A growing number of employers and coaches are using mindfulness to help people work more productively, calmly and creatively, as well as enhance their well-being and ability to enjoy their lives.
Employers who have offered meditation training have included Deutsche Bank, Glaxo SmithKline, Google and the Post Office. And coaches are increasingly showing an interest in mindfulness and meditation training, both to enhance their own presence and awareness of self and of others, and for their clients.
There is rapidly growing evidence that mindfulness training changes the way our brains work. These changes have been linked to benefits in health, sports performance, and social and professional competence. In the current climate, it is more important than ever for leaders to think clearly and creatively. Mindfulness training can make all the difference.
In the first article in this report, Graham Lee shows how mindfulness can be used to foster leadership qualities of perspective, engagement and clarity. Who knows how many crises could have been avoided had swathes of leaders in financial services been practising mindfulness?
Some coaches are adding the odd meditation exercise into the work they do with clients. Others are combining mindfulness training with existing approaches such as solution-focused coaching. For example, last year, Tony Grant and his colleagues at Sydney University’s Coaching Psychology Unit published research showing that mindfulness training can be combined with cognitive behavioural and solution-focused coaching to great effect.
Meanwhile, here in the UK, Gladeana McMahon has teamed up with Patrizia Collard to develop mindfulness-based cognitive coaching (MBCC). In the second part of this report they share how MBCC can be used with clients.
Volume 4, Issue 2