How leaders can stay focus in complex times

By Megan Reitz, Michael Chaskalson, Sharon Olivier, Lee Waller* BUSINESS leaders in Saudi (Arabia) and the region face complex times with a changing economic scenario, young people entering the workforce and technological advancements changing the way of doing business. When faced with such challenges, it is important not to lose focus but be mindful of the effect of the changes on yourself and your team. Interest in mindfulness as a helpful skill for leaders to practice in the complex, dynamic and fast-paced context of the 21st century has been growing exponentially. Whilst evidence for its effectiveness in improving a variety of skills such as focus, empathy and emotional regulation is very promising, the evidence has predominantly been gathered with clinical populations. Robust research conducted with organizational leaders examining the impact of mindfulness training is, however, extremely limited. This leaves leaders and leadership developers considering mindfulness interventions with little idea about whether, why and how mindfulness practice might impact leadership effectiveness. We decided to delve deep into the art of mindful leadership with a project involving 57 business leaders; and focused on three key leadership capacities for the 21st century: resilience, collaboration and leading in complexity. Our key research questions included: • To what extent can a mindfulness training intervention improve these key leadership capacities? • In what other ways does a mindfulness training intervention impact leadership effectiveness? • If the intervention does impact leadership capacities, why and how does it? • How much home practice is needed to make a difference? • What are senior executives’ experiences of undertaking a mindfulness training program, in particular the home practice element? • What advice can we give to leaders and leadership developers in relation to mindfulness interventions? Evidence suggests the program was effective in developing the three capacities and this effect was reliant upon the level of home practice undertaken. Participants described a number of challenges to practicing meditation including: busyness, ‘beating themselves up about lack of practice’, lack of routine and lack of support from others. Conversely what helped these busy executives to practice regularly included building practice into a routine, seeing that the practice was giving them positive benefits, accepting and allowing themselves to experience highs and lows in their practice and having the support of others. Participants practiced on average 10 minutes a day. Those who practiced more than this were significantly more likely to experience improvements in their mindfulness and resilience levels than those who practiced less than 10 minutes. Following participant reports, we offer the beginnings of a theory of mindful leadership which suggests that improved metacognitive capability (the ability to to choose at crucial times to observe, in the moment, what they were thinking, feeling and sensing), the capacity for ‘allowing’ and an attitude of curiosity may be viewed as ‘meta-capacities’ which create a ‘space’ conducive to responding as opposed to reacting to events. This in turn may influence critical leadership skills such as focus, emotional regulation, empathy, adaptability and perspective taking. These skills may result in improvements to resilience, collaboration and leading in complexity as indicated by the participants in our study. While advising further research in this area, we suggest that mindfulness training, including personal practice, may be considered an important and effective intervention in developing leadership capacity for the 21st century. * The writers are from Ashridge Executive Education