Download Learning Resilience and Self Care as Leaders – exploring

Learning Resilience and Self Care as Leaders – exploring the potential of mindfulness
meditation in reflective practice
Clare Rigg
University of Liverpool
[email protected]
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
Purpose
A short time ago I saw six male friends, all around age of 50, all with career success and
mainly the product of business schools, finding themselves in mental turmoil or dying
prematurely, and potentially avoidably. This paper poses a consequent challenge for business
school teaching:- in failing to provide learning about self-care (Foucault, 1988) in leadership
courses, what are they doing to leaders’ spiritual, mental and physical health; are they
implicated in these kinds of breakdowns and premature deaths?

Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper exploring critical literatures that explore the association of
leadership with identity work and masculinity (Koenig et al, 2011; Sinclair, 2007), as well as
explorations of the physical body, managers and masculinities (Kerfoot and Knights, 1996;
Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Kenny and Bell, 2012; Sinclair, 2011). I argue it is no coincidence
these ‘leaders in crisis’ were all men. The extent to which pretence that bodies do not exist at
work, coupled with a mind/body dualism of western knowledge that elevates the cognitive and
relegates the physical, contributes to leaders being inattentive and unaware of their bodies to
the point that they do not notice evident signals of pain and early ill-health.
We already have, in the critical reflection and experiential management learning fields,
valuable approaches for stimulating learning in attentiveness, but this paper explores how we
can take this further in the reflective practices within traditions of mindfulness meditation,
ancient practices which though currently in the West perhaps most associated with Buddhism,
but also practiced in Hinduism and Christianity.

Practical implications
The paper presents a model for integrating ideas from mindfulness meditation into critical
reflective practice with management students in a business school context.
 Keywords (between 3-6 keywords)
Mindfulness meditation, business school education, leadership, resilience, masculinity
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Learning Resilience and Self Care as Leaders – exploring the potential of mindfulness
meditation in reflective practice
Clare Rigg, University of Liverpool Management School
A challenge to business school teaching and learning
A short time ago I saw six male friends, all around the age of 50, finding themselves in mental
turmoil or dying prematurely, and potentially avoidably. One had a near fatal breakdown;
another did take his own life; two more are being treated for depressions that have descended
without any previous history; and two others died unexpectedly, one to a sudden heart attack
and one to cancer, only discovered when already terminal. Hindsight is a wonderful thing,
(and of course there is a dose of wishful thinking in me) but in retrospect the three deaths might
well have been avoided, and the other three need not have encountered such depths of
desperation. I want to suggest that as a result of lack of attentiveness to themselves, or in other
words, an absence of mindfulness, opportunities were lost, if not for cure, at least for earlier
discovery and the potential for intervention that might have extended their lives.
Why does this concern business schools? Each of my male friends is, or was, impressively
accomplished: leading companies, coordinating departments or organising complex
programmes. They had or have an MBA or other post-graduate business qualification. And
yet, in mid-life their lives all ran into crisis, and particularly what I am venturing was avoidable
crisis. I want to suggest that this presents the following challenge to business schools: in failing
to provide learning for self-care in leadership courses, what are they doing to leaders’ spiritual,
mental and physical health? Are they (we) implicated in the kinds of breakdowns and
premature deaths I have described?
In this paper I first argue it is no coincidence these leaders in crisis were all men, and draw
from critical literatures that explore the association of leadership with identity work and
masculinity as well as explorations of the physical body, managers and masculinities. I draw
particular attention in these literatures to the pretence that bodies do not exist at work, coupled
with a mind/body dualism of western knowledge, that elevates the cognitive and relegates the
physical, and ask how might this be contributing to leaders being inattentive and unaware of
their bodies to the point that they do not notice evident signals of pain and early ill-health. The
next part of the paper revisits established critiques of the approaches taken by business schools
in developing people for management and leadership practice are well established particular
those from critical management learning which place emphasis on process learning not just
content, based on an understanding of the whole person as mediated through experience, thus
paying attention to a more connectedness to daily personal and professional life. Building on
an exploration of the extent to which we already have, in the critical reflection and experiential
management learning fields, approaches for stimulating such learning, the paper proposes we
can take this further by integrating ideas and practices from traditions of mindfulness
meditation into critical reflective practice with management students in a business school
context.
