Clear vision

Consider yourself a trustee and not the owner of the organisation and you would have made the transition from being a smart leader to a wise leader

Mindfulness allows you to see the role and the person playing the role distinctly and without internal criticism. By cultivating mindfulness, you will develop discernment and learn to perform your role with detached engagement as you recognise that you are bigger than your role. John Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, defines mindfulness as paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally.

Mindfulness facilitates self-awareness by allowing you to simultaneously focus your attention in a deliberate manner on your body, thoughts, feelings, and external context. Being mindful, you see things as they are and observe yourself. This ability to perceive clearly without judgement helps you gain a deeper understanding of who you are as a whole person in relation to the world around you.
 
The first major benefit of mindfulness is that it gives you the discernment to choose appropriate roles. By being mindful of your strengths and weaknesses, you gain discernment in choosing right roles that leverage your real strengths. All leaders have the ability to act appropriately and choose right roles based on the context and if they are in a wise state of mind, their emotional attachment to a particular role and ego issues are minimized. They are able to play multiple roles with ease without getting caught up with any one of them. Moreover, they know how to cast other leaders in complementary roles in order to serve a larger purpose. Gaining and maintaining the clarity that you are only a trustee and not the owner of the organization you are leading-even if you are the founder of that organization -is one of the key differentiators between smart leadership and wise leadership.

We have found that many leaders often step into a role feeling confident that they have the right skills to perform that role when in fact they don't. As a result, they have to stretch their skills to make up for this deficiency, which can lead to failure. Other leaders shy away from a challenging role even though they are perfectly qualified for it because they don't want to take the risk of potentially failing once they assume that role. They are more likely to pick a role they are comfortable with, but then they quickly become dissatisfied or bored because it is not challenging enough. Mindfulness helps you find a role that fits your skills and yet challenges you and gives you an opportunity to learn and grow.

Another major benefit of mindfulness is that it will help you perform your chosen role with poise and detachment. We once consulted with Ray Hayachi (not his real name), the co-founder and CEO of a start-up that eventually became a ¤^5 billion company. In time, the company investors suggested that Hayachi step aside and bring in a seasoned CEO who had more experience in the types of clients the company had and with multiple product lines. We advised Hayachi to let go of the CEO role and become the chairman of the board, a role in which he could continue to contribute to the growth of the company. Hayachi didn't agree: he felt he could prove his mettle in running a large organization and scaling it up further to make it a billion-dollar company. In the ensuing battle of will, the board won: it brought in a seasoned CEO and made Hayachi chief operating officer. Hayachi resented the board's decision and refused to assume that role. His lack of poise and unwillingness to listen to and learn from the new CEO sabotaged his career: he was forced by the board to leave the very company he had co-founded.

We see many leaders like Hayachi who get caught up in a particular role and are unable to gain a broader perspective and assume that role in an emotionally detached manner because they identify too closely with it. If you are mindful, it is easier to cultivate detached engagement because you can see yourself as being bigger than that role. Over time, this detached engagement helps you deal with failures effectively and build resilience, which helps you maintain your equanimity. You won't cling to that role or become attached to the pleasures derived from it.

This detached engagement will provide you with several benefits. First, you will develop the ability to observe your performance - like watching an actor on stage - and objectively identify areas you need to improve. Second, you won't feel the burden of the leadership role since you are aware of being merely an instrument of a larger purpose. Third, you will carry out your role with consistency and resilience without craving validation. Finally, since you are not attached to the outcome, you will be willing to share in the rewards and become a better team player.

Meet the authors

Prasad Kaipa has advised CEOs and coached executive teams in the areas of innovation, business transformation, decision making and strategic thinking. Some of his clients include HP, CISCO, Disney, Adobe, Apple, Xerox, Boeing and Mastek. Prasad is a founding director of Center for Leadership and Innovation Change at the Indian School of Business and part-time faculty at the Saybrook Graduate School.

Navi Radjou is an independent thought leader and strategy consultant based in Silicon Valley. Radjou is a Fellow at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and a faculty member of the World Economic Forum (WEF). He has consulted with leading international organisations, including Ernst & Young, GM, Hitachi, IBM, Marks & Spencer and Microsoft on innovation and leadership strategies. Most recently, Navi served as the executive director of the Centre for India & Global Business at Cambridge Judge Business School. He is also the co-author of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth (Jossey-Bass, 2012)

In addition to helping you cultivate detached engagement, mindfulness keeps you grounded in the present. It is a popular notion that we spend too much time thinking and reminiscing about the past or worrying about the future and too little paying attention to the present. Mindfulness keeps you grounded in the present by focusing your attention on what's happening here and now, and this allows you to perform better, according to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a professor of psychology at Claremont College. He has demonstrated that artists and athletes tend to perform at their highest level when they operate in the immersive state of flow - when all their thoughts cease to exist and their selves completely merge with the object of their attention. When they are performing with such high concentration, awareness and action fuse together and their sense of time gets altered to focus on the present.

Mindfulness is like an untrained muscle: you can consciously develop it with the right exercise. Todd Pierce, former chief information officer of Genentech (and currently an executive vice president at salesforce.com), believes that leaders who consciously practice mindfulness can increase their self-awareness - and in doing so, they will be able to discover and tap into the best of themselves when leading others. Having personally experienced the benefits of mindfulness, Pierce was eager to introduce the company's IT staff to mindfulness development techniques and develop their own self-awareness to improve their performance. He realized that the best way to keep employees motivated and engaged was by contributing to their personal growth. To accomplish this at Genentech, he brought in Pam Weiss, a Buddhist meditation teacher, executive coach, and the founder of Appropriate Response, a company that trains leaders in mindfulness development.

SMART TO WISE: ACTING AND LEADING WITH WISDOM
AUTHOR: Prasad Kaipa, Navi Radjou
PUBLISHER: Random House India
PRICE: Rs 499
ISBN: 9788184003710

Excerpted From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom by Prasad Kaipa and Navi Radjou. Published by Random House India. All rights reserved.