Coaching for Professional Development

Equanimity, Mindfulness and the Path to Successful

Leadership Conversations
- Melanie Gowlland, Executive Coach and Facilitator

I was speaking to a great friend recently, about this topic, and she said to me –
“Isn’t executive coaching and progressing as a leader, all about attaining
Equanimity?”

I have thought a lot about this comment and I’ve decided that not only do I
think this is indeed fundamental to the path to exceptional leadership
development, but also that by exploring what this means, we could cover some
important aspects of how executive coaching works towards achievement of
excellence in leadership, through attaining equanimity and building skills to
engage in successful and relevant conversations.

So, what is Equanimity? There are many definitions, and here are a few I
googled - “ a state of psychological stability and composure which is
undisturbed by experience or exposure to emotions, pain, or other
phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind”, also “ a
perfect, unshakable balance of mind, rooted in insight”, or “ the quality of
being calm and even-tempered; composure”. In Yoga, the virtue of equanimity
can be one of the results attained through regular meditation, combined with
regular practice of pranayama, asanas and mental disciplines, which clear the
mind and bring one inexorably toward a state of health and balance.

So, here’s a question for each of you to think about – How often in your
professional life and in what circumstances, do you feel you exhibit this skill or
competency of equanimity? And when you don’t, who or what or when or
where do you lose your equanimity? What do you think are the benefits of
equanimity?

One of the ways that we can build more equanimity and self-awareness into
the way we show up is to start self-observations and reflection practices to
build a better sense of ourselves. In doing this we start to understand more
clearly how we do things, and from there we can add new behaviours into our
personal leadership style that have a stronger impact on our outcomes.
Now that we have a little insight into our own capabilities in regards to
equanimity, I