Leadership Coaching for Mindful Leaders: Self-Awareness is Key to Leadership

Mindful Leaders

Are you working in a company or law firm where leaders are self-aware? Do leaders in your company or law firm have a calm and reassuring presence under pressure?

One of the most powerful questions one can ask is “Does our company culture support the importance of leaders' self-reflection?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent leaders know themselves and how they impact others.

Mindfulness

Most business books focus on how leaders can achieve more. How can you do more, better…and faster? This post takes the opposite tack: how and why, as leaders, you should sit and be still. How do your leadership skills benefit when you take time to quiet your mind and simply sit and be still?
 
Psychologist Daniel Goleman, an authority on emotional intelligence in organizations, calls this the leadership paradox in Primal Leadership: “For leaders, the first task in management has nothing to do with leading others; step one poses the challenge of knowing and managing oneself.”

This includes:

• Connecting with deep values that guide
• Imbuing actions with meaning
• Aligning emotions with goals
• Keeping ourselves motivated
• Keeping ourselves focused and on task

When we act in accord with these inner measures, we feel good about what we do. Our emotions become contagious. When we, as leaders, feel positive, energized and enthusiastic about our work, so do those we influence.

Honing the skills of awareness leads to mindfulness—becoming aware of what’s going on inside and around us on several levels. Mindfulness is living in a state of full, conscious awareness of one’s whole self, other people and the context in which we live and work.

Before you dismiss mindfulness as New Age rhetoric, pay attention to the research. Recent studies in management science, psychology and neuroscience point to the importance of developing mindfulness and experiencing meditation.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become an inspiring and mindful leader. You can become a leader or follower who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged and aligned with the vision and mission of your company or law firm.

I am currently accepting new executive coaching and career coaching clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to [email protected].

Comments

[Robert Graham]

Thank you for bringing up the importance of being still and mindful. I once read that the Dalai Lama was asked at an interview if, during a particularly hectic period, he still had time to practice his meditation for an hour a day. He smiled and said that things had gotten so busy and stressful, he had to meditate for two hours instead of just one.

At a time when our attention span is shorter than ever, the practice of turning everything off and focusing on Now is more important–and more difficult–than ever.

Robert Graham
Founder, GrahamComm
www.grahamcomm.net