Nice to be here. I'm Karen Suk and we speak about mindfulness based leadership in the 40 minutes. Coming 40 minutes, I want to show you how we can better manage ourselves, relationships and work and gain better results and innovation about myself.I'm the founder of wisdom to lead a consulting company. In the last 20 years, I've been working with leading firms to change process and promote growth. I've conducted a phd in a high tech company. I conducted a case study which my leading question was what is the role of leaders nowadays in leading financially successful organizations alongside motivating their employees for meaningfulness and intrinsic motivation in order to enable them to fulfill themselves and for the organization to be innovative.

And what I found that a crucial element that will leaders need to embrace nowadays is the mindfulness aspect. I, five years ago, I was invited to teach in a poly U in Hong Kong in a master degree called executive meaningful, innovative leadership. And they opened 30 hours components of mindfulness. And actually I taught there and then I understood, then all the dots were connected and I understood that the mindfulness tours that we bring to the organizations where and I have developed a mindfulness based course and retreats and just launched my new book, Mindfully Wise Leadership.

And I'm a keynote speaker in this area. So actually, I understand that I'm bringing the mindfulness in the leadership in the organizational aspect. This is among our clients and conferences. So the the talk will be divided into three parts. The first part, we will understand what does the mindfulness aspect mean? We understand why we should embrace it and what's happening in the corporate world in the technology world afterwards, because it's a practical tool, we will practice five minute uh mind for meditation.

And we conclude with the benefits of embracing mindfulness in the day to day, organization culture. So let's begin. First of all, I want to speak about three main challenges that we face nowadays as leaders and individuals. So the first one is the va definition that we all live in right now, right? Vitality, uncertainty, we're living in uncertain times in a complex and a lot of Amri we although we are post corona, then there is the war and every time something new comes. And actually as I see it, this is the new normal, the uncertainty we need to embrace and be able to handle ourselves better in this hectic reality and find an anchor in order not to be moved by the winds of change. So this is the first challenge that we all face nowadays, the second one is called the wandering mind in the Buddhism. It's called the monkey man. What does it mean? It means that we are continuously thinking, we're thinking about the past, about the present. What, what did I do wrong? Continuously thinking? Thinking, thinking. Two research researchers from Harvard conducted the research and they were exploring how much of our waking day we are in this state of mind in the wandering state of mind. And they found that approximately 50% of our time we are in this, in our stories without telling ourselves and in our mind, another interesting data shows that 70% of leaders claim that they can't be attentive in the meeting.

You know, this feeling that you sit, your body sits really well on the chair during the meeting. However, your mind is far, far away, probably a few of you experiencing the I talk. So this is actually the chat, the wandering mind. So the stories and the thing that we are telling ourselves during the day to day. Another interesting data shows that as we are more in the wandering mind state, we are less happy because think about it, usually when we are thinking, what thoughts are we thinking? We're thinking negative thoughts, we are criticizing ourselves um and illuminating about negative experiences. So it actually decreases our happiness. And the interesting part in this research shows that even that we are thinking in natural thought, it decreases our happiness.

So I said it's a pity we its short life and you want to enjoy them and increase our well being. And the last challenge that we are experiencing now is individual leaders is the new leadership that is changing. You know, as we are having the traditional leadership that the traditional leadership is based on hierarchical relationships, on authority on titles one way, communication. I'm the boss. Do what I tell you. Actually, it's based upon our external source of power. So we are as we are in the midst of the post Coronavirus transformation that transformed the global world. We also experiencing transformation in the workplace because the the new generation, right, the white generation, the their generations and they don't play the game that we played before.

They are changing the workplace. They looking for different things. They want to experience meaningful in the day to day. They want to find the right integration between work and life. They want to have an impact on the world. So we need to move from the traditional leadership to the new leadership, meaning from the external source of power to the internal source of power, meaning the ability to create relationships based on trust and partnerships with our employees, colleagues, vendors, whoever we need to collaborate better to work in network way.

We need to engage people from a deeper place of meaning and intrinsic motivation. And as individuals and leaders, we need to embrace the growth mindset we need to be able to try new things, sometimes succeed, sometimes not and move on. Otherwise we won't be relevant as we saw it in the Coronavirus transformation. We all needed to re invent ourselves or organization, our products are offering. So actually, the new leadership requires us to enlarge our social skills in order to engage better employees and colleagues.

