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In this guide, I’m going to share with you a powerful meditation for leadership skills, and I’ll explain why I believe mindfulness is the absolute number one tool for leaders.
Now, here’s the truth of it: absolutely anyone can be a good leader. Whether it’s in the workplace, on the field of play, or even just with your family, you have the power to lead with vision, integrity, and confidence. And while some evidence suggests that some leadership skills are genetic, I firmly believe that anyone can acquire those skills.
But what “skills” are we talking about?
Generally, the best leaders display the following character traits:
- Self-confidence That has to be a belief, both internal and external, in your own abilities and your ideas (you really need to feel confident and communicate that belief).
- communication skills So that you can convey your thoughts and ideas to your employees in a clear and concise manner. Ultimately, better communication means less risk of misunderstandings.
- management skills: Broadly speaking, the ability to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each team member, and create a structure that works with those strengths and weaknesses for the betterment of all.
- emotional intelligence: To understand the feelings of team members (as well as your own) so that the decisions you make serve the interests of both team members as individuals and as a group. This is why meditation is so great for team building.
- Empathy and Compassion: With empathy and compassion you will have a deeper understanding of the psychological motives of your employees, which will enable you to motivate and inspire them, and hopefully their betterment. Because, as the Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “The true leader uses his power compassionately for the happiness and well-being of those around him.
- ImaginationAnd especially the ability to visualize the path to prosperity, as Abraham Zalznick once said, “Imagination in business is the ability to see opportunity”.
- levellessness, When things turn south, you, as the leader, will be expected to act as the team’s stabilizing force, maintaining a confident calm no matter what.
- Decision making skills: Because the choices you make will shape the future of your team/company.
Notice how all these are qualities of the mind? This is why meditation, the number one tool for training the mind, is so beneficial to leaders.
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benefits of meditation for leaders
Meditation can help us improve our leadership skills in many ways. It can improve our communication skills, enhance our ability to connect emotionally with our employees, help us make better decisions, and much more. But forget all that for now. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that meditation can completely circumvent the biggest problem all leaders face: Ego.
Researcher and author Jim Collins conducted studies from which he determined that the number one issue interfering with a company’s stability is “the presence of an inflated ego.” Why? For starters, egotistical leaders are likely to shut down any constructive criticism their team members might give them. They also run the risk of devaluing others’ creative ideas because they weren’t the first to come up with them. And in the end, they forget that team success is just that – team success. Team—and they focus purely on their own successes.
Arrogance kills teams.
But meditation can help. Indeed, traditional texts on meditation, which are primarily Buddhist, often include practices that remove the ego and lead to meditation. Unity, Sure, we don’t need to go that far, but the fact remains that meditation can help us overcome the ego problem. And indeed, in my work teaching executives to meditate, many have confided to me that their meditation practices helped them escape their narcissism, and that greatly improved their leadership.
But this is only the beginning. also consider Amazing effect of meditation on emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman says that emotional intelligence is an absolute necessity for leaders. He tells us that high EQ is largely about awareness, both social awareness and self awareness. Research shows that meditation increases EQ and makes us more aware of our own and other people’s emotions. It also makes us less reactive to our emotions, which helps us stay balanced. Specifically, meditation strengthens the insula part of the brain, which is essential for managing emotions. This is especially true of Vipassana meditation, a technique in which we observe and label our thoughts and feelings.
Meditation also strengthens the prefrontal cortex, which is the logical part of the brain. This is one reason why meditation sharpens our decision-making skills. When you combine this with increased cortical thickness in the insula, it means that meditation gives us the power to stop, pause, and reflect, even at times when many people are making rash decisions. Afraid to take Two good meditations for this are zazen, the meditation principle used in Zen Buddhism, and trataka, a yogic meditation in which we meditate on the flame of a burning candle (though a significant part of this meditation has nothing to do with the candle and It’s totally about it. still holding our gaze).
