Mindful Leadership
This is the write-up of a talk I gave at Atlassian Design Week 2017. Much of the inspiration came from the wonderful book “Mindful Leader” by Michael Bunting.
As leaders we are asked to simply “lead,” or we’re put into a leadership role with no clarity around what that means or how we’re supposed to do it. Over time we develop coping mechanisms, frameworks, methods to handle most situations, and we gain a handle on what it means to lead — mostly through experience and learning from others.
In addition to these challenges, the sands are always shifting and the world we’re asked to lead in is VUCA. In fact, everything is VUCA.
Your job as a leader is:
“Deliberately cultivating a state of wellness and being a beacon of goodness, responsiveness and clarity even in the toughest circumstances” — Michael Bunting
This is the definition of “mindful leadership”. It helps you cope with the crazy world around you.
To be a mindful leader, you need to start with yourself. If you’re not well, you’re not going to lead well. One of the key things to wellness and to optimal performance is the ability to be present. It allows you to develop Equanimity, courage, and empathy. These three things are very important for us as leaders. They allow us to do our best work, and remain well while doing it.
But “You need to be more present” is a confusing request. We might sense its meaning, but find it hard to practice because it’s a nebulous concept that’s often poorly explained. There are books dedicated to “The now,” like the Yoga Sutras, which start with the word “Now” and, it is said, the whole of Yoga is explained in this single word. The rest of the book is about unravelling what that means. For most people it’s a tough read and takes many years to fully understand.
Simply put, and to make things more actionable:
Presence of mind: Be aware of the stories you tell yourself, and separate fact from fiction (and there’s a lot of fiction if you’re honest with yourself). Pay attention to your inner monologue: is it negative, defensive, overly critical? Learning to develop this awareness is essential to changing what’s happening. The mind is not your master.
Presence of body: Emotions are derived from sensations in the body and memory (to put it very simply). If you can be aware of your shallow breath, sweating, increasing heart rate, tightening hips, etc., you can preempt an outburst of anger, a clumsy exchange, a reaction you will regret later. Being present to your body and understanding its language means you can slow things down for yourself and take control in a compassionate way. For example, “Oh, I’m getting annoyed, interesting. I need to take a few full breaths and keep that in check. This is an important meeting. It’s more important to collaborate than be right.”
Presence of heart: The things that you stand for, what you love, what you feel deeply about, what moves you, all these things dictate your behaviour. Knowing what they are and paying attention allows you to make better decisions. This is especially helpful in people management conversations, for example.
Practising being present in these three ways is pretty hard and takes a lot of practice. It helps to have a meditation teacher, and practising meditation is non-negotiable in my opinion. You need to be ready for it. I wasn’t for many years, but now I see that practice is the way forwards. That’s what meditation mostly is, at least at my level.
When you close your eyes and practise being present in a quiet place with attention on your breath, it’s a lot easier than in the middle of a heated conversation at a whiteboard. It’s a great place to start so you can be successful when it matters. You can find a myriad of different breath techniques and meditation methods, find one that works for you.
Like everything, it takes practice.
If you can’t be present, there are thousands of crappy behaviours that can emerge. These will kill you as a leader by stealing away your credibility. Some of them include:
I’m sure you can identify with at least two, and I know I can count at least 4. The first step is awareness, and then to develop the self-compassion and skill to defuse those behaviours.
The first thing is to call yourself out after you’ve done something you’d rather not have done, like talking over someone in a meeting. This is mindfulness too late.
The next stage is being very aware and deliberate about changing a behaviour or about choosing to be very present to the situation. For example, being very mindful of letting people finish before speaking. This is mindfulness on purpose.
Eventually, with enough practice, you become present and react appropriately because you’ve trained yourself; this is who you are.
Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh is a spiritual leader, poet, writer, and peace activist. If you haven’t read his books, I highly recommend them (start with Peace is every step). He sums things up succinctly for us with the following advice:
So…Be well :)
Did you enjoy this post? Want more of the same? Consider following Designing Atlassian.
