Mindfulness, latest fad or Business Development Tool?
Currently we see thought leaders promoting Mindfulness as the way to personal fulfilment, happiness and business success, but is the reality a revolutionary new step or just another name for something that has gone before?
Mindfulness from my perspective is about awareness of yourself and others around you. A key element is listening to what other have to say and speaking with consideration about the impact your words will have on others. All sounds a great approach to life and business, but of key note here is, 'listening to others' as its not inherently a strong trait in people generally. The more common situation in an exchange of communication, is for each party to use the time whilst the other person is speaking, to think up the next statement to support their own argument, (has been described as reloading which I think perfectly describes it). So is any surprise that so many discussions become heated and turn into a conflict situation? We are under more and more pressure in business to perform and as competition grows in a shrinking world, this most likely will continue to get worse. If we don't take control and realise its more important to do tasks well, taking more time if necessary, rather than do everything to a mediocre level, we are destined to create more trouble for ourselves in the future.
So whats the point here? Communication is at the heart of managing a team and a business, so if we don't put time into mastering communication, we are making everything more difficult for ourselves. If we then look at how we can perform at our best, looking after our bodies and mental health, scores pretty high on the list.
Mindfulness may be the current in vogue thing to do, but as business owners it could just be the thing that give our business the edge. Coupled with this we can see a natural evolution through society where initially a persons potential was measured as intelligence, or Intelligence Quotient, (IQ), but reality failed to show success in life coupled with a high IQ score. The outcome of this was to measure peoples Emotional Quotient, (EQ), which did correlate life success to a high EQ score. What EQ didn't do was to give a personal development path, it was more of a scoring system. So maybe this is where Mindfulness comes in, with techniques and specific processes people can practice and improve, developing more awarenesses of our surroundings, ourselves and the effect of our interaction on others. So practice Mindfulness to grow your emotional skills and hence your EQ which statistically measured will grow your life potential
Moving forward we need to optimise our own personal abilities to be able to maximise our business development, but clearly we need the tools to develop our businesses to best effect and hence achieve the growth or profits to support the lifestyle we desire. If you are interested in attending one of our introductory workshops to help you in this area just get in touch
