Summary: Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader By Marc Lesser

Ask yourself: What brings me alive, and what really brings me alive?
Explore your values, or what you love, by naming the people you admire and the values they represent.
Practice four types of love: loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.
To cultivate mindfulness and see more clearly, practice meditation.
Get to know the “three apes” inside yourself, which represent your fears, dissatisfactions, and need for connection.

Acknowledge your ground truths and identify creative gaps: What are yours?
Tell your “way-seeking mind” story (in a journal or to a friend). What brought you to love this work?

Implement or continue dedicated mindfulness practices: Create a regular routine of meditation, walking meditation, and journal writing, in any combination.
Implement or continue an integrated mindfulness practice. Ask, “What is the appropriate response?”

Listen for facts and for feelings, and practice generative listening.
Practice self-compassion; experiment with kindness.
Whenever you feel triggered or reactive, pause, evaluate the appropriate response, and cultivate emotional awareness.
Whenever you fear change, identify your ground truth or creative gaps, and act to seek alignment.

Adopt “beginner’s mind,” or seeing without assuming, anticipating, or judging.
Embrace failure. Practice “I failed” when things don’t go as planned or expected.
Practice seeing things as if for the first time, such as your hand or while walking.
Notice mind wandering and rumination.
Bring awareness to your experiencing self and to your remembering or storytelling self.

Notice your filters. What stories get in the way of listening?
Avoid assuming you know what others feel and think; instead, listen to learn what is “invisible” to you.

Face and connect with pain and discomfort, since this helps us learn what is most important and meaningful to us.
Remember that emotional pain, like physical pain, is a helpful signal about a problem that needs attention.

Practice meditation as a way of exploring discomfort.
Notice when your life gets out of alignment; listen to your intuition and feelings of dissatisfaction or discomfort.
Explore your story and your understanding of positive and negative events by creating a timeline.
To avoid denial and compartmentalization, occasionally feel miserable on purpose and connect to our shared human condition.
Practice “one less breath” to appreciate being alive and not taking anything for granted.

Remember that a leader’s job, by definition, is to cultivate community and connection.
Recognize the “Four Horsemen” that seek to avoid connecting to the pain of others: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
Practice seeing similarities and offering kindness.

In conversation, look under the hood of others by asking about difficulties and challenges.
Practice tonglen, or giving and receiving meditation.
Foster empathy in order to inspire, and lead with, acts of compassion.

In your role as a leader, explore and focus on coaching, empowering, and listening to others.

Notice your resistance to depending on others and embrace interdependence.
Meditate with and for others to help develop a regular meditation practice.
Do a brief audit: Who depends on you? And how do you depend on others?
Consider your work style — visionary, organizer, people person, or doer — and the work styles of others when building a group or team.
Seek to cultivate positive group norms of psychological safety, structure and clarity, dependability, meaning, and impact.

As necessary, change the way meetings are conducted to foster mindfulness and a collaborative, cooperative, supportive environment.

Explore letting go of your to-do lists, plans, and projects, just for a few minutes each day.
Practice greater acceptance. Experiment with turning toward difficulty, accepting it, and letting go of blame.
During any activity, practice being alert and relaxed.

In any moment, simplify using the three breaths practice: focus on body, breath, and what is most important.