Choosing to Lead

Good leadership. 

Thoughtful, visionary, compassionate, supportive, self-aware, trustworthy. 

These are some of the words that participants in our first Mindful Leadership program tossed out when asked for qualities they see in excellent leaders they've known.  But it took some time for everyone to dig in and find the right labels. Good leadership is something we can feel- in the heart and gut, but maybe we don't often stop to identify the actual qualities that generate these good feelings. 

It was much easier to apply negative labels. Arrogant, self-centered, demeaning, disrespectful, jerk, ego, insensitive, unaware, untrustworthy... This list was longer, more accessible and generated a lot of energy in the room as everyone's emotions became stirred with memories of upset and injustice.

Interestingly, when we stopped to examine the traits that we, as leaders, aspire to achieve, and those that we wish for in our own leaders, we noticed that mindfulness underlies them all.  Leaders who slow down to pay attention, who listen fully, who can see the big picture- all demonstrate mindfulness of the present moment. Whether they recognize this label as the foundation of their skill is questionable, but most certainly we, as those being led, we can feel it. 

Looking back at the other list, we noticed that underlying every single negative label was fear. And fear-driven behavior is most often mindless, because we are rarely aware of the fear, nor do we like to acknowledge that it is in control. Our habitual reactivity runs the show when we're being driven by fear- fear of failure, fear of looking bad, fear of making a bad decision. I'm reminded of "Otto" the autopilot in Wall-E, the Disney movie (a recent fan favorite in my house). Given its instructions 700 years ago by some terrified humans driven by fear, "Otto" insisted on continuing to follow that ancient protocol, even though contradicting evidence was right in front of it.  A massive struggle commenced when the Captain of the ship, himself a creature of habit, realized that he had a choice to respond differently because he was human. He chose to Live. 

This activity in our workshop confirmed to me that mindfulness training is increasingly important- in our leadership development programs and in development programs everywhere. At the root of human choice is awareness.  We do have the choice to live and lead according to that "good" list.  But we can't choose if we don't see that there are options. 

Living Mindfully, Leading Mindfully - a course through the UCSD Rady School of Management's Center for Executive Education - will be offered again in the Fall of 2014.