Mindfulness in Organizations: The Concept of Mindful Leadership

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to explore the concept of mindfulness and its growing popularity within organizations with the introduction of the concept of mindful leadership in the management literature. This paper is one of the first in a pair of papers to explore the concept of mindful leadership in organizations. The first section of the paper provides a brief inquiry into the history of mindfulness, the definitions of mindfulness and the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness meditation. In the second section, the author considers mindfulness in the organizational research before conducting discussion on the concept of mindful leadership in the third section. The paper claims that while many studies have been conducted on mindfulness in diverse research areas, mindful leadership research is still developing, and the author vows for its adoption by business leaders for positive transformation within their organizations. Putting mindfulness into perspective as an energy resource that can activate a spiral of gains, the paper calls for greater research into the concept of mindful leadership. The paper offers a starting point for researchers and organizational development professionals to consider the possibility that mindfulness can be used as an efficient tool for the benefit of business executives.

1. Introduction

As innovative solutions are of crucial importance to the survival of companies, leaders are constantly under the negative effect of stress, and they may find it very hard to step back and use new strategies to effectively manage their teams. The twenty-first century leaders operate in a context that has significantly changed; their conditions of work are described as more and more complex and paradoxical, and certainty in the new society is getting increasingly illusory. In order to develop well in this unstable and uncertain environment, companies and leaders are obliged to cultivate new skills, which enable them to handle effectively new challenges for which they cannot control the consequences [1]. As stated by Day and Dragoni, the main purpose of business executives for leadership development in this environment is to reinforce individual and collective capabilities in order to be effective in leadership positions [2]. The skills that must be developed individually are self-awareness, efficacy [2], resilience and cognitive flexibility [3], self-reflection and self-regulation [4]. While King and Nesbit [5] challenged today’s leadership development programs and actions in order to develop these leadership skills, Nesbit [4] emphasized on the development of meta-skills that he believes are particularly crucial for leaders who want to develop themselves. Mindfulness can be considered as a kind of meta-skill, which has the potential to develop core functioning like self-awareness and emotion regulation of leaders [6]. Recently, mindfulness training has turned out to be a very popular topic in management publications, which is emerging as a new method of leadership development [7, 8, 9]. The concept of mindfulness is employed to describe a state, a trait, and a method of training the mind [10]. A state mindfulness is when one is attentive in a state of full awareness and when one is focused on a clear goal with a non-judgmental attitude [11]. It is induced by clearly focusing on the breath and being aware of thoughts or emotions that arise without making any judgment at that moment. However, mindfulness happens naturally in everyday life whenever a person is aware of his present moment experiences. The majority of mindfulness operationalization measures trait mindfulness as the disposition to be mindful in everyday life differs from person to person.

Nowadays, new leadership theories are emerging. They are suggesting a renewal of leadership theories and practices based on behavioral developments for positive organizational change. These theories preach authenticity, emotions, and humility as core leadership competencies for positive organizational change and sustainable performance [12]. While studies on mindfulness in the workplace are getting more and more popular [6, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20], many leaders believe their companies are not equipped enough to face the “highly volatile, increasingly complex business environments” [21]. This work specifically demonstrates that it is possible to overcome this challenge of fostering greater outcomes at workplace by using mindfulness and contribute to leadership development. A growing number of leaders believe that the practice of mindfulness can fundamentally transform management and leadership approaches in organizations. This constitutes the interest of this work as it relates to the application of the ancient practice of mindfulness in organizational setting to not only induce greater work outcomes but also to improve leadership practice.

Therefore, what we are proposing through this work is one of many humble but perhaps useful responses to the issues of inventing an ethical and inspiring leadership, based on mindfulness, that is to say, to lead by consciously paying attention to what is happening in the here and now, in order to face any situation in an innovative way and adapt to it.

To address this purpose, this work aims to review academic literature on investigating the history of mindfulness, the multiple definitions of mindfulness, the mechanisms through which mindfulness operates, and what it purports to do in the context of leadership development.

2. Theoretical framework

2.1 Investigating the history of mindfulness and its definitions

The history of mindfulness as a concept spans over 2500 years, and it takes its roots in the Buddhist tradition. The first written mention of the term mindfulness in ancient Indian comes from a fifth-century Indian philosopher called Asanga [22]. Traditionally, this term is known in Pali as “sati,” and it means “bearing something in mind without distraction and without forgetfulness” [22]. Originally, “sati” calls for a voluntary training of the attentional processes allowing constant and sustained attention to be placed on an object of external and internal observation. This training would increase the capacity and quality of attention or presence in the present moment. At the end of nineteenth century, sati was translated from Pali into English by the British Davids under the term mindfulness [23]. As a technique, mindfulness is one of the steps of the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to wisdom and the lack of suffering. The steps of the Noble Eightfold Path are: Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. The Buddhist Theravada tradition has it that, by increasingly focusing attention on the stream of internal and external experiences without making any judgment or mental comments, the individual can reach a deeper knowledge of himself and the essence of life [24]. In this culture, mindfulness is thought to be one of the five faculties (indriya) among others, which are: confidence, energy, concentration, and wisdom. It is developed in a continuous sequence with stages. The first stage is about developing sustained attention through regular practice. In the second stage, the individual develops the capacity of introspection and a profound understanding of emotions as ephemeral. When the individual goes through all these steps, he will gain in wisdom and will be able to understand the very essence of self and of the factors that lead him to a state of calmness and peace of mind [24].

Until the 1970s, mindfulness was merely considered as a Buddhist culture, and then modern scholars started introducing it into the Western medicine. Hayes [25] encourages scholars to include mindfulness in scientific research by claiming that the concept must not be limited to its religious roots. By liberating mindfulness from its religious origins, it becomes possible to generalize its application and to integrate its practice into clinical treatment thanks to the secularization of the construct. In Western countries, Jon Kabat-Zinn was the first person who standardized mindfulness as an intervention technique that can be utilized in the medicine. In 1979, he created at the Massachusetts Medical Center a stress reduction program, which he called Mindfulness-Based-Stress Reduction [11]. As stated by the MBSR website¹, there are more than 25,000 people who have completed the 8-week mindfulness training program, and it is provided at thousands of hospitals and medical centers around the world. Nowadays, the practice of mindfulness training has surged drastically both in medicine and in psychological practice. In psychotherapy, mindfulness is no more considered as only a means for stress reduction, but also a means to the treatment of diverse psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, attention-deficit disorders, and borderline personality; and the introduction of mindfulness in the organizational settings has recently been debated. A big topic of the debate in the use of mindfulness is the ambiguous nature of the concept; and some scholars have claimed that the operationalization of the term and the standardization of the practice are necessary for its use in research [11, 26, 27]. Different perspectives to defining mindfulness are presented in the next sessions.

