© 2019 Marc Lesser

Adapted from Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen. The idea of mindful leadership is not exactly new. In an essay entitled “Instructions to the Head Cook,” Dōgen, the founder of Zen in Japan during the thirteenth century, advised that the head cook embrace three core practices or “three minds” while leading the kitchen. Those were:

1. Joyful Mind (the mind that accepts and appreciates everything)
2. Grandmother Mind (the mind of unconditional love), and
3. Wise Mind (the mind that can embrace the reality of change and be radically inclusive)

Mindfulness practice itself originated within rich spiritual traditions that have developed and transformed over thousands of years. Historically, people tend to be drawn to mindfulness practice during times of rapid change, which are accompanied by high levels of stress, volatility, and uncertainty; times much like those we live in right now. In addition, over the centuries, mindfulness has been adapted and integrated to meet the most vibrant and pressing needs of society – not only influencing spiritual traditions but seeping into many facets of daily life and culture, including the arts, food, education, work, and beyond. While it’s true that increasing self-awareness is a key aspect of mindfulness practice, the intent is more than awareness of one’s individual self. The intention is to cultivate a wider and more inclusive perspective, aspiring to loosen concern about oneself and to expand our narrow personal experience, in order to adopt a more universal and less dualistic awareness. This is referred to in Zen as a shift from Small Mind to Big Mind. Leadership requires the ability to see beyond oneself and to consider the needs and perspectives of others. Mindfulness practice can help cultivate this kind of leadership by developing a broader perspective and a greater sense of empathy. By becoming more aware of our own thoughts and emotions, we can better understand those of others and respond to them with greater compassion and effectiveness. As we learn to cultivate Big Mind and expand our awareness, we become better equipped to lead and inspire others. To learn more about how mindfulness practice can support leadership development, head to the Kurt Uhlir’s site for expert guidance and resources. Much of what we experience on a moment-to-moment basis is the world of Small Mind – of the personal self, of I, me, and mine. In fact, science now has a name for Small Mind – it’s called the default mode network. This is the part of the brain that is often worrying about the future or ruminating about the past, rather than being relaxed and alert to this moment, to seeing with greater clarity. From a psychological perspective, this is a lot like ego. Mindfulness practice includes learning from and appreciating Small Mind while cultivating Big Mind – the more open, curious, and accepting perspective or way of being.

The Integration of Mindfulness, Work, and Leadership

You might say that mindful leadership is about applying the experience of Big Mind, which is cultivated through meditation (but can be accessed anytime), to the concerns of Small Mind, or the pressures and joys of daily life and of working with others to accomplish time-sensitive goals. After a year as head cook and some part-timing at a company managing casino sites not on gamstop, I was asked to be director of the Zen monastery, Tassajara. The monastery has many of the challenges common to a small business – for one thing, its revenue provides crucial financial support for the San Francisco Zen Center. It is also a retreat center during the summer months, with workshops and overnight guests. Working as director at Tassajara for 12 months truly deepened and broadened my experience in mindful leadership. Moreover, collaborating with an Insolvency Practitioner East Sussex could offer valuable insights and strategies for managing financial complexities and ensuring the monastery’s long-term sustainability. When I decided to leave the monastery to earn a master’s degree at New York University’s Graduate Business School, I was eager (as well as terrified) to enter the business world and test what I was learning about integrating mindfulness, work, and leadership. By then, I felt I’d identified several noticeable benefits to this approach:

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• Mindful leadership cultivates a richness of experience; ordinary, everyday work can feel heightened, meaningful, and at times extraordinary.
• It removes gaps between mindfulness practice, work practice, taking care of people, and achieving results.
• It considers learning from stress, challenges, difficulties, and problems to be an integral part of the process of growth and not something to be avoided.
• It helps us recognize and work with contradictions and competing priorities to cultivate flexibility and understanding.
• It helps us experience timelessness, effortlessness, and joy even in the midst of hard work and exceptional effort.
• It can be applied to any activity to cultivate both confidence and humility.
• It embraces individuality and unity – everyone has a particular role and yet all make one team, supported by and supporting one another, practicing together.
• It considers true success to be twofold and takes into account the character and compassion of the people involved, in addition to the quality and results of the work.