And this the lead, the new leadership is actually a social process. It's not one leader that leads the company every time each and every one of us lead it, I can lead a, a conference that I want to uh promote an idea, a team, a group and it changes. So, you know, we have the wisdom of the crowd and we need to be able to be flexible and take the different position every time. And my claim that the way to lead nowadays is by self management. What does it mean? Self management? It's the ability to manage our internal world, my thoughts, my emotions and my time. It's actually leading by example, for example, if I set a meeting with my team and every time I'm late for my own meeting, probably next time they won't be on time, right? Because it starts with my myself. So it's the ability to start with our internal world and manage ourselves and then from this place, manage others and lead others. And I claim that the foundation of self management is mindfulness. So what is mindfulness mindfulness. The classical definition of Doctor John Kazin is the ability to be present here. Now, non judgmental and intentionally, my definition to mindfulness based on my research is identical, but a little bit broader. It means it's the ability to be aware of an experience that I've gone through.

It can be a thought that run through my mind and the emotion that I'm feeling right now or a process that I'm going through in a no judgmental way. And without being managed by it, let me give you an example from the day to day life in one of my um uh trips to Hong Kong. I had an intensive business trip. I also taught that in the ma 10 hours and I was also with a colleague. Uh we wanted to present a presentation for a potential client. And as we created the presentation, I asked him something about the, the meeting I was going to be handled and he lost it and he acted to me in a really unpleasant manner and I was really offended. But at the same time, I didn't understand what happened there because I didn't say something intentionally to, to make him feel bad. And in this moment, we both were smart and we decided to take one hour apart from each other. And as I said, back from the situation, beyond the unpleasant feeling that I felt, I tried to understand what's happening there because I really didn't understand and then it came to me, I understood that when I'm stressed, I like to ask questions to feel in control. And then I understood that when he is stressed out, it contained, it contained it, contain it till the moment he can't contain it anymore. And then it's like a volcano exploded out of the stress.

And then when we came back for another hour to finish the presentation, I decided that it's not the right time to speak about to coordinate expectation and to be professional and succeed with the client. And only afterwards to speak to a bit difficult conversation and to set expectation and talk about what we experienced. And this is actually what we had. So we only also succeeded with the client in the presentation. And afterwards, we had a really difficult conversation. But in the paradoxical way, it deepened the trust between us because we really talked about what is what's important for each one of us. So as Viktor Frankl defined mindfulness, he defined it as the space between the stimulation and the response as we brought up the space, we have a free choice to choose our behavior. And this is actually the mindfulness aspect. Otherwise we act upon our emotion and we don't have this buffer to choose freely how we want to act. I want to show you a nice video that show it in a really nice way. Let me pull it. OK. I don't know why it doesn't work. So let's continue. OK?

You may have heard this word mindfulness. It's become something of a buzz phrase of late. I'm gonna give you one simple serviceable definition, which is this mindfulness is the ability to know what's happening in your head at any given moment without getting carried away by it.

Imagine how useful this could be just as an example, driving down the road and somebody cuts you off in traffic. How do you normally react? I think most of us we normally react by having a thought, which is I'm pissed. And then what happens next? You immediately habitually reflexively inhabit that thought. You actually become pissed. There's no buffer between the stimulus and your reaction with just a little bit of mindfulness in that same situation. You might notice my chest is buzzing, my ears are turning red. I'm having a starburst of self righteous thoughts. I'm getting angry, but you don't necessarily have to act on it and chase that person down the road screaming at them with your kids in the back of the car thinking you've gone nuts. Now, you might be thinking, don't I need to get angry sometimes, aren't I justified? I would say yes, but probably not as much as you think. The proposition here is not that you should be rendered by mindfulness into some lifeless nonjudgmental blob. The proposition is that you should learn how to respond wisely to things that happen to you rather than just reacting blindly and that my friends is a superpower. How do you get it the way to get it is through meditation. I believe that meditation and mindfulness are the next big public health revolution in the 19 forties. If you told somebody, you were going running, they would have said who's chasing you. But then what happened next?

The scientists swooped in, they showed that physical exercise is really good for you and now all of us do it. And if we don't, we feel guilty about it. And that's where I think we're headed with mindfulness and meditation. It's gonna join the pantheon of no brainers, like brushing your teeth, eating well and taking the meds your doctor prescribed for you. Let me just close by saying, mindfulness is not gonna solve all of your problems. It's not gonna render your life a nonstop parade of unicorns and rainbows. Nonetheless, this is a superpower and one that is accessible by you immediately.

