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Mindful Leadership – all we need to do is notice new things

September 29th, 2011

I was so touched by a colleague’s blog that I asked for e-print rights. I am pleased to share Lisa Markwick’s July 13^th   blog in its entirety.                

• We are sealed in un-lived lives…and it’s important to free ourselves to reach our and the worlds potential.
• Mindfulness is energy giving.
• No matter what we are doing we are either mindful or mindless (there is no in between) and the consequences are enormous for each place to stand.
• When we notice novelty it reveals uncertainty. Perhaps this is why we have trained ourselves not to be mindful – people tend to be attracted to certainly way more than uncertainty.
• Mindful attention is about drawing novel distinctions vs. seeking certainty.
• We confuse stability of mind for stability of context – which is an illusion.
• Mindfulness is see-able and hear-able …and found to be attractive eg. when it is the basis for a production (eg art or music).
• A major road block to mindfulness is fear of making mistakes. So we follow rules in order not to make mistakes!
• The job of a successful leader may be to increase peoples mindfulness because what we realize as mindful attention arises is that most of what we “know” is not so certain after all.
• From a mindful leaders perspective judging or evaluating others’ behaviour at work is not useful. It is more useful to look at the behaviour and understand what is behind it…what it means to the person – and learn from that together.
• We succeed by letting everything vary and exploiting the power of uncertainty – fighting against this and going with the illusion of control or stability, limits future and current possibilities.
• The world is a social construction – when something no longer makes sense (fits us) then reconstruct it so it does.

Just before I listened to this podcast I was working with a colleague and had found my self fascinated and somewhat frustrated by how clear and definitive her “recommendations” were about a path forward. I could not quite put my finger on what was going on. I think I can now and I must speak to her about it because others have come to me mentioning this quality in her.  She sees her role as minimizing risk for the business. I think in order to feel safe (and help us to feel safe) she expresses herself without uncertainty. Often times this may be needed. In this case however we are in a place where we need to be innovating and shifting to adjust to a changing context constantly. I am looking forward to a conversation with her about mindful grace (or is it patience?) … letting us see more, and learn more, before we make decisions which close off other possibilities.   

For more from Lisa, check out http://www.mindfuladventures.co.nz/news/   To continue the thinking about mindfulness and leadership, please leave your thoughts below.