Exploring the Impact of Mindfulness on Leadership: A Dialogue between Perspectives
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2020
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The aim of this thesis was to explore the experience of a group of leaders in a mindful leadership program. In depth engagement with two contemporary leadership theories found important connections to mindfulness concepts: specifically, spiritual leadership and socially constructed relational leadership. Mindfulness: a deliberate practice of placing attention on awareness itself, with an attitude of acceptance, is connected in literature with the foundational assumptions of these leadership theories. Spiritual leadership calls for mindfulness training as an inner life reflexive practice for leaders. Concurrently, socially constructed relational leadership theorists claim leaders need reflexive practices such as mindfulness that deliver fundamental realisations on leadership as emergent, intersubjective and context laden. The practice of mindfulness boasts substantial uptake in organisational life, globally, including at the level of leadership despite little to no extant empirical research.
Methodologically, this interdisciplinary research employs a qualitative design informed by critical realism. A qualitative case study was employed in the form of a ten-week mindful leadership program with 12 participants who identify as senior leaders and represent a range of industry sectors. The participants practised mindfulness together and at home. The group came together for ten two-hour sessions to discuss their experiences with mindfulness and leadership. This spoken word dialogue was transcribed by a research assistant in the room. Additional data was collected, including researcher journals, post-executive coaching interview responses, in-program artefacts and completion survey.
The study follows the journey arc of the group as a whole, using sensemaking as a theoretical frame. Findings show that the group normalised discussions of attentional awareness, shared ontological insights, and invited open-mindedness to the socially constructed, relational nature of leadership. The study also follows the journey arc of individuals. Findings show that four subsets of mindful leaders emerged at the interpretation stage of sensemaking. These have been named crusaders, advocates, cynics, and curious. An in-depth analysis of the subjective experience of the ‘curious’ subset who practiced mindfulness outlines their subjective experience of changes, as storied by them, and demonstrates the new discussions on reality that were brought to the group as a whole by this subset. Implications of these findings are relevant for theory and praxis as mindful leadership practice is shown to meet the goals of spiritual and socially constructed relational leadership at group and individual levels, offering a bridge from theory to practice.
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