So let's clarify the definitions. Mindfulness is a state of mind that I'm also connected to my own experience. And at the same time to the broader picture, the ability to move between these two realms and choose my behavior. This is a mindfulness state of mind when I work with leaders and managers, I'm asking them the questions and giving them another viewpoint and actually enabling them to broader the perspective because usually it reminds me when we the enemies after a surgery going with the corners on their head.

They see only really a narrow viewpoint and usually walk like this during the day. As we increase our mindfulness in the day to day, we can increase the ability to see the broader picture and then have the free choice to choose how we want to act between these two REMS. Another way to achieve this state of mind is by meditation. Meditation is a technique that make us the uh neoplastic that I will talk in a few minutes a little bit. What's happening in the technology world. We see that there's a lot of application nowadays that access to practice meditation. There's the headspace. I'm sure you all know, actually, it's a really interesting story. The the co-founder of headspace was a monk in the monastery for a long time and he wanted to make it accessible to as many people as he could. And he connected with the marketing guy. And you know, you see that they raised $72 million in the third round and you can see them in Netflix in different places. There's a lot of apps in someone wants to start practicing. You can also use the 10% appear in much more apps to start bringing into the day to day. We can consider that also in the corporate world.

They understood that there are new tools that they need to give to their leaders and employees in order to bring the organization to the cutting edge. Actually, there's a new job description in Linkedin S A Etna in Linkedin. There's a guy, a job description called Chief of mindfulness and compassion. Actually, he wrote the forward to my book and also in S A in Etna. So we can understand that we are going out there and understand that it's not only gimmick, but we need to embrace these new tools. So I need to let you understand what's happening there in Aetna. In 2004, the CEO went through a life crisis in a ski accident and he almost died and he didn't have a lot of choice. So he started practicing mind meditation and yoga and it really saved his life. So in 2010, he brought two programs of mindfulness to the company. And today, more than 20,000 employees went through the courses and they also created a place for meditation center and took it forward and also in the sales force in San Francisco. Every in every uh building, they have quiet rooms that people can go and connect to themselves and meditate or every little bit quiet and all this noise also in Google, I'm sure you know that they develop the silly program and offering it inside and outside of Google.

So we see that companies are going this way and it's starting to be a common practice to offer mindfulness programs uh to the organization and meditation in order to help them be more Karma productive and increase their well being. Also in the universities, the Highly league universities like Stanford UCL A Harvard, all of them uh research in this area but not only researching but also offering the mindful as the courses, as the programs in the MA degree and B A degree. And much more, there are more than 6000 published scientific studies that support the efficiency of mindfulness to improve our three areas in our life, our health, our happiness and our brain. How does it affect our brain? It's actually create the neuroplasticity. If in the mid twenties, they thought the researchers saw that we get to an age that our brain stopped changing. Actually, they found that through meditation, our brain does change and can create new patterns in our brain and we can embrace agility. So the meditation actually asks us to create new patterns and to let go of patterns that doesn't serve us anymore. Let me show you one research that explained it. So as I mentioned before, Doctor John Kazin is a say. Uh so, so doctor that in 1979 came to hospitals and asked them to bring in patients that they can't deal anymore with the chronic pain, with their anxiety and with the strength stress. And he developed a protocol called mindfulness based stress reduction N BS R.

It's eight meetings of 2.5 hours meditation in a half day retreat of meditation. And in this research they took people like a group of people that didn't practice meditation before and they went through the MRI and then they divided them into two groups. One group was the control group that didn't go through the N BS R. And one of them was the experimental group that went through this eight weeks of the M BS R. And afterwards, they went through again, the MRI and they found that the group that practiced only eight weeks of meditation, their brain changed for the better. How did it change this part of the brain? That's the Amygdala that connected to stress and anxiety. Actually, the activity decreased in this area. And this is this is the advanced part of our brain that connected to emotion regulation, to memory, to executive decision making, the activity increased in this area. And beyond this, the connection between the two were blow. So people can make better decision after only eight weeks of medication. So this is actually an example of one research that shows how meditation changes our brain for the better and increases places that connects to compassion, empathy. Even if we don't believe in meditation, the fact that we are practicing physiologically, it changes our brain for the better. So this is actually the theory and little about what's happening in the corporate tours.