3. Definitions of mindfulness

During its recent history, it has been a huge challenge to give a precise definition to mindfulness. Nonjudgmentally paying attention to what happens here and now is an apparently simple notion. However, mindfulness turns out to be a very complex concept, and it gets even more complex when diverse features are taken into account in its definition. Even if mindfulness can be used as an intervention for many psychological disorders, providing an exact operational definition is still an ongoing process [26]. Some scholars have just defined it as from its religious perspectives that stems from ancient Buddhism. Others view it as a skill that can be developed by training, a set of beliefs about how to behave correctly in the daily interactions, a mindset, and a trait of personality. Most of the definitions in the literature take into account all these aspects.

Thich Nhat Hanh [28] a Vietnamese Zen master who is among the first scholars to introduce mindfulness to the Western culture, defines the term as “keeping one’s consciousness alive to the present reality.” This assumption posits that no matter what one is doing at the present moment that activity must be given the fullest attention possible. Whether it is taking a bath or taking a walk, chatting with friends, or following a course, eating, or reading; whatever one is performing at any given time must be credited with the fullest attention than anything else. Being fully aware of the present moment, no matter what it is, allows individuals to perceive the world more clearly and actively create their own life [28]. Brown et al. [29] advocated for this idea by claiming that mindfulness has existed for a long time in psychology. They recognize that many theoretical approaches suggest the importance of bringing awareness to bear on subjective experience (i.e., thoughts, emotions, external stimuli). By bringing the notions of mindfulness out of darkness, scholars can study its role across diverse psychotherapeutic currents [30]. From Baer’ perspectives [31], mindfulness is seen in terms of bringing gently the attention to internal and external experiences that occur here and now. According to him, that skill is cultivated over time if one practices it regularly. Any attitudinal factors related to this definition of mindfulness are viewed as an impact of the skills acquired and not part of the concept itself. Kabat-Zinn [11] defines mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” Here Jon Kabat-Zinn depicts mindfulness as a set of skills that includes elements of attitudes, beliefs, and other qualities, such as: acceptance, patience, openness, gratitude, empathy, trust, nonjudging, letting go, gentleness, generosity, nonstriving, and kindness. Among these qualities some are naturally related to the mindfulness practice itself (openness, acceptance, nonjudging), while others tend to be changes in attitudes, which are the resultants of the practice of mindfulness (kindness, generosity, gratitude). Later, Kabat-Zinn [11] made this distinction clearer when he referred to mindfulness as a state of being, in which an individual is nonjudgmentally conscious of his thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and external stimuli in the present moment (openness, acceptance, and curiosity). This way of defining mindfulness differentiates what mindfulness actually is (a state of being) from the attitudinal properties that characterize this state. Wallace [22] confirms this difference when he describes mindfulness as a state in which one is open, receptive, and nonresistant to anything that the present moment may provide. The assumption that supports mindfulness practice is the idea that such a state of being enables an individual to efficiently deal with stressors reflectively and responsively, in opposition to a reactive and reflexive way [11]. Bishop et al. [26] argued the outcomes of several meetings, which were held in order to find an established and consensual operational definition of mindfulness for the coming research. They stated that mindfulness is an activity of mental training, which aims to decrease one’s reactive thoughts, emotions, and behavior; as opposed to the fact of being relaxed or being able to manage effectively one’s mood. This definition of mindfulness incorporates two elements: the self-regulation of attention to experience in the present moment, and the attitude of curiosity, openness, and acceptance. Brown and Ryan [32] distinguished awareness from attention by claiming that awareness is about the ongoing experience of the present moment (thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and sensory perceptions); while attention is the fact of focusing awareness on a particular phenomenon. Awareness and attention are interwoven, and they are the main properties of consciousness; and mindfulness is about observing consciousness by having a complete picture of it, which involves both awareness and attention. According to Brown et al. [33], mindfulness is a receptive state of mind when the stream of consciousness unfolding in the present moment (thoughts, images, verbalizations, emotions, impulses, etc.) can be observed without discrimination, categorization, or reaction. This kind of state of mind generates more flexible and informed mental, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. Though mindfulness is considered as a technique of self-detachment from thoughts, it is not a technique of avoidance of thoughts; instead, it allows an individual to utilize thoughts with increased effectiveness and precision [29]. Based on the definition given by Shapiro et al. [34], it has been demonstrated that mindfulness has three elements (attention, intention, and attitude) and a “metamechanism of repercieving” (p. 374). Intention is seen as a personal vision, which is dynamic and which can evolve personal. It changes when mindfulness is increased going from regulation to exploration and ultimately to liberation. According to Shapiro et al. [34], intention is crucial to the process of mindfulness, and it is often neglected in many contemporary definitions. By attitude, Shapiro et al. believe that it is a component that enables an individual to bring to attention a set of qualities that include: compassion, non-striving, patience, curiosity, kindness, and openness. According to them, when an individual has the wrong attitude (e.g., cold, critical, etc.), this may bring about the situation in which he becomes condemning or judgmental of himself. By the concept of reperceiving mechanism, Shapiro et al. see it as the ability to de-identify oneself from the components of consciousness and to view experience with objectivity. This naturally occurs in mindfulness practice. When one is no more attached to own thoughts and emotions as they arise enables one not to be defined, controlled, or conditioned by them inducing objectivity and equanimity [34]. The literature reveals that mindfulness is a complex and multidimensional concept. For Kabat-Zinn [11], mindfulness is “the work of a lifetime and, paradoxically, the work of no time at all” (p. 149). The complex and obscure nature of mindfulness made it difficult to define in operational terms; however, the majority of attempts to define it have common characteristics. For the objectives of this study, mindfulness is defined as intentionally focusing the attention on what happens in the present moment (thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and external stimuli) and accept it without judgment. This state of being is characterized by many attitudinal factors (openness, acceptance, equanimity, patience, empathy, calmness, trust, gratitude, kindness, etc.) [32, 34]. According to Dekeyser et al. [35], individual involved in the practice of mindfulness can develop four distinctive competencies: attentively and consciously observe the internal and external phenomena (thoughts, emotions, sounds, smells etc.); consequently act by being fully engaged in an activity with total focus of attention; non-judgmentally accept the unfolding experience; immediately appreciate the unfolding experience. For Salmon et al. [36]: “The focus of attention on the experience of the present moment in an attitude of non-judgment.” The literature on mindfulness, both modern and ancient, depicts the practice of mindfulness as a means to quiet the mind, decrease suffering, and improve quality of life.

After reviewing the main definitions of mindfulness, we present next the tools that are used to measure mindfulness.

