The Yoga of Leadership

When I refer to the yoga of leadership in the business context, I am not referring to leadership in the yoga world but bringing a yogic mindset and practice to how you approach your leadership in business. My intent is not to condense the volumes written on each discipline here (yoga and leadership), but to open the door to an ongoing exploration of how both disciplines can learn from each other.

Business is about creating value for your constituents: business and client, leader and employee, or business and shareholder. To be a strong leader requires you articulate a clear vision, engage stakeholders in that vision, give people the support and resources they need to do their part to make that vision a reality, and recognize people for a job well done.

Yesterday I shared Stanton Kawer’s article, Yoga Made me a Better CEO. I love his subtext: “Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.”

Of course yoga, if practiced consistently over time, brings you physical flexibility. Much of this happens from working with the patterns of your mind and emotions to accomplish what you physically didn’t think you could a mere few weeks earlier. The ultimate benefit of a physical practice is to foster mental and emotional flexibility that creates a resiliency and vitality of spirit. This flexibility enables you to make optimal decisions while navigating an often chaotic and uncertain world.

Yoga promotes a calm and clear mind, a strong body that is stress-resistant, and clear emotions – being clear on your emotions and the ability to clear negative emotions. When you embody all these states of being than you have a vital spirit typically engaged in purposeful activity. These are all ways of being that the 21st century leader needs to embody, and given the context of today’s business world, can be challenging.

Technology has compressed time, leveraged resources and connected people like never before. It requires that a leader have the mental stamina and emotional flexibility to make decisions quickly with very little information, change gears on a dime, and breakthrough their own internal barriers as to what is possible. There is a need to react quickly without being reactive. Often this happens in the context of a physically demanding schedule of long hours and traveling across multiple time zones while navigating high stress/conflict situations.

This is why mindfulness practices are so desired today. Yoga is about managing personal energy – how you move through life. Yoga literally means to unite or yoke together as one. It refers to the unification of body, mind and spirit. When a leader can embody this state of being within themselves, they create the conditions to support others in doing so. An individual in alignment, creates a team and an organization in alignment. When all are aligned, this creates the conditions for success.

Where do you feel aligned and in sync, within yourself, team or organization? What needs adjusting?

We work with all three: self-care for leaders, team and organization effectiveness.

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