Chapter 13

Thriving on the Challenges of Leadership

In This Chapter

Flourishing in your leadership role

Discovering how you can become a more mindful leader

Leading your organisation mindfully

Boosting your resilience using mindfulness

Most 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 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.

Ideas about what makes a good leader have changed dramatically over time. In the 1920s and 1930s, trait theories argued that leaders were born. From the 1940s to the 1960s behavioural theories argued that you can be taught leadership – it is just a matter of adopting the right behaviours when attempting to lead. You can be autocratic (‘I am the boss, do it this way’) or democratic (‘Let’s decide how we should do this’).

In more recent times, 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 team work 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.

If you look at leadership theories over the last 70 years or so, you can easily see how each leadership theory has built on the last theory. You can also see why human potential theories are gaining in popularity. 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. Over the years you’ve probably developed habits, which have been rewarding, and you repeat these patterns of behaviour with little or no conscious thought.

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 5, your cavemen 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 that I (Juliet) have coached (names changed). 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 feels. 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 well-being.

This example graphically illustrates how mindfulness can help you, as a leader, pick yourself up after a fall, avoiding 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.

Three ways to lead and thrive

Leadership can be challenging, and its 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 well-being.

Soaking in the good

Think about the little things that make you feel good in life. Examples may include stroking 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.

Soaking in the good is free and takes little time. It can also reduce your threat response, activating your parasympathetic nervous system, flooding your system with feel-good hormones. You may be amazed at the impact it has on your life.

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 your body, your blood pressure drops and feel-good hormones such as serotonin is 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 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 5 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 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:

• Understand their purpose
• Practise solid values
• Lead with the heart
• Establish connected relationships
• Demonstrate self-discipline

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

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

Working out whether you’re an authentic leader

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

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

1. I actively seek feedback to improve the way I communicate and work with others.
2. I always say exactly what I mean.
3. My actions are always fully consistent with my beliefs.
4. I always listen very carefully to others’ views and opinions before reaching a conclusion.
5. If asked to do so, I can quickly and easily give a true description of how others view my strengths and weaknesses as a leader.
6. I never play games – what you see is what you get.
7. As a leader, I feel that I need to model behaviours that are consistent with my beliefs.
8. I recognise that others may not share my views on life and leadership, and am open to others’ ideas.
9. I understand what motivates me, and the values that underpin my work as a leader and my life in general.
10. If I make a mistake I always admit to it and am ready to take full responsibility.
11. My values and beliefs have a huge impact on the decisions I make.
12. I actively seek out others’ views to challenge the way I think about things.

Enter your scores in the table below:

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 shown below:

• 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:

• Are highly self-aware
• Demonstrate a high level of self-management
• Are highly socially aware
• Are emotionally intelligent
• Actively work to manage their relationships

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 well-being.

Mindfulness helps you to manage how their 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.

If you want to explore this subject further, two key authors in the field of mindful leadership are Michael Carroll (The Mindful Leader, 2007) and Michael Chaskalson (The Mindful Workplace, 2011).

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 cannot 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. We now look at 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. As discussed throughout this book, your thoughts have a huge impact on how your body feels (for example, tension) and 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 can have a profound impact on the decisions you make.

A number of researchers have concluded that, when making decisions, emotions and negative information have a huge impact. Surprisingly, numeric information, analytic and logical arguments often have less impact. See 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.

Four steps to making mindful decisions

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

1. Spend a few moments centring yourself in the present moment. Focus on the sensation of breathing to make you relax and exist in the present moment.
2. Clearly define the decision that you need to make. Close your eyes, or hold them in soft focus (eyes looking down and three-quarters closed). Just sit with this question, using it as an anchor for your attention. Avoid the temptation to start making the decision or to think about it in any way; just keep on repeating the question in your mind.
3. Imagine the question to be answered placed on a workbench in front of you for closer examination and study. Spend a few moments exploring it, with kindness, and curiosity. Consider:
   • Any negative information you may have associated with the decision – observing how this negative information impacts on your thoughts or emotions
   • Your emotional state in the present moment
   • Any key numerical or statistical information that you may have
4. Open your eyes, evaluate all the information you have to hand and make your decision. You can now make a decision taking into account all the factors involved and being fully aware of any bias you may have initially felt.

Communicating ideas and expectations

Chapter 7 has lots of information about mindful communication. The key thing to remember is that you’re likely to spend a great deal of time on auto-pilot. You may be physically in the same room as the person you’re communicating with, but at some point your mind is likely to wander elsewhere. As a leader, you need to make a real effort to be 100 per cent present when communicating. You need to train your brain to notice when your mind wanders to the past or future or to matters unrelated, and gently bring it back to the present moment. In this state of present-moment awareness, you’re better able to pick up verbal and non-verbal cues from your audience. You’re better able to identify emerging areas of support and build on them. Similarly, you can pick up on areas of dissent and take time to explore or address them. Most importantly, people feel that you’re really listening to them and that you value their time and input.