4. The mechanisms of mindfulness: how does mindfulness operate?

From the historical perspectives, the term meditation is employed in Ref. to the Sanskrit word bhävana and to its Tibetan synonym sgoms. Etymologically, the Sanskrit term means the notion of “cultivation,” or “causing to become,” and the Tibetan synonym refers to “development of familiarity” [37]. In light of these clarifications, it is clear that, traditionally the meditation practice mostly highlights the process of mental development during which the practitioner cultivates a general sense of well-being and virtue. Along with the development of interventions based on mindfulness, there exist many theories that explain its mechanisms of action. In fact, several mechanisms of action explain the impact of mindfulness meditation on reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms. First, meditation increases metacognitive awareness [38, 39], which means it favors the ability to shift focus from one’s thoughts and emotions and realize that they are only transitory mental events rather than identifying oneself with them or believing that they are an exact reflection of reality. This ability predicts a decrease in depressive relapses [40]. Indeed, according to Teasdale et al. [39], metacognitive awareness leads to a reduction in repetitive thoughts such as ruminations [39], which are a risk factor for several psychological disorders [41]. It is worth noting that meditation decreases the tendency to ruminate [42, 43]. Meditation promotes interoceptive exposure [44], which enables the capacity to desensitize oneself to the thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations associated with distress [31]. It promotes experiential acceptance, which results in a reduction in emotional intensity, compared with a non-acceptance attitude [45]. Acceptance is the ability to allow the experience to be as it is at the present moment, to accept pleasant and unpleasant experiences without seeking to hold back the former or push back the latter. According to Choate [46], emotional suffering results more from the non-acceptance of the emotion than from the emotion itself. Furthermore, TDC and ACT consider that change is only possible when the individual has recognized and accepted the emotional distress he feels. For example, studies show that increased experiential acceptance mediates the positive effects of ACT [47, 48]. Meditation improves self-management. In fact, observing emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations without avoiding them or reacting to them automatically improves their recognition and the possibility of responding to them in different ways, to broaden the behavioral repertoire. For example, mindfulness helps maintain healthy lifestyles: asthma patients detect the emotional states that trigger the attacks, diabetic patients are more diligent in taking insulin, and obese patients can avoid giving in to impulsion when they are hungry [49].

Meditation improves attentional control because mindfulness requires sustained attention to the experience of the present moment and the ability to return to the present moment when the mind wanders [26]. Research shows that mindfulness training improves various aspects of the attentional system: orientation, or the ability to direct attention to a stimulus and maintain attention [50]; conflict monitoring, or the ability to focus the attention on priority tasks when there are several tasks [51]; warning, or the ability to remain alert or receptive to different potential stimuli [50]; sustained attention. Chambers et al. [52] also demonstrate an association between improved sustained attention and a reduction in depressive symptoms. Meditation changes how memory works. It reduces overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) [38, 53], which is associated with the severity of depression and suicidality [54]. It minimizes the effect of a decrease in working memory capacity during periods of stress, which is a mediating factor in the reduction of negative affects [55]. It decreases the memory of negative stimuli [56]. Meditation induces relaxation by decreasing oxygen and carbon dioxide uptake, respiratory rate, heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol levels, skin conduction response, and muscle tension [57]. Hölzel et al. [57] have established four mechanisms of action of mindfulness with neurological evidence:

1. Regulation of attention—i.e., sustained attention to an object and, when distracted by an unexpected event, the individual is able to disengage the attention from that stimulus and return it to the object of initial focus (anterior cingulate cortex);

2. Body awareness—the focus of attention on the sensory experiences such as breathing, emotions, and other bodily sensations (insula, temporo-parietal junction);

3. Emotional regulation—that is, the fact that emotional reactivity decreases when the individual does not allow emotional reactions to interfere with his performance in cognitive tasks (modulation of the amygdala by the lateral prefrontal cortex);

4. Change in perspective on the self—that is the capacity to observe mental processes with clarity and allow the development of a meta-awareness that facilitates a detachment from identification with the static sense of self.

From these perspectives, we clearly understand how mindfulness operates through its multiple mechanisms of action by which it impacts on reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms, increasing awareness, developing acceptance and the ability to focus and control attention.

5. Mindfulness in organizations

How to become an ethical and inspiring leader? Perhaps by changing the way we perceive things, by reducing our tendency to interpret and judge them. We can become more ethical leaders by reducing our propensity to put people in tiny boxes and expect them to function exactly as we want them to. We can also become more inspiring leaders by seeing people as a source of unparalleled creativity, not a list of imperfections for improvement. People are easily distracted, they forget important things, and they prefer to act according to their own values rather than according to what is dictated to them. Expecting employees to operate like a machine is a huge mistake. Instead, they must be granted some margins of freedom turning them into a source of innovation by changing the relationship with them and favoring a constructive collaboration, in a climate of trust.

The organizational environment is getting more and more uncertain. Is the competitive strategy of a company built solely based on strategies, technologies, and shareholders? Will the company of tomorrow be merely a financial and technological tool? Assuredly No, the competitive advantage of the company lies above all in the men and women who compose it, and the company of tomorrow will be above all a human community, which will flourish through people’s skills and ability to cooperate and adapt. The environmental term VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) perfectly describes what both managers and employees unanimously depict. This term was introduced by the military in the United States in the 1990s. In recent years, it has been picked up widely in organizations, as it aptly describes what we see in business: the uncertainty and increasing complexity of our environment. However, this concept, if it makes an observation, does not offer any answers.

Today’s organizations face impermanence and uncertainty. Everything seems to change much faster, in unexpected ways. People spend most of their time operating in “autopilot” mode. Most of our daily life is managed automatically. Our actions, which we think we control, are often automatic. If we want to change that, which implies to develop the awareness of these automatisms, of the representations which underlie our reactions and of being able to momentarily press “pause” and take the time to reflect. Research on “solution-centered” approaches such as the Appreciative Inquiry has shown that being able to represent “possibilities” opens up the field of innovation, while respecting the needs of each individual. This approach makes it possible to think “broader” and to mobilize the available resources toward a common objective, based on shared values. It is resolutely oriented toward the values ​​of individuals and avoids swimming against the tide and therefore wasting energy unnecessarily trying to cope with “resistance to change.” The development of mindfulness appears as a way to promote this new posture in organizations in order to achieve the implementation of processes-oriented change toward innovative solutions.

Because of the uncertainty that characterizes today’s society, the high levels of pressure from stakeholders, the “always-on” cultures of the digital era, the complex interpersonal relationships, and the constant changes, paradox, and ambiguity have become part of most managers’ everyday working lives. All these factors result in stress, stress-related health problems, sickness, and absenteeism [58], which consequently affect the outcomes of the managers themselves.

Thusly, we are witnessing the disappearance of the Western figure of the manager. In fact, in the past, the manager used to be seen as hero or a visionary thanks to whose extraordinary talents, any difficulty could be easily overcome with the help of a purely rational approach to management [59]. Today’s literature theorizes new conceptions of management and leadership, and these conceptions are being relayed by consultants, schools of management, and the management press calling for a new posture of management. The representation of the manager as someone who is responsible for making decisions or someone who only manages by objectives is therefore being questioned. Desmarais and Abord de Chatillon highlighted the role of managers, and they claimed that managers’ role consists of interpreting and articulating the concerns of the different stakeholders [60] and inscribing the action of the collaborators in certain coherence, even if this coherence is always local and temporary. As a matter of fact, the contemporary manager is someone who creates meaning, guarantees the coherence of the action, he is the main actor of the co-regulation, and he plays this role by sharing emotions of the stakeholders. During the last decade, in response to the recent problematic of leadership and management, an emerging field of academic research is being focused on the types of leadership, which are centered on ethics, collective, and pro-social behaviors [61]. On the one hand, leadership is viewed as collective or shared behaviors resulting in a set of actions of interdependent individuals from a nonlinear perspective. On the other hand, the new emerging leadership styles emphasize the leaders’ ability to foster employees’ development through empathy, ethics, altruism, especially through servant leadership [62, 63]. Thusly, this style of leadership has been associated with important effects such as increased job satisfaction and organizational commitment [63], creative behaviors [64], and performance [65]. At the same time, the literature on leadership rehabilitated emotions and their role in managerial performance.

