Most business books focus on how leaders can achieve more. How can you do more, better…and faster?
This article takes the opposite tack: how and why, as leaders, you should sit and be still.
Psychologist Daniel Goleman, an authority on emotional intelligence in organizations, calls this the leadership paradox in Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee (Harvard Business School Press):
“For leaders, the first task in management has nothing to do with leading others; step one poses the challenge of knowing and managing oneself.”
This includes:
· Connecting with deep values that guide
· Imbuing actions with meaning
· Aligning emotions with goals
· Keeping motivated, focused and on task
Honing the skills of awareness leads to mindfulness — becoming aware of what’s going on inside and around us on several levels. Mindfulness is living in a state of full, conscious awareness of one’s whole self, other people and the context in which we live and work.