Join getAbstract to access the summary!

Audrey Tang

The Leader’s Guide to Mindfulness

How to Use Soft Skills to Get Hard Results

FT Publishing, 2018

15 min read

10 take-aways

Audio & text

What's inside?

Most people know just a little about mindfulness, yet business leaders recognize its career benefits.

1×

Editorial Rating

Qualities

Overview
Concrete Examples
For Beginners

Recommendation

Most people know just a little about mindfulness, yet business leaders recognize its career impact and workplace benefits. As psychologist Audrey Tang reports, a Mindfulness Initiative study found that users said mindful practices made them feel positive, focused and resilient. Mindfulness can help you be more conscious of your prejudices, goals and values. It can also strengthen your leadership skills. Tang describes how mindfulness leads to better decision making: It helps you set priorities and distinguish between important information and mere noise. In considering the practical aspects of mindfulness, Tang discusses using mindful practices to support collaboration, resilience, creativity, “emotional agility” and confidence. Her comprehensive introduction to mindfulness shows readers how to use it, step by step. Tang encourages those who wish to deepen their leadership skills to add mindfulness to their methods.

Summary

“Practical Mindfulness”

If you ask a group of people what they understand about mindfulness, about half of them will talk about meditation or breathing or, perhaps, yoga. The other half will say that it’s nonsense. They will disclaim interest in hearing anything more about it. Yet the business world has embraced the concept of mindfulness. Universities teach courses on mindfulness in business schools. Publications produce articles that refer to mindful practices in the halls of tech industry leaders such as Intel, Apple and Google. These articles highlight the gains mindfulness has brought to these companies.

Originating in Buddhism, mindfulness is, according to one definition, a “contemplation of one’s own experience, subsumed under the four objective domains of the body, feelings, states of mind and experiential phenomena.” In 2016, Cranfield, Birmingham and Aberystwyth Universities conducted a study for the Mindfulness Initiative. Participants reported that mindful practices made them feel positive, focused and resilient. It enhanced their insights into other people’s behavior.

Practicing mindfulness strengthens ...

About the Author

Chartered psychologist Audrey Tang founded CLICK Training and is the resident psychologist on the Chrissy B. Show, a British program devoted to mental health. Some of the research she cites is available at Mindful.org.

Comment on this summary

More on this topic

By the same author

Book

The Leader’s Guide to Resilience

In our Journal

9 months ago

Journal Article

In Defense of Slow

Savor the benefits of integrating “slow” into your life. Fast food. Instant messaging. Efficiency tools. Learning sprints. The pace at which we consume, from food to knowledge and experiences, keeps accelerating. But at what cost? As life in the fast lane continues to accelerate, many people yearn for a slow lane less traveled. People from […]

11 months ago

Journal Article

How to Reassure Your Team

In the face of unsettling technological change, ease the panic and show a way forward – with these eight action steps. Will I be out of work soon? Is my company going to survive? How can I upskill so I remain relevant in five years? These are probably just some worries preoccupying people’s minds as […]

2 years ago

Journal Article

How to Raise Your Happiness “Set Point”

Techniques to put a smile on your face 🙂 Happiness is that elusive end goal people try to pursue when they’re not juggling work, family and social obligations. Yet, according to economist Richard Layard in Happiness, despite a steadily increasing standard of living since 1950, people are not generally happier. Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky says in […]

2 years ago

Journal Article

Well-Being Is About More than “An Apple a Day”

It also means managing your time and energy wisely and practicing emotional intelligence.

3 years ago

Journal Article

“Mindfulness Is a Lifestyle.”

British psychologist Audrey Tang discusses how introducing small nuggets of mindfulness into your workday can lead to powerful changes over time. As a trained psychologist, Audrey, when did you first become interested in mindfulness? Audrey Tang: My grandfather was a Buddhist teacher back home in Melaka, Malaysia. As a young child, I would sometimes get […]

4 years ago

Journal Article

Ancient Buddhist Wisdom for Turbulent Times

Though timeless, the teachings of Buddhism are uniquely suited to cope with today’s fast-paced world. Buddha’s teachings, which originated roughly 2.5 millennia ago, began to penetrate Western mainstream culture in the 1960s and have since gained increased popularity and acceptance. Many in the West have found modern relevance in Buddhist ideas and concepts, which can […]

4 years ago

Journal Article

Of Viruses, Vulnerability and Superheroes

Isolation highlights the need to reach out. The pandemic is taking an emotional toll on all of us. Some struggle with intense feelings of isolation and loneliness. Others navigate the daily challenges of living in close quarters with their family members. Many of us are plagued by feelings of guilt and despair for not being […]