Although there are leadership approaches that have been interested in emotions for a long time, it is only recently that this topic has become the subject of systematic research. In fact, in the research on leadership, the analysis of the impact of emotions and emotional work is omnipresent. There are many approaches and definitions of concept of emotion. A simple and synthetic definition conceptualizes emotions as intense reactions to an event, person, or entity [66, 67]. According to the meta-analysis of Gooty et al. [68], the research unanimously shows the existence of an emotional contagion between leader and followers, i.e., a positive impact of positive emotions of the leaders on the followers and, conversely, for the negative emotions. For example, Avolio et al. [69] demonstrated that the hope and the optimism of the leader had a key influence on the behavior of the followers, while Huy [70] shows that in a situation of change, effective managers build an emotional balance that is characterized by an emotional involvement and an increased attention to the emotions of their employees. Rubin et al. [71] showed the impact of the recognition of emotions by the leader on the exercise of transformational leadership. Hence, the portrait of a new type of manager has emerged: that is a humble manager who is able to integrate the emotional dimension of the work and who is able to control his level commitment in order to respond fairly according to each situation. Many managers find this representation very attractive as it is being promoted by numbers of human resource manager and business executives. This trend is at the heart of some corporate policies, for example, by deploying programs that develop the quality of life at work or training sessions on the notion of mindfulness. So, using mindfulness in management development makes sense as, by enhancing managers’ own well-being, it permits not only to provide benefits to the participants, but also to knock-on positive effects for those that these people lead and manage. Since organizations face increased complexity affecting the ways they take actions for change, leadership and management practices have become essential factors of performance and sustainable competitiveness advantages for businesses. That is the reason why inside organizations, we must develop the ability to change management practices. The contemporary approaches to management emphasize the urgency of reinventing human resource management even if organizations are finding it hard to apply concretely these new approaches in their managerial practices. Thusly, mindfulness becomes a useful tool that is likely to help organizations to support the emergence of new managerial practices.

The traditional figure of the manager is associated with a requirement of total dedication to the organization. However the contemporary approaches to management propose to have a more balanced relationship with work. Given the social and organizational evolutions (the feminization of management, the transformations of the family structure, the aspirations of new generations, etc.), balancing professional life and personal or family life is now considered as an essential factor, a factor of attractiveness for organizations and even a source of performance. A balanced attitude at work and performance imply to have the ability to stand back from one’s activity, to mentally stay back (psychological detachment) and but also physically observe distance (breaks, weekends, hobbies) from work. Recently, scholars have developed theory with regard to integrative rather than causal relationships between work and family that feature the construct of work-family balance [72, 73, 74, 75]. The present moment alertness that characterizes mindfulness should enable individuals to fully immerse themselves with care and attentiveness while engaged in each role. Mindfulness has been associated with increased concentrative capacity and attentional control [29]. For example, FMRI research (functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow) has demonstrated that self-report of trait mindfulness relates to amygdala activation in ways that suggest more mindful individuals have greater affect regulation ability [76]. As stated previously, mindfulness is a present-centered, clear, non-judging, non-reactive, and receptive form of awareness [11, 29]. Shapiro et al. [34] suggest that by consciously bringing awareness and acceptance to present moment experiences, individuals are enabled to use a wider and more adaptive range of coping skills. Through attending to information contained in the present and creating space between emotions and reactions to them, clarity and self-regulated functioning are improved.

Although the literature of management science perceives commitment as a positive dimension, the pathologies of over commitment are being increasingly studied: workaholism, stress, and their negative impact on the private life [77]. Thus, today’s managers are urged to observe a fair and reasonable distance from their work. Also, even if organizations are interested in the new approaches, they find it very hard to put them concretely into their managerial practices. For example, there are many companies that advocate for a radical questioning of the hierarchical structure, as if they fail to change attitudes and behaviors. So, despite the existence of many studies on the new approaches to management, the literature provides little information on the conditions to favor their emergence.

Furthermore, business executives encounter a lot of difficulties in putting into practice the new dimensions of management. The observation of the forms of management in most contemporary organizations shows a weak evolution of the managerial practices. In fact, the contemporary evolutions of many organizations hardly seem to lead to the renewal of management practices but tend to maintain and strengthen the status quo: the Information Systems strengthen centralization and control, the financial goals determine the performance of managers through very short-term considerations; pyramidal and centralized models yield little ground. Managers are busy executing the numerous management processes, and consequently, they have no time to effectively manage and support their teams. This difficulty to integrate new dimensions of leadership into the managerial practice is demonstrated in the analysis of the six reference points of the managerial skills of French big companies carried out by Vernazobres [78]. The posture of traditional leadership, centered on an individual figure, with outstanding qualities, is widely highlighted. Conversely, the spiritual, plural, and collective dimensions of leadership do not appear. Despite the depletion of the model of the rational manager, the universe of management is still refractory to emotional aspects [59]. The model of bureaucracy, focused on rationality, is the model that develops the most the negation and the control of emotions [79]. However, although this model is controversial and questioned, it continues to underpin much of the dynamic of contemporary organizational structures.

Good et al. [6] analyze the current research on mindfulness at work and call for more academic research on this topic. They classify the possible impacts of mindfulness at work into three categories: performance, relationships, and well-being. Without relying on this categorization, we approach these topics by studying mindfulness in the light of the role of manager and leadership, emotional skills, and work relationship. In a context of search for cultural and behavioral changes, it seems to us that the concept of mindfulness, which is focused on awareness and training, will be a promising research avenue. Already two studies have demonstrated that mindfulness trainings generate more positive behaviors than the traditional approach of training. In 2010, Schneider et al. showed that corporate social responsibility training was more effective in inducing behavioral changes when relying on mindfulness [80]. In the same year, a pilot study conducted on primary school teachers who underwent mindfulness training showed a positive and very significant evolution of their ability to accept situations without judgment [81]. The changes operated by the managers involve both their posture and their behavior. The approaches based on mindfulness belong to the field of acceptance and commitment therapies (ACTs). The ACTs aim to help individuals strengthen their psychological flexibility by working on two complementary processes: acceptance and mindfulness processes by allowing not only a change of posture but also the processes of commitment and change behaviors that allow behavioral change.