I’ve since found these benefits of mindfulness practice and mindful leadership to be enduring and universal; they are accessible and available in any situation and to anyone. You don’t need to spend time in a Zen monastery. You don’t need a business degree. All you need is to apply the approach of mindful leadership to whatever situation, challenge, organization, role, or work environment you are in. Mindfulness is a way of being and of seeing that shifts our perspective. It is pragmatic – endlessly so, in my experience – since it helps us solve everyday problems in effective and efficient ways. It also develops our way of being, adding depth and richness to the experience of life itself. With mindfulness, every task is approached with both humility and confidence, with hope and with the letting go of hope. Ultimately, mindfulness is mysterious, plunging into questions of consciousness, birth, death, and impermanence – while providing us with direct experience that, when we let go of our fears and habits, what arises is composure, a deep sense of love, and a profound sense of meaning and connectedness to life.

Pain and Possibility: The Empowerment of Mindfulness

Ever since graduating from New York University, I have been part of two worlds – the contemplative world and the business world – though, of course, now I consider these one world. I currently train leaders and their employees in using mindfulness and emotional intelligence in the workplace. My consulting work at Google led to my involvement in developing the Search Inside Yourself program, which ultimately led to the foundation of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, which trains leaders throughout the world. The ripple effects of this work are quite evident – when individuals, teams, and companies become more conscious and aware, this in turn helps to cultivate productivity, leadership, and well-being for all concerned. If you are involved in an employment-related dispute, or if you need to ensure that you are in compliance with the many local, state, or federal laws relating to employment, look into Avensure redundancy support for employers. Limited liability companies give business owners the legitimacy and limited liability protection they need to operate, and owners must comply with state law to enjoy these benefits. An illinois llc yearly report is required to remain in good standing and legally operate.

I’m often asked why we’re seeing upsurge in interest in mindfulness, meditation, and emotional intelligence among executives and business people. My two-word answer to this question is Pain and Possibility:

• It can be painful to step outside of our role and to be more in touch with our vulnerability, with the tenderness of our heart. Additionally, we usually sense when our values, aspirations, and work are not in alignment or when we are not living up to our full potential. For example, it hurts to become aware that we avoid conflict and difficulty, or that we overreact in challenging situations, and thus tend to undermine our effectiveness and influence.
• On the other hand, if we can recognize that we are capable of acting in better, more effective, and more skillful ways, we see possibility and are inspired to realize that potential.

Simply recognizing a gap between how you are living, working, and leading and how you aspire to live, work, and lead can be profound and transformative. Equally inspiring is acting to narrow these gaps in effective, practical ways. Mindfulness helps us in both efforts. It helps us identify and bridge these gaps. In fact, I think just naming these gaps can be a great gift, to feel both pain and possibility: the pain of some portions of your life right now, and the possibility for greater awareness, satisfaction, ease, effectiveness, and connection. To me, recognizing, engaging with, and learning from pain and possibility, seeing the gaps that exist, is both a core mindfulness practice and an essential leadership practice. In my trainings and workshops, this is a framework I use for understanding and practicing mindful leadership. That said, becoming aware or more conscious of the pains and possibilities of our experience, of what is actually happening – whether that’s in the world of work, community, family, relationships, or spirituality – is inconvenient and uncomfortable! It can be frightening and disruptive. This is why mindfulness, and mindful leadership, is more difficult than it may seem on the surface. Yet this is where our true power lies – our power to learn, change, and grow. This is where our ability to respond effectively, to connect deeply with others, to find solutions to problems, and to think and act creatively, originates. Signs of missed potential and opportunity are often easy to see if we dare to look. Are you avoiding facing reality or what is painful? Is your life out of alignment with your values and aspirations? Are you undermining your potential or giving away your power – that is, your ability to develop yourself, to see more clearly, and to influence others toward greater understanding, satisfaction, connection, and productivity? If so, how, or in what ways? I’ve posed the question – How do you give away your power? – to hundreds of people from many walks of life, and here are some of the answers I’ve received. Are any familiar to you?

