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Effective Executive Journal

The Transformative Leadership Capacities of Mindfulness

Article Details

Pub. Date	: Sept, 2020
Product Name	: Effective Executive
Product Type	: Coaching and Mentoring
Product Code	: EECM30920
Author Name	: Linda Kantor, Kurt A April, Warren Nilsson
Availability	: YES
Subject/Domain	: Management
Download Format	: PDF Format
No. of Pages	: 39

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Abstract

This paper explores participant leader experiences of mindfulness at the workplace and presents an inductive model that highlights the potential of the mindful individuals to transform their work world in the domains of productivity, relationality and power. The model highlights the resources and capacities built through practice and considers capacities developed as antidotes to the three Buddhist poisons of greed, hatred and delusion. Using a phenomenological approach and semi-structured interviews from 53 participant leaders working in a variety of organizational contexts, this paper explores how individuals trained in mindfulness applied and understood this capacity at work. Participant leaders had trained in one of the three different Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs): Executive MBA (EMBA) Mindful Leadership Program, Mindfulness Teacher Training, and an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. The research distinguishes some key individual meta-capacities (awareness of the wandering mind, embodiment, equanimity and kindness) and individual capacities (resilience, sense of self, multiple perspectives and possibility) that develop. These individual capacities enhanced participant leaders' abilities to work with difficult emotions. The individual changes allowed for new behaviors and experiences in the areas of productivity, power and relationality.

Description

Understanding Mindfulness
The origins of the concept and practices of mindfulness are found in early traditional Buddhist texts. The Sanskrit word "Sati" describes a lucidity, as part of self-development linked to the reduction of human suffering and enhanced states of calmness and contentment. The streams of discourse around definitions of mindfulness are numerous. Definitions range from early Buddhist understandings to Western philosophical approaches, to a cognitive understanding of attention. The range of definitions has left mindfulness training at the workplace open to a wide range of interpretations. For practitioners and participants at the workplace, the multiple definitions of mindfulness could result in some confusion or even contention. In the words of Singh et al. (2008): "..the definition of mindfulness will vary depending on whether one is interested in mindfulness from a social, psychological, clinical or spiritual context, or from the perspective of a researcher, clinician, or a practitioner and their various combinations" (p. 661). This study draws on Kabat-Zinn's (1994, p. 4) work, and defines mindfulness as: ".... the capacity to pay attention, non-judgmentally in the present moment".