Leadership is a choice – not a role
If someone is following you, you are a leader.
Everything you do, say or emote has an impact on the people around you including your children, your team, your clients, your peers and students. In any given moment, someone might be following you, and you have the choice to lead poorly or lead and influence with integrity, authenticity and wisdom… BUT sometimes it takes a bit of training, courage and conviction to be able to make that choice in difficult moments!
I’ve worked with many health professionals who do not identify with being leaders – yet they are having a profound influence on the people they work with. People are following them, which is both a huge honour and huge responsibility.
And I have worked with many people in designated positions of leadership or public influence, including world-stage musicians, CEO’s of large organisations, and politicians, all of whom do identify with being a leader and yet are not always leading or are not leading wisely.
If people are not following you, you are not leading.
We do a mindfulness exercise in the mindful Leadership course, where people are paired up for a mirroring exercise. One person is tasked as a leader to move their hands in a way that is interesting and invites their partner to follow. Repeatedly we notice in this exercise that some people feel burdened by being given the role to lead. Others prefer to lead.
Some leaders want to be creative, entertaining and a little challenging as well as bringing their followers along with them.
Some leaders stay focused on bringing their followers with them, but can get bored with the simplicity and lack of innovative ideas and challenge, and everyone wants to stop fairly quickly.
While other leaders get so excited about new creative, expansive ideas and moving very fast – either in showing off or in enthusiasm- that they do not bring the followers with them, and the followers either disengage or disrupt.
The key learning is the importance of noticing when people are following, and also knowing that when they are not, you are not leading.
“You are only leading when people are following.
Mindfulness helps us to find that beautiful dialectical balance of enthusiasm, creativity, challenge, and invitation. That subtle dance between the invitation and the take-up, to keep those leading inspired and moving toward a vision, and those following inspired, engaged, and feeling their own capacity and success. Mindfulness in action teaches us to continuously notice and respond to this balance, correcting moment to moment just as each paddle stroke of a kayaker is a slight correction to the wind, waves, current undertows.
Leadership is the transference of hope
In leadership, we are transferring hope, with the intent to influence and ultimately the invitation to greatness in ourselves and in others. Leaders of all occupations train in mindfulness meditation for an assortment of reasons, mostly to stay calmer and more focused in their leadership, dealing elegantly with people without losing the “edge” that makes them successful.
“75% of careers derail due to lack of EI: inability to handle interpersonal problems; unsatisfactory team leadership during difficulty or conflict; inability to adapt to change or elicit trust – Center for Creative Leadership.
Leadership requires a bigger vision and requires us to recognise that others are depending on us, expectant, projecting and hanging out their hopes and fears. The pursuit of mindfulness in leadership helps you clarify what is important to you and achieve a deeper understanding of the world around you, and therefore how to navigate it.
Leading wisely
Every person in a leadership position reaches toward wisdom, is expected to have wisdom, and wants to be wise, and yet it is not always easy to articulate what wisdom is or how one develops it. Leadership is about vision, leading others to their full potential, and insights that cultivate wisdom and create outcomes.
And yet, what we repeatedly find among those in leadership is the collective sense of being alone in their challenges and dreams, their desire to do the right thing, and sometimes secret inner fears and doubts and responses that halt them in their way. Especially the fear of being caught out as a fake.
“You know you’re in trouble when you start to judge your self-worth by your net worth, focusing on external factors like impressing others or positioning yourself, rather than looking inward to measure success as a human and as a leader.
In fact, in coaching senior executives, ethical business leaders, global change-makers, I’ve noticed the collective sigh of relief that those at the top have when they realise they are not alone. They are expected to have the answers and yet don’t always know the answers. In coaching, as in mindfulness training, they can simply be honest about their struggles and ambitions and how they move forward.
Deep self-knowledge enables you to be honest. Mindfulness cultivates your ability to access your innate wisdom and leadership qualities at will by providing access to deep and honest self-awareness and insight. People trust – and follow – those who are real, consistent, and whose behaviour, values and beliefs are aligned.
“We trust people we do not constantly have to second-guess.
Mindfulness helps you clear away trivial and needless worries about unimportant things, nurture passion for your work and compassion for others and develop the ability to empower the people in your organisation, tribe, community.
Leadership Wisdom
Mindfulness is one of the teachings arising from a rich body of Buddhist teachings for cultivating human wisdom that requires us to make wise decisions for ourselves and other people. Leadership wisdom is an extension of human wisdom and requires us to make wise decisions based on the needs of our clients, organisations, and our public, national and global environments. Often these decisions can only be evaluated over time, and it is not so much about getting it right but about doing the right thing. That is not always easy to understand or implement.
I recently listened to a very enlightened business guru who said it took clients she was mentoring 4-6 months minimum to even clarify what was most important to them and what was getting in their way – in life, in business, in leadership, in their humanitarian ambitions – to fully understand their strengths, and the areas for development that would make the biggest difference in their long term leadership and the outcomes they wanted to achieve. She said it was only after that 4-6 months of consistent development that they were ready to start really shifting gears.
By developing deep and honest self-awareness, and greater internal and external clarity and insight, you build skills to accurately decipher what you think and feel and how to find positive, powerful, impactful ways forward in your own life and leadership practice.
How does mindfulness help uncover wisdom in leadership?
Many people think mindfulness is about reducing stress and gaining calm by quietening the chatter in our minds, leading us to relax and be calm and focus on what matters. Research suggests that 90% of our thinking is wasted space because it is about worrying, ruminating, second-guessing or judging ourselves or others- all of which takes time and energy that could be used for better productivity.
Mindfulness certainly can help manage the overthinking, feeling overwhelmed, worrying about people, relationships, the future or the past. It helps stop the frustrations, fears, worries and stress that can set off the amygdala in a flight or fight response, flood our brains with stress chemicals, hijack our thoughts, mood and behaviour and bring out the worst in us- sometimes turning the most capable people into what feels like jabbering wrecks. Yes, mindfulness training can teach us how to regulate our emotions, calm down, gain perspective as well as improve our memory and creativity.
“Research in neuro-imaging shows that mindfulness training is associated with changes in grey matter concentration in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective-taking.
And, in addition, mindfulness is designed to do so much more. In the article Understanding the 9 layers of mindfulness, I discuss how much more richness is developed in deepening layers of mindfulness, layers which help us develop self-clarity, focus, compassion, depth of insight and stability of mind. And then further on, as we practice more, we cultivate increasing levels of flexibility of mind, joy and wisdom. Mindfulness cultivates your ability to adapt gracefully to all life’s adventures and challenges. Click here to see what Harvard Business Review says about leadership and mindfulness.
“Nurture your moment-to-moment clarity, courage and conviction, sufficient to cultivate adventurous, visionary, wise leadership.
“The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves, Ray Kroc.
Liana Taylor
An innovator in the field of Mindful Leadership, Liana’s passion for social change toward the cultivation of wisdom in leaders, has inspired her mindful leadership programs. Her keynote speech at the first International Mindfulness conference in Rome and at South Australia’s first Mindfulness Symposium reflects her passion for leadership development and cultivating wisdom in leadership. Liana is qualified and experienced in both therapy and leadership coaching.