本文源自2015年6月Toastmasters杂志期刊文章
https://www.toastmasters.org/magazine/articles/mindful-leadership
作者：琳达·艾伦
琳达·艾伦，ACS, CL，是俄克拉何马州伊尼德平原演讲协会的成员。她是一名作家、演说家和培训师，专门研究文化意识、职业和个人发展以及领导力。
当大量的信息、培训和材料竞相吸引我们的注意力时，当你想提高你的领导技能时，你如何知道从哪里开始呢?你怎样才能更好地鼓舞、激励、吸引和激励他人?
企业、政府、大学、市民团体和个人都发现，真正伟大的领导力来自能够首先领导自己的人。积极参加社团活动是一个很好的开始，如果你选择追求领导的轨道，你会获得额外的洞察力。
虽然你可能不认为自己是Toastmasters之外的领导者，但我们每个人都会在我们的互动中作为榜样、导师、同事、家人和朋友影响他人。即使是陌生人也会观察你的行为和反应，并根据他们所看到的做出决定。你的影响力的力量和影响比你意识到的要大。
心理学家、《工作中的正念》(Mindfulness at Work)一书的作者斯蒂芬·麦肯齐博士写道:“好的领导力就是知道该把人带到哪里。”“知道如何领导别人的本质就是知道如何领导自己。”我们必须先发现自己的全部工作潜力，然后才能引导别人发现他们的全部工作潜力。”
近距离接触
领导自己的第一步是了解自己是谁——你的价值观、性格和本质。包括苏格拉底、老子、佛陀、莎士比亚、拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生等在内的来自不同文化和时代的受人尊敬的声音，都表达了某种形式的“认识你自己”，以指导后代寻求生活的目的和意义。
要真正了解自己，你必须近距离地独处，安静地问自己并回答“我是谁?”我们经常回避这个令人困惑的问题，因为我们考虑的是我们不是谁，而不是我们能成为谁。别人的意见，无论是积极的还是消极的，也会影响我们对自己的看法。每个人的答案都是独一无二的，没有正确或错误的答案。
大多数人通过他们生活的内容——经历、思想、事业、物质对象和人际关系——来定义自己。了解自己就是做自己，不再满足于满足，”畅销书《当下的力量》和《新地球》的作者埃克哈特·托尔说。
但是，当你被超负荷的生活所淹没时，找到时间和空间来询问和回答关于身份的深层次问题可能是一项挑战。过去的智者给了我们另一条忠告:保持安静。
一个古老的习俗
在当今这个多任务处理和信息过载的世界里，我们的大脑经常自动运行，只是为了跟上工作和个人生活的要求和责任。当周围世界的噪音打断你的一天，干扰你的思想和注意力时，你怎么能找到一个安静和内心平静的地方呢?
正念是静止与和平的空间，在这里你可以安静你的思想，放松你的思想。这是一种古老的做法，它正在吸引新的注意力，作为一种减缓思维和重新引导你分散的注意力的方法。正念是多任务处理、自动工作和生活的对立面。它教会你通过静止来控制你的思想和想法。几个世纪以来，正念的持久力和价值已被证明是正确的。
情绪健康
如果你认为你更频繁地看到像正念、有目的、有意识、自我意识和参与这样的词，你是对的。它们已经悄悄进入了主流意识，甚至进入了商业词汇，这些词汇传统上嘲笑处理情绪的领导品质。在国际经济会议上举办的正念研讨会吸引了全场爆满的人群。
谷歌有一个名为“搜索你内心”的正念课程，是该公司最受欢迎的培训项目。大约有2000名员工参加了这个项目。Tan chad - meng(音译)领导了这门课程的创建，他有一个不同寻常的头衔——“快乐的好伙伴”。他通过帮助谷歌员工在生活中创造和平、快乐和善良，鼓励他们保持情感健康。当你带着这三个特质生活时，你就能引导别人拥有同样的经历。没有这个基础，很难做正确的事情，Tan说。
和其他公司一样，谷歌也发现了正念对公司利润和成功的积极影响。人们开始为了更大的利益去帮助别人。Tan认为，谷歌在通信技术方面的领导地位将刺激软件和应用程序的发展，这些软件和应用程序将把正念交到数字用户手中。
Janice L. Marturano是正念领导力研究所的创始人和执行董事，也是《寻找领导的空间》一书的作者，她将正念领导力作为一种简单有效的领导和生活得更好的方法来实践。在通用磨坊(General Mills)担任高管期间，她通过对日程安排过多的生活中最响亮的声音做出反应，平衡了职业、公民和个人责任。
