Chapter 9

Thriving on the Challenges of Leadership

In This Chapter

Flourishing in your leadership role

Boosting your resilience using mindfulness

Discovering how you can become a more mindful leader

Leading your organisation mindfully

M ost people spend a huge amount of their time at work. It stands to reason, therefore, that work should make you feel good about yourself, give you a sense of personal mastery and be fun. Unfortunately, many people find work to be stressful, demotivating and frustrating. Great leaders identify what motivates people and match their skills to those needed by the organisation, thus creating a win-win situation. In order to create this situation, leaders need to be in a fit state to lead others.

In this chapter we take a look at leadership roles and how to use mindfulness if you’re in one!

Understanding Different Leadership Theories

Ideas about what makes a good leader have changed dramatically over time. Most recently, contingency theories (such as situational leadership) argue that no one leadership style is correct and that as a leader you need to adopt the correct leadership style for the situation. Transformational theories view leaders as agents of change. As a transformational leader you can ‘transform’ the workplace via teamwork or team development, or by acting as an agent of change or a strategic visionary.

Human potential theories are the latest development and are concerned with the performance of the leader from a human perspective. These theories incorporate authentic leadership, resonant leadership, mindful leadership and neuro-leadership. Human potential theories are concerned with maximising your potential as a leader by being true to your values, and finding out how to work in harmony with yourself rather than trying to be something you’re not. Mindfulness is a core element of human potential theories of leadership.

We live in a VUCA world — volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. This new world may go part of the way to explaining why some leadership theories are no longer effective. Yet many leaders, and you may be one of them, continue to base their leadership behaviours on outdated models. Why? Because like everyone else you probably do a fair amount of your work on auto-pilot.

Adopting new, human potential theories of leadership can be scary, as you discard the security blanket of your old methods of leadership and take a leap into the unknown of being yourself, and maximising your potential as a leader. In this brave new world, you need self-knowledge and the courage to be true to yourself. In return, you can shed the heavy burden of trying to be someone who you are not in favour of being the best you can be.

Thriving Rather Than Surviving

Being a leader is a challenging role, especially in times of recession and economic crisis. Being a senior leader can also be a lonely and isolating experience. At times when you feel under pressure and uncertain about the future, you’ll find keeping your team motivated and engaged tough. As a leader, you may also feel less inclined to seek support and guidance from your peers. Catastrophising as thoughts spiral round and round in your head is all too easy.

Imagine missing a report deadline at work. In reality this situation is hardly life or death, is it? But your mind is likely to make up its own story about what’s going on, blowing the matter out of all proportion. As you discovered in Chapter 4, your caveman threat response can have a serious impact on your performance, health and happiness. By practising mindfulness and learning to observe thoughts as mental processes, you can change things.

Take the example of Dave and Ken, two middle managers from the same organisation. Both applied for the same senior leadership role. An external candidate was appointed, so neither got the job. How they dealt with the situation was very different.

Dave’s thoughts started to spiral down as he catastrophised about the situation. He tried to get on with work, but his mind kept on wandering to what went wrong at the interview, and how this might threaten his career.

Ken, however, applied mindfulness to his feelings of failure and rejection. He noticed himself starting to spiral down and his body becoming tense. He practised mindfulness for a short while, calmly observing his thoughts without reacting or thinking about them further, recognising the impact of his thoughts on his emotions, and then noticing how his body felt. He released the tension he felt and then focused his attention on the present-moment sensation of breathing. Ken returned to his work. He acknowledged feeling sad and a little angry about missing the promotion, but did not let these thoughts and emotions have a negative impact on his work and wellbeing.

This example graphically illustrates how mindfulness can help you, as a leader, pick yourself up after a disappointment and avoid falling into a downward spiral of despair. Mindfulness also teaches you that the problem is never the real problem. Your perception and response to life’s challenges is what can throw you out of the frying pan and into the fire!

While many things are beyond your control at work, you always have a choice about how you respond. Choosing how you respond is empowering — it hands control back to you.

Leadership can be challenging, and it’s easy to forget to look after yourself. Here are three simple exercises that can help you balance work demands with the need to care for your wellbeing.

Soaking in the good

Think about the little things that make you feel good in life. Examples may include holding a pet, hugging a loved one, someone appreciating something you’ve done, or seeing the first flowers of spring.

Ask yourself if you can give these small pleasures a little extra attention. As you experience them, try pausing for a moment to really soak in the good they provide. Allow your body time to release feel-good hormones so that you can derive maximum benefit from these pleasurable experiences.

Smiling

When you smile, you’re telling your body that everything is fine. This simple action turns off your threat system. Your body immediately stops pumping adrenaline around itself, your blood pressure drops and feel-good hormones such as serotonin are released.

Being kind to yourself

Do you find it easier to demonstrate empathy and kindness to others rather than yourself? Maybe you dismiss the idea of self-kindness as selfishness?

Sometimes you need to be selfish for your own preservation. Try to avoid beating yourself up for mistakes you make, things you get wrong or things you should have done. Being kind to yourself can help reduce or eliminate the detrimental effects of fear, guilt and shame.

Taking a time-out to consciously accept yourself and make friends with the person you really are helps you increase your happiness and creativity. This time-out is especially important if you’re a leader. Self-acceptance also helps to train your brain to work in approach mode rather than avoidance mode. A befriending exercise such as ‘Cultivating kindness’ in Chapter 4 helps you to deactivate your threat system, making it easier to concentrate and gain a fresh perspective. Befriending yourself can be really hard when you first practise it, but it does get easier over time and is definitely worth working on.

