moment of every day. In the spirit of gratitude, we find the ordinary to be extraordinary.

For leaders, gratitude is the catalyst for recognition. It makes us constantly look for the good in people and feeds our desire to share our gratitude for a job well done. It is a light we carry with us that people are drawn to because they feel good about themselves when they are around us. Gratitude reverses fear and clinging—two of the core issues that rob us of mindfulness. To be mindful is to be generous; they are inseparable.

Transforming for Good

           The world is desperate for great leadership—more precisely, for mindful leadership. Disconnection and disengagement abound in our personal and professional lives. The greatest opportunity of leadership is to make a truly positive and meaningful impact. Given that we spend a significant portion of our lives at work, organisational leaders in particular can make a profound difference—and at a much deeper level than we typically think.

           Mindfulness equips us with the tools and capability for transforming ourselves into extraordinary leaders. It helps us overcome our inner resistance to the flow of life and develop a flexibility, an intelligence and malleability that can come in no other way.