Can a mindfulness program strengthen leaders—and leadership skills—across an organization?
Absolutely. That’s exactly what my mindfulness workshops accomplish.
To understand this connection, start at the base of this framework and work upwards.
—Mindfulness leads to greater self-awareness
—Self-awareness increases your ability to self-manage your actions and reactions
—Self-management helps you get in better touch with your motivations and purpose
—Deeper understanding of your own motivations makes you better able to grasp and respect the motivations of others, which leads to empathy
—Empathy helps you relate to others, making it more likely they can also relate to you
—Leadership is all about influencing others, and the only way to do this is to relate to others and have them relate to you
To put this another way, when a leader lacks some or all of the lower levels in this framework, it is far less likely that person will be an effective leader.
Viewed from this perspective, it is hard to imagine how any organization would fail to support an ongoing mindfulness program.
I’d value hearing your thoughts on this framework…
P.S. The arrows go down as well as up because you are never “done” with this process, and success is never a straight line.