Resources

The Sustainable Individual

Physical and Mental Health

What do you do for a living? A bold new vision for leaders
By Stephen Johnston
Published by Hardie Grant Books 2007

If there was one "hot topic" that preoccupied many of my discussions to do with health, balance and wellbeing, it was the ancient art of meditation. The practice of focusing attention to bring about feelings of calm, energy and heightened awareness dates back to 3000 BC when Indian scholars would sit in silence on the banks of the River Ganges and explore their minds. Buddhists took up the practice in 500 BC and the technique has been spreading across the globe ever since.

The physical benefits of meditation - enhanced immune system, relief from anxiety and enhanced capacity for happiness - have been known, and scientifically proven, for decades. A good friend of mine and teacher of meditative techniques, Stuart Mackay, captures the essence of meditation in this way: "When tension, fear, sadness rise up to the surface and fill the mind, it floods. Meditation on a regular basis is like keeping an elbow on a release valve, so the well doesn't build up to a flood."

Before starting the journey described in this book I had little experience with meditation. Not unlike John Akehurst, who described himself as an "anxious over-achiever", I was too busy being busy to allow myself any quiet or reflective time. Indeed, I was one of those who would constantly bemoan the fact that there was never enough time to plan or prepare, I was always too enmeshed in the problem/solution cycle to take the time to find a way out of it. That was until I met Stuart Mackay, the founder of Peace at Work, an organisation dedicated to popularising inner peace in part by introducing meditation into one environment where it is sorely needed - the workplace. Stuart's own experience with meditation had begun when, as a twenty-seven-year-old owner of a small manufacturing business that employed some ten to twelve staff, he sacked a guy for being too calm. "There was this one guy who went around as if he was on wheels - calm, consistent, never up or down," said Stuart, "and my reaction, based on how I was responding to my own life experiences at the time, was that this guy was really annoying and I wanted him gone."

Stuart found himself "picking fights to justify getting rid of him" and, sure enough, the day came when this calm, annoying fellow decided to leave the business. Stuart was aware that the basis of this man's calmness was his regular practice of meditation and when he came to pick up his final pay, Stuart could not help but feel humbled by the mature, unemotional non-judgmental way in which this man accepted the circumstances. Feeling a little sheepish, he asked, almost in passing, about "this meditation stuff" that he was into.

I remember exactly what he said to me: "Meditation is like you've got a window in your mind and a tub of Ajax and every time you meditate you give it a good wipe and before long you see things really clearly." He said this in such a kind way - after the way I had treated him - that eh really touched my heart. I felt at that moment that this was something I should look into myself.

What followed was an extraordinary transformation. Stuart gave away his business to his staff, persuaded a friend to leave a high paying job to help him write a program on meditation (which was subsequently published in the United States with great success), then toured the world in pursuit of his personal mission before returning to Australia to establish Peace at Work.

Practitioners like Stuart are acutely aware that quality reflection time, or "time out", is becoming increasingly important for leaders wanting to better understand what drives and motivates them to find a deeper connection with personal purpose. It is acknowledged by most leaders as critically important in terms of balance and it ensures that leaders are focusing on the important things. Unfortunately, the reality of the modern workplace is at odds with this. As Fabian Dattner observed: "In this environment of increasing busyness, leaders and staff alike are overwhelmingly concerned that they are caught in a problem/solution cycle where they are expected to rapidly resolve issues as they arise. However, the absence of quality reflection time means that individuals and teams are often solving the wrong problem."

According to the results of the Dattner Grant "Purpose and Spirit in the Workplace" survey, there was a great deal of variation in the degree to which executives took time to meditate or reflect at work/ While overall it was encouraging that just over half the survey population (53 per cent) meditated/reflected at least once a month (of which 19 per cent did it daily), a significant amount (46 percent) meditated rarely or never. The reasons for meditating are varied but centre around the need for a "clear head" when confronted by difficult situations that require crucial decisions.

A number of leaders I met with believed in the power of meditation. John Kaehurst found it to be "profoundly impactful" in both his own transformation and the organisation's; Gordon Cairns participates in an annual Buddhist retreat as part of his exploration of the discipline; and others, like David Reeves, facilitate staff adoption by encouraging lunchtime seminars. Each has found that the process of "becoming relaxed through quieting the mind" is one of the best ways of enabling an individual to "see" the whole person, find balance and indeed improve performance in all aspects of their life - a big part of which is their performance at work. As Stuart Mackay says:

If you focus on the one thing for a period of time, the mind becomes still - and it is the stillness that does all the work, it provides the clarity to those seeking it. From a leadership perspective, where there is a requirement to evaluate whether to say yes or no to everything - all day, everyday - it is through meditation that we can sharpen our feelings and, as our instincts become sharper, we tend to evaluate in a clearer frame of mind, ultimately making better yes/no decisions.

I have found that when a persona has a quiet mind they begin to see all the possibilities, and so when a leader takes time out on a regular basis to clear their mind, increasingly they tend to make better decisions.

For ourselves as leaders and for our staff, it is vital that we find ways to facilitate self discovery through work-sponsored activity, to ensure that the importance of "well" employees is clearly communicated and to create an environment in which people believe they have the requisite freedom to pursue physical or mental development, both in and out of work time.