Mindfully encouraging others to speak up and contribute

A key part of being a leader is encouraging people to voice their thoughts and contribute to discussions and meetings. When you’re in a mindful, present state of mind, you’re better able to encourage people to share their ideas and support them in working collaboratively.

To improve the quality of your meetings, follow these steps:

1. Remove anything that causes a distraction. At the start of a meeting or collaborative working session, ask people to switch off their phones and so on.
2. Set the tone for the meeting or working session. You need to set the scene:
   • State clearly and concisely what you’re trying to achieve.
   • Gain consensus from everyone present.
   • Reassure people that you’re open to hearing their opinions and ideas (there’s no such thing as a stupid question or suggestion). Back up this statement by making sure that you acknowledge and capture in writing every idea put forward.
   • Do not openly criticise someone’s input (whatever you secretly think of it). Value that person by acknowledging their contribution.
3. Create opportunities for everyone to share ideas and thoughts. Don’t expose people or put them on the spot. If they’re initially too shy to contribute, be gentle and supportive.
4. Recap what has been discussed and decided on so far to maintain direction and momentum. At regular intervals, pause and give a brief overview.
5. Make the final decision. Remember that you’re the leader and that the final decision rests with you. If this decision is different to group consensus, always ensure that you thank everyone for their contribution, and let them know that you’ve really heard and considered their input.

Solving problems mindfully

Defaulting to old ways of thinking and behaving is all too easy when you’re trying to solve problems – after all, they’ve served you well in the past. Mindful problem solving takes a more holistic approach.

Mindful problem solving

1. Take steps to ensure that you’re fully in the present moment. Spend a few minutes doing a short mindfulness exercise of your choice, with your eyes closed or in soft focus.
2. Place the problem you wish to solve on your ‘workbench’ of the mind. Try to picture the scene if you can. Observe how it makes your body feel and any emotions it invokes. Try your best not to judge these feelings and emotions as good or bad – just sit with them.
3. Ask yourself the following questions. After asking each question, observe the challenge sitting on your workbench and wait for an answer. Acknowledge each answer as it arrives.
   • How/why has the challenge arisen?
   • What factors are involved?
   • What are the possible solutions?
4. Observe your answers with kindness and curiosity. Avoid the temptation to drift away from the present moment by focusing on your answers. Observe any strong reactions that are elicited by any part of your exploration. Are you experiencing an emotion, for example excitement or fear? Is your body responding, for example, with a clenched jaw or fluttering in your stomach?
5. Open your eyes and make a decision on the best way to solve the problem. You can now make an informed and dispassionate decision, having considered all the facts.
6. See the problem as a challenge. Research suggests by reframing problems as positive challenges to learn and overcome, you’re more likely to take a proactive approach and find effective solutions

After practising mindfulness regularly for eight weeks or longer you should be able to use techniques like this one much more rapidly, as you develop the ability to quickly tune into the present moment and observe things more objectively.

Creating a positive and inspiring workplace culture

As a leader, you’re the one who sets the tone in the workplace. Being true to yourself and your values is important; that is, you need to be authentic.

If you truly value people’s creativity and innovation, make sure that working practices reflect and celebrate these aptitudes. For example, your company could set up a system that identifies and rewards staff who are innovative. Google staff are allocated time each week to work on their pet projects or ideas that interest them. This freedom has led to the development of many of Google’s most profitable products.

If you value mindfulness, and want to cultivate a more mindful workplace, consider:

• Offering staff mindfulness training in work time.
• Setting aside space for people to get away from their desks or work areas to clear their minds and grab a few moments of mindfulness. Leading organisations are creating these spaces, and this privilege is highly valued and rarely abused.
• Cultivating a culture in which staff feel comfortable leaving their work area for a short time to practise mindfulness somewhere quiet.
• Offering mindfulness drop-in sessions, possibly at lunch time, which people can join as and when they want to.

As Mahatma Gandhi famously said, ‘be the change you want to see’. If you want to encourage openness and honesty, be open and honest yourself. Many leaders paint a vivid vision of what an organisation is like to work for, but fail to follow this vision through by making sure that the fundamentals are in place to make the vision a reality.

Mindfully take a long hard look at your organisation, and what it looks like from an employee’s perspective. Does it really match up to the vision painted of it? Ask yourself what you can do to change things for the better, embodying your beliefs and values.