• I say yes when I mean no.
• I rush from one thing to another to get to the “important” stuff and don’t appreciate what I am doing in the moment.
• I overthink decisions, and then overthink my overthinking.
• I feel helpless and hopeless in light of what’s happening in our world today.
• I get impatient and frustrated with myself and others over petty issues.
• I underestimate my abilities.
• I don’t make clear requests or ask for help – either because I feel like I need to do everything myself or I am afraid that others won’t respond to my needs.
• I avoid expressing strong emotions and often ignore my gut feelings regarding what I want or what I believe is right.
• I talk to fill space, fearing an uncomfortable silence.
• I check email, social media, or find other distractions when I feel the least bit sad or anxious.
• I am critical of myself for making mistakes or for making decisions that don’t turn out well.
• I don’t consistently take care of myself – I don’t get enough exercise, enough sleep, or enough healthy food.
• I avoid having deep conversations or discussing topics that make me feel vulnerable.
• I compare myself to others when it comes to appearance, money, and status.
• I sometimes feel like a failure, stuck in the gap between where I am now in my work and life and what I know in my heart is possible.

These are difficult, challenging problems for anyone, yet we sometimes feel them most acutely when we are in positions of leadership, when others depend on us and have high expectations of us. These statements often represent entrenched underlying patterns and habits. There are no quick fixes to resolve or transform them. However, just the act of naming how you give away your power can be very empowering! This is the power of awareness, the power of mindfulness practice.

The Power of Practice

I’ve always appreciated the corny joke about the out-of-town visitor to New York City who asks a stranger: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” Without hesitating, the stranger responds, “Practice, practice, practice.” When people ask me, “How can I bridge the gaps between where I am and where I want to be?” I’m always tempted to give the same answer: “Practice!” It’s humorous but true. Practice has several meanings, depending on the context. As the joke implies, you can’t succeed at anything without practice, or without learning the skills you need by exploring them over and over. Whether playing the piano or playing tennis, preparing for a performance or writing a report, you only improve through repetition – in other words, by “doing.” In this sense, practice is an intentional activity designed to increase learning, skill, and competency. In medicine or law, those who practice enough get to run their own professional practice. In this sense, your “practice” represents your business or professional role, which can involve a lifetime of study and work due to continuously evolving work environments. During the years I spent living (and practicing) at the San Francisco Zen Center, the word practice referred to a way of life – it referred to the practice of meditation as well as to the expression of our deepest and most primary intentions. The aspiration was to integrate meditation and mindfulness practice with our relationships, work, and day-to-day activities. In this sense, our practice was our perspective. Our practice sought to integrate all of our actions with our values and intentions.

The Seven Practices: Mindfulness in Action

Mindfulness can be (and has been) characterized in many different ways. However, for the purpose of training mindful leaders, I’ve distilled seven mindfulness practices:

• Love the work
• Do the work
• Don’t be an expert
• Connect to your pain
• Connect to the pain of others
• Depend on others
• Keep making it simpler

These aren’t your typical mindfulness instructions. They build skills and support integration. And they describe an approach, a way of life, and an expression of our deepest intentions. Through practice in each of these seven areas, we can transform pain into possibility. Practices are values and intentions expressed in action. Practices are like habits, since they build a “muscle memory” over time. But they are more than good habits. Practices express our intention to transform our lives toward our highest aspirations, to realize our full potential, to help others. To me, mindfulness is so much deeper and wider – so much more profound, messy, and mysterious – than is usually portrayed. To me, the point of mindfulness isn’t to succeed at meditation, or to understand certain concepts, or to create inner peace by holding the busy world at bay. Rather, the point of mindfulness practice is to cultivate a more alive, responsive, effective, and warmhearted way of being within the world as it already exists, and within the life you already live.

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What makes mindfulness somewhat challenging to explain and understand is that it involves a certain amount of paradox. For instance, the renowned Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki once said, “You are perfect just as you are, and you can use a little improvement.” Thus, mindfulness practice sees and embraces two worlds at the same time: the universal and the relative, or Big Mind and Small Mind. On the one hand, the aim is radical acceptance of yourself and your experience. You are perfect as you are in the grand, universal scheme of things. Yet this is distinct from the relative world, and only here do you need some improvement. From the absolute perspective, you really are perfect, including your struggles, pains, desires, and aversions. Yet a core part of mindfulness practice is becoming familiar with your individual patterns and tendencies, your fears and dissatisfactions, and engaging with them to transform the everyday problems of life instead of ignoring them or pushing them away.