What what why should we embrace these tools in order to navigate better our life and our companies. Now, I want to invite you to a meditation of five minutes that I will facilitate. So I will put on music, you know, invited to enjoy the meditation. So let's put the music on. So I invited to sit comfort comfortably on the chair. Let your eyes close, be aware of your body and feel the intensity of your body. Now pay attention to the fact that you are breathing, pay attention to the sensation of your brain breathing slowly through your nose. And when through your mouth, now slowly move your attention to your shoulders, feel the sensations around your shoulders or stressed, relaxed, maybe aching and just be aware of the sensations and exist without trying to change anything. Now, slowly move your attention to your shoulder, to your hands, to your palm of their hands. Now already bring your attention to your left foot and just notice your left foot, including your toes, heel, bottom of your left foot, top of your left foot, just notice what it feels like, then move up slowly to your left ankle. Notice how your left ankle feels.

Pay attention to whether there is any pain there. Is it cold or hot? Does it feel light or heavy? And just accept the sensation as there are in this moment. Now, slowly pay attention to your left leg, starting at the bottom up to your knee and thigh all the way to your hips at the top of your leg. Notice if you left feet is tight or relaxed, warm or cold, light or heavy and just let it be exactly as it is in this moment. Now, pay attention to your art food. Just notice your right foot, including your toes, heel, the bottom of your right foot, top of your right foot. Just notice out feel that now slowly move up to your right ankle. Notice how your right ankle feels. Pay attention to whether there is any pain there. Is it cold or hot, heavy or light? Now pay attention to your right leg starting in the bottom of your knee and tight all the way to your hips in the top of your leg. Now pay attention to both legs from your toes up to your hips and breathe gently into your legs. Now, slowly move your attention to your belly and just observe what's there.

Notice how your belly feels and let it be exactly as it is in this moment without trying to change anything. Now, slowly move your attention to your heart, see if you can feel your heart beating and if you can't, it's also ok, just be curious what exists in this present moment. Now, it slowly bring your attention to your throat and neck feel. Is there any sensations in this area? Not bring your attention to your head, fill your cheek bones in your nose and mouth and just let it be exactly as it is in this moment, not judging anything. And without trying to change anything only been present, whatever feels like. Now, take a deep breath in through your nose and after through your mouth, take another few breaths. Now, slowly bring up to attention to your eyes, to the eyebrow. And when you're ready, you were invited to bring your attention back to be here and now and slowly open your eyes. Ok. So this was one the bodies can practice. Hope you enjoyed it. You are able to let go of your wandering mind and be present in the moment. It's really a great n to do during the day, we can find even three minutes or five minutes to do it. Now, let's move on to the last part.

The benefits of embracing mindfulness in the day to day. So it's actually impact our life in three areas in the according to the self-awareness, better relationship and work performance. So our, it increases our self-awareness. First of all, it enables us to get out of automatic behaviors.

Each and every one of us have a lot of automatic behaviors. It can be an example that I'm saying no to every new opportunity that comes to my way, it can be that I'm all over the place or too much focus on seeing the negative part. So as you can understand each and every one was a, has a lot of automatic behaviors. But let's take one example. OK? Maybe I have a colleague or a person that every time I see him, I get, my body gets angry. I get stuck and I can't even listen to him because something in his behavior make me feel uncomfortable. So automatically I'm cross and I can't listen to anything insane and getting angry and frustrated. But if I will pause and will ask myself, why is this person creates this reaction in me? And maybe I can understand that. Maybe the way you say things it's unpleasant to me or maybe the timing he finds to speak with me is also not comfortable time. And then I get constructed so they can act upon it and ask them to next time. Let's set a meeting instead of reacting automatically and closing in front of them. And maybe now he's coming to a meeting and now I'm coming first, right? Because I'm not acting upon automatic behavior. And I don't feel uncomfortable because I'm not in the same situation that make me feel uncomfortable.

And then I said sitting down and speaking with this colleague and there's something that I'm trying to figure out for a lot of few months with another client I have and only speaking with with this colleague that I didn't stick like it because I wasn't able make me a epiphany about this client because he also worked with this client.

And I could listen differently to what he say. And it actually enables me to find a solution quicker than I thought. So you can see that once we are acting from a mindful place in creating the space. We can choose how to act and get out of automatic behavior and to achieve different results and better ones. And as we embrace mindfulness in the day to day increases our resilience, our well being and better, we can have better decision making process. It increases our relationships because actually when we practice meditation, it changes part of our brain that connected to compassion, to empathy to acceptance. So we are much more acceptance of ourselves than others. And you know, as leaders and individuals, it starts with ourselves, right?