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Discourses of Leadership
Discourses of leadership have been preoccupied with the search for a holy grail of
characteristics and behaviours that can be claimed as the essence of leadership. More recent
perspectives acknowledge the role of context to recognise leadership as a relational activity,
and affect and emotion have received a measure of attention in the leadership literature (Gooty
et al, 2010). However, where leaders’ emotions are discussed this has tended to be a
functionalist discussion of emotional intelligence and the harnessing of ability to read others’
emotions for performative ends (George, 2000) or contributing to a healthy emotional
workplace climate (Ashkanasy and Humphrey, 2011). Despite relationships being riven with
emotion and interpretation there is still a paucity of studies that explore the emotional lives of
managerial leaders.
I would argue it is no coincidence these leaders in crisis were all men. Critical perspectives
have brought into view the association of leadership with identity work, with the physical body
and with masculinity. Stereotypical characteristics of decisive, heroic leadership are masculine,
whether hallowed in men or women, and models of leadership behaviour are overwhelmingly
masculine. A 2011 meta-analysis of studies into cultural stereotypes of leadership (Koenig et
al, 2011) found that leadership continues to be construed as masculine, at least in the context
of North America, Europe and East Asia, where data was collected. The implication is that to
be a leader, individuals, whether they themselves are men or woman, must display typically
masculine behaviours.
Such stereotypical characteristics include being aggressive,
competitive, not admitting to doubt, and a persistent conceptualisation of leadership as
constituting heroic individualism. Rosette et al (2015) go further to suggest that because
weakness is proscribed for men, and especially in leadership roles, there is particular pressure
on them not to display behaviours that might be taken to indicate vulnerability, such as asking
for help. Combining masculinity and identity work, as Sinclair argues: “For male leaders, the
remaking of identity often becomes bound up with the establishment of a heroic, death-defying
masculinity” (2007:7).
The body as a focus for research emerged in the 1980s, assisted by Foucault’s work (e.g. 1988),
such that from the 1990s bodies entered research on gender, work and organization (Kerfoot
and Knights, 1996) producing the suggestion that manager and male body were commonly
synonymous (Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Kenny and Bell, 2012). Sinclair (2007; 2011) has
argued that the body has been absent from understanding of leadership, whilst simultaneously
being implicitly central to leadership practice as performance. Body language, dress, voice,
confidence, spatial layout of meetings and buildings are all recognised and often taught as part
of enacting effective leadership, yet rarely is attention paid to the underlying gendered
discourse of strength, virility, or impotence associated with idealised conceptions of leadership.
Negative and exclusionary consequences for women have been explored and analysed, but less
attention has been paid to the problematic consequences for men, for whom the equation
between leader=male body might be seriously challenged by fragile body, friable identity.
What interests me here is the extent to which pretence that bodies do not exist at work, coupled
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with a mind/body dualism of western knowledge which elevates the cognitive and relegates
the physical, might be contributing to leaders being inattentive to their bodies to the point that
they do not notice evident signals of pain and early ill-health. Taken in tandem with the
potential cost to status of admitting vulnerability, expressing doubt or asking for help (Rosette
et al, 2015), what are the risks masculinity presents for leaders and what has the business school
curriculum to offer?
How to address this gap?
