To be mindful is to be conscious or aware of something as it occurs in real-time, and many consider this to be a psychological process that can be honed and developed through practices such as meditation.
With this in mind, it stands to reason that mindfulness should be a prominent attribute among the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. However, this is an underrated quality that many aspiring entrepreneurs continue to overlook, as they instead focus on hard leadership skills such as decisiveness, communication and critical thinking.
This represents a huge oversight, however, and one that can cost entrepreneurs dearly over time. So here just a few reasons why mindfulness is so important:
- It Helps you to Set the Right Emotional Tone
While your workplace may be a place of business, it’s also home to a number of varied and conflicting emotions at any given time. These emotive feelings can become contagious, and the in the worst case scenario this may have a detrimental impact on employee morale and productivity.
It’s your job to set the emotional tone as a leader, however, and by being mindful of this and the impact that your behaviour has on others you can achieve this objective.
The most important thing is to maintain a positive outlook and tone even during turbulent times for your business, as you look to provide tangible leadership and influence the reaction of your employees.
The importance of this is borne out by studies too, with research having shown that teams tend to perform at their optimal level when their leaders project positive energy and a keen sense of enthusiasm.
- It Makes it Easier for you to Incentivise your Employees
There’s no doubt that we live in the age of a competitive labour market, which continues to boast high levels of employment and engagement.
While this is largely good news for employers, however, it also creates several challenges in terms of acquiring top talent and retaining their most skilled staff members.
Mindfulness can help with this, however, as it enables entrepreneurs to remain in touch with their employees and the motivational factors that drive them to work every single day.
From here, entrepreneurs can look to build tailored employment packages to reward their staff, combining competitive salaries and bonuses with a number of relevant and innovative perks.
Perkbox, a UK based company reward system, is ideally placed to help in this respect, as it offers access to a number of discounted offers and unique promotions that can wow your staff.
- It Drives More Informed Decision-making
In many respects, decision-making is an art-form and one that remains integral to successful leadership.
However, our decision-making as humans is often inherently flawed, thanks to factors such as subconscious bias and an inability to think critically when confronted with challenges.
Mindfulness can overcome both of these issues, however, as it underpins a sense of awareness that enables you to appraise situations accurately and form rational judgements in response. Additionally, it ensures that you’re aware of how certain decisions will impact on those around you, allowing you to announce them in the right way and avoid undermining office morale.
With a mindful and critical approach, there’s no doubt that you can improve the quality of your decision-making as an entrepreneur. It can also maintain the output of your workforce, which is a crucial consideration if you’re to build a productive and successful business over time.
