Mindfulness in Leadership

Leaders who are mindful tend to be more effective in understanding and relating to others, and motivating them toward shared goals. William W. George

As you develop a greater awareness of the interplay of your thoughts and emotions, you will find that you have a leg up on your peers. Practicing mindfulness actually helps to make you a better leader, and modeling mindfulness for the rest of your co-workers helps to make your corporate culture a more positive and productive one. While the recommended approach to practicing mindfulness has been to engage in a mindfulness meditation for 10 to 20 minutes a day, this serves well as an introduction. To take your mindfulness practice to another level, engaging in two twenty minute meditation sessions daily is ideal. A mindful approach to leadership will enhance your mental toughness, increase your ability to focus selectively on that which you need to focus on, improve your capacity to feel compassion, and loosen the constraints we naturally place upon ourselves that inhibit our creativity. When studying these aspects of mindful leadership, it is important to remember that each concept overlaps and builds upon all the other concepts.

Mental Resilience

The United States Military Academy at West Point has recently developed a mindfulness approach to leadership training that focuses on enhancing mental resilience. The West Point model posits that the world has become increasingly volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous (VUCA). Mental resilience is required in order to navigate a world marked by VUCA, but what is mental resilience and how can one develop it? Mental resilience is that quality which allows a leader to weather adversity, adapt to stressful situations, and recover. Mental resilience is mental toughness. Here are some approaches to increasing your mental resilience:

·        Build strong social support networks. As a leader, you will frequently find yourself pulled in many directions. Developing a good network can help mitigate this, but keep in mind that this is a two-way street. Helping others can also have a positive impact on your own well-being as well as providing a strong network for the future.

·        Approach crisis situations with both an immediate and long-term view. While you may feel a sense of impending catastrophe in the immediacy of a crisis, if you take a moment to imagine better circumstances in the future, this can help provide perspective.

·        Act decisively. Once you have determined what needs to be done, take action. The more you procrastinate the greater the opportunity for problems to spiral out of control.

·        Practice self-maintenance. When you are in a leadership position in particular, you will experience high degrees of stress. Using exercise, meditation, and relaxation to help ventilate that stress will allow you to perform better when the next inevitable crisis arrives.

Focus

While mindfulness is helpful in focusing your attention in a neutral and accepting fashion, as a leader, you will constantly find yourself having to decide upon what to focus. Understanding the goals and values of your company and your shared mission is a vital step towards prioritizing your focus. Familiarizing yourself with a company mission statement can help in this regards. Another helpful approach is to compose a personal mission statement, which focuses on your personal values, and a professional mission statement, which focuses on your leadership goals and values within the company. Familiarity with what is important to you and to your company can provide key insights as to which way to prioritize your focus.

Compassion

Developing a genuine sense of compassion for other people is a great side effect of a continuous practice of mindfulness. Compassion means that you try in good faith to understand where another person is coming from and the peculiar challenges that they have to face. Having compassion for others when you’re in a leadership position is vital for building sustainable support networks. One helpful approach to leading others is to imagine your thought processes as transparent to everyone. When you do this, you become much more aware of negativity and instances where you are not being as fair and understanding as you can be. With a greater capacity for mindfulness, you can intervene in when your thoughts veer into the negative and reassess situations and people from a more neutral and accepting standpoint.

Creativity

The flexibility and adaptability that come with a practice of mindfulness are exceptionally helpful in being creative. Being a creative leader also means that you provide an environment where creativity is rewarded. Too rigid an approach to rules and regulations can stifle creative thinking, which requires the same openness and neutrality that you strive for in practicing mindfulness. In a stifled environment, the status quo tends to dominate, and the phenomenon of groupthink blinds you to your shortcomings. One approach to increasing your own and your team’s creativity is to schedule times for play as a group. Keep in mind that this is play with a purpose – to help recharge the creative juices and allow them to flow.

Case Study

Wendy had just been promoted to a supervisor position. Over the ensuing weeks her best friend Angela had grown more distant. Angela began showing up late to work on a regular basis. At first, it was just a couple of minutes, but eventually Angela would show up 20 minutes late or more. Wendy considered why Angela was showing up late. One thought that occurred to Wendy was that Angela was jealous, but she discarded that thought because she knew it wasn’t fair to Angela. Wendy considered another possibility – Angela was afraid Wendy would change now that she was in a management position. Perhaps this was Angela’s way of forcing a confrontation to determine how much Wendy had changed. Wendy considered that a possibility but she also wondered if Angela might be going through problems of her own that had nothing to do with Wendy. Even if Angela was worried that the nature of their working relationship had changed, Wendy couldn’t dispute this because it had changed. Wendy wondered if she could still have a friendship with Angela outside of work. She decided to invite Angela to join her for drinks after work one day and ask her why she was always late. Wendy valued her friendship with Angela and wanted it to continue, but this new promotion was equally important to her. Wendy decided that if this promotion was the reason Angela was late all the time, then Wendy would ask Angela if she needed to change teams or ask her what other solutions they might arrive at together.  If that wasn’t the reason, then Wendy could find out why and work with Angela to help her.