Mindful Leadership in Action
Master 5 Mental Markers of Mindfulness to reset your focus, reduce stress and re-balance your leadership approach
Mindful Action Master Class for your personal leadership wellbeing
A major mission of leaders is to help their people stay engaged and on-task – so they can apply themselves to producing good results, relatively free of stress, distraction or upset. Before they can help their people like this, though, leaders need to work on setting aside their own distractions and focusing their own attention first.
That’s where Mindful Leadership in Action can help – it looks at what it means and how to lead mindfully…
What's this clinic about?
Mindfulness isn't a practice you encounter all that much in the rush-’n-hurry of workplaces yet it actually underscores so many things that matter for good leadership. Work, for many of us, seems to be a place where action is valued over reflection; where we prefer speedy decisions over more considered ones and mindful leaders are a pretty rare species.
Mindfulness from an applied leadership perspective
Mindfulness is a hugely beneficial set of practices that can help us cope more calmly and constructively with constant demands, busyness, pressure and stress and the deluge of distractions we face every day that can keep us in a state of continuously divided attention.
"Different to the run-of-the-mill mindfulness courses. Well worth attending. Especially if your interest is in mindful leadership and how to put it into action at work every day. I now have practical exercises I can use to get better at focusing my attention, dealing better with distractions and feeling less pressured at work. Others in my team have attended The Change Forum clinics with good results too."
Greg W, Financial Development Manager
Practical paybacks of mindfulness at work
The sheer number of leaders suffering stress and burn-out has doubled during the last decade. More and more leaders are seeking ways to put in a peak performance without sacrificing their sanity and well-being.
Recent neuroscience discoveries vividly show how mindfulness training can reshape neuronal pathways, exert a beneficial and healthy influence on brain function, and help leaders find a haven of clarity, calm and focus in a maelstrom of complexity and uncertainty.
Putting aside the stress-relief and well-being benefits, some practical paybacks mindfulness at work has for leaders include:
- It forms the foundation for building your emotional and social intelligence faculties that help leaders to cultivate constructive relations, connectivity and compassion
- It can help train a leader's brain to learn to focus full attention on what matters most in a situation, see things more clearly and reduces reactivity
- It aids mental clarity by freeing leaders from the fog of unhelpful thoughts and the dead-weight of preconceptions, prejudicial thinking or tyrannous thought traps
- It facilitates leaders to see things systemically – to comprehend subtle patterns of interrelationships between seemingly separate factors
- It increases mental discipline, emotional balance, helps you maintain calm, clarity and composure, restores resilience, tempers your temper and enhances our quality of action
You don’t have to formally meditate to be mindful
Mindfulness is often linked with meditation – but you don’t have to meditate to be mindful. There's no doubt that regular meditation practice provides a powerful path to develop the brain-discipline of focused-attention, is good for your health and for your ability to cope with anxiety and stress.
But there are many every-day ways you can train your brain to focus attention, downgrade distractions and heighten presence and clarity – deep and abiding mind-skills that can lift your leadership capacity and personal productivity while strengthening your sense of balance and well-being.
5 Mental Markers to rebalance your leadership focus
Mindful Leadership in Action introduces 5 Mental Markers and simple brain-training-tools to help you develop the mental disciplines of presence, attention, self-reflection and focus and integrate these into your everyday leader activities.
We’ll show you lots of ways you can be more calm, clear, present and emotionally balanced while going about your usual leadership work.
Mindful Leadership in Action is not a meditation program targeting leaders. It's been carefully crafted from years of developing leaders to apply mindfulness from a practical leadership perspective.
We're fully aware that many leaders think of mindfulness as inaction – mainly passive, meditative and possibly impractical in a work environment. Rather than go into meditation, our focus is mainly on how you can do it ‘in action’ just as well – practical, everyday ways leaders can incorporate a bit of mindfulness into their weekly routines, without necessarily having to 'retreat to the cushion’ – yet at the same time training your brain to be more focused, present and attentive.
Apart from helping you to lift your performance, mindfulness can also help leaders:
- Be more present and focused for the people you lead
- Make better decisions and increase the quality of your actions
- Conduct more mindful dialogues and be conversationally present
- Manage distractions and mind-stray - ease anxiety and lessen stress
- Be more attuned to yourself physically, emotionally and cognitively
- Regain balance, curtail confusion and dampen down disruptive emotions
- Strengthen your reserves of resilience and sense of well-being
- Build your social intelligence capacity to cultivate connectivity and compassion
Wondering what we’re minding when we’re being mindful leaders?
