Leading mindfully

Leading from a still centre

Reflections from the meeting point of awareness, responsibility, decisions, technology, and change. Written from ordinary working life — where presence is tested, and where it can quietly grow.

The most valuable resource in a fast-moving world isn't speed. It's awareness.

More on mindful leadership is on its way.

Reflections

When I did not like my own presence

There were years when I led people and did not like who I became in the room. Impatience. The need to be right. Anger that arrived before I noticed it had. People grew careful around me, and I felt it, and that made it worse. I used to think the problem was them, or the pressure. Slowly I understood the room was often reflecting my own state back to me. The work was not to manage them better. It was to see my own mind a little sooner — before it became the weather everyone else had to stand in.

— UM

Learning to be safe with anger

Anger was the reaction I trusted least in myself, because it moved faster than I did. The body knew before the mind admitted it — the heat, the tightening, the words already forming. For a long time I either acted on it or pretended it wasn't there. Practice offered a third way: to feel it arrive and simply know it, without obeying it and without denying it. Anger seen is very different from anger acted out. I am not always quick enough. But I am learning that the aim is not to have no anger. It is to become someone it is safe to be near, even when it comes.

— UM