A Warrior's Secret to Mindful Leadership
Research proves what the Samurai warriors always knew – that mindfulness meditation is the secret weapon that can make you or your team a winner. For companies and organizations, there are tangible benefits that bring positive change to their leadership and teams. Benefits like improved productivity, increased ability to stay on-task, innovative thinking, and greater empathy for team members.
In the words of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer:
"Just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to make it calm, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things."
When it comes to winning in the marketplace, the same rules of competition apply to businesses as to sports. To win, you need to martial all resources to give you and your team the edge. As an international martial-arts champion, I learned that the difference between winning and losing is often just half a heartbeat or the blink of an eye. In Kumite (fighting), mindfulness meditation gave me the advantage of perceiving the opponent's intentions a fraction of a second before he acted, allowing me to seize control of the moment. I often produced winning attacks and counter strikes that seemed to come out of the ether. In Kata events, my practice helped me to enter into a deep state of calm, shielded from distractions allowing me to execute my forms flawlessly.
After college, I started a creative agency in Dublin, Ireland. We designed everything from pitch decks and concepts for local advertising agencies to full brand identities for international brands like Yoplait, Baileys, Kerrygold, and Fyffes. I remember our team was having a tough time finding the concept needed to create winning design solutions for a particular pitch.
It suddenly occurred to me that the Warrior Zen meditation I had been practicing as a martial-arts competitor might apply to this problem we were having at our agency. So I literally "sat" on the problem, spending the weekend meditating and sketching concepts. By Monday morning, I had three solid ideas the team could use to develop our pitch. The project turned out to be a game-changer for our agency. Mindfulness practices became a central part of the way we began to work together as a creative team and helped us become the number-one brand agency in Ireland.
Regular mindfulness meditation practice instills a sense of calm-rootedness in a leader that helps them to connect more easily with their team. Regular practice puts leaders and their teams in a mindset that creates a relaxed and safe environment where people can contribute freely without fear of being wrong or making a mistake, encouraging innovation and creativity. Both leaders and teams become calmer, more open and better at hearing one another, coming together with a stronger sense of purpose.
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