The Mindful Leader

Have you ever been in the middle of an important conversation with your subordinate and while they are speaking your mind wanders, or you look down at your mobile device or laptop? Or have you been in a meeting where the focus of the meeting is lost and there are parallel conversations going on as well as participants checking e-mail or other activities? These are both examples of situations where there are low levels of mindfulness.

What is mindfulness? A leading researcher is this field, Dr. Ellen Langer describes it in the HBR article Mindfulness in the Age of Complexity as “Mindfulness is the process of actively noticing new things. When you do that, it puts you in the present. It makes you more sensitive to context and perspective. It’s the essence of engagement. And it’s energy-begetting, not energy consuming.”

Daniel Goleman in his book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence writes “Mindfulness develops our capacity to observe our moment-to-moment experience in an impartial, nonreactive manner. We practice letting go of thoughts about any one thing and open our focus to whatever comes to mind in the stream of awareness, without getting lost in a torrent of thoughts about any other thing. This training generalizes, so that in those moments at work when we need to pay attention to this and drop our stream of thought about that, we can let go of the one and focus on the other.”

Why Leaders should practice mindfulness

Organizations depend on subordinate leaders taking action and executing their respective missions in order to accomplish the overall organizational objective. Practicing mindfulness and developing leaders to be mindful is contributing to the development of their emotional intelligence and creates a smarter, more agile, and adaptive organization. Leading and influencing others makes applying mindful leadership methods an important skill. Leaders should be clear of the “me-focused” mental chatter and focused on maintaining open awareness while having conversations with subordinate leaders on matters relating to mission accomplishment, readiness, morale, etc…

To maintain the organizations ability to accomplish it’s mission, leaders need to be engaging sub-leaders for commitment not compliance on a regular basis to ensure there is mutual understanding. When leaders are in conversations with subordinates, peers, or superiors that is where their attention needs to be. Practicing mindfulness is tied to effective listening and communication skills. In his book Leadership: Theory and Practice, Peter Northouse writes about listening and servant leadership “Listening. Communication between leaders and followers is an interactive process that includes sending and receiving messages. Servant leaders communicate by listening first. They recognize that listening is a learned discipline that involves hearing ad being receptive to what others have to say.” Listening, free of mental clutter (being mindful) is key to good communication, mutual understanding, and relationships.

The world is a complex place and requires different leadership skills. Applying mindfulness concepts in complex environments allows leaders to see the bigger picture if they pause and take the time to reflect. In the HBR article A Leaders Framework for Decision Making, David Snowden and Mary Boone write “Leaders who try to impose order in a complex context will fail, but those who set the stage, step back a bit, allow patterns to emerge, and determine which ones are desirable will succeed.”

All leaders will find themselves overwhelmed from time to time. As Dr. Langer writes “What you want is a soft openness-to be attentive to the things you’re doing but not single-minded, because then you’re missing other opportunities.” The ultimate challenge for leaders at this time is not to succumb to being besieged by events but to take a step back and lead by being mindful and set the example for their leaders to be as well.

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Jonathan is an experienced leader and coach with a proven record of leading and developing others to perform at higher levels and improve their overall effectiveness. He has a passion for learning and developing others to improve as leaders. Jonathan brings lessons from experience leading in U.S. Army Infantry, Cavalry, and Armor units in a wide range of assignments, to include leading soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Korea. He is a decorated veteran and a recipient of the General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. Jonathan served as a faculty member at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY before transitioning from the Army in 2015. He is a certified Executive Coach and operates his own leadership coaching business. Check out his website here: http://www.quicksmartsleadership.com