Bizcuits | Mindfulness, attention and balance

Leanda Lee

What especially highlights the intrusion of modern technology into our daily lives is when work routines are disrupted by holidays. Summer holidays, Christmas and the more recent holidays over Easter and Ching Ming bring with them a clash of expectations, demands and desires – our own and those of the people around us.
Some unusually productive people are able, and give themselves permission, to switch off from work roles over holidays breaks; they successfully compartmentalise life, sending clear messages to their colleagues, their managers and clients that there is time for work and time for other life roles, and ne’er the two shall meet. At the other end of the spectrum are those that are simply incapable of shifting priorities and fiercely remain colluding and complicit in the intrusion of corporate and business demands upon their families and friends.  Meals, family gatherings and, in the worst cases, even sleep are disrupted because we have the technology, the technology is used and used mindlessly.
The choices managers make in how they use their downtime for work sends messages of value to family and friends. Allowing phone calls and ‘just one more email’ to remove mindful presence from the people we are physically present with can send damning messages of priorities. There will always be reasons – and also times of extraordinary need to focus on work tasks – but should these interruptions into our daily lives become the rule, rather than the exception, relationships suffer in a mindless cycle of justification of busy-ness, self-importance and misguided focus.
I was recently at a book launch as part of a global gathering of Melbourne Business School alumni held simultaneously in dozens of locations all over the world. The author of the book, Professor Amanda Sinclair, has been researching, consulting and influencing leaders for nearly three decades with her innovative ideas on leadership, change, ethics and diversity. Her thinking and contributions to leaders in many spheres has continued to be innovative precisely because she dares to bring emotional and human qualities into the mostly economic-rationalist, data-based analytical world of Harvard-type business schools and hard-nose business and medical domains. She does so with genuine passion, a depth of insight, formidable intellect and grit that has enabled her to reflect upon responses of her naysayers that in turn has facilitated an audience for her ideas.
Professor Sinclair’s most recent book ‘Leading Mindfully’, brings the mindfulness literature together with the leadership literature, but although grounded in academic rigor, the book draws from the author’s own life and leadership experiences, those of her students and many very senior executives that she consults and works with.
Mindfulness is “the very simple act of choosing to be present.” It is about turning down our own thoughts, our own ‘stuff’, judgements and history, keeping our tongues under control and simply listening. It’s about being pleased and even delighted to be (working) with others, to move from a judgement culture to one of even playfulness and permissiveness. We can all acknowledge that being listened to, having time given to us and feeling cherished opens up conversation and dialogue which develops trust in all relationships.  We know about this in our interactions at home and with friends but we irrationally disregard the efficacy of this knowledge in the workplace.
Managers would do well to remember this message; turn down the noise, turn down the need to fix, judge and do, turn down the ego and just be there, giving attention to those that matter. Attention is said to be the real currency of a leader. It is the choice of when and to what and to whom to give focus and attention, and in turn where the business and everyone in it gives their attention. Those choices send messages about what is important and meaningful. The wise leader and the busy business executive will understand that those signals extend to all roles in our lives.