Top 3 Reasons Our World Needs Mindful Leadership
By: Janice Marturano
Tags: Leadership, Work Smarter, Wisdom, Mindfulness

2. “Something is missing….the win-win-win”

The project is over, the expectations were met and you are 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 had a little more ‘space’, you could have brought more of your expertise, creativity or compassion to the project. I heard this wish for some ‘space’ so often that it was the inspiration for my book about mindful leadership, Finding the Space to Lead.

Cultivating this spaciousness in your day is another part of mindful leadership training. As you train and step out of ‘autopilot’ mode, you can begin to see the things that are creating clutter. Sometimes those things are in your environment (e.g. culture of too many meetings, redundant assignments) and sometimes those things are within you (e.g. tendency to over-analyze, 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, 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 job 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 smartphones 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 does anyone still think no one will notice?) If you are 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. One president of a large organization discovered that when he was told to put his smartphone away for the evening, he walked outside and because he didn’t have his phone to check, he looked up at the night sky. He later shared with me that he was frozen in that moment as he realized that he ‘hadn’t seen the stars in 20 years’ and wondered ‘what else have I missed while staring at my phone’.

Deep connections-to ourselves, to those around us and to the world-are fundamental capabilities that we all need to develop to fulfill 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 looking at a YouTube video ever replace seeing the night sky? Can reading texts replace the sound of a human voice? As we become more awake to our behaviors, 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.

Join Janice Marturano for Finding the Space to Lead: A Practical Guide to Mindful Leadership© Workshop, October 20th, 2017 at New York University’s Stern School of Business to learn about the intersection of mindfulness and leadership.