Critiques of the approaches taken by business schools in developing people for management
and leadership practice are well established. Some have challenged that MBAs emphasize
analysis and technique whilst neglecting to engage participants in learning experientially from
the kinds of messy, complex problems characterised by management practice (Mintzberg,
2004). Whilst not pervasive in business school discourse, there has nevertheless been a
growing clamour of voices in the past decade, critical of the failure of leadership development
to encourage leaders to make connections between management and leadership practice and
impact on the wider world (Willmott, 1997; Reynolds, 1999; Rigg, 2005, 2007; Alvesson et al,
2009; Antonacopoulou, 2010; Fenwick, 2011). Some have questioned where management
development was in the recent global meltdown - whether it was impotent bystander, active
contributor or indeed irrelevant (Currie et al. 2010; Stewart et al, 2011). Critical management
learning offers another alternative, grounded in ‘an appreciation of the pressures that lead
managerial work to become so deeply implicated in the unremitting exploitation of nature and
human beings, national and international extremes of wealth and poverty, the creation of global
pollution, the promotion of “needs” for consumer products etc.’ (Alvesson and Willmott,
1996:39).
Burgoyne and Reynolds (1997) have argued that central to critical management learning, is an
emphasis on understanding the whole person as mediated through experience, thus paying
attention to a connectedness to daily personal and professional life. By avoiding the passivity
associated with more conventional management education methods, critical approaches also
offer more opportunity for development than seemed possible in focusing exclusively on the
acquisition of knowledge and skills. Advocacy of process learning has been one strand of
critical management learning (Reynolds, 1997), referring to learning about the micro-politics
and emotions of how things get done (Reynolds, 1999; Reynolds and Vince, 2004; Vince, 2004,
2010), as distinct from the content of the task. Traditions of psychodynamics, critical reflection,
critical action learning all promote pedagogies that emphasize process learning alongside task
or content learning (Trehan and Rigg, 2007; Vince, 2004), and emphasize the value of insight
into the inherent anxiety that accompanies human existence, focused on, for example, desire
for permanence, certainty and boundaries, (Vince, 2010).
Foucault, tracing origins of thought from ancient Greece, maintained that the dominance in
modern Western culture of the principle ‘know thyself’ is a departure from the ancient Greek
principle and practices ’to take care of yourself’ or self-mastery. The latter he described as ‘not
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abstract advice but a widespread activity, a network of obligations and services to the soul’
(Foucault, 1988:27). Techniques of care of the self included (in terminology as per translations
of Foucault) disclosure of self, a remembering and Stoicism’s emphasis on silence and
listening, all which would seem to have parallels with modern day self-reflection. In this
approach process is more important than problem resolution, in that this is the route to
individuals learning to know themselves better and find their own solutions.
Arguably, the more recent literature on leadership development is also strewn with attention to
process, in the sense of seeing leadership as essentially relational and concerned with meaningmaking (Mabey and Finch-Less, 2008; Bolden et al, 2011). However, I contend that even this
focus in leadership development emphasizes cognitive learning, and lacks attention on how to
enact leadership with compassion or care of self as well as others. In the next section I will
explore what the practices of mindfulness meditation might offer to this gap.
Practising Leadership with Awareness and Compassion: Insights from Buddhist
Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is an ancient practice (Hanh, 1975), probably currently most associated
in the West with Buddhism and yoga, but also practiced in Hinduism and Christianity.
Mindfulness as associated with Buddhism is derived from the Pali word sati, which can also
mean attentiveness to the present, and from the Sanskrit word smṛti, which also translates to
awareness, or remembering.
In the past decade there has been an explosion of Western interest in mindfulness (Williams
and Kabat-Zinn, 2011) applied in fields as diverse as medicine, psychology, neuroscience,
school education, business and leadership development. Systematic research reports positive
impacts on brain activity, producing increased control over chronic pain, anxiety and
depression (Kerr et al, 2013), curtailing negative functioning and enhancing positive outcomes
in mental health, physical health, behavioural regulation and interpersonal relationships
(Brown et al, 2007) .
