Mindful Leadership

By Fleet Maull, PhD, CMT-P, guest contributor

No matter what type of leadership role you are in, you need to be able to connect with others while also staying connected with yourself, so that you can be a driving force for positivity.

Mindful leadership is an approach and set of skills and practices that can be developed and mastered in order to effectively lead, manage, and influence in today’s world, ensuring that you optimize your abilities as a leader within a business, a non-profit organi…

By John J. Murphy, guest contributor

You are a business leader about to give a keynote address. You are a student about to take an exam. You are a job seeker about to go into an interview. You are a basketball player about to shoot a game winning free throw. You are a mother caring for a sick child or elderly parent. How do you feel? Poised and confident? Relaxed and at ease? Or, nervous, anxious and stressed?

It doesn’t matter which scenario you find yourself in. We all face challenges in lif…

By Wendy Saunders, guest contributor

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
–Excerpt of “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

It can feel rather lonely sometimes when leading mindfulness programs or endeavoring to gather the support needed to start, sustain, or expand these programs in the workplace. This has been my experience at points during the …

Shared Resources and Tools

• How to Read Nature, book by Tristan Gooley

• Mindful Magazine

• Center for Mindfulness, UMass

• Hotline to Peace: 360-385-2200 x2238

• eNaropa: Mindful at Work, 8-week online course (also free 7-day course)

• Mindfulness-Based Emotional Intelligence Facilitator’s Guide

• Becoming a Resonant Leader, book by McKee, Boyatzis, Johnston

• The Mind of the Leader, book by Hougaard and Carter

• Awakening Compassion at Work, book by Worline and D…

Summary Report 

This document captures key questions and insights that arose during a weekend deep dive retreat hosted by Mindful Leader and the Garrison Institute in August 2018. The participants were all internal champions of mindfulness within medium to large organizations (100+ employees). Our objective was to provide a forum where these peers could share best practices and lessons learned, bond, and find meaningful ways to support the continued growth of mindfulness in America.

Being an i…

By Wendy Quan, guest contributor 

Organizations struggle with constant change. Or, rather, it’s the employees who struggle with the relentless changes that disrupts their lives and mounts their stress. The problem is there is never enough change management resource to truly help our employees.

The responsibility of helping people through change, or ‘change management’ tends to fall upon leaders, change managers, project managers or human resources. However, generally whatever little time there…

By Schuyler Brown, guest contributor

One morning in 2015, I opened my Sunday New York Times to find a profile of Mark Bertolini, the CEO of healthcare giant Aetna, on the front page of the Business Section. The story was not a typical business story, but rather a vulnerable and personal portrait: the story of a corporate leader’s personal journey into meditation and his vision to bring the practice into his workplace.

Bertolini hired Andy Lee to do the real work of building a company culture w…

By Patricia Thompson, guest contributor

When I began my career as a management consultant, I was reluctant to be authentic. As a Black female who had just finished grad school, I was all too aware of potential negative stereotypes that others might have about me based on my age, gender, and race. As a result, I made it my mission to come across as pulled together, polished, and serious at all times.

To prevent any concerns about how knowledgeable I was, I led with my intelligence. At the same …

By Leah Weiss, guest contributor

Meetings are a way to arrive at solutions, voice opinions, share and receive team feedback. So why are roughly 59% of meetings a waste of time? Furthermore, meetings can cause companies to lose billions of dollars in revenue annually.

Why haven’t we yet found an antidote to mindless meetings? Maybe we’re not looking in the right place.

A Tip from Tibet 

The image of an ego-tripping narcissistic boss is fading fast. In its place is a leader who knows the impor…

By Schuyler Brown, guest contributor

Many of us are aware of the mindfulness revolution currently happening in corporate America, but perhaps less of us know about the interest in empathy that’s coming on its heels. Over the past few years, I’ve received requests to teach empathy at a social media giant, a large healthcare company, and a worldwide leader in hospitality. These companies have been early to the practice because their business models rely on interpersonal skills—building and keepin…