Today’s hyper-accelerated and ultra-competitive business world brings challenges to entrepreneurs and company leaders that require them to make quick and effective decisions in a myriad of circumstances. From having to troubleshoot a product in the middle of a public launch to navigating complex emotions during high-stakes negotiations, our nervous systems are consistently placed in “fight-or-flight” mode as leaders.
While traditional leadership paradigms typically deal with logic and rationality above all else, I’ve learned firsthand that the ability to include practices that may elevate your emotional intelligence can bring a recent dimension to your decision-making process.
By embracing and nurturing practices comparable to yoga, meditation, and mindfulness, for instance, I’ve seen leaders enhance their intuition, higher regulate their emotions, and gain a deeper understanding of their teams, partners, and customers.
For those leaders who want to start out infusing more mindful practices into their workday, listed below are a couple of of my top suggestions and lessons learned for sidestepping ego in favor of spiritual solutioning inside the business realm.
1. Heighten Your Intuition and Emotional Intelligence
The practice of spiritual mindfulness encourages us to tap into our intuition and embrace emotional intelligence when making any major decision. This may occasionally feel contrary to what we’re taught in business school, but the value of these “gut instincts” cannot be understated for leaders inside the skilled sphere.
While some of the decisions you’ll be faced with would require a logical, reason-based response, others would require a more mindful approach that leans in your intuition. By developing internal discipline through practices like meditation and yoga, leaders can increase their self-awareness, patience, perspective, emotional stability, and communication skills.
In that quiet time of inner reflection, we’re granted space to take a step back, breathe through the tension, objectively assess the situation at hand, and determine whether it requires a rational or emotional solution. Understanding when to trust your gut and when to go for a more linear business decision can result in more balanced and well-informed selections.
2. Elevate Your Human Understanding
Once the brain has been opened to spiritual practices, its ability to really understand those outside of itself multiplies dramatically. As a more mindful leader, you’ll notice a recent capability for perceiving the underlying motivations, desires, and desires of those you lead and people who depend on you to drive the business forward.
This increased awareness can be especially priceless in high-pressure meetings, interviews, and negotiations, because it enables leaders to see beyond the surface-level interaction while more astutely analyzing the perspective, values, and interests of those at the table with them.
By empathetically acknowledging those less tangible aspects, our ability to attach with and supply value to our fellow man increases – as does the leverage we’ve inside those interactions.
3. Improve Conflict Resolution and Compassion
Most leaders reach their position through passion, relentlessness, confidence, and infrequently, genius. A natural driver of each of these qualities is the ego, which there’s no shortage of amongst leaders. The ego can create countless opportunities for conflict, whereas spirituality heightens one’s awareness – of self, of others, and of existence – and instills or elevates interpersonal qualities (compassion, empathy, patience) that place the ego in the backseat.
When faced with conflicts that may easily and unnecessarily escalate by activating the ego, leaders who incorporate spirituality into their approach can decide to shift their mindset from a combative, ego-driven stance to at least one that intentionally seeks common ground. They will approach conflicts with curiosity, asking thoughtful questions and observing closely to grasp triggers and underlying motivations.
By recognizing the pain points of all parties involved and specializing in finding an empathetic, mutual resolution, leaders can foster an environment of collaboration, earn a positive repute amongst partners, and create win-win outcomes for all.
4. Regulate Your Mind-Body Connection
The mind-body connection determines a lot of how we move through our days and experience the world, yet it’s fairly often neglected or forgotten in business.
By introducing physical and psychological practices that may regulate the parasympathetic nervous system (comparable to breathwork, meditation, and exercise), leaders can ground themselves in the present moment, harness a way of inner peace, reduce stress, gain mental clarity, expand their perspective, increase productivity, and navigate complex situations that impact the people, partners, and businesses they’re guiding.
There isn’t any shame in taking breaks to reconnect with our bodies – actually, I might argue that the ability to step away to be able to elevate outcomes and interpersonal interactions is a pacesetter’s superpower that must be learned and continually refined.
5. Release Attachment and Embrace Flow
One of the most proven, profitable, and productive states of being in business (and in life) is that of “flow.” Coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as a positive psychology principle, flow is an experience through which we change into so immersed in the task at hand that nothing else matters in that moment. It’s marked by creativity, genius, and bliss.
When a pacesetter can tap right into a flow state, innovation occurs, solutions arise, productivity is unparalleled, and success in a single’s work is at its highest. We’re never more present or receptive than once we are capable of achieve a flow state.
Part of this practice requires us to release our white-knuckled grip on outcomes and expectations to go away space for unexpected opportunities and possibilities to flow in. As distractions, conflicts, and the tension of attachment flow out of that space, we’ve the best probability at finding the best next step for our business.
Mix Spirituality with Practicality and Reason to Gain an Invaluable Edge
As the landscape of business continues to evolve, leaders who learn tips on how to mix spirituality with practicality and reason will possess a useful edge.
By enhancing intuition, understanding the needs of others, resolving conflicts compassionately, staying grounded, and embracing the flow of opportunities, they are going to be capable of make more impactful decisions, encourage their teams, and ultimately, achieve sustainable success.
About the Writer
Rachael McCrary is the founder and CEO of Gather Labs, the first vertically-integrated, high-complexity CLIA laboratory to supply same-day lab results for over 100 diagnostics tests.