当家庭和公司的决策挑战了她通常的解决问题的模式时，玛图拉诺发现了正念。她发现了正念冥想，并在几周内注意到她的反应如何变成了回应，她摆脱条件行为、琐碎担忧和精神混乱的能力也增强了。她成了一个“秘密的冥想者”，不愿与同事分享她非传统的解决问题的方法。
当她练习正念冥想时，她的日子变得更有成效和创造力，这也影响了她的个人生活。人们开始注意到她的变化，想知道她的“秘密”。在通用磨坊的最后五年里，她开发并教授了公司的“正念领导力”培训，现在这是所有感兴趣的员工工作经验的一部分。2010年，她离开公司，在新泽西州奥克兰创立了正念领导力研究所(Institute for Mindful Leadership)，并在世界各地的组织教授正念领导力，包括在瑞士达沃斯和中国天津举行的世界经济论坛(world Economic Forum)会议。
互补对
在接受马图拉诺的电话采访时，她对自己的话进行了深思熟虑。她讲述了自己是如何意识到正念和领导力训练是可以兼容的——它们相辅相成，相互交织。为了进入正念状态，马图拉诺建议每天冥想两次，每次10分钟，让你在无数分心的事情中重新集中注意力。这就是宁静的来源——宁静到足以注意到你的呼吸。她说:“正念在你的思想周围创造空间。从那个空间中产生了敏感的、有意识的选择。你不只是关注短期结果，你有机会问“现在最好的选择是什么?”’你加强和培养你的思想，让它活在当下，让它在你做出的选择中充分发挥你最好的能力。”
在接受澳大利亚咨询公司About Time Management Solutions经理埃利奥特·海耶斯(Elliot Hayes)的在线采访时，心理学家麦肯齐表示，工作场所的专注力可以提高决策能力，从而带来高质量的结果。正念为决策带来简单和自然的能力。
压力是注意力不集中的表现。许多错误都是由于没有注意到自己在做什么而造成的，这样的压力是没有注意到的一个指标。很多错误都是由于没有注意自己正在做的事情而造成的，比如在一封不该发送的邮件上点击了发送按钮。你的注意力不是集中在当下发生的事情上，而是被生活和预测未来分散了注意力。
要从不需要动脑的工作习惯转变为专注于你正在做的事情，麦肯齐建议把注意力集中在你的呼吸上。
麦肯齐将用心的领导者描述为那些看到机会领导自己和他人的人。他们给出明确的方向，并留出安静的空间，以便其他人可以确定自己的最佳方式，成为整体有效工作的一部分。没有技术干扰的谈话(或者你的自我计划对谈话的反应)会让别人感到被重视、被倾听和被理解。
从马图拉诺的角度来看，“具有讽刺意味的是，创造技术是为了更容易、更快速地将我们联系起来，实际上却使我们与高质量的关系脱节。”她分享了一个研讨会参与者的例子，他回到工作岗位，开始在与同事交谈时关闭笔记本电脑的做法。他注意到，当他倾听并充分关注对方时，谈话是多么的不同。他的团队成员表示，他们感到被倾听、被尊重和被理解。
另一位参加马图拉诺研讨会的人，在一天晚上放下智能手机后，抬头看着繁星满天的天空，意识到他已经有20年没见过星星了。他真正“顿悟”的时刻是，他在想自己盯着手机时可能还错过了什么。
它显示了
如果你是一个正念的领导者，你的反应来自一个和平的中心。你的措辞深思熟虑，流露出冷静和善良，这让你感觉很舒服。第十六地区总监潘杰良，DTM，将这些品质带进他领导俄克拉何马国际演讲会扶轮社及社员的责任中。他将自己的正念描述为完全致力于并遵循自己的领导职责。当你和潘在一起时，你会感受到他正直、尊重、服务和真诚的价值观。他希望所有的国际演讲会会员都能体验到他担任领导角色的快乐。
“正念是一段不断成长的旅程。你必须不断学习才能成长，”潘说。服务、学习和成长是个人、专业和演讲会会员有效领导的关键。我们必须不断相互学习，才能继续成长。”
通过正念冥想来了解自己，可以让你对自己和外部世界有一个诚实的看法，从而提高你的领导能力。正念领导的持久而深远的影响会从你的工作或领导职位蔓延到你的个人生活和世界。当你的外在生活反映出你内心的平静和控制时，别人就会注意到。他们能感觉到你的真诚、真实和同情心。这时，正念式领导就会成为一个双赢的局面。你已经激励他们陪你踏上正念之旅，去了解他们是谁，然后成为正念的领导者，激发世界的积极变化。
享受你的旅程!