In Mindful Leadership in Action we use 5 Mental Markers of Mindfulness to identify what makes up mindfulness and actions you can apply in an everyday leader context. Each provides a potential start-point for you to learn and practise mindful leadership:
- Being Present to whatever’s going on now, not thinking about other things
- Being Awake and Aware of how thoughts can either distract us, distress us or help us to focus
- Being Focused by making ourselves pay attention and set-aside distracting thoughts
- Emotional Balance: staying even-minded and accepting whatever’s happened so you can then concentrate on how to handle it
- Being Clear, Open and Calm. Being clear-and-open-minded rather than ruminate on the past, worry about the future or let biases get the better of us and cloud our thinking.
“Gave me good practical tools to improve my mindfulness and cope with high-demand situations. Biggest learning was applying the 5 Mental Markers in a tough situation after the course. It’s been very useful. Thanks again for another great course!”
Penny S, Program Manager Queensland Health
What You'll Learn in this practical program
In this 'minds-on' clinic you will...
Look at what it means to lead mindfully
Explore neuro-leadership and emotional intelligence links of mindfulness training and its practical benefits and pay-backs
Be introduced to 5 Mental Markers for mindful leadership, attention-focusing exercises and tools leaders can use to retrain your brain and rewire mental habits and neural pathways for greater self-mastery and personal productivity
Explore how you can achieve more focus, connectivity, compassion, resilience, presence and emotional balance – all key aspects of emotionally intelligent leaders
See where you are on our Mindfulness Dashboard and design a practice-regime to re-train your brain to be more mindful and self-aware
Down-to-earth work-based actions not just a meditation program
● Learn about the brain-science behind our 5 Mental Markers for mindful leadership
● Try-out some simple techniques you can use back at work
● Measure yourself on our Mindfulness Dashboard
● Take away our complimentary in-depth Mindful Leadership in Action Toolkit
● Become more present and focused for the people you lead
● Quality learning, safe environment to practise, very reasonable rates
“...The guidebook, as always, is outstanding – with excellent tools. You always provide such useful follow-up resources supported by such a strong research base!"
Lyn Bishop, Principal – Sheldon College
What we will Cover in this practical program
Our day features 6 broad Mindful Leadership in Action Sessions
Session 1: Leading Mindfully
...looks at why mindfulness matters for leaders, the neuroscience basis behind it, and introduces 5 Mental Markers of Mindfulness: Presence, Self-awareness, Focused Attention, Emotional Balance & keeping a Clear, open and calm Mind.
Session 2: Mindful Body
...touches on a few body-based ways to focus attention and the idea of using your body as an anchor to be present.
Session 3: Mindful Thinking
...how thoughts distract and lead us astray with exercises to help stay present, focused, prevent mind-stray and reflect on whether our thoughts are beneficial or baneful.
Session 4: Mindful Feeling
...looks at how feelings drive what we think, say and do, how focus and attention is tied to them and tools to dampen down disruptive emotions.
Session 5: Mindful Talking
...the quality of conversations leaders have has a lot to do with being present, focused, balanced and mindfully listening and speaking. We also look at dialogue as a form of mindful and reflective group conversation.
Session 6: Mindful Action
...ways leaders can apply mindfulness practices to everyday activities and work contexts to improve the quality of actions and relationships. You'll also assess yourself in terms of mindfulness practices and create a practice plan.
“I came along to learn how to manage personal stressors in high-workload environments. I enjoyed the relaxed nature and insights of the small-group conversations and went away with a much better understanding of how to incorporate mindfulness into both work and my private life."
Thomas G - Queensland Parks & Wildlife
Is this course for you?
Participants of our mindfulness, personal mastery and well-being clinics are leaders and workers from all levels and any walk of working-life who want to re-balance and reinvigorate themselves, and refresh their leadership practice through learning and applying the mental disciplines of deep self-reflection, mindfulness and compassion
Individual Coaching option
If you prefer 1-on-1 learning through individual Coaching we can help you focus on integrating mindful leadership practices into your everyday leadership approach - see our Coaching Leaders website
In-house options - LIVE or ONLINE
Enquire about in-house programs for larger groups (10 or more), tailored clinics or currently unscheduled locations
Mindfulness is not just a practice for leaders!
CALL Bill Cropper on 0429-687 513
to arrange a mindfulness clinic in-house with your team
Strengthen staff focus and attention at work
Increase resilience, relieve stress, reduce anxiety
Be more present to people and situations
Manage distracting thoughts and emotions
Improve harmony, calm, well-being and balance
Why choose The Change Forum clinics?
Down-to-earth, hands-on, stimulating & relevant
Practical tools, processes & frameworks for back-at-work action
Comprehensive, take-away, self-coaching Guidebooks
Safe, relaxed, small-group environment
Highly-experienced, well-regarded facilitator
Serious & challenging with a healthy dose of fun!
