Harnessing Mindfulness for Effective Leadership
In a world constantly inundated with sensory overload of information and demands, the journey of leadership requires training your mind to stay ahead of the curve and achieve your full potential.
This balance was at the heart of a recent fireside chat between two leaders, our very own Reeva Misra and Ibrahim Ajami, Head of Ventures at Mubadala Capital, who shared their insights and personal journeys on the role mindfulness plays in their lives as leaders.
Introducing Ibrahim and Reeva
Ibrahim was first introduced to mindfulness practises during a difficult period in his life. A friend recommended the work of Tara Brach, which began his journey into meditation and stress management techniques.
“For most people the catalyst to begin exploring meditation is a personal or professional crisis, or an intent to grow and manage stress better.”
Ibrahim found that through regularity, his meditation practice became like a muscle that he could use whenever he needed, and it opened the door to another tool - gratitude journaling.
“Gratitude journaling has had the most profound impact on my state of mind and how I feel. It’s a practice that has really helped me. I’ve noticed that I feel really good for 2-3 hours afterwards. It’s another muscle.”
For Reeva, spirituality has always been part of her life through her Indian roots. Her route to starting her company came from a desire to underpin her knowledge of the science behind these ancient practices. Following years of research in a lab at Oxford, Reeva decided to shine a light on the neuroscience behind these ancient preventative practices, as a way to validate them, and make them more accessible.
“There is a study of brain imaging of monks that showed increased activity of the prefrontal cortex, which is the area of the brain associated with higher decision making and reasoning. They also found lower brain activity in the amygdala, which is associated with fear and anxiety. This is fascinating - for so long spiritual leaders have been able to talk about this impact and how they feel, but we now have the science validating it too.”
This discovery is what led Reeva to start WONE, to bring together the science and the AI technology to these ancient practices, making these solutions more accessible to a rationally minded workforce.
“It came down to this - if I can help people feel less stressed and more present in their lives then it will help not just them but society at large because of the ripple effect. If we’re more present, kind and compassionate then others will be too.”
Embarking on the Journey: Practical Tips for Mindful Beginnings
For those embarking on their mindfulness journey, Ibrahim offered practical advice: start small, embrace imperfection, and prioritise self-investment. Whether through short meditation sessions or gratitude journaling, carving out moments for self-reflection can have a ripple effect on both personal and professional spheres.
Meditation
“Meditation provides you with a few minutes to forget the suffering of the past and disassociate from the suffering of the future, known to most as anxiety. Meditation helps you to recognise fully that the only moment you actually stop suffering is in the present moment.”
- Get a guided meditation app and explore different teachers: try a couple, research and find someone that you like, this will change for different stages of your life. Some examples - the Walking on Earth app, Joseph Goldstein (powerful and irreverent humour) and Sharon Saltzberg (metta loving kindness)
- Don’t be too hard on yourself: if you can't do it, begin again and if it’s not working, don’t worry
- It’s not easy: sometimes it will feel awful, and in these moments know that you don’t need to do it - you’re not here to achieve anything
- It will become like a muscle: it does require you to invest time in yourself, but when you do, over time it will become like a muscle that you use whenever you need it
- Build into your life: take 5 minutes between your calls, when you’re in the car, or when you’re on the plane
- A powerful tool: don’t confuse meditation with slowing down, in fact it’s the exact opposite
Gratitude journaling
Once every 10-14 days, Ibrahim writes down one page of all the things he’s grateful for, all the people he’s met and who had an impact on him.
“You meet all these people in my job, it’s like a marathon of meetings, and you could forget about it because the days go so fast. That practice has really helped me change. I’ve noticed that I feel really good for 2-3 hours afterwards. It’s another muscle."
If you are at the beginning of your journey, Ibrahim recommends you start with these guidelines:
- Get a notebook, ideally unlined
- Write a journal once or twice a week
- You don’t have to write a novel - just some bullet points on one page
- Focus on what brought you joy, the people, the activities
The concept of Joseph Goldstein’s ‘Skillful vs Unskillful mind states’
Simply - when you are skillful you’re focused on the good of others, when you’re unskillful, you’re focused on the other person’s complexity - which more often than not will frustrate you.
We are all complex and have unique perspectives that are frustrating to others, so to help with managing workplace conflict, when you are interacting with someone, remind yourself to move to skillful mode. The act of seeing the good in that person regardless of your frustration will help to dissipate any conflict.
Your bubble is not everyone’s bubble
Recognising that our individual perspectives should not define our entire reality is essential in navigating the complexities of interpersonal dynamics.
It's a common tendency to assume that others perceive the world through the same lens as ourselves, yet this narrow viewpoint can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts. Ultimately - don’t take your bubble and make it your world.
The antidote lies in cultivating compassion. By shifting your bubble, you enable a profound shift in mindset that not only benefits our psychological well-being but also influences our physiological responses. When we approach challenging situations with empathy and understanding, it has a powerful energetic effect on the subconscious.
Leading by Example: Cultivating Mindful Leadership within Teams
As leaders, Reeva emphasised the importance of integrating mindfulness into everyday actions rather than viewing it as a separate practice.
“Start small - what we’ve seen from our platform, highest engaging sessions are shortest. We’ve looking into the science - 5 minutes is all you need to move from your heightened stress state - the sympathetic state - down into the relaxed state - the parasympathetic state.
You need to build these short sessions into your working day to reset your nervous system and turn off your stress response. These 5 minute micro moments are all you need. Everyone has 5 minutes.”
Reeva also highlighted her own journey, where mindfulness became not just a personal practice but also a guiding principle in leadership.
“These practises have been done for thousands of years - leaders in times of battle used them for clarity of thinking, astute decision making, and when you look at leaders in modern times such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, they attribute no small part of their success to these practises. In fact, Steve Jobs requested that a copy of ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ be given to all guests at his memorial as a last memory of him, because it was the book that had the most profound impact on his life.”
It’s really important to look at these practises as how they can help us to live up to our full potential and to model the behaviours we want to see in our teams. By prioritising the well-being of her team, she aims to defy the norm of burnout culture prevalent in high-growth tech companies.
“We want to show that as a tech company, we can grow faster and sustain longer by putting our own health first.”
Mindful quotes from spiritual leaders
Finally, we leave you with quotes that inspire both Ibrahim and Reeva on their journeys:
Maya Angelou - “If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present... gratefully.”
Thich Nhat Hanh - “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”
Rainer Rilke - “In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.”
Maya Angelou - “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
In a world that often glorifies hustle and striving for more, the wisdom shared by Reeva and Ibrahim serves as a reminder of the transformative power of mindfulness in leadership — a power that lies not in the pursuit of more but in the full embrace of the present moment.
