Mindful Leadership can be defined as a leadership whose attention is grounded pervasively in the

present and is in-tune with real-time emotions that are in turn derived from daily complexities and
uncertainties embracing our lives.

Modern world and its ever increasingly complex set of drivers, with their vast array of permutations,
perpetually seeking ever higher trifecta of profits, productivity and performance metrics, defining
them as the inalienable requirements of a high performance organisation, has in turn and sometimes
inadvertently created an ego-driven, personality-centric, more times than not exhibitionist, intense
working culture, at its core, and increasingly at odds with elements within human’s hierarchy of needs,
namely Physiological, Safety, Love/belonging, Esteem and Self-actualisation (Maslow, 1943).
Throughout twentieth century the environment for creation of organisations that were increasingly
divorced from the indirect consequences of their actions became prevalent. The new century, with its
new-found sensibilities, and specifically the ubiquitous presence of highly interconnected technology
platforms, providing the ability to instantaneously share, distribute and disseminate information and
reactions to events, has created a need for a new, and at heart primordially existential, type of
leadership.

Mindful Leadership taps into what is essentially a fundamental aspect of Eastern esoteric self-
regulatory and self-actualising philosophy and assimilates it into modern Western cultural narratives,
that have evolved over the last century to demand intense competition and maximum performance
with a view of achieving and breaking ever new records, across almost all metrics.

A pertinent example that manifests the lack thereof Mindful Leadership can be the BP’s Deepwater
Horizon disaster that occurred on 20 April 2010. The CEO of the company appeared to be so
disconnected and disinterested in the calamity that was unfolding, under his watch, that he infamously
announced, in an interview held a few weeks after the disaster that the environmental impact was
“very, very modest” and later on went to say that he wanted his life back (Bergin & Kerry, 2010).

Mindful Leadership, at face value, may be deemed as a contrarian approach to maximisation of profits,
products and performance. However new research has shown some interesting results that do fly in
the face of such a notion (King and Jarrod, 2017).

King and Jarrod (2017) assert that the result of their study, and dissection of array of other literature
and research, underpin the important and increasingly essential facets of Mindful Leadership in recent
era. The study goes on to show the impact and influence of Mindful Leadership on contextualised
positive leader performance, and the very positive transformational dimensions of this approach is
further corroborated. These transformational aspects and the resulting balance between internal and
external drivers and array of unpredictable stimuli, the study claims, is deemed to provide the
leadership with improved presence of mind, manifesting itself in enhanced and clear thinking,
emotional stability and improved problem-solving abilities. This enhanced performance can be
effective for navigating uncertainties and complex events that do unfold and do require a self-mastery
combined with a level of humility and disengagement from self-interest, that at its core can be
attributed to Mindful Leadership.

Considering the results of the above study and what I have personally observed throughout my career,
organisations’ increased interest in recruiting and developing mindful leaders is therefore a pragmatic
approach to addressing the requirements of the new age of corporate citizenry, social license, and
essentially their license to operate. BP’s lessons-learnt following the aforementioned disaster can be
a case in point to support this mindset and the invaluable nature of mindfulness and resulting reaction
to stressful situations.
Considering that individuals are at once rational and emotional and the uniqueness of individual is
governed by the degree by which these states, and their interplay, are present at any one time,
deduction can be made that the derivative personality traits will have a profound impact on how
effective a leader could be in certain circumstances. King and Jarrod (2017) refer to psychology
research that suggest that personality traits, have at least in theory, some impact on leadership
effectiveness. Their study goes on to highlight, through data collection across senior managers of a
global firm, that the inherent stresses that are part and parcel of today’s complex and unpredictable,
and increasingly uncertain and fickle environment, can and do accentuate certain undesirable
personal traits. I Argue that converse is also possible, where desirable traits can be and are
accentuated when the right environment presents itself. One such example can be the personality
traits embodied by Winston Churchill who was a highly effective wartime leader during second world
war (WW2) and an ineffective and unsuccessful peacetime leader post WW2. Another reference can
be made to BP’s CEO, mentioned earlier, and his reaction to the very stressful period following the
disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Considering leadership to be a function of reflection and experience,
BP CEO’s lack of demonstrating reflection within an environment that he had zero experience in,
further underpins the value of personality traits that could have assisted him in such a situation, such
as being sympathetic, demonstrating vulnerability and compassion and hence showing how his values
aligned with the issues at hand. Had that been the case he could have managed the disaster far more
conscientiously and allowed the community at large and the company to work together to arrive at
an amicable outcome, bereft of animosity and hostility, which incidentally were the manifested
outcome, eventually costing the company huge litigious sums plus the cost of the disaster itself,
notwithstanding the disastrous public relation outcome for BP, finally culminating in the ouster of the
CEO (Walsh, 2010).

Having spent one half of my career as a follower and the other half as a leader I have developed a very
critical view on how employees’ performance is impacted by behavioural aspects of the leader. At the
early part of my career my opinion of my leader, and in turn my performance, was derived essentially
from my leader’s technical competency. As my technical competencies improved I realised that how I
performed was very much dependent on how I was treated, not necessarily as an engineer, but as a
person. The leaders that demonstrated emotional intelligence, tempered confidence, higher values,
resilience, adaptability and shear ability to reflect and pause in the face of very stressful situations
were ones who inspired me and encouraged me to strive for being better at whatever I was doing. I
willingly put myself out of my comfort zone and pushed myself hard to achieve outcomes that would
have otherwise remained unrealised. Conversely the leaders that were predominantly instinctive and
temperamental, were ethically questionable and showed traits and attributes deemed opposed to
what I conceived as progressive stymied my efforts and hunger to achieve and were causes of my early
departure from those companies.

Now that I am in a leadership position I can see how my demonstrated personal attributes and
behaviours effect my team members and how crucially important it is to practice what I preach and
maintain the moral high ground to give my followers a platform to look up and aspire to. I have realised
that before I can actively lead others, I need to first lead myself, and in doing so demonstrate that I
have the necessary grit, to show levels of humility and vulnerability, and hence the privilege of leading
others.
References

Bergin, T., & Kerry, F. (2010, June 3). BP CEO apologizes for "thoughtless" oil spill comment.
Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-spill-bp-apology/bp-ceo-apologizes-
for-thoughtless-oil-spill-comment-idUSTRE6515NQ20100602,

King, E, & Haar, JM 2017, 'Mindfulness and job performance: a study of Australian leaders', Asia
Pacific Journal of Human Resources, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 298–319,

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-96,

Walsh, B. (2010, July 25). Oil Spill: Goodbye, Mr. Hayward. Time. Retrieved from
http://science.time.com/2010/07/25/oil-spill-goodbye-mr-hayward/