Mindful Leadership

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…

By Jay Forte, guest contributor

So many people today are working remotely. With a computer and Internet connectivity, employees can get most (or all) of their usual work done. 

But working from home during a pandemic is drastically different from the traditional work-at-home mentality. Today, remote employees have to juggle so many things that impact their productivity. There is family, home schooling, shopping in a pandemic, having enough of the essentials, finding and using safety equipment …

View our Free Guide - What is MBSR?

By Brenda Fingold, guest contributor

Even in the best of times, work is messy. By its very nature, work is unpredictable, complex, and continually moving in directions that are both expected and unexpected, pleasant and unpleasant, controllable and uncontrollable. And yet, most of us still show up every day assuming that we can contain our experience and are surprised when a conflict arises, technology goes down, a valued colleague gives notice, a done d…

By Art Kleiner, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, and Josie Thomson, guest contributors

This is part of a series. You can find the first article here. 

Strategic leadership is the ability to handle complex problems: where there is no obvious or facile solution, the stakes are high, and collaboration with others is essential. In this series for Mindful Leader, we are exploring the seven challenges, based in the mind and brain, which strategic leaders can expect to face as they move through their careers.  

By Andy Lee, guest contributor

In 1988, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) published a book that transformed how people thought about leadership development. In The Lessons of Experience, the authors proposed that based on their research, the most important source of professional growth is not training programs or even mentoring relationships, but rather the insights that result from on-the-job experience. They captured this lesson in the 70-20-10 prescription for leadership development, …