Practicing mindfulness is a challenge in itself. But how do you teach it to busy business leaders? Here’s some of my own experiences after doing it for over 10 years.
There is usually one rule to get started. And one prompt.
The rule is silence. I like to get people outside, but if they’re in deep conversation while they leave the classroom, we lose some presence straight away.
So, as soon as we walk out the door no-one is allowed to talk. Not a word, until coming back through that door.
The prompt is a colour. I ask someone for a colour that is not blue or green. And so the start of the mindfulness experience is not mindfulness meditation but rather deep observation. Looking around us in silence and trying to find that selected colour.
Before going any further in the exercise itself let’s take it back a few steps. What exactly is mindfulness?
Mindfulness can be defined as ‘as a moment-to-moment awareness of our experience without judgment’. It is a state of being. It is not meditation, if meditation is indeed used to be mindful, but a result of it.
And so, we can apply mindfulness to our doing. The actions that make up our daily lives—walking, eating, showering, talking, listening. The mundane and everyday as well as the special.
For example, researchers at the University of California San Francisco found the benefits of an ‘awe walk’ for emotional wellbeing. The research was focused on 52 older adults who were asked to take at least one 15-minute walk each week for eight weeks.
They reported increased positive emotions and less distress in their daily lives. This shift was reflected in ‘selfies’ that participants took on their weekly walks, in which an increasing focus on their surroundings rather than themselves was paralleled by measurably broader smiles by the end of the study.
Back to my typical exercise, people are less focused on themselves, and more aware of their surroundings, in large part because they are not allowed to talk. We hear the footsteps of colleagues, feel our heart-rate increasing. Often we receive the puzzled stares of other people we pass wondering why a group isn’t talking – but probably unable to identify that the source of their puzzlement is the fact that the group isn’t talking.
Brain imaging research shows that mindfulness changes the brain. It is well supported in numerous studies to have significant benefits, including:
Reduced rumination,
Reduced stress,
Better working memory,
Better focus,
Less emotional reactivity,
More cognitive flexibility and better cognitive performance,
More satisfying relationships,
Stronger morality and intuition,
A stronger immune system.
Yet it is important to remember that mindfulness is not perfect. It is not, on its own, the answer to all our challenges in life.
Amidst the global clamour to implement mindfulness practice, some researchers highlight the counter case. Some of this is linked to how we have implemented it in modern society. In his book McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, management professor Ronald Purser describes how modern practice has become divorced from the original Buddhist teachings and that it has become just another “stripped-down, DIY, self-help technique.”
Other recent research has even found mindfulness to promote more selfish behaviour and can also lead to increased anxiety as well as trigger panic attacks.
Just like everything in life there’s no silver-bullet, and mindfulness is no exception. It’s one of a variety of tools we can use.
I like to combine tools, and source inspiration from different fields. The colour-based observation comes from my background in design thinking – of appreciating the power of deep observation.
IDEO CEO Tim Brown says that once a day, we should stop and take a second look at some ordinary situation that we would normally look at only once (or not at all)—as if we were a detective at a crime scene. He said that by feeding our curiosity and immersing ourselves in the “super-normal” we develop incredibly rich insights into the unwritten rules that guide us through life.
Brown concludes that good design thinkers observe and great design thinkers observe the ordinary.
And I think the observation which is part of my mindfulness teaching allows us to appreciate the richness of ordinary life that is laid out before us. By stopping and fully absorbing what is going on. Colour allows us to focus, to filter within the complexity. I think that can also help us when we feel overwhelmed in our busy daily lives.
What do you think follows the observation?
We close our eyes.
What do you think happens?
The irony is that the world often comes into even sharper focus, without vision, since we are able to employ our other senses. We hear a multitude of sounds when previously we heard none. We smell different scents. We feel the wind on our skin.
During the de-brief back in the classroom I ask how long the silent part of the meditation lasts. The answer is 55 seconds. I’ve ran this exercise hundreds of times the past 10 years, in and out of the classroom, and also virtually as a result of the pandemic, and most people believe it to last significantly longer.
During one of these sessions in the past year an executive asked me if there was a recording available. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recorded it, but I have now. Check out the link above which you can use to pique your curiosity, or play it each day to hone regular practice. It’s up to you.
Feel how time can stretch. Immerse yourself in those 55 seconds of silence.
And that, pretty much, is a practical example teaching mindfulness to busy business leaders. It usually lasts around 5 minutes, though the debrief and discussion can last 1 hour or more. There’s other exercises too — a longer mindfulness walk, longer meditation and even mindful eating, often in the class — but this 5 minutes silent exit, observation and 1-minute meditation is the best means of introduction to what mindfulness is.
For me, the ending is always one of the most powerful parts. We return to the classroom. The rule allows people to talk again. Yet no-one ever does. It is always up to me to break the silence, and I do it with great reluctance.