本文的另一个版本发表于Toastmaster杂志2015年6月号。
With a wealth of information, training and materials competing for our attention, how do you know where to start when you want to improve your leadership skills? How do you become better at inspiring, motivating, engaging and energizing others?
Businesses, governments, universities, civic groups and individuals are finding that truly great leadership comes from people who can lead themselves first. The idea is that by learning to lead yourself, you will become a more sensitive and effective leader. You are off to a great start by being active in your club, and if you choose to pursue the leadership track you’ll gain additional insight.
Although you may not consider yourself a leader outside of Toastmasters, each of us influences others in our interactions as role models, mentors, colleagues, family members and friends. Even strangers observe how you act and react, and they make decisions based on what they see. The power and impact of your influence is greater than you realize.
“Good leadership is knowing where to lead people,” wrote Dr. Stephen McKenzie, psychologist and author of Mindfulness at Work. “The essence of knowing where to lead other people is knowing where to lead ourselves. We have to discover our full working potential before we can lead others to discovering their full working potential.”
Up-Close and Personal
The first step in leading yourself is to know who you are—your values, character and essence. A list of respected voices from all cultures and times, including Socrates, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson and more, have expressed some version of “Know thyself” to guide future generations in their quest for purpose and meaning in their lives.
To truly know yourself, you have to get up-close and personal by spending quiet time alone to ask and answer the question “Who am I?” We often avoid that puzzling question because we consider who we are not—instead of who we can be. The opinions of others, whether positive or negative, also influence who we believe we are. Each person’s answer will be unique—there is no right or wrong answer.
“Most people define themselves through the content of their lives—experiences, thoughts, career, material objects and relationships. Knowing yourself is being yourself and ceasing to identify with content,” says Eckhart Tolle, author of the bestselling books, The Power of Now and A New Earth.
But, finding the time and space to ask and answer deep questions of identity can be challenging when you are overwhelmed by an overscheduled life. Wise voices from the past give us another piece of advice: Be still.
An Old Practice
In today’s world of multitasking and information overload, our minds often run on autopilot just to keep up with the demands and responsibilities of work and our personal lives. How can you find a place of stillness and inner peace when the noise of the world around you interrupts your day and intrudes on your thoughts and concentration?
Mindfulness is the space of stillness and peace where you can quiet your thoughts and relax your mind in the present moment. It’s an old practice that is attracting new attention as a way to slow down the mind and redirect your wandering attention. Mindfulness is the opposite of multitasking, working and living on autopilot. It teaches you to control your mind and your thoughts through stillness. For centuries, the staying power and value of mindfulness have proven true.
Emotional Fitness
If you think you’re seeing words like mindful-ness, purposeful, intentional, self-awareness and engagement more frequently, you’re right. They’ve crept into mainstream awareness and even into business vocabulary, which has traditionally scoffed at leadership qualities that deal with emotions. Mindfulness workshops at international economic conferences have attracted standing-room-only crowds.
A mindfulness course at Google called “Search Inside Yourself” is the company’s most popular training program. Approximately 2,000 employees have participated in it. Chade-Meng Tan, who has the unconventional title of Jolly Good Fellow, led the creation of the course. He encourages emotional fitness in Google employees by helping them create peace, joy and kindness in their lives. When you lead your life with these three attributes, you can lead others to have the same experience. Without that foundation, it’s hard to do the right thing, says Tan.
Like other companies, Google has discovered the positive effect that mindfulness has on the company’s profit and success. People begin to help others for the greater good. Tan believes Google’s leadership in communication technology will spur the development of software and apps that will put mindfulness into the hands of digital users.
Janice L. Marturano, founder and executive director of the Institute for Mindful Leadership and author of Finding the Space to Lead, practices mindful leadership as a simple and effective way to lead and live better. While a top executive at General Mills, she juggled career, civic and personal responsibilities by reacting to the loudest voice in her overscheduled life.
Marturano discovered mindfulness when family and corporate decisions challenged her usual pattern of problem-solving. She found mindfulness meditation, and within a few weeks noticed how her reactions had changed to responses, and her ability to let go of conditioned behaviors, trivial worries and mental clutter expanded. She became a “closet meditator,” reluctant to share her unconventional problem-solving method with her colleagues.
