Mindful Leadership

By Jay Forte

It might seem hard to believe now, but just a few short months ago, one of the biggest challenges organizations faced was keeping its employees engaged. In fact, the Gallup Organization reported in its The State of the American Workplace report that the percentage of engaged employees hovered around only 30% of the workforce for most of the past 20 years. 

Let’s put that into perspective: only 30% of employees were engaged in their work. They brought their A-game to work and were …

By Meggan Davis, José Ramos, and Jeremy Scharf

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-year MBA, says about t…

By Mark Morey

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 signs of what’s to co…

By Chris L. Johnson, PsyD. 

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 something that happens…

By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West 

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 around a group of pe…

By Jay Forte

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 effectively, and tr…

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

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.  

You’re running a vi…

By Andy Lee

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, as well as professi…

Dear Friends,  

By John Murphy

Here is something to contemplate: Why manage something when you can delete it? Why solve problems inside a box when it is the box itself that is the problem? 

In today’s world, we are inundated with strategies and techniques on how to manage unhealthy stress, but very little is offered on how to eliminate it. Some even question whether this is possible. 

No doubt, stress can be a challenge. Every year seems to bring more things to worry about. Viruses. Climate change. Air quali…