Because if, if I'm criticizing myself all day long, I won't be able to be empathic to my employees because this is my glasses I see through. So it starts within ourselves. So as we practice mindfulness and meditation, we are letting go of, of criticizing ourselves. It doesn't mean that we don't want to evolve and be better leaders and persons, but it will be from out of love and acceptance. And then we can be there for our employees in this manner. And the last thing, it actually increases our ability to be in a flow state of mind to be really focused, ef efficient and productive and at the same time, really creative and innovative and enjoy what we are doing. And this is actually the place that we want to be in, bring our investing minimal effort and gaining maximum results. So as leaders as we are more mindful, we can create trust with our employees colleague. And this is actually the crucial element that we need to to lead nowadays by creating trust. And it will help us be more empathic toward our more employees because we will be able to accept and be there for them and not trying to close and find a solution. You know, as a leader, even by saying to my employee, look, I see you, I see you are struggling. How can I be here for you? You know, you don't know how miracles it creates because the employee will feel seen and actually he will find a solution.

Usually it doesn't really need a solution. People want to feel seen and the people of their leaders and managers are listening to them and as I more mindful, we can be show up more vulnerable. We don't need to show a coherent identity. Sometimes we don't know the answers and that's ok. We can't know all the answers as leaders because the wisdom is in the crowd, but we need to listen better and be authentic. And you know, one of the leaders manager went through my course. It was amazing. She told me we touched upon this uh vulnerability issue and she, during the Coronavirus transformation went through also a divorce, really tough divorce and she led a, a big team and they didn't know anything about it. And after the course, she told me, wow, I'm going to share with them what I went to this year and be vulnerable. It's not my conference, but I will do it. And then she came back and told me, wow, you know, it was amazing because one, once I showed up in there to be vulnerable. First of all, it was amazing to see how emphatic they were to me. And also it's gave them legitimacy to be also vulnerable. And one of my employees told me that you feel lonely. And then another, another one said another really vulnerable thing. And it's created such a deep connection between us that from this moment on we can achieve everything. So it's actually being human, showing authentic and showing our weaknesses.

And actually, as I see, it is uh in order to show our weakness, it's, it's actually a strength because the ability not to show that we know all the answers. So I want to leave you with tools, you know, taking it to the day today. So if you want to create more mindfulness practice, I invite you to set in your calendar, five minutes to pause. It can be transition, meditation, even put a music like I put here and listen to the music. You can go up to nature for 10 minutes every walk. And let's see your thoughts, let them go and bring your attention to the here. And now it really will enable you to come fresh to the new meeting. And you will be much more productive and efficient and present. Another thing I encourage you to do is when you have a meeting, invite people to, to, to, to have a check in, for example, between one and 10, our present are you now with us? And actually the fact that they are saying, OK, I'm 95 because I'm not present and my, my mind is with my daughter. I, I have an issue there and another guy will say different thing. The fact that I said it will in a paradoxical way make me be more present.

And maybe as a leader, I'm listening to one of my employees and I understand that it's, we need all of us five minutes to wrap up the other things in order to be more present. So maybe I will postpone the meeting in five minutes, but it would be much more efficient that people will be present, really not be with their body, but the mind far far away. Another thing is to really create, to start a meeting with the code on, you know, to acknowledge things that people are doing great to, to be appreciative. It's really leverage, increases the energy in the team and connect to people and really create a sense of community, engage people by inviting them to bring themselves, sharing their personal stories. Uh Something that, you know, more human, not only the functional aspect of the day to day.

And as we are we will act more from this place of mindfulness. We can create more flow in the workplace for ourselves and for our employees. And really to be in the state of mind that we integrate the doing mode and the B mode and acting out of deep listening will enable us to invest minimal effort in maximum results. And the last thing I want to share with you that if you do want to bring mindfulness into the workplace, you know, good practices to do is to find an owner to bring mindfulness to the workers. You see that in your companies, there's a lot of the individuals that already practice this meditations and tourism and they can take ownership on it. Uh You can offer your managers and employees mindfulness courses, offer a weekly meditation practice, CRE create a community of practice that they will practice together. It's really helps to continue this practice and can create a physical space for practice, a silent room, a meditation room.

It can be even a fun room only sometimes to take ourselves out of the situation in order to clear our mind to come in a fresh way to the next meeting of sessions. So thank you very much for your attention and your presence.