The first contribution of mindfulness is the awareness that the observed reality is distinct and sometimes profoundly different from the mind that observes it. Throughout the practice, the participant clearly integrates what he perceives as the reality is actually what he decides to see, build, and interpret. This awareness allows a kind of hindsight: the person in a state of mindfulness ceases to identify himself with a situation and is able to observe distance from judgments, which enables him to develop greater clarity and objectivity. By adopting the posture of a witness instead of a subject, the participant becomes part of a more global and relative system. He is able to talk in relative terms and opens himself to others [26]. As Goleman suggests, “The first realization in ‘meditation’ is that the phenomena contemplated are distinct from the mind contemplating them” [82]. This skill is necessary as it enables the manager to be a translator and have a clear vision of the environment without necessarily identifying himself with it.

At the same time, mindfulness promotes an attitude of curiosity, acceptance of the present situation [26]. Such attitude reduces negative reactions of resistance or avoidance. A person who acts in a state of mindfulness does not seek for self-affirmation, but he advocates for fair actions. By relegating the ego to the background, mindfulness allows the clarification of values and the ability to distinguish the reality from what is dictated by our misrepresentations. In complex situations, managers can therefore question their own vision and renew it by adopting an attitude of non-judgment and acceptance. Finally, mindfulness develops cognitive, emotional, and behavioral flexibility, which is the ability to identify and challenge automatic modes of operation to increase its action [83]. This attentional capacity would allow the manager to better manage the numerous solicitations that he undergoes and the injunctions of the immediacy. Whereas the rationalist approach of contemporary management rejects emotions, the practice of mindfulness suggests managers to welcome their thoughts, their emotions and sensations, as well as those of others [26]. This special attention helps to integrate emotions into interpersonal relationships and to support their leadership on this dimension.

Today, a growing number of companies are making the choice to adopt mindfulness training technique that incorporates mindfulness meditation as its main component. While in the fields of psychology and medicine, the research on mindfulness is well developed, it is still nascent in the organizational literature. However, this trend is changing now as many scholars are confirming the multiple advantages of mindfulness for practitioners [27, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90]. Also, attention has always been considered as an important challenge in today’s companies, and it is well established that mindfulness provides additional insights on the property and the importance of attention. Organizational scholars and practitioners are showing steady and growing interest in using mindfulness to solve workplace problems. Stahl and Goldstein [91] speak about a “mindfulness revolution” in business as mindfulness is getting more and more popular inside organizations. The world leading organizations have adopted mindfulness (Google, Apple, McKinsey & Company, Deutsche Bank, Procter and Gamble, Astra Zeneca, General Mills, Aetna). Mindfulness practice is being adopted in the world of business as a technique that helps generate the well-being and performance, specifically in high-stress professional contexts [92] and organizational leadership. Mindfulness generates a shift in perspective and provides less identification between the individual and his unfolding experiences [34]. It provides a reduction of automatic mental processes and an awareness of physiological regulatory mechanisms. These three mechanisms would allow the establishment of secondary mechanisms that could be beneficial in the workplace.

As a matter of fact, according to Siegel [93], mindfulness practice develops in a person the ability to take time and think before responding to an environmental stimulus. This time of reflection would allow him to ponder and consider multiple solutions before reacting to an event and avoid acting impulsively or reactively. The person would also take the necessary time to think and act in coherence with his goals, needs, and values. In the professional environment, this would only help improve decision-making but also reduce impulsive or aggressive communication. Ruminations are major bottleneck at workplaces. Nolen-Hoeksema defines it as a mechanism by which the individual who faces difficulties, focuses repetitively and passively on the symptoms, causes, and consequences of these difficulties [93]. Rumination reduces concentration in the workplace, it favors the development of negative moods, and thereby, it decreases the individual’s efficiency. Dane [94] stated that mindfulness is positively correlated with performance. According to him, mindfulness practice broadens the individual focus to internal experiences (intuitions) and external experiences: these qualities are very important for making decisions. Karelaia and Reb assess the potential impact of mindfulness on the entire decision-making process [95]. It has been also established that mindfulness enables a better regulation of affect promoting positive emotions and reducing negative ones. This generates many impacts in organizations: resilience to negative experiences; ability to handle stressful situations; better communication with coworkers. Moreover, it has been proven by many empirical studies that the emotions of a leader affect the emotional state of his followers, the general atmosphere of the team, and its effectiveness [96, 97].

Well-being is a fundamental issue that concerns all companies and organizations, at all levels: managers, HR, and all teams. We have discovered that mindfulness reduces stress, burnouts, and it allows better management of psychosocial risks. Therefore, in a business world, which is constantly under pressure and stress, leading mindfully allows leaders and managers to make strategic decisions with serenity and self-control. It is a management method that combines performance and well-being.

6. Discussion

For years, researchers and practitioners have been passionate about how to best describe leadership. Among the touted characteristics they cite: the aspiration for excellence, honesty, emotional intelligence, discipline, self-confidence, open-endedness, adaptability, and truthfulness. So who would be the leader that practices mindfulness? What distinguishes this concept from the previous conceptualizations of leadership? We have already described mindfulness as favoring vigilance and full attention to experiences as they happen, non-reactively and non-judgmentally. Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence are presented to anchor the concept of mindfulness in the behavioral dimension. Mindful leadership can be explained from these three perspectives. By developing these skills, leaders are likely to reinforce the skills they need in order to manage not only their own behavior but also to engage with other people and lead them. Below we examine the three foundational elements of mindful leadership (self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence) and provide a rationale that explains why it is especially important and relevant for leaders to cultivate mindfulness in organizations.

Self-awareness is an important part of effective leadership. It enables people to have a correct understanding of their intentions, emotions, biases, and habits; so that they can more effectively manage their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Three aspects of self-awareness are likely to benefit leaders, their staff, and their organizations: first, the awareness of one’s mental, physical, and emotional state; second, the awareness of his automatisms; and third, the awareness of one’s experiential or narrative mode of reference. When a leader is aware of himself, all these three aspects can be linked to concrete results that will have effects for employees and the organization as a whole.

When the body and the mind are under stress, part of the brain (the median prefrontal cortex) coordinates the limbic system (sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems) in such a way as to balance the bodily systems so that the person can continue to function [93]. If the median prefrontal cortex becomes overwhelmed or overly stressed, the sympathetic system may activate in a way that causes the person to choose a suboptimal response, such as engaging in a struggle while refraining would be more appropriate. For example, a manager experiencing high levels of stress due to a tight deadline who abruptly responds to a coworker asking if anyone wants cream and sugar in their coffee. The manager’s reaction is likely to be offensive and fruitless. The states of overload, burnout, and emotional exhaustion that lead to this type of reaction are common in organizations among workers at all levels, and while leaders have responsibility for the well-being of others, they must also make sure to invest in their own well-being. It is indeed important for leaders to take care of themselves, as their mood and decisions are likely to affect a larger population of employees. The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, offers on this subject the analogy with the oxygen mask intended for the passengers of the planes, which illustrates the fact that people must first put on the mask before putting it on someone else [28]. Before managing their workforce, leaders should consider making a conscious effort to take care of their own well-being first. Feeding themselves in this way can generate other resources for themselves and others.

