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Practising mindfulness makes better communicators and better leaders according to mindfulness expert Dr Craig Hassed. Speaking to Megan Dalla-Camina in the lead up to the Sustaining Women in Business conference, Hassed discussed the effects of mindfulness meditation on people’s performance at work and the benefits it has for those in leadership positions. When we’re paying attention and being mindful, we communicate better, establish relationships and develop more emotional intelligence.
“Through better focus and awareness, people [who practise mindfulness] tend to perform better. Memory improves, executive functioning – which is like our decision-making and processing of information – improves, emotional regulations – all of those functions work better,” said Hassed, a general practitioner and senior lecturer at Monash University in the department of general practice.
“[Mindfulness] is very important in the workplace, very important for leadership. Women tend to perform better in these areas as well; very often it’s the men that need a little bit more work with developing those capacities, but they’re the kind of capacities that are associated with good and effective team leadership.”
Being mindful can help us to better prepare for that important meeting or presentation, according to Hassed, by helping us to actually plan for it rather than stress about the outcome.
“Preparing for that presentation or meeting is a focused, present-moment activity, but very often things like worry do a very good impersonation of planning and preparation, so we think we’re planning and preparing or working, when what the mind is actually doing is worrying,” he said.
“If we’re mindful we can start to notice [when the mind starts to worry about how it’s is going to go] and unhook our attention from it and just refocus on whatever it is that needs our attention at that moment.”
While practising mindfulness will help us become better leaders, it can also reduce the number of sick days we take each year. According to Hassed, mindfulness improves our immunity and our ability to cope with pain or deal with illnesses.
“Less coughs, colds and infections, or if a person gets one, it tends to be less severe,” he said, pointing to studies that have suggested we’d all take about a quarter of the number of days off work due to colds and infections, if we had mindfulness training.
Aside from improving our physical health, mindfulness also has a significant impact on our mental health and, in particular, depression.
“If people who have had multiple episodes of depression learn mindfulness, they can expect more than half the chance of having a relapse compared to if they just have treatment as usual by itself,” Hassed said.
Hassed will be speaking at the Sustaining Women in Business conference in October, but to hear more of his latest mindfulness discussion, listen to the full podcast available at SWB or in the media player above.