Blog: Age old wisdom for new age leadership

Leadership

Age old wisdom for new age leadership

The Mindful Leadership Summit 2017 was organized in Gurugram recently. Read on to know more about the thoughts shared.
Age old wisdom for new age leadership

Mediation is nothing new to India, but apparently, 'Mindfulness movement' is. 

The West seems to have only newly discovered the benefits of meditation, and this discovery has given rise to a new movement with roots in those very benefits. It is most popularly knowns as the 'Mindfulness Movement'.

For those who are new, Mindfulness is described as the state when the mind is completely present in the moment and is non-judgemental. Apparently, apart from the various personal benefits that being ‘mindful’ provides, it also makes you an extremely effective leader, or so was stated by the modern age gurus and flagbearers of the movement during the Mindful Leadership Summit 2017 held in Gurgaon.

The core of the event was the message that the organizers and the speakers wanted to convey: Mindfulness will lead one to become a more effective leader. The speakers shared their own personal journeys, mostly about how stress at work affects people, and how they discovered meditation and how it potentially changed their mind, and consequently their lives. But most importantly, how it led to them becoming better people, better leaders.

Here are some of the crucial highlights from the event that you help people understand the role of mind, meditation, and purpose in becoming an effective leader.

Your mind is like any muscle in your body, you can train it

When one meditates, one centers themselves on something, and that is how you train your mind. Through regular meditation, one can train the mind to be calm.

Empathy can be developed

Once you meditate, you will learn to be observant and patient. And instead of being reactive, you will be responsive. 

'Drishta bhav' or the third person view

When one meditates, the guru tells him not to force himself into silence. Rather, the first thing that a guru would tell the student is to watch his thoughts and not to interfere. This particular quality which develops over time as one begins to view things instead of being involved leads one to develop a ‘third person view’. And hence, leading to the person not loosing his cool in moments of crisis, but actually being able to help and guide others.

Being authentic

Meditation, apart from the other things, most essentially lets helps you bear your own soul to yourself. It puts you in a situation, where you can enter into a dialogue with yourself, and you can bring down the barriers you might have subconsciously placed in your mind. And there is nothing you can do except resolve it, leading to empowerment in life.

Imagine this

Summing this up, think of a scenario in your office. You are overloaded with work, your colleagues have just entered into an altercation. And all you want is a some ‘peace of mind’. But you can’t have it.

In these situations, how many times have you wished that you could be more efficient  to lighten the workload, be a much more effective communicator and mediator to resolve the conflict in the office, and also that you could be less emotionally and physically tired. If you are still thinking how you could do all of this, than read the article again.

From conscious individuals to conscious organizations

The premise is very simple. A more aware person takes better decisions. Similarly, for any organization which has scores of such people, it will be in a position to take better decisions as well. This is all that Mindful Leadership is all about.

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Topics: Leadership, Life @ Work

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