Coping with Stress and Pressure by Building Resilience

Did you know that a lack of control over your work can be a major source of stress? The Whitehall II Study found that leaders experience the lowest level of stress in organisations. This low level may be in part because they have a high level of control over their work. While leaders do have a higher degree of control over their work than many other employees, the high pressure, fast-changing environment that most leaders work in can be a major source of stress. Stress is now reported to be the number one cause of workplace sickness and absence. A huge volume of research carried out over the last 40 years demonstrates the effectiveness of mindfulness to reduce stress.

Mindfulness can build your resilience in the following ways:

• It improves well-being. It helps you gain more benefit from the pleasures in life and creates a greater capacity to deal with challenging events.
• It improves physical health. Scientists have discovered many ways in which mindfulness can improve physical health. These ways include lowering blood pressure, reducing chronic pain and improving sleep.
• It improves mental health. Hundreds of research studies have concluded that mindfulness is effective in reducing stress, anxiety and depression. It can also help with eating disorders, couples’ conflict and even obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• It helps you manage you mind better. Make sure that you remember that you should be in control of your mind – your mind should not be controlling you! Creating a small gap between a stressful or difficult event and your thoughts puts you back in control
• It helps you to cope better with the difficulties in your life. Mindfulness works, in part, by helping people to accept their experiences – including painful emotions – rather than reacting to them with sense of aversion and then avoidance. By approaching and exploring things you find difficult, their grip and impact on your life usually diminishes.

While you cannot always control the challenges and stressors that arise at work, you do ultimately have 100 per cent control over how you respond to them. However, gaining this control can take practice!

Reading a book about mindfulness is all very well, but is no substitute for actually practising it and hardwiring it into your brain. The best way to cope well under stress and pressure is to develop regular mindfulness practice. After discovering and practising the basics for eight weeks, as little as ten minutes formal practice each day can help you take control of your responses to life’s challenges. Here are a few hints and tips to help you build your resilience.

Maintaining peak performance

The trick to maintaining peak performance is recognising when your performance starts to drop off and taking steps to restore it. The Yerkes–Dobson curve, described in detail in Chapter 5, illustrates this scenario.

To maintain peak performance, try this exercise:

1. Practise the body scan (see Chapter 6) to identify the key areas of your body in which you hold tension. These areas vary from person to person. Detecting tension in these areas can act as an early warning system, alerting you of the need to take mindful action. (At work you can do a three step body check at your desk – Chapter 6 tells you how.)
2. Deal with any tension you detect in these key areas. Try:
   • Breathing into them and then letting the tension go on the out breath
   • Giving yourself a few minutes break away from what you were doing by walking outside or from one area of the building to another or by leaving the office premises altogether
   • Eating or drinking something mindfully. Spend a few minutes really experiencing the taste, smell, and sensations as you swallow the drink or eat the food
   • Stretching at your desk – really experience the sense of stretching and moving your muscles
   • Spending a few minutes focusing on sounds, with your eyes closed or in soft focus – just observe them as they arise and vanish without categorising them or having to do anything
3. Return to your work. Your improved performance more than compensates for the few minutes that you’ve spent practising mindfulness.

Implementing mindful strategies for rejuvenation

Mindfulness teaches you how to manage your own mind. It shows you that you’ve a choice in how you respond to life. Just because you’ve always done things in a certain way doesn’t mean that you have to continue to do so. Mindfulness is also about creating a balance in your life between things that nourish you and things that deplete you.

You may find that, when you get particularly busy, you drop things that seem unimportant such as playing a musical instrument, playing a sport, spending time with friends or little pockets of time to yourself. The more you spiral away from being mode into doing mode, the busier you’re likely to become. Here are a few mindful strategies you can try to rejuvenate your life:

• Do a quick audit of the activities you do each day. Note which ones nourish you (make you feel good or give you a sense of mastery or achievement) and which deplete you (sap your energy or make you feel bad).
• Note whether your day includes at least a few things that nourish you. Time spent on these things is an investment in your well-being and should be an important part of your day.
• Recognise that some activities can both nourish or deplete you. Decide what you can change (in your mindset or actions) to make certain activities more nourishing than depleting.
• Spend a little time each day practising mindfulness. Set a time in your diary and don’t let your busy workload rob you of this important investment in your productivity and well-being.
• Do one thing a day mindfully. Take a mindful shower, be mindful of your bodily sensations as you work out at the gym, eat or walk mindfully.
• Take a few minutes to pause and gain maximum benefit from something that you enjoy. Savour every mouthful of that chocolate bar. See all the colours of that beautiful sunrise or sunset. Relish a hug from your children or loved one. Pausing to really experience things you enjoy in the present moment makes your body release feel-good hormones, which reduce stress and increase immunity and general well-being.

Stop surviving and start thriving by experimenting with different aspects of mindfulness. Your investment in time and effort will pay handsome dividends.