How To Become A Mindful Manager And Leader

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Becoming a mindful manager involves a focus on the employee experience.

Mindful leaders dedicate themselves to the health and wellbeing of their employees, knowing that this investment pays off in positive morale and improved productivity.

Join a growing trend of compassionate managers adopting forward-thinking approaches to keep employees engaged without burning them out.

By investing in your individual leadership skills in meditation classes for managers, you can achieve a calm and effective leadership mindset.

What Is a Mindful Manager?

Mindful managers lead with intention and respect.

As a mindful leader, you inspire your team and keep conflict to a minimum. At the same time, enlightened supervisors guide individuals and teams through adversity such as economic downturns or difficult changes to the business process.

Whether conveying good or bad news, you should reflect on the impact it may have on your time and plan your communication style accordingly.

Why Are Mindful Managers Better Leaders?

Mindful managers inspire employees to do their best work and handle conflict tactfully.

The skills needed to become a compassionate leader include situational awareness and the authenticity needed to build mutual understanding.

When you stay in the present moment, you notice a lot of things that you might otherwise miss. To practice, consider taking meditation classes for managers. There are a lot of fancy ways to say it, but a mindful manager stays in the moment and focuses on the task at hand. This takes mental and emotional maturity and self-control.

Ultimately, being a mindful manager starts with governing yourself more effectively. When you lead by example, your team will follow.

According to the Harvard Business Review, mindfulness develops leadership qualities associated with emotional intelligence, including:

  • Meta-cognition: This awareness teaches you to monitor your thoughts and feelings to achieve self-awareness and emotional stability, without which you cannot communicate or lead properly.
  • Curiosity: Mindfulness makes you want to know more about those you interact with.
  • Empathy: This gives you a better understanding of others, helping to improve the quality of your communication and relationship with your team.

What Research Supports the Benefits of Mindful Leaders?

Research supports the benefits of meditation classes for managers who want to improve their mindfulness.

Here are eight stats that show the benefits of maintaining a compassionate, aware presence at work:

  1. In one study, Stanford University School of Medicine found that meditating can yield a 30% decrease in stress-induced symptoms linked to serious illness.
  2. More than half (58%) of Americans list work as a major source of stress. Stress triggers include heavy workload, interpersonal issues, and work-life balance.
  3. A 2005 study of healthcare workers showed significant advantages of after taking an eight-week mindfulness meditation program. Improvements included empathy and mood with lower stress levels.
  4. Four out of five workers believe they are stressed at work and would like help managing it.
  5. Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction (MB-BP) can significantly reduce blood pressure up to a year after the classes end.
  6. A Headspace internal study confirmed the benefits of guided meditation, finding that a 10-day stint of guided meditation reduced participants’ stress by 14% and decreased irritability by almost twice that amount.
  7. Hindawi.com reported that chair-based guided meditation and yoga can improve the health and wellbeing of employees. The researchers concluded that performing meditation in the office improved psychological and physiological stress symptoms. This shows that you can use these techniques to help your team relax at work from the comfort of their workspace. This is also great news for mindful managers who want better control over their own stress levels.
  8. According to Cleveland’s The Wellness Institute, another study conducted among call center employees show that mindfulness reduced their stress levels. Following eight weeks, workers reported a 31% decrease in stress symptoms and a 28% boost in vitality!

These statistics show what you have to gain from meditation classes for managers. The question is, what do you have to lose?

How Can I Become a Mindful Manager?

As a manager, your attitude sets the example for the rest of the team. So, it’s crucial to remain aware of your emotions and to realize that your moods affect those around you, even if you don’t say a word.

]If you don’t want to walk into grumpy, short-tempered coworkers, let the attitude adjustment begin with you.

Constantly disgruntled managers inspire dread and create an atmosphere that makes it hard to remain productive.

To become a better leader, practice mindfulness and pass on the zen to the team members who need it the most for a positive culture:

1. Stretch Often

Sitting in a cube for hours isn’t what the human body is designed to do. Your joints and muscles cramp up after hours in the same position. Learn stretching exercises that activate your core and stimulate blood circulation.

This also revitalizes your attention, allowing you to focus on the task at hand. This is a great practice to pass along to your employers to keep them awake and engaged.

Stretch at the beginning of the day and every two hours. Find a quiet space where you won’t be interrupted, stand with your feet hip-width distance apart and raise your arms up over your head, taking deep breaths.

What about a lunch-time stretching club. At first, you may feel uncomfortable breaking typical boundaries at work. However, this activity can improve the health of your works and serves as an informal team-building exercise!

2. Just Breathe

During meditation classes for managers, you learn breathing exercises that help you stay calm and relaxed.

If you feel annoyed, angry, or overwhelmed, that’s a good time to practice your breathing. If you feel out of sorts, perform breathing exercises before you meet with the team. They may otherwise pick up on your mood and wonder if they did something wrong.

Inhale deeply all the way down to your diaphragm. Consider what you want to accomplish when you speak to your team, and visualize what you will say. Remember to speak to individuals privately whenever possible to spare hurt feelings or embarrassment.

3. Connect With Your Employees

As a mindful manager, you shouldn’t sit in your office with the door closed. That sends the wrong message to your team. Like the wizard at the end of the Wizard of Oz, pull back the curtain and connect with your employees.

Meditation teaches you to stay calm and look for the words, tone of voice and other factors that properly convey your messaging without making anyone uncomfortable.

4. Step Away From the Office

Do you eat lunch at your desk and work late each night? If your employees are following your lead, you might be one of the most productive departments in the company — also one of the most burnt-out groups of employees.

Instead, step away from the office. Consider taking the team to lunch periodically with a strict no-work-talk rule. Also, occasionally make the rounds to see what people are working on at 5:00 p.m. Remind them to start wrapping up. They can always finish the work in the morning.

Making a clear break between work time and home time helps employees start winding down for the day and arrive home refreshed. The higher quality of life they have at home, the more productive they are likely to be in the office.

5. Turn Off Wi-Fi

If possible, when you do get swamped with work, take it home rather than staying late. Try to avoid sending late-night messages to coworkers who should use their time off to recharge, spend time with their loved ones, and get a total break from the office.

If you do want to type up a message, just keep it in your email drafts until the morning. Otherwise, dedicated employees are likely to pick up their phone or laptop and spent the time to answer you. Unless you’re reminding them to do their meditation and yoga stretches, leave it for the morning if at all possible.

6. Take Classes

Before you can run meditation classes for your employees, take ours.

Start with the mindfulness meditation for mangers, then encourage your team to join in the individual or team options to create a more relaxed, calm and productive environment that employees will appreciate.

Our enterprise-ready courses help you develop compassionate managers for your startup or large corporation. The most popular courses improve work life and can be put into practice at the office. Consider Mindfulness Meditation Classes, Mindful Eating & Nutrition Classes and Chair Yoga Classes to name just a few.

When you take our individual or managers classes, you begin a journey that can change your whole life. It can also make you the mindful manager with the happy employees that everyone wants to join!

Contact Twello today for a free quote or more information about our classes.

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