Before we look at how you can become a mindful leader, let’s first determine what a mindful leader is. Leading people in an incredibly challenging task in a world full of distractions. However, mindful leaders can exude their passion, education, professionalism, and skills throughout their everyday business tasks amidst these distractions. A mindful leader is present, selfless, and inspires others to work ethically and productively.
So, how do you become a mindful leader?
Here are three steps you can take to become a mindful leader:
1. Develop availability and flexibility
Availability is a vital mindfulness characteristic since employees expect availability and consistency from their leaders. To develop availability, you need to build empathic awareness, presence, and a curiosity for your team member’s ideas, opinions, and experiences. Additionally, you should listen to your employees whenever they have a concern or idea and follow through on your promises and commitments. This way, your workforce will feel appreciated, seen, and heard. Flexibility is all about being able to adapt to changing circumstances and environments. Whether the market is changing or there’s a structural change in the company, a flexible leader can maintain a flexible mindset and use their skills to respond to these changes with optimistic solutions.
2. Build emotional intelligence
Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence (EI) model is based on four ideals: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. These four elements can guide mindful leaders in their day-to-day activities, especially when handling a challenging task. Emotional awareness can also help mindful business leaders make the right decisions even when the matter is personal or intense emotions are involved. However, emotional intelligence can also help leaders empathize with their team members and support them effectively, leading to further transparency and trust in the workplace.
3. Focus on integrity and ethics
Leaders with a strong moral compass and integrity can influence their team members to act ethically. This is especially true since most employees look up to their leaders and view them as role models.
Developing strong personal ethics and having a sense of integrity can also help leaders deal with challenging or murky situations with ease since leaders have an internal moral compass that they can trust and rely on. Additionally, this prevents leaders from being distracted or swayed by complex professional and personal dilemmas.
Why mindful leadership is important
As mentioned above, today’s world is filled with challenges that can affect us mentally, emotionally, and professionally. As a result, it’s crucial to understand mindfulness and cultivate mindful leadership. Moreover, we are often distracted by various technological devices, social media, and the internet that can harm our mental health and lead to a sense of disconnection and ultimately overwhelm and isolate us. Additionally, we have access to so much information and a wide variety of voices and opinions that sometimes overwhelm and confuse our own ideas and thoughts. However, these changing times also present an opportunity to be innovative, compassionate, and practice mindfulness.
Contact Corporate Class today to develop your skills and become a mindful leader. We offer high-quality mindful leadership training, coaching, and consulting to some of the world’s largest Fortune 500 companies across the globe.