Your Facilitator - A Brief Profile
"Over the past decade or more, I’ve had the privilege of coaching executives, senior managers and team leaders in many different organisations, and whether it’s leading with emotional intelligence, dealing with difficult team moments, managing stressful situations or having more connective conversations, mindfulness always crops up as one of the paths we explore.
Since launching Mindful Leadership in Action in 2012, a steady stream of leaders coming along to this clinic share one thing in common: they all want to find ways to be deliberate, thoughtful, calm, composed - more of the better leader they want to be rather than the anxious, reactive or pressured one they fear becoming."
Bill is founding director and principal consultant at The Change Forum. He has a wealth of practical experience in conversational coaching, social and emotional intelligence, strategic change, cultural reconstruction, teamworking, group facilitation and leadership learning at all levels from senior executives to team leaders. A big portion of his consulting, coaching and training work over the past twenty years has centred on helping workplaces build the emotional, conversational and social intelligence capacities to create more compassionate, caring and connective cultures and more vibrant, productive, happy and high-performing teams.
Since he designed and delivered his first Mindful Leadership in Action program in 2012, he’s delivered numerous programs publicly and in-house for leaders from many organisation backgrounds including housing, environment, education, roads, Local Government and community services. Mindful leadership also features frequently as a desired topic for coverage by leaders seeking assistance through individual leadership coaching.
Bill’s been a preferred learning, change and leadership provider for many federal, state and local government agencies over the years. He is known for his practical, engaging and interactive style of facilitating; designs his own programs, models, frameworks and tools; and produces down-to-earth, self-coaching guides, toolkits and workbooks to accompany all his programs.
Your Facilitator - A Brief Profile
"Over the past decade or more, I’ve had the privilege of coaching executives, senior managers and team leaders in many different organisations, and whether it’s leading with emotional intelligence, dealing with difficult team moments, managing stressful situations or having more connective conversations, mindfulness always crops up as one of the paths we explore.
Since launching Mindful Leadership in Action in 2012, a steady stream of leaders coming along to this clinic share one thing in common: they all want to find ways to be deliberate, thoughtful, calm, composed - more of the better leader they want to be rather than the anxious, reactive or pressured one they fear becoming."
Bill is founding director and principal consultant at The Change Forum. He has a wealth of practical experience in conversational coaching, social and emotional intelligence, strategic change, cultural reconstruction, teamworking, group facilitation and leadership learning at all levels from senior executives to team leaders. A big portion of his consulting, coaching and training work over the past twenty years has centred on helping workplaces build the emotional, conversational and social intelligence capacities to create more compassionate, caring and connective cultures and more vibrant, productive, happy and high-performing teams.
Since he designed and delivered his first Mindful Leadership in Action program in 2012, he’s delivered numerous programs publicly and in-house for leaders from many organisation backgrounds including housing, environment, education, roads, Local Government and community services. Mindful leadership also features frequently as a desired topic for coverage by leaders seeking assistance through individual leadership coaching.
Bill’s been a preferred learning, change and leadership provider for many federal, state and local government agencies over the years. He is known for his practical, engaging and interactive style of facilitating; designs his own programs, models, frameworks and tools; and produces down-to-earth, self-coaching guides, toolkits and workbooks to accompany all his programs.
Cost & Registration
Register On-line >>>
[ Prices include GST ]
1-Day On-location Clinics...
Single registration
General fee: $627 $594
NFP & Schools: $572 $550
Live-Online Sessions...
[ 7.5hrs online coaching + hard copy guide ]
5 x 1.5hr Sessions: $572 $550
In-House Clinics suggested for 10 or more
The fine print...
- Prices include GST…
- Payment due on Registration - pay by card on registration or on Invoice due within 10 days & prior to attendance
- Fees non-refundable - may be transferred to an alternative event up to 10 days prior
- Small groups 3-10 to optimise individual learning
- Minimum numbers required at The Change Forum’s discretion)
- Registrants auto-Subscribed: All registrants are added to The Change Forum mailing list but can choose to unsubscribe any time after the event
- Venue: Centrally located venues advised on registration
- Inclusions: Tuition, Guidebook, eCertificate plus for in-person events: light lunch & refreshments
- Timing: On-line: 2.00-3.30pm (login 10 mins prior)
On-location: 8.30am-4.45pm (arrive 15mins prior)
Please Note: Covid-aware hygiene practices will be observed at live workshop venues. Please do not attend if you are sick or advised to self-isolate. If a substitute cannot be arranged and transfer to an alternative course is not feasible, a refund will be provided.
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for our full range of leadership & team learning programs