Mindful Leadership: Understanding the Concept and Practice

This article is sponsored by Lancaster University Management School

What is mindful leadership and why does it matter?  Chris Saunders, FTMBA director at Lancaster University Management School, explains why being a better manager and a better leader requires a more holistic perspective than is often acknowledged.

How to be a good manager

Does learning how to be a good manager also mean learning to be a good leader? Saunders believes that the answer to this question lies in understanding the close relationship between leadership and management.

“If you’re a good manager, then you’ll be able to decide what needs to be focused on, you will be able to come up with good policies, good procedures, and you will have good methods of implementing those policies. You will be able to plan well, to measure what you’re doing, and to take your team with you,” says Saunders.

Leadership, on the other hand, calls for a wider vision. “Where a good leader comes from is really understanding his or her purpose, and the purpose of the organization. This enables you to understand where you must focus. When you’re in a position of leadership there are huge demands on your time. You have generally got to the position because you’ve been very good at managing something, at the detail, but now as a leader you have to let go of some of that detail in order to allow others to be able to grow into their roles, and so it is imperative that you understand where you will add most value. An understanding of your purpose helps with this,” he says.

Saunders also believes that while it is possible to teach a person how to be a good manager, you can’t always teach them to be a good leader. “You can give them ideas or theories about mindful leadership, and you can help them with methods on how to reflect on what they do so that they can learn from their experience, which is very critical, but you only really learn how to lead from the experience of actually doing it. That’s the only way you learn leadership, you don’t learn it from sitting in a classroom, you learn it from getting out and taking leadership,” says Saunders, adding that on the MBA program at Lancaster University Management School, students work with a variety of companies and charities in order to gain and reflect on their experiences to improve their leadership abilities.

Mindfulness in the workplace

Mindfulness in the workplace is an idea that is impressed upon many MBA programs, including Lancaster’s in which it is central, and is crucial both to managers and leaders. So what does it entail?

Saunders explains that his school’s approach to mindful leadership has its roots in Artistole’s three approaches to knowledge: episteme, techné and phronesis.

“Episteme is essentially knowledge, and on an MBA this is the knowledge you get from core courses such as accounting, marketing or operations.  Techné refers to the skills needed to manage, such as negotiation and presentation skills, skills that can be gained through training. Phronesis best translates as having the practical wisdom needed to make good decisions. This is something that can only be gained through experience, and can only be built if one can learn from experience," says Saunders.

He explains that part of the concept of mindfulness in the workplace is being aware of how you think and act and how that impacts on others.

“The ideas of mindfulness can be taught. For example, on our program what we get students to do is use different reflective techniques to understand a little bit more about themselves, their cognitive processes, and what captures their attention at any one time. And that helps them develop skills for mindfulness.”

General Mills – a Fortune 500 company in the food industry – has such a program, where employees use meditation techniques to help them focus and understand how the mind works in relation to the information overload most people are subject to.

Saunders adds that the concept of mindfulness is a discipline unto itself. “You can’t just get it on the course. You must learn disciplined reflection, and apply this to your experience, which helps you become more mindful. Being mindful helps students to develop practical wisdom, and they capture this by defining the principles they have for managing and leading. The principles are the things they consider important for themselves as a manager or leader, regardless of the job or company in which they work,” he says.

Defining leadership qualities

Leadership qualities are not something which can be defined in a textbook. Again, mindfulness is required.

“People generally come in to a leadership class looking to be told the answer as to what leadership is. But, if it’s a good leadership class they’ll come out of it understanding that leadership is different for each person. So, it depends on who you are and your context and it depends on the environment in which you’re leading. Context is very important,” says Saunders.

“We try to get our MBAs to think of mindful leadership as something you do for your whole life. We help them to look back at their life and learn from it. Leadership is an on-going apprenticeship, and the key quality of a leader is the ability to reflect on experience, and to learn from the people around you. So, a key quality of a leader is a desire to learn; the desire to be curious; and the ability to be mindful,” he concludes.

This article is sponsored by Lancaster University Management School