Why leaders need mindfulness now as the key leadership element!
Times are troubling. Energy shortages, financial turmoil, the never-ending pandemic issues, armed conflicts nearby, progressive digitization and working conditions in which some workforces – shaken by a lack of staff – have reached the end of their patience. Being a manager now is a real challenge. In my work in the process industry, in production and service companies worldwide, I am involved in what is happening every day.
How mindfulness as an element of leadership helps
Our mind is awake and alert. It analyses, prioritizes, plans and controls and it is also inclined to rely on systems. On hierarchical systems of competences and responsibilities or on data-based systems from a digital environment. But our mind is not the top performer in our organism. Due to evolution, our emotional perceptions are much faster and always ahead. Although we largely suppress them in everyday life. In management, we often still expect that emotional perceptions should not play a role either on the part of the executives, colleagues or superiors. But purely verifiable facts.
But here lies a proven key to successful management work. If we exercise mindfulness in leadership, i.e. practice a conscious, benevolent focus of attention on a daily basis, then anything is possible: increased productivity, efficiency, innovative power and creativity, as well as stable resilience even in difficult times and social skills that employees can use again binds companies and thus prevents fluctuation and absences. For managers themselves and for every employee. What it takes is to train perception. Sensing before leading!
Our supposed top performer is highly sensitive!
Our minds, which are increasingly overloaded and often pushed beyond all borders, are more limited than we would like. Cognition gradually leaves it to our feelings and the body to draw attention. And there they are: increasing tiredness, decreasing concentration, distancing oneself from the tasks, lack of creativity, dwindling motivation through discipline that is nevertheless whipped up every day, to the point of pain and the development of symptoms of illness. The decreasing neuroplasticity of our brain by constant stress has long been proven. Gradually, it only uses the “well-trodden paths” and no longer changes for the better. And gone is the reliance on the mind, on the cognition, which we so urgently demand and need every day in top shape! And it is becoming increasingly difficult for managers to motivate overwhelmed, tired, battered employees.
Sense and avoid!
Both with the manager himself and with the employees, one can feel the degree of excessive demands long before the physical statement and lead accordingly. If you focus your attention on it and have a real presence in the action, you can make strategically and tactically more sensible decisions and react operationally. You can create sustainable framework conditions that allow everything to happen again. Productivity, efficiency and stability in the team can be actively nurtured again. Then, as a manager, you are not only in a position to trouble-shoot among quarterly results and annual target discussions, but also to really move forward in the sense of leadership. And success – it succeeds! Verifiable with measurable positive influences on the operating result within six weeks through mindfulness as a leadership element.
If you want to learn for or with your team how to put “presencing” before leadership, how to avoid the worst for people and companies with scientifically proven methods, e.g. the 7 pillars of mindfulness, with the 8 drivers for neuroplasticity and how to get back to everyday work , which is not only somehow manageable for everyone, but is fun again and brings the desired results, then please contact me: info@cm-mindfulchange.com or 0049 (0) 178 878 0385