Mindful Leadership For Dummies

Chapter 18

Integrating Mindfulness into Everyday Work Practices

IN THIS CHAPTER

Discovering how to manage yourself

Improving the processes and outcomes of your meetings

Making better decisions

Becoming a mindful project manager

It’s easy to fall into the trap of embracing the concept of mindfulness without actually practicing it or embedding it into your life. If you’re serious about becoming a more mindful leader, you need to set a firm intent to integrate it into the way you work. This chapter helps you get started by exploring three key activities that all leaders are involved in – meetings, decision-making and project management. Before exploring each of them in turn, we start with the basics – improving the way you manage yourself.

Managing Yourself Better

WorkplaceMT formal training techniques, such as mindfulness of breath (Chapter 8), body scan (Chapter 9) and mindfulness of sounds and thoughts (Chapter 10), help you to use all your senses to progressively step out of autopilot. Noticing when your mind wanders and observing without judgment your unique patterns of thought and behaviour help you to manage yourself better.

Give yourself permission to take time out to be mindful. This many sound simple, but many leaders find that taking time out to be mindful is hard to do at the outset. They worry about what others will think, or they don’t think they have time.

Most leaders ...