Mindfulness training has been shown to be very successful in coping with burnout, stress, and anxiety and in ensuring overall well-being, both in clinical and non-clinical populations [27]. One study found that mindfulness-trained participants had higher levels of melatonin, an indicator of immune functioning, than untrained participants [31]. In the workplace context, mindfulness-practicing employees have been found to be more committed and satisfied at work and less likely to take time off and quit their jobs. These studies have important implications for executives who are concerned with safeguarding their own well-being at work. Additionally, researchers suggest that leaders who have incorporated mindfulness as a trait have a positive influence on their employees [98]. Reb et al. surveyed 96 managers in various industries and their subordinates. They found that employees whose managers practiced more mindfulness exhibited minor emotional exhaustion, are able to better balance their work and personal life, and were more satisfied at work and performing better. Automaticity is also an integral part of the human life. Automaticity causes narrow habits, prejudices, and perceptions that may become deeply rooted over time. Habitual reactions can happen without our knowing it or being aware of it and can lead to undesirable outcomes, including limitation of innovation, repetition of negative habits, and incapacity to change. Mindfulness helps break the rhythm of automaticity by making it possible to approach the present in a mindful and deliberate way [99]. For example, we may absurdly answer a question when we are not listening with full attention to what other people are actually saying. When we practice mindfulness, we can hear another person’s words without having to assume what they are saying. The usual reactions are then interrupted by systematic modes of information processing. Along these lines, mindfulness has been associated with improved decision-making [100], creativity [101], and the ability to counter cognitive biases [102].

The third aspect of self-awareness relates to a person’s ability to know when exactly he or she is in the present moment as it is, and when he or she approaches the present moment as a story to tell. The brain uses two processing mode of the present moment [103]: the experiential processing mode and the narrative processing mode. When the narrative processing mode is active, thoughts and emotions are induced by a narrative oriented toward the past or the future, a narrative created by the subject. The experiential processing mode is based primarily on experiencing oneself in the present moment. Psychologists also describe the concept of self as having two dimensions: the subject self (“I”) and the object self (“me”) [104]. Here, the notion of the subject self, also called the “self as process,” is close to the experiential mode, which involves being aware of the activities that are occurring. The notion of self as an object can be understood as a perception of the self that is constructed, in a social perspective, in the narrative mode. This perception of the self inherently activates self-esteem by allowing identification with self-valuing attributes, characteristics, roles, and beliefs [29]. Mindfulness helps develop the experiential mode and combines it with an attitude of unconditional openness [105]. A self-aware leader can be more apt to know when he is caught in this type of constructed self-perception and to leave that mode in order to understand what others are experiencing without feeling threatened. This conscious relief of the ego creates space for self-acceptance, self-compassion, and humility, which makes it possible to be less defensive and have more authentic relationships with others. This suspension of the ego could help bridge the generational gap within organizations by allowing leaders to hear the voices of those they might have difficulties to understand. Integrating self-awareness into mindfulness practice has benefits for both leaders and the organizations they lead. Awareness of one’s own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, when linked to a particular goal, allows for better behavioral control. In the next part, we discuss the second pillar of mindful leadership: self-regulation. While self-awareness offers leaders the ability to know where they are, self-regulation is the way to get them where they are going.

Leonardo da Vinci said: “You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself…the height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment…. And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.”

Willpower and self-control help people to achieve their goals and make them avoid to take actions that they might regret later. The capacity to control oneself allows people to act in a strategic manner on their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors instead of reacting impulsively to immediate stimuli from their environment. A famous study on delayed gratification and achievement elegantly demonstrated the benefit of willpower: some kids were offered a marshmallow telling them that they were free to eat it if they wanted to, but that, if they could resist the urge to eat it for a short time, they would be offered two marshmallows. Some years afterward, the researchers discovered that kids who had demonstrated the mastery necessary in order to get the benefits from delayed gratification performed better at school with good grades, they were able to better cope with stress, and were more cognitively and socially competent [106]. Recent studies on willpower claim that it is a better predictor than intelligence [107]. This is a particularly interesting conclusion, considering that willpower can be improved with practice; however, it can be very difficult to increase IQ and its effects are minimal [107]. Mindfulness training proves to be an efficacious way to improve self-management skills [101]. Moreover, an additional training could improve the mental health of those who already have a lot of discipline [108].

Mindfulness enhances self-regulation on two levels: attention and emotion Regulation. Attention regulation relates to the capacity to maintain concentration in or out of a particular direction for a specific period of time. This ability has far-reaching implications for leaders. It goes without saying that it is more productive to give sustained attention to the task at hand than having scattered and wandering attention. According to Alan Wallace, one of the first scholars to bring Buddhist mindfulness to the Western countries, all of the most famous artists and scholars in history were endowed with the extraordinary ability to focus their attention, while maintaining a high level of clarity, for long periods of time. During one of his research, Langer, along with his colleagues, recorded an orchestra that played sometimes mindfully and sometimes without attention [109]. Mindful performances have been rated as superior by an audience who ignored the nature of the experience. Working memory may be one of the mechanisms involved in the mindfulness-performance relationship [110]. The notion of working memory relates to the amount of information that an individual can store and handle in the mind at a time, for example, to establish the total cost of an addition before the server brings it. Mrazek [110] conducted a randomized controlled study where students who have gone through 2 weeks of mindfulness training were able to improve their working memory and to perform better on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) test than the control group.

Mindfulness promotes the development of concentration, enables leaders to see things with more clarity and thus make better decisions. One study found that leaders with more mindfulness as a trait make better decisions under pressure [111]. Sustained focus, along with acceptance and non-judgment, enables leaders to consider the many perspectives that exist beyond a cursory glance at the situation. Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Apple Inc. had his own method of meditation. His biography relates the following: If we sit down and watch, we notice how restless our mind is, but over time it calms down, and by the time it calms down, intuition flourishes, and we begin to see situations more clearly and to be more in the present [112].

Mindfulness could be useful for leaders who cannot stop thinking or, more specifically, thinking at work, in that it can help them cultivate attention regulation to allow them to leave their work in the office and to be more present when they return home. In a study of staff at a Norwegian insurance company, employees who received mindfulness training had a much better perception of their work-life balance at the end of the training [113]. In this vein, Thompson and Bunderson [114] found that work-life balance is determined less by the time a person spends at or outside of work, than by their level of presence in these two contexts. Mindfulness methods rely on deliberately paying attention to the present moment. No matter how much time leaders spend outside of the workplace, mindfulness benefits them by allowing them to be fully present no matter where they are and who they are with.