As she practiced mindfulness meditation, her days became more productive and creative, which spilled over into her personal life. People began to notice the change in her and wanted to learn her “secret.” During her last five years at General Mills, she developed and taught the company’s Mindful Leadership training, which is now part of the work experience for all interested employees. In 2010, she left the company to found the Institute for Mindful Leadership in Oakland, New Jersey, and has taught mindful leadership at organizations around the world, including World Economic Forum gatherings in Davos, Switzerland and Tianjin, China.
A Complementary Pair
In a phone interview with Marturano, she spoke with thoughtful consideration of her words. She told how she realized that mindfulness and leadership training are compatible—they complement each other and are intertwined. To tap into mindfulness, Marturano recommends 10 minutes of daily meditation twice a day to redirect your focus in the midst of countless distractions. That’s where being still comes in—being still enough to notice your breath. She says: “Mindfulness creates space around your thoughts. From that space come responsive, conscious choices. You are not just focused on the short-term outcomes, you have a chance to ask ‘What is the best choice now?’ You strengthen and cultivate your mind to be present and to bring your full and best capacity to the choices you make.”
In an online interview with Elliot Hayes, manager of About Time Management Solutions, an Australian consulting company, psychologist McKenzie said mindfulness in the workplace improves decision-making skills, which leads to quality results. Mindfulness brings simplicity and natural abilities to decision-making.
Stress is an indicator of not being mindful. Many mistakes are caused by not paying attention to what you are doing, such Stress is an indicator of not being mindful. Many mistakes are caused by not paying attention to what you are doing, such as hitting the send button on an email that you should not send. Instead of focusing on what is happening in the moment, your mind is distracted by living in, and anticipating, the future.
To go from mindless work habits to paying mindful attention and focusing on what you are doing, McKenzie suggests focusing on your breath.
McKenzie describes mindful leaders as those who see opportunities to lead themselves and others. They give clear directions and allow for quiet space so that others can identify their own best way to be an effective working part of the whole. Conversations without distractions of technology (or your ego planning its responses to the conversation) make others feel valued, heard and understood.
From Marturano’s point of view, “It’s ironic that the technology that was created to connect us easier and faster actually disconnects us from quality relationships.” She shared the example of a workshop attendee who returned to work and started the practice of closing his laptop whenever he had a conversation with col-leagues. He noticed how different the conversations were when he listened and paid full attention to the other person. His team members commented they felt heard, respected and understood.
Another one of Marturano’s workshop participants, after put-ting his smartphone away one evening, looked up at the star-filled sky and realized he hadn’t seen the stars in the last 20 years. His true “aha” moment was when he wondered what else he may have missed while staring at his phone.
It Shows
If you are a mindful leader, your responses come from a center of peace. You choose your words thoughtfully and exude calmness and kindness, which makes you feel comfortable. District 16 Governor Jieliang Pan, DTM, brings these qualities to his leadership responsibilities with Oklahoma Toastmasters clubs and members. He describes his own mindfulness as being fully committed to, and following through on, his leadership responsibilities. When you are with Pan, you feel his values of integrity, respect, service and sincerity. He wants all Toastmasters to experience the joy he does in his leadership role.
“Mindfulness is a journey to keep growing. You have to keep learning in order to grow,” Pan says. “Serving, learning and growing are the keys to effective leadership personally, professionally and as a Toastmaster. We have to keep learning from each other to continue to grow.”
Getting to know yourself through mindful meditation gives you insight into yourself as well as an honest perspective of the external world, which improves your leadership skills. Long-lasting and far-reaching effects of mindful leadership ripple beyond your job or leadership position to your personal life and out to the world. As your external life mirrors your internal peace and control, others notice. They sense your sincerity, authenticity and compassion. That’s when mindful leadership becomes a win-win-win for every-one. You’ve inspired them to accompany you on the mindfulness journey to get to know who they are and then to become mindful leaders who will inspire positive changes in the world.
Enjoy your journey!
A version of this article appeared in the June 2015 issue of the Toastmaster magazine.
Linda Allen
Linda Allen, ACS, CL, is a member of the Enid Speakers of the Plains Toastmasters in Enid, Oklahoma. She is a writer, speaker and trainer specializing in cultural awareness, professional and personal development, and leadership.