And let’s not forget the avoidance of conflict and the resolution, Meditation techniques such as Loving Kindness can make vast improvements in our empathy and compassion. In turn, this empowers us to see things from the other person’s point of view, which is essential for both avoiding and resolving conflicts in the workplace.
It also helps with creative thinking, Research shows that meditation improves divergent and convergent thinking, which in turn improves our ability to generate new ideas. This is especially true of meditation in which we do not focus on one thing but open our mind to the entirety of our surroundings, a technique known as open meditation. Indeed, in my meditation sessions I have been able to help writers and other artistic types overcome a creative block and create new concepts, purely by practicing Open Meditation.
And best of all, you’ll be a pillar of peace, Because meditation balances the stress chemical cortisol as well as other neurochemicals such as noradrenaline and serotonin, it helps you stay calm and balanced. And of course that can only be a good thing for both you and your team.
So yes, there are some incredible benefits of meditation for leaders. But how do you start meditating? For best results, I recommend booking an online meditation lesson with me. But I’ll also give you some pointers here.
Best Meditations for Leaders
Loving Kindness and Other Compassion-Based Methods: When you have compassion and empathy, you will gain a deeper understanding of your employees’ psychological needs and desires, and this will help you inspire and motivate in ways that go far beyond monetary.
Conscious Breathing to Calm Down: Whenever you feel calm or anxious, spend five to ten minutes breathing mindfully. It’s the very exercise used by Scott Shute, former VP of Customer Operations at LinkedIn, who now leads the company’s mindfulness program. Mindful breathing is beneficial for everyone on the team, whether they are the leader or not. This is one of the many reasons why you may prefer to meditate at work.
Open Meditation for Creativity: If you want to be more creative and come up with new ideas, try practicing open meditation. It is a method in which we do not focus on any one thing but open our mind to the totality of our surroundings. This will improve your convergent and divergent thinking, which will improve your creativity.
Practice mindfulness at work: Mindfulness comes in two versions. there is state mindfulness, which is the actual formal practice of meditation. and then there’s trait mindfulness, which is a common quality of being consciously aware. It’s best to do both. Do one meditation session a day, and then aim to be mindful all the time.
Note that all of the above are the methods we teach in our virtual corporate meditation classes.
Other Ways to Improve Leadership Skills
Practice Self Awareness: As a leader, your own actions are paramount, and therefore it is important to have a high level of self-awareness, including an accurate understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. One way to increase self-awareness in your leadership role is to use an anonymous questionnaire.
Improve your communication skills: Leaders must be able to communicate effectively. Thankfully, mindfulness and meditation can help with this. When you calm your mind through meditation, you will clarify your thoughts, making it easier to communicate those thoughts.
Practice Personal Development: The more you grow as an individual, the stronger your leadership skills will be. There are many ways to develop, from contributing more to your community, to learning new skills, to becoming fitter in both mind and body – in fact, it’s one reason you might want to consider Workplace wellness program.
Summary
Being a leader is both a privilege and a responsibility. While we may enjoy our positions of leadership, we must make sure that our egos do not interfere, that we are empathetic and compassionate toward everyone on our team, and that we have the vision and vision to take our workplace. Be it both skill or team up to the next level. Thankfully, meditation can help. We’ve looked throughout this guide at how meditation can reduce ego-related problems, enhance mental processing, increase our level of compassion, and strengthen our emotional bonds with our team.
If you want to get the most out of meditation, book a meditation lesson with me today.
external resources
To learn more about leadership and development, I recommend taking a look at the following:
- Dale Carnegie.
- Harvard Business School Executive Education Program.
- Center for Creative Leadership Development Program.
- Columbia Business School’s Executive Education Program.
- Abraham Zalznick
Paul Harrison is a passionate meditation teacher who believes in real, authentic meditation. He has over 15 years of experience in meditation and mindfulness. He studied meditation in beautiful Oxford, UK and Hamilton Ontario Canada and received his degree at Staffordshire University.
“My goal is to provide the most authentic meditation sessions so you can harness the power of your mind for personal transformation” – Paul Harrison
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