For leaders, the ability to identify and overcome outdated mental programming without triggering the threat system is vital. If you’re really serious about being a better leader, and thriving rather than surviving, you need to prioritise time to learn mindfulness and embed practice into every day you spend at work.

Being a More Mindful Leader

Human potential models of leadership all centre around the concept of being the best you can be, maximising your innate leadership qualities while being true to yourself and your values. All human potential theories incorporate mindfulness in some shape or form.

This section briefly explores models and ideas around becoming a more mindful leader.

Authentic leadership

Authentic leaders are leaders who demonstrate the genuine desire to understand their own leadership behaviour in order to serve the needs of the organisation and its staff most effectively. Their behaviour and decisions are based on strongly held values and beliefs. By upholding these values and beliefs, they increase their personal credibility and win the respect and trust of their team, colleagues and peers.

Authentic leaders actively encourage collaboration and the sharing of diverse viewpoints, leading in a way that others perceive and describe as ‘authentic’. Authentic leadership is all about leaders as individual people. It can be likened to a self-awareness approach to leadership and leadership development.

According to Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic and author of Authentic Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2004), authentic leaders are motivated by their mission, not your money. They tap into your values, not your ego. They connect with others through their heart, not their (sometimes artificial) persona. Authentic leaders should live their lives in such a way that they would be proud to read about their behaviour on the front page of their local newspaper.

George defines authentic leadership as having five dimensions. Authentic leaders:

He believes that acquiring these five dimensions isn’t a sequential process, but happens throughout a leader’s life, often over a long time.

Mindfulness is a key element of authentic leadership. It underpins all five dimensions described in the preceding bullet list. It helps leaders increase their self-awareness and self-regulation. It helps them to be kinder to themselves and to protect their values.

This activity will give you an indication of how ‘authentic’ your leadership style is.

Score the following questions as follows: 0 = not at all like me; 1 = a little like me; 2 = mostly like me; 3 = an accurate description of me.

Enter your scores in the following table:

Interpret your trait score as follows:

0 = A trait you do not display or do not value

1–3 = A trait you can work to improve

4–6 = A trait you display

7+ = A trait you truly embody

To work out your overall score, add up the figures in the right-hand column. The authenticity of your leadership style is as follows:

0–13 = A low level of authentic leadership behaviours displayed

14–26 = A moderate level of authentic leadership behaviours displayed

27–36 = Someone who leads with authenticity

If possible, repeat the exercise with one or more colleagues, peers or members of your team. Don’t forget to emphasise the need to be honest! Do your team members see you in the same way that you see yourself?

Resonant leadership

Resonant leaders are individuals who manage their own and others’ emotions in ways that drive success.

The idea behind resonant leadership is that, rather than constantly sacrificing themselves to workplace demands, leaders should find out how to manage these challenges using specific techniques to combat stress, avoid burnout and renew themselves physically, mentally and emotionally. Many of these techniques are derived from mindfulness practices.

Resonant leaders:

Mindful leadership

The latest thinking on effective leadership suggests that leaders need self-awareness (a clear idea of what makes you tick, your strengths, weaknesses, beliefs and motivations) and must be well-grounded and centred.

In addition, leaders need to be able to manage how their mind deals with multiple demands and constant connectivity so that they can maintain peak performance and wellbeing.

Mindfulness helps you to manage your mind by regulating and focusing your attention, making you more aware of your thoughts and emotions. Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine and co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center, refers to mindfulness practice as ‘good brain hygiene’, which is as important to your health as brushing your teeth.

Practising Mindful Leadership

As you process the continuous stream of information coming in from the world around you, your brain selects the things it deems most relevant and often dismisses the remainder. Academics and researchers argue that business performance is strongly influenced by this continuous stream of individual and organisational ‘meaning-making’.

Mindfulness encourages a state of active awareness, openness to new information and willingness to view situations from multiple perspectives. Adopting a mindful attitude allows you to suspend judgement until you have all the facts. Doing so refines your ‘meaning-making processes’, giving you a more balanced view of the world around you.

This state of active awareness can’t be achieved by simply grasping the idea of mindfulness as an intellectual concept. To fully benefit from mindfulness, you need to regularly apply it to your workday practices. When you gain sufficient knowledge and confidence, you can help others around you by introducing a few simple mindfulness practices into their working lives. Here are some practical ways to incorporate mindfulness into your work as a leader.

Making mindful decisions

If you’ve been in a leadership or management role for any period of time, you’re probably well versed in various models of decision-making. What you may not be familiar with is looking at your mindset and unconscious mental programming when making decisions. Your thoughts have a huge impact on how your body feels (for example, tension) and your emotions (for example, happiness and fear). Similarly, holding tension or anger in your body has an impact on your thoughts. This impact is often unconscious, but it can have a profound effect on the decisions you make.

A number of researchers have concluded that, when making decisions, emotions and negative information have a huge influence. Surprisingly, numeric information, analytics and logical arguments often have less impact. Refer to Chapter 2 for more on the benefits of mindful decision-making.

By practising mindfulness you become more aware of the different factors at play when making a decision, including the impact of your own meaning-making process, which leads to less subjectivity in decision-making.

Try this activity to improve your approach to making decisions. Follow these steps: