Mindful Leadership

By Meggan Davis, José Ramos, and Jeremy Scharf, guest contributors

We started Mindfulness and Leadership (“M&L”) in 2019 as a student-led initiative at MIT’s Sloan School of Management with a firm belief that to lead others well we must first know ourselves. Despite research recognizing some inner knowledge is key to effective leadership, many MBA students graduate without a toolkit for understanding themselves or how they relate to others.

Jeremy Scharf, one of our co-founders and a second-ye…

By John J. Murphy, guest contributor

The year 2020 has clearly introduced some major challenges to our personal lives and our business practices. Travel has been severely restricted, and in many cases, canceled all together. Obviously, this means we need to pivot and adapt to succeed, especially if we travel for a living. In my case, I had a major contract with a new client in San Diego come to a temporary halt and several speaking engagements around the country canceled. What is a speaker, coa…

By Mark Morey, guest contributor

Remote worker burn-out is a tsunami slowly rolling towards every manager who thinks they dodged a pandemic bullet. 

As New York Times columnist Jennifer Senior put the matter bluntly in her recent op-ed: “We are not, as a nation, all right.” (1)

The ground is shifting beneath our feet. Life is confusing and yet our responsibilities are still requiring our participation and leadership. If you are in a company and have direct reports you have already seen the si…

By John J. Murphy, guest contributor

Meditation is an immensely helpful practice to bring harmony, balance, and inner peace into one’s life. It’s also a great way to boost creativity and improve performance. That’s why I do it every day to center myself, open my heart, clear my mind, and let go of anything weighing me down. Having said this, I am often asked about alternative practices or “tools” one can use to boost consciousness and elevate awareness. It’s not a bad idea to have more than one…

By Chris L. Johnson, PsyD., guest contributor

COVID’s tragic impact—on health and the economy, working remotely or job seeking, juggling kids and school, racial strife, and a divisive US election soon—is like nothing we’ve ever had to address (1). Yet, if these past few months of enforced pause have shown us nothing else, it’s that we’re able to learn on the fly.

Conventional, rationalistic tradition—involving lectures, books, data points, and debate—has led us to believe that learning is some…

By Mo Edjlali, Chief Community Organizer, Mindful Leader

It's been exciting and sometimes concerning for me to watch mindfulness go mainstream. Though mindfulness has been overhyped in some ways - marketed as a panacea to fix everything - I believe that we are at the early stages of the potential for the application of mindfulness in the workplace. Here are some of the critical pain points that all organizations across industry and size face, which I believe workplace mindfulness programs will …

By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West, guest contributor

As a school dedicated to everyone uncovering their authentic contributions to life, we at New Ventures West have always worked to cultivate optimal conditions for growth and connection. We are constantly honing and refining the ‘containers’ for our Integral Coach training programs—particularly now that we have moved to a virtual classroom.

What is a well-held container?

A container for growth is just that: a physical and energetic field ar…

By Michelle Palladini, guest contributor

Today’s society offers countless ways to improve yourself, and the wave of mindfulness has come in like a tsunami in recent years. Many look towards mindful practice as a way to step back, regroup, and manage the thoughts/feelings/emotions that surface during the day. While mindfulness is an important tool, it’s just the vessel that keeps you afloat so you can communicate, connect, and lead effectively (it’s not actually about you).

The organizational i…

View our Free Guide - What is MBSR?

By Andy Lee, guest contributor

If you wanted to identify the beginning of today’s burgeoning mindfulness movement, it wouldn’t be hard. All arrows would point back to Jon Kabat-Zinn and his development of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, right around 1980. The program was completely original—and in many ways revolutionary—in a way that may be hard to appreciate today, as practically all programs developed since have been built on its groun…

By Jay Forte, guest contributor

For many organizations, how they do business and how work is done has completely changed. Though many organizations feel compelled to return to the way things were before COVID-19, this isn’t possible. Many of the things that previously filled our days have been replaced with things we either never thought possible or thought we would get to someday, like workplaces with fully remote employees, touchless contact, effective video sales calls, home delivery of near…