Immense power in stillness. In silence. Being mindful.
However busy you are in your life these days, try and bring some of these elements inside.
Teaching Mindfulness to Leaders
Practicing mindfulness is a challenge in itself. But how do you teach it to busy business leaders? Here’s some of my own experiences after doing it for over 10 years.
There is usually one rule to get started. And one prompt.
The rule is silence. I like to get people outside, but if they’re in deep conversation while they leave the classroom, we lose some presence straight away.
So, as soon as we walk out the door no-one is allowed to talk. Not a word, until coming back through that door.
The prompt is a colour. I ask someone for a colour that is not blue or green. And so the start of the mindfulness experience is not mindfulness meditation but rather deep observation. Looking around us in silence and trying to find that selected colour.
Before going any further in the exercise itself let’s take it back a few steps. What exactly is mindfulness?
Mindfulness can be defined as ‘as a moment-to-moment awareness of our experience without judgment’. It is a state of being. It is not meditation, if meditation is indeed used to be mindful, but a result of it.
And so, we can apply mindfulness to our doing. The actions that make up our daily lives—walking, eating, showering, talking, listening. The mundane and everyday as well as the special.
For example, researchers at the University of California San Francisco found the benefits of an ‘awe walk’ for emotional wellbeing. The research was focused on 52 older adults who were asked to take at least one 15-minute walk each week for eight weeks.
They reported increased positive emotions and less distress in their daily lives. This shift was reflected in ‘selfies’ that participants took on their weekly walks, in which an increasing focus on their surroundings rather than themselves was paralleled by measurably broader smiles by the end of the study.
Back to my typical exercise, people are less focused on themselves, and more aware of their surroundings, in large part because they are not allowed to talk. We hear the footsteps of colleagues, feel our heart-rate increasing. Often we receive the puzzled stares of other people we pass wondering why a group isn’t talking – but probably unable to identify that the source of their puzzlement is the fact that the group isn’t talking.
Brain imaging research shows that mindfulness changes the brain. It is well supported in numerous studies to have significant benefits, including:
Yet it is important to remember that mindfulness is not perfect. It is not, on its own, the answer to all our challenges in life.
Amidst the global clamour to implement mindfulness practice, some researchers highlight the counter case. Some of this is linked to how we have implemented it in modern society. In his book McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, management professor Ronald Purser describes how modern practice has become divorced from the original Buddhist teachings and that it has become just another “stripped-down, DIY, self-help technique.”
Other recent research has even found mindfulness to promote more selfish behaviour and can also lead to increased anxiety as well as trigger panic attacks.
Just like everything in life there’s no silver-bullet, and mindfulness is no exception. It’s one of a variety of tools we can use.
I like to combine tools, and source inspiration from different fields. The colour-based observation comes from my background in design thinking – of appreciating the power of deep observation.
IDEO CEO Tim Brown says that once a day, we should stop and take a second look at some ordinary situation that we would normally look at only once (or not at all)—as if we were a detective at a crime scene. He said that by feeding our curiosity and immersing ourselves in the “super-normal” we develop incredibly rich insights into the unwritten rules that guide us through life.
Brown concludes that good design thinkers observe and great design thinkers observe the ordinary.
And I think the observation which is part of my mindfulness teaching allows us to appreciate the richness of ordinary life that is laid out before us. By stopping and fully absorbing what is going on. Colour allows us to focus, to filter within the complexity. I think that can also help us when we feel overwhelmed in our busy daily lives.
What do you think follows the observation?
We close our eyes.
What do you think happens?
The irony is that the world often comes into even sharper focus, without vision, since we are able to employ our other senses. We hear a multitude of sounds when previously we heard none. We smell different scents. We feel the wind on our skin.
During the de-brief back in the classroom I ask how long the silent part of the meditation lasts. The answer is 55 seconds. I’ve ran this exercise hundreds of times the past 10 years, in and out of the classroom, and also virtually as a result of the pandemic, and most people believe it to last significantly longer.
During one of these sessions in the past year an executive asked me if there was a recording available. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recorded it, but I have now. Check out the link above which you can use to pique your curiosity, or play it each day to hone regular practice. It’s up to you.
Feel how time can stretch. Immerse yourself in those 55 seconds of silence.
And that, pretty much, is a practical example teaching mindfulness to busy business leaders. It usually lasts around 5 minutes, though the debrief and discussion can last 1 hour or more. There’s other exercises too — a longer mindfulness walk, longer meditation and even mindful eating, often in the class — but this 5 minutes silent exit, observation and 1-minute meditation is the best means of introduction to what mindfulness is.
For me, the ending is always one of the most powerful parts. We return to the classroom. The rule allows people to talk again. Yet no-one ever does. It is always up to me to break the silence, and I do it with great reluctance.
Immense power in stillness. In silence. Being mindful.
However busy you are in your life these days, try and bring some of these elements inside.
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