Core themes at the heart of cultivating mindfulness in traditional Buddhism include
attentiveness to the present, non-judgemental awareness, impermanence insight, cultivation of
compassion, interconnectedness, coupled with becoming aware of how the mind is so readily
trapped by habitual patterns of attachment, fixations, aversion and delusion (Williams and
Kabat-Zinn, 2011). Mindfulness meditation as a practice involves two key ingredients
(Batchelor, 2011) samatha (sustained concentration) and vipassanἀ (experiential enquiry),
usually whilst sitting or walking. Concentration, which is typically focused on the breathing,
encourages attentiveness to, followed by disengagement from, whatever is happening in the
here and now, whether that be sounds, physical sensations or what the mind is doing. During
mindfulness meditation people are encouraged to simply note the coming and going of
thoughts, without judgement or getting drawn into a specific train of thought. Learning to
practice mindfulness is to counteract the habitual tendency of ‘mindlessness’ (Langer and
Moldoveanu, 2000), symptoms of which can include continually living in the past or planning
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the future, whilst paying scant attention to the present; feeling separate from both life and
oneself; being caught up in the mind, whilst detached from the body.
Mindfulness meditation is experiential in the sense of being grounded in the body, paying
attention to physical sensations and through this becoming aware of feelings associated with
them. To listen to physical sensory information is to create the space to acknowledge that
discomfort and pain, if not physical data about the body itself, is often unacknowledged
emotion. Through the practice of mindfulness meditation, during which a person focuses
attention on their breathing, a further aim is to gain great insight into the processes of the mind,
in the sense of becoming more aware of patterns of thought, dominant stories, and
preoccupations, for example, repeated patterns of fear, anxiety, self-criticism, denigration of
others etc. Mindfulness practice develops deep listening in the sense of encouraging people to
remain present in the moment, to what is going on in the ‘here- and–now’. It encourages
practitioners to notice and observe physical sensations and mind patterns, but without getting
drawn into them. Rather than ignoring discomfort or willing a way through it,
acknowledgement and acceptance helps to resolve them or bring disengagement.
How might this fit into a Business School programme?
As I have read about and practiced mindfulness meditation myself over the past couple of years
I have been struck by similarities with some of the language and practices of process radical
methods of reflection and critical action learning which, as described above, have made some
headway in business schools in experiential approaches to management and leadership
development. For example, notions of ‘active listening’, being observant of the ‘here-andnow’ and questioning ‘what is really going on’ are integral to Tavistock-informed
management/ leadership and organisation development (Miller, 1990; Trehan and Rigg, 2007).
With the characteristics of impermanence and scepticism of a fixed reality, Buddhism has much
in common with post-structuralism. There is commonality with critical reflection and critical
action learning in the sense of reflection being a process of noting feelings as well as thoughts
(Rigg and Trehan, 2004). However, there are also differences. One distinction is the priority
given in Buddhism to the body as a source of potential insight, and a corresponding scepticism
in the accuracy of cognition.
So, what might this look like in practice within a business school? In many ways I do not think
the implications are far removed from what some critical action learning and critical
management learning practitioners have been advocating. For example, in action learning it is
common to begin a group meeting with a round of ‘checking–in’, whereby each individual says
something about how they are feeling, or what preoccupations they are leaving at the door, in
order that they can be full present in the session. Bringing mindfulness into play could mean
simply extending the check-in to focus on what each participant is physically feeling as well.
For example, Sinclair (2007), in her experimentation with integrating yoga and mindfulness
into her business teaching, describes starting classes with a body scan or a few moments of
meditation, simply asking a class to close their eyes and concentrate on their breathing.
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Pushing practices of critical reflection further in the direction of mindfulness might introduce
a structured reflection exercise for managers, such as that of Baraz and Alexander (2010) [See
box].
Extending Reflective Practices to Mindfulness
This exercise could be added to supplement critical reflection by introducing
practices that enhance mindful reflection (Baraz and Alexander, 2010).
RAIN
Recognise and name the feeling
Allow the feelings to be present without either pushing away or getting
bound up in them
Investigate the feelings in the body and in the mind
Non-identification – don’t take the feeling as defining who you are
Conclusion
The motivation for this paper was to contemplate how business schools might better provide
learning in self-care for leaders/managers, so that others do not rush headlong, heroically,
masculinely into the devastating, but potentially avoidable, experiences of my six male friends.
I have argued that we already have, in the critical and experiential management learning fields,
valuable approaches for stimulating such learning, but that we can take this further drawing
from traditions of mindfulness meditation.
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