Why a Mindfulness Practice is Important for Every Manager

Every Manager is not a Leader even though good leadership qualities and skills are what makes a great manager.  Leading and managing go hand in hand, yet there is a distinct difference between managing and leading.  

Simply put, managing is about the hard stuff - productivity, quality, money, resources and outputs etc. – that can be measured.  

Leadership is about the soft stuff – to be mindful, have respect, listen, appreciate and inspire to create a positive, appreciative and happy work culture, so people meet the organizational goals and objectives and meet their own too.  

On the other hand, when things are not going well, a good leader will become mindful to park the emotions and know when to have a rational coaching conversation - and it does not mean there are no consequences for mistakes or failures.  

A good leader will manage these situations strategically by being present and aware - may even impose penalties, yet create learning and change without impacting on people’s self esteem.

Why is this important?

Lightning speed of change, high expectations, changing priorities, and doing more with less in today’s organizations creates tremendous stress and emotion.  If that is not complex enough, diversity of people and varied expectations add to the challenge of managing and leading.

Leadership gurus Kouzes & Posner in their book - “Leadership Challenge” identified five timeless virtues of great leaders; 

·       Challenging the Process

·       Inspiring a Shared Vision

·       Enabling Others to Act

·       Modelling the Way

·       Encouraging the Heart

 <http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/home.aspx>

Every manager has to balance all these to be a good leader.

Apart from critical thinking, analytical, problem solving and decision making skills – the hard stuff requires, logical and rational intelligence, yet it is these soft virtues that keep organizations humming.  

They require emotional intelligence - being aware to manage own feelings, needs, thoughts and actions, as well to understand others - their feelings and needs. 

 

This is where mindfulness comes in. Being mindful and self aware, we can find the balance between our cognitive skills, mental acuity and emotional intelligence. 

A regular meditation practice helps keep the mind sharp and aware to improve the ability to become present and introspective when needed - to listen well, get clarity and to be intuitive to know and witness what is happening in the team.

 

Becoming present and aware enables the manager to know the subtle nuances, the body language of others and the energy in the room.  All this emerge as useful information in the process of managing, especially when there is a need for a difficult conversation with a team member or a client.   

 

Being able to move from thoughts to awareness mindfully when there is push-back, enables the manager to pause, even for a minute, to gain some space to move away from emotion to logic and reason.  This way the manager can respond with an appropriate strategy to approach the issue more skillfully.

The Practice and Process

Meditation with a focused concentration on the breath at the tip of your nostril is the first basic step for mindfulness.  It is like learning the scales of the piano as knowing and embodying the sound of the notes, we can make music.  

Meditation helps us to stop the thought process, which usually speaks to us at about 750 words per minute.   Our thoughts also have a life of its own, taking us on wild trips of fancy or fear, based on the past or expectations of the future.   This is called the “monkey mind” -  as the monkey jumps from branch to branch, our thoughts flit from one to another.  It is akin to being on a bucking horse and at the mercy of the animal, and what meditation does is to take a hold of the reins, and take control of our mind.

Meditation’s practical purpose in organizational management is to help us get a hold of our runaway thoughts that can lead to an emotional reaction.  This way we can actually stop and examine, inquire into, think critically, question and validate those thoughts, as most of the time, they may not represent the reality of a situation.  

Our thoughts may stoke fears from the past – for instance; a new colleague who reminds you of a bully from your school days – hence those old fears may dominate your current thoughts and actions.   

The Four Questions for Clarity

I use and teach a simple tool called Four Questions for Clarity, based on non-violent communications (NVC) that will help stop the thought process - breathe in and observe; acknowledge the feeling and need; diffuse the emotion and take skillful rational action to move forward with.

Stopping the thought enables us to pause and inquire, think critically to validate the “truth” of that uneasiness about the new colleague.  This helps to acknowledge the dominant emotion – feeling of fear or anxiety - inquire into the need that is not being met - safety - to manifest the feeling.  

Bringing these emotions to the surface of your mind, helps to take the power away from them and put things in perspective. 

This way, we may clear our mind to become logical and have an inquiring conversation with the new colleague to realize, he is not the kind of person that you judged him to be.   Such is the power of mindfulness.   

A Commitment to a Practice

These mindfulness tools require a commitment and patience to practice and embody them.  This practice enables access to them to gain space to think rationally when you most need it – at the heat of the moment, a time of stress and when your limits are pushed to the edge. 

The mark of a good manager is the ability to take this stress with equanimity - to not indulge in emotions, but to learn to acknowledge them and find ways to act logically and rationally on a consistent basis.      

Being mindful enhances your leadership qualities and virtues, as then you may win the team’s trust and inspire them to action.   

As a mindful manager, you may find more meaning and purpose in the good work you do, not only to get the hard stuff done, but also balance it with the soft, so your team finds meaning and purpose in their work too.