Joe Burton On Creating Mindful Leaders

‘Multi-tasking feeds stress.’

‘If you regularly drink wine to manage your stress, that’s not mindfulness. Sometimes, that’s called alcoholism.’

‘When the subject comes to the sharing economy, you have to play to win. Bringing teams together regularly can help surface employee concerns in a transparent way.’

‘You can tell a lot about a person by what they reveal in their life stories. Uncover common ground by asking your colleagues interesting questions.’

‘If you’re looking to ‘crush it,’ ‘kill it,’ ‘not freak out,’ and so on, you should feel good in doing what’s right for you.’

‘We’re actually many ways at different points in our day, let alone in our lives. When we’re open to others occurring to us as jerks in one moment but as smart, funny, clever, or charming in other moments, then we actually give those moments a chance to appear. We give ourselves the chance to enjoy the many dozens of ways that others can occur, if we’re open to it.’

‘Doing good is good for you.’

‘Sitting is the new smoking. Rather than destroy your health or turn into a keyboard hunchback, set your smart watch or a timer to get up and move at least once every hour.’

‘Getting stuck in a culture of us versus them is all too easy. Real discourse requires patience, openness, and curiosity. Is your business having an impact on society or simply being impacted.’

‘People don’t leave jobs; they leave managers. When the subject comes to your culture, start with your own wellbeing as a leader and you’ll have a better chance of improving the inner workings and emotional culture of your team and organization.’

‘Talk yourself up. A ‘growth mindset’ relies on self-talk that is positive and encouraging. Practice becoming aware of the messages you give yourself when you are feeling stuck or challenged.’

‘Leaders spend countless hours putting complex measurement and data feedback loops in place. How much time do you spend creating data checkpoints for yourself? What’s your personal optimization plan?’

‘Giving your brain time to recover and repair is necessary for your mental and emotional wellbeing, performance, relationships, and sleep. Being a leader has to start with self-care.’

‘Mindfulness … isn’t about 5 to 10 minutes of meditation practice each day. It’s about a way of life. It’s about changing the negative and unhealthy routines that create the disease states and career states that erode your happiness and performance that can take years off your life. It’s about changing the conversation with your inner critics-that pushy board of directors in your mind.’

‘Learning to catch yourself when you’re distracted and coming back to a point of focus may be the single most important life skill for modern living.’

‘Life can be hard. Don’t take it all too seriously or too personally. The truth is, you’re perfect the way you are. And you could be a little better.’

Source

Joe Burton (2018). Creating Mindful Leaders: How to Power Down, Power Up, and Power Forward

Leading With Mindfulness

Photo by ub0e5uc774 uace0 on Pexels.com

When you are at peace with yourself, with your inner self, you are alive. When you are flexible in how you live your life, you are alive. You are living, not just existing.

That is how mindful leaders lead their lives. They focus on what is important to them. They are not after what is trending. They are after what is alive, not after what is popular.

According to Keren Tsuk, ‘A mindful leader is a leader who can go beyond the day-to-day activities and connect both to the broader picture and to higher purpose. This means cultivating the ability to be in being, at presence, to listening, and to pausing alongside our doing.’

‘Mindful leadership offers a holistic view that embodies a great deal of flexibility for employees and considers their personal needs.’

‘Organizational control is achieved through existential empowerment, through which employees bring their personal ways of work to the organizational space.’

‘Letting go of control means giving employees space and freedom of action to bring their uniqueness into play with their work.’

‘A key practice of leadership today is giving people room to realize themselves, room to deliver creative ideas and innovation.’

‘Confidence begins when people believe they are capable of coping with the challenges they face, even if they do not know how to face them.’

‘Self-awareness allows us to shift because it allows us to practice in a way that is fundamentally adaptable, cutting out the noise of everything else.’

‘Authentic human connection at work … holds people accountable in a way that a team does not; it allows us to step out of our characters and into ideas that are more valuable, more aligned with innovation.’

‘Mindful leadership … is characterized by an inward awareness of the self-awareness of the self and an outward awareness of a need for supporting the development of others.’

‘A mindful leader … is driven by service for the purpose of business and not only by motives of power or money.’

‘A growth mindset sees everything we do as another experience that allows growth and development as a leader.’

Source:

Keren Tsuk (2021). Mindfully Wise Leadership: The Secret of Today’s Leaders