“Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.” —Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric

Most business books focus on how leaders can achieve more. How can you do more, better…and faster?

This full-length article takes the opposite tack: how and why, as leaders, you should sit and be still. How do your leadership skills benefit when you take time to quiet your mind and simply sit and be still?

Psychologist Daniel Goleman, an authority on emotional intelligence in organizations, calls this the leadership paradox in Primal Leadership: “For leaders, the first task in management has nothing to do with leading others; step one poses the challenge of knowing and managing oneself.”

This includes:

• Connecting with deep values that guide
• Imbuing actions with meaning
• Aligning emotions with goals
• Keeping motivated
• Keeping focused and on task

When we act in accord with these inner measures, we feel good about what we do. Our emotions become contagious. When we, as leaders, feel positive, energized and enthusiastic about our work, so do those we influence.

Honing the skills of awareness leads to mindfulness—becoming aware of what’s going on inside and around us on several levels. Mindfulness is living in a state of full, conscious awareness of one’s whole self, other people and the context in which we live and work.

Before you dismiss mindfulness as New Age rhetoric, pay attention to the research. Recent studies in management science, psychology and neuroscience point to the importance of developing mindfulness and experiencing meditation. Read more

What would your life be like if you were able to focus your attention on
three priorities for a week? What if you were able to concentrate and focus on
those activities, in spite of distractions?

“In the final analysis, the quality of our life depends on our ability to
consciously choose who and what we give our thoughts, interests, moments and
emotions to.” — Author Sam Horn, in Conzentrate: Get Focused and Pay
Attention – When Life Is Filled With Pressures, Distractions, and Multiple
Priorities (2000).

Few people understand what concentration means, or how important a role it plays
in our lives. Life consists of what we pay attention to. If we focus on
meaningful, positive things, we’ll have a meaningful, positive life. If we focus
on meaningless, negative things, we’ll have a meaningless, negative life. This
is simplistic and also enduringly profound: one of life’s great truths.

“Our experience is what we attend to.” —William James

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts.”— Buddha

The full article consists of the following important concepts:

Why Concentration Is so Important
The Pareto Principle
Five Keys to Concentration
TIME: Thoughts, Interests, Moments & Emotions
The Power of Priority
Working with Your Coach

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