From a neurological viewpoint, mindfulness is said to strengthen the pathways in the brain that are in charge of emotions regulation [115]. Emotions regulation is the ability to calm down when one is agitated and lift the spirit up when one is depressed. An important aspect of mindfulness training is observing, identifying, and labeling experiences without attaching meaning to what is happening. This process, known as “decentering” [34], allows people to accept thoughts as the interpretations of reality but not necessarily as the reality. When we practice mindfulness, we recognize our emotions in the present moment and decenter ourselves in order to create enough space and take a break before reacting to what we are feeling. For Siegel [93], this possibility of taking a break gives flexibility to react. It allows to take time for reflection and to examine the situation from a non-automatic perspective and choose the action best suited to the person’s goal [29, 93]. This decentering technique and flexibility can facilitate the regulation of emotions in leaders who practice mindfulness. Managing emotions effectively provides many benefits to leaders. Three of these benefits are discussed below, namely resistance to stress, improved positive affect, and improved interpersonal communications.

One of the most developed domains of study on mindfulness is to determine the effectiveness of mindfulness in reducing stress, depression, and anxiety [27]. The medical literature has established that the practice of mindfulness promotes psychological well-being, particularly in very stressful situations [11]. Similar results were found in a recent study on employees of The Dow Jones Chemical Company, showing that increased mindfulness practice resulted in increased resistance, engagement and general well-being, and lower stress levels [116]. Mindfulness also ends usual negative thought patterns by decreasing self-centered reflective and introspective attention [29] and amplifying negative thoughts [117] in such a way that that people can better deal with painful and emotional experiences. When the self shifts away from negative emotions, the person thinks less and develops a greater tolerance for negative thoughts and feelings and, as a result, he learns to cope better with stress [118]. In short, mindfulness permits to see what is negative less negatively and to remember what is positive more easily.

Mindfulness has been related to increased positive emotions in a number of studies. Barbara Fredrickson [119], a researcher in the field of positive psychology who has proposed a theory of positive emotions called “Broaden-and-build” (extension and construction of positive emotions), maintains that the more people have positive daily experiences the more they develop other lasting physical, cognitive, and psychological resources. In 2008, Fredrickson and his colleagues conducted an experiment in which adult employees were randomly assigned to an experimental meditation group or a control group. People in the experimental group began to notice and experience more positive emotions, less depressive symptoms, and greater life satisfaction as well as giving more meaning to life [120]. Another research confirms the link between noticing positive experiences and engaging in their experiences [121].

The regulation of emotions arguably benefits leaders with increased emotional intelligence, decreased impulsiveness and improved communication, interpersonal relationships, and social experience [122]. The ego can be managed more effectively through mindfulness training, allowing leaders to intelligently listen to others and articulate the message they want to deliver. Since mindfulness enables people to endure more negative emotions and to overcome them effectively when they occur [29], those who practice more mindfulness may be less defensive and turn out to be more open. In addition to the advantages in terms of communication, there are positive chain effects on the behavior of subordinates whose leaders are less negative [97] and practice more mindfulness. While conducting their study, Reb et al. [123] recruited leaders and their followers to take part in a web survey. They discovered that leaders who had better integrated mindfulness as a character trait built better connections with their subordinates and were more responsive to and supportive of their needs and that, for their part, their subordinates declared that they are more satisfied at work and were judged to be more efficient.

Mindfulness training technique can be used to modify the way the brain directs and processes thoughts and emotions [124, 125]. This opens up exciting possibilities for organizations with regard to mental illness as well as employee well-being. Self-regulation of thoughts and emotions is an important skill that leaders must possess, not only in order for them to carry out their tasks optimally, but for them to learn how to stay optimally in an environment weighed heavily by pressure, high stakes, and relentless stress. We have tried to introduce two of the three pillars of mindful leadership, self-awareness and self-regulation, to explain the notion of mindful leadership and the advantages associated with these two modes of functioning. Leaders with higher self-awareness and self-control may find themselves better equipped to care for themselves and to lead others more effectively. The final pillar, self-transcendence, examines how leaders can push themselves through mindfulness and why this concept can be valuable in the nowadays workplace.

Self-transcendence is the ability to put aside one’s special needs to pay attention to the needs of others. In the Buddhist philosophy, it is said that there are four immeasurable moral qualities: benevolence, compassion, selfless joy, and equanimity [126]. The practice of mindfulness seeks the incarnation and development of these qualities; however, the ability to put the needs of others ahead of one’s own needs requires that one first develops enough personal resources to take care of oneself. Mindfulness develops the mind to pay nonjudgmental attention to the present moment. Decentering and pauses for reflection allow people to distance themselves from painful thoughts and emotions so that their negative impacts do not hurt their self-esteem. Once the resources formerly used to defend and provide for themselves are freed, mindful leaders are able to give more and could benefit from doing so. Does not the parent who deprives himself of a pleasure so that his child can enjoy the fruits of his deprivation still experience joy? Self-transcendence in mindful leaders can be conceptualized as actions done for others with genuine empathy and compassion. The inclination toward pro-social behavior has attractive implications for the well-being of individuals and the best interests of the companies that employ them. Empathy involves seeing life from another person’s perspective. It allows you to bond with others by understanding their experience and being compassionate. Leaders who can understand the feelings of others have the ability to consider the needs of others and choose a course of action that reflects the interests of a larger group of people [93]. One can read, in a study of the behavior of leaders, that people underwent the following four measures of empathy to establish a profile of dispositional empathy: empathic concern, perspective taking, personal distress, and empathic association [127]. Those with the highest empathy profile were the most likely to exhibit transformational leadership behaviors, a style of leadership that is described as inspiring followers to accomplish more than expected. Empathetic leaders are more promising in resolving conflict, engaging their employees, and effectively motivating them.

A growing body of organizational research suggests that healthy social bonds at work are very important. Some even go so far as to argue that a leader who wants to add value to his team must form strong emotional relationships with and within his team and then manage them [128]. Compassion might even be a necessary leadership trait to engage followers. Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, authors of the popular Find Your Strengths collection, have published Strengths-Based Leadership [129]. They list four needs that make people follow a leader: confidence, hope, stability, and compassion (characterized by caring, friendship, happiness, and love). In fact, the lack of compassion in relationships makes it difficult to build trust [130]. Given that lack of trust is considered to be the main cause of team dysfunction [131], learning to express compassion is far from secondary.

Essentially, we see two great benefits to self-transcendence. First, it fosters positive and fulfilling relationships in this our chaotic and fragmented world of work. Then, it creates lasting happiness and a raison d’être for the leader as a person. In today’s workplace, employees have less job security but more responsibilities and a longer schedule that impinges on their personal lives. In many ways, they themselves have integrated the pressure to accomplish and produce. Recently, the fastest growing segment of the workforce, Generation Y, has added a new dimension to the world of work. This generation has higher expectations of employers and aspires to have them committed to these expectations and fulfill them. At the same time, however, it has conflicting priorities in personal life that are more important than career, which makes them difficult to manage [132]. Leaders who can engage their employees through mindfulness, nurturing genuine relationships with them based on compassion and empathy, may be better able to effectively manage their organizations in the workplace today.

