Unlocking Conscious Change Leadership Through Mindfulness

As someone who meditates every day, it’s been exciting to learn more about the link between mindfulness, conscious leadership, and organizational change success.

For?those of you who are unfamiliar with mindfulness, it is the practice of “turning on” your awareness. When your mind is fully in the present moment, you start to become aware of the emotional triggers and filters of judgement, expectation, and programming that are?sabotaging your efforts to connect, collaborate, and communicate with others.

This level of awareness is especially important for leaders during organizational change, when emotions run high, and the stakes are even higher.

Conscious leadership, then, is the mindful and intentional approach to guiding individuals and teams. It embraces self-awareness, compassion, and ethical decision-making, and acknowledges the interconnectedness between individual and organizational well-being.

Conscious leaders are the people we want to follow during change, crisis, or otherwise. They are attuned to their values and emotions and are aware of the impact of their leadership style on others. Conscious leaders make excellent change leaders because they calibrate quickly, modeling the necessary behaviors to facilitate and accelerate change, including:

• Open communication. Conscious leaders keep people informed, encourage feedback, and admit when they don’t have all the answers. They create safe spaces for dialogue, which can help teams process their emotions so they can more skillfully transition through change.
• Active listening. Conscious leaders are skilled at active listening, which includes listening for what isn’t being said, just as much as what is said. They use their intuition, ask open-ended questions, and listen without judgement to ensure stakeholders feel both seen and heard.
• Fearless collaboration. Conscious leaders share information and ideas without hesitation, inhibition, or fear of judgement. They focus on finding solutions rather than dwelling on problems and are willing to explore new ideas knowing that the journey to transformation is full of opportunities for learning and improvement.

When change is on the horizon, conscious leaders provide a sense of direction, safety, and assurance to those navigating the journey of transformation.

Becoming a conscious leader – like organizational change success – doesn’t happen overnight. The good news is that the tools you need for personal growth are easily within reach. Whether you practice mediation, self-reflection, or breath work doesn’t matter. The point is to teach yourself how to create more space between stimulus and response so when a change is on the horizon you can be like a lighthouse, clear?and steady no matter what the circumstances, illuminating the path forward for your team and organization.

(Special thanks to Jessica Crow and Douglas Scherer who have been instrumental in the learning process. Check out their interviews here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvb70O0dJR7M_kN4p3DOx1w).

References: The “Complete Book of Mindful Living”, Butera and Byron, 2021.