At the end of the day it's not about what you
have accomplished...it's about who you've lifted up, who you've made
better.
3 Ways to be a More Mindful Leader
--by Janice
L. Marturano, syndicated from agenda.weforum.org,
Feb 18, 2015
It’s
been more than a decade since I started exploring the intersection between
excellence in leadership and contemplative practices like meditation. The
leaders I worked with, first as vice-president of a Fortune 200 company, and
then in my work as executive director of the Institute for Mindful
Leadership, came from different cultures, professions and backgrounds. They
were influencers in small and large organizations, teams, community groups and
even their own families.
Despite
their differences, they had some things in common. They had bright minds, warm
hearts and were drawn to leadership roles because they wanted to make a
difference. They were also often overbooked, overwhelmed, exhausted and spent
much of their life on autopilot, struggling to get through the day.
Can
training in mindful leadership cure all these problems? Of course not. But there
are many ways it can help. Here are my top three:
1.
How can it be 6pm already?
You
know the feeling - you glance at your watch and it says 6 pm. That can’t be
right. Where did the day go? You feel tired from all the running around but you
aren’t quite sure what you did all day. And you’re sure that not much of what
you did actually reduced the items on your to-do list.
When
you’re distracted and unfocused, your day goes by in a blur. Your body is in the
room but your mind is rarely fully attentive to anything you’re doing. As you
begin to train your mind, you notice more quickly when it becomes distracted and
you learn to redirect your attention. Imagine how much more thoughtful your
contributions might be if you gave every meeting, conversation and project your
full attention. Imagine how much more efficient and effective a meeting might be
if everyone was actually paying attention.
2.
Something is missing … the win-win-win
The
project is over, the expectations were met and you’re moving on to the next
assignment. You take a moment to think about the finished project. Everyone says
you did a good job but you feel as though something is missing: it wasn’t your
best work. If you’d had a little more space, you could have brought more of your
expertise, creativity or passion to the project. I would hear this so often that
it even inspired me to write a book on mindful leadership, Finding
the Space to Lead.
Cultivating
this space in your day is another part of mindful leadership training. As you
train and step out of autopilot, you can begin to see the things that are
creating clutter. Sometimes those things are in your environment (culture of too
many meetings, redundant assignments) and sometimes those things are within you
(tendency to over-analyse, emotions that isolate you). As we learn to cultivate
the space needed to be our best, we are more likely to find the “win-win-win”
solutions that are good for the organization, good for the employees and good
for the community. In other words, we begin to find what is missing.
3.
I hadn’t seen the stars in 20 years
Technology
helps us do our jobs and keep track of our lives. But increasingly, our lives,
and our potential to lead with excellence, are being adversely affected by our
need to check our smart phones every waking minute. Critical human connections
are lost when we become addicted to this form of connectivity. If you are in a
meeting, can the best work be done if half the room is checking their phone
under the table? (And do people really think nobody will notice?) If you’re
trying to get your son to really listen to you, do you think your efforts will
succeed if you allow yourself to be interrupted by texts?
One
of the most poignant realizations of the need to have boundaries with technology
came on a mindful leadership retreat I led a few years ago. Participants were
asked to put away their smart phones for the evening. At a loss as to what to do
without his phone, the president of a large organization took a walk outside and
looked up at the night sky. He later admitted that he was shocked to realize
that he hadn’t seen the stars in 20 years. He asked himself what else he had
been missing while he was staring at his phone.
We
need to develop deep connections - to ourselves, to those around us and to the
world - if we are to fulfil our potential to lead, and live, with excellence.
When we are connected to each other and the world primarily through technology,
some of the most important aspects of those connections are neglected and can
wither away before we know it. Can watching a YouTube video ever replace seeing
the night sky? Can reading texts replace the sound of a human voice? As we
become more aware of our behaviour, we have the chance to make conscious choices
about how we want to lead and live, and which connections we need to prioritize
and strengthen.
This
article originally appeared in Agenda, an International Institution
committed to improving the state of the world through public-private
cooperation. The article is republished with permission. The author, Janice L.
Marturano, is Executive Director at the Institute for Mindful
Leadership.
Be The Change: Take a moment
each day to better connect with those around you, keeping in mind how you would
yourself would like to be interacted with and treated.
Sourced from www.dailygood.org
Sourced from www.dailygood.org