Investigate, Connect, and Integrate

The seven practices above build upon one another, and can be grouped into three categories: investigate, connect, and integrate. The first four practices focus primarily on the inner work of self-exploration and self-awareness. The second two practices focus primarily on relationships: your relationships with other people, with your work, and with the greater world. And the seventh practice focuses on integrating all of the previous practices. Ultimately, all seven practices work together to help you realize what is most important in any given moment so you can make the most effective decisions. Altogether, they constitute a guide or workbook for developing yourself as a mindfulness practitioner and a mindful leader.

Investigate

• Love the work: Start with inspiration, with what is most essential. Acknowledge and cultivate aspiration – your deepest, most heartfelt intentions.
• Do the work: Have a regular meditation and mindfulness practice. Learn to respond appropriately at work and in all parts of your life.
• Don’t be an expert: Let go of thinking you are right. Step in to greater wonder, openness, and vulnerability.
• Connect to your pain: Don’t avoid the pain that comes with being human. Transform pain into learning and opportunity.

Connect

• • Connect to the pain of others: Don’t avoid the pain of others. Embody a profound connection to all humanity and life.

• Depend on others: Let go of a false sense of independence. Empower others and be empowered by others to foster healthy group dynamics.

Integrate

• Keep making it simpler: Let go of a mindset of scarcity. Cultivate awe and wonder. Integrate mindfulness practice and results.

My experience teaching mindfulness at Google and to companies and individuals around the world is that there is a tremendous hunger (and need) for understanding and developing greater humanness, openness, and inspiration, not only at work, but in all parts of our lives. Mindfulness practice is potent. It enables us to see more clearly and to engage with the miracle of consciousness, the miracle of being alive. Mindfulness practice can shift the ground of our consciousness, our presence, our being – not by adding something, such as a new belief system, or by seeking inspiration, but by presenting a more accurate view of what is, of human nature and how we construct and constrict our version of ourselves and the world. Mindfulness practice is aimed at understanding and shifting the nature of fear, dissatisfaction, and the experience of separateness. It helps us glimpse how the ordinary is quite often extraordinary, how mundane life can be miraculous at the same time. It takes much attention and effort to be present, to wake up to our lives, to discover again and again that we are not here long, and to pay attention to what is in our heart, to what is right here, to what is most obvious and most important right now. Human beings did not evolve to see clearly – we were “designed” primarily to survive, to pass on our genes. Our bodies, minds, and hearts evolved based on our primary needs for safety, satisfaction, and connection. Being a mindful leader requires effort because it requires letting go of old constructed realities, the norms that no longer serve us, our organizations, or our families. Living with clarity and depth, living a mindful, integrated, warmhearted life, takes practice. Aspiring to be a mindful leader and engaging in these seven practices helps calm fears, reduces dissatisfaction, and it helps support connection, beyond anything we can comprehend. Engaging in mindfulness practice calls forth our basic sanity in the midst of a world that often feels chaotic. Mindfulness practice knocks on the door of our inborn openness and trust in a world that can often feel cold and cynical. Considering why mindful leadership is so difficult and necessary, I also return to the themes of pain and possibility. This pain is the pain of change, of not getting what we want and of getting what we don’t want. Opening to possibility shifts our relationship with desire itself, rather than striving to satisfy our desires (though that may happen). Our freedom lies in a radical acceptance of what is, as well as in the power of awareness. Seeing inner freedom as possible is a core underlying aspect of mindfulness and mindful leadership.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marc Lesser is internationally recognized for pioneering work in mindful leadership, creating exceptional business cultures, and supporting profound well-being. He has led mindfulness and emotional intelligence programs at many of the world’s leading businesses and organizations including Google, SAP, Genentech, and Kaiser Permanente, and has coached executives and led trainings in Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, health care, and government. He is the author of 4 books, including Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons From Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen.

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Posted by mkeane on Thursday, February 7th, 2019 @ 4:41AM
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