The second benefit of self-transcendence for leaders is a personal advantage. To achieve lasting happiness and fulfillment, you have to be committed to something bigger than yourself. Martin Seligman, often referred to as the father of positive psychology in mass media, distinguished between lasting pleasure and fleeting pleasure in his book Authentic Happiness [133]. In it, he describes three methods that people can use to continue their quest for happiness. The first is about the pursuit of positive emotional experiences in oneself: good food, beautiful things, happy experiences. The second is about discovering personal strengths and applying them to positive experiences. The third method, a journey he calls “meaningful life” focuses on the distinctive strengths and virtues that one puts at the service of something greater than oneself [133]. It is important to note that it has recently been established that compassion meditation leads to important improvements in altruistic behavior [134]. Buddhist compassion meditations have been shown to produce the highest level of activation of the left prefrontal cortex, the so-called region of happiness [135], suggesting that cultivating happiness through mindfulness can create opportunities to be kinder to others. Mindful leadership has remarkable potential to generate a positive upward spiral of self-fulfillment.

The performance of business executives and the development of their behavioral skills and leadership capabilities are huge challenges for companies that are looking for new ways for training and coaching. The methods based on mindfulness training could be interesting to address two major themes:

1. The improvement of the emotional intelligence of the leaders is at the heart of the debate on the performance. Earlier we mentioned the impact of MBSR training on the regulation of positive emotion. Bondolfi et al. introduce a dynamic view of emotion management thanks to Mindfulness training [136]. Sobolewski et al. demonstrate that meditators are able to regulate the action of their brain by minimizing the effect of negative emotions, without altering the effect of positive emotions [137]. Studies on another type of meditation, such as the meditation of loving-kindness meditation, reveal that it generates an improvement in positive social emotions that might result in the reduction of isolation [138].

2. The strengthening of the capacity of attention: Meditation improves attention and cognitive abilities (flexibility) [139] even in case of brief mental training [140]. It also increases positive emotions and associated benefits (purpose in life, sociability…) [120].

In conclusion, we can say that in today’s new organizational context, the role of manager is increasingly that of an agent of change who is capable of developing the involvement of complex individuals within turbulent projects with uncertain outlines. The manager is thus confronted with a first organizational paradox: the injunction to immediacy and the injunction to action in a hyper complex environment, which also requires greater hindsight and a distance that requires time. He must also find solution to a second paradox, which is of an individual nature: the injunction to be fully involved in the organization and the aspiration for self-realization and quest for meaning. This places him in a permanent tension between contradictory aspirations: well-being and professional performance, authenticity, and adaptation to one’s workstation [141]. The manager’s posture therefore becomes fundamentally dual, forcing him to learn to reconcile what may seem irreconcilable:

• Goal achievement/self-realization

• Effectiveness of immediate and punctual action/global and complex reflection

• Segmentation/integration between private and professional life

• Maximum involvement/well-being

• Rationality/emotional intelligence and creativity

• Implementation of strategic decisions taken by others/participation and co-decision of the teams

These oppositions force the manager to make a permanent gap and, in the absence of finding the right balance, to love his work but to suffer from it [142]. In this work, we propose avenues that explore how transcend these oppositions and overcome personal and organizational paradoxes. Leadership research follows changes in society and tries to support mutations linked to hypermodernity and individual globalism. Two directions coexist:

• On the one hand, the notions of creativity, authenticity, exemplarity, ethics, values, ​​and even spirituality are found in the positive forms of leadership, and they offer advanced or high-end constructs.

• On the other hand, operational necessities ask for a return to the leadership of structure and consideration. These different works underline from a theoretical point of view the duality between the principle of reality and the aspiration to certain transcendence, as if the operational necessity were irremediably opposed to a “spiritual” perspective, which nevertheless takes a growing place in managerial literature [143].

To overcome these oppositions, Quatro et al. [144] suggest a “holistic” model, which emphasizes the need to reconcile analytical, conceptual, emotional, and spiritual leadership. Fry and Kriger [145] offer a new interpretation of the leadership theories that are based on various levels of relation to reality and converge toward a non-dual leadership, capable of overcoming apparent oppositions. Quatro et al., like Fry and Krieger, support the need to explore new avenues to overcome the paradoxes imposed by modernity. They do not, however, provide operational response on the nature of this new leadership and its learning. This is what we propose to explore by mobilizing the psychological concept of mindfulness along with the theory U [146]. In our opinion, mindfulness is a concept that is both interesting and operational to change perspective, and theory U is an interesting tool to illustrate what could be this renewed leadership.

Theory U, although not explicitly referring to mindfulness, seems to be an excellent illustration of what mindful leadership could be. The proposition is the same: to change perspective by opening up and going beyond traditional patterns by mobilizing the concept of presencing, which is very close to that of mindfulness.

Theory U proposes to respond to the current challenges of our society by favoring the development of collective intelligence, the letter U symbolizing three movements in a process of creativity. It is based on the observation according to which any living system operates from several “interior places,” which results in different qualities in the way of giving birth to acts. In order to change the way individuals and groups approach situations and then react to them, it is necessary to develop a state of attention, a particular way of listening, a way that enables individuals to “Slowdown in order to understand.” This state of attention and heightened awareness is known to high-level athletes, and this is particularly from their experiences, but also by drawing inspiration in oriental philosophies and in the works of Senge [147, 148] and de Varela that Scharmer developed the U theory.

Leadership is one of the particular fields of application of Theory U, because its success depends, according to Scharmer, on the quality of attention and intention that the manager brings to the various situations he deals with.

7. Research limitations and contributions

The question of representations and factors of adoption of mindfulness in business is a crucial avenue of research. These factors are indeed essential in the dissemination of this managerial innovation. Today, the representations surrounding meditation are unknowns and their effects on adoption processes can be significant. Likewise, diffusion in organizations seems slow and may be a hindrance to the operationalization of mindfulness-based intervention programs (MBIs) in companies.

Throughout this research work, mindfulness has been depicted as a psychological construct that can be beneficial to business executives, and that can be mobilized in organizations and deserves scientific interest.

This research contributes to the reflection on the training of managers and the means to support them personally and collectively toward more efficient leadership styles. It therefore provides a new response to the managerial challenge of developing transformative leadership programs allowing leaders to develop themselves personally and morally. We hope that this research will contribute to the development of a neutral and constructive scientific debate on this subject, particularly in Africa where the concept is still not well known.

8. Conclusion

Introducing mindful leadership to the culture of organizations is not only a useful strategy for managers, but also an overall organizational strategy of utmost importance. It is for this reason that it is present in companies such as Google, LinkedIn, and SAP. A large number of high-level leaders have already included it in their daily agenda. They are mindful leaders.

Mindfulness enables managers to live more authentically and to be proactive partners who have a significant influence on the mental health and performance of their team.

This review paper has shown that this field of research is rich in potential, but it is only at the very beginning of its exploration. Some topics are still the subject of a very limited number of publications. If a notable growth in publications has been measured in recent years, and if the study of mindfulness in a professional context is no longer limited to the medical environment and stress at work, the population of leaders remains a population that is very little studied, and the question of the influence of mindfulness on leadership is still in its very early stages. Other themes highlighted show just as much potential and should not be overlooked in order to understand the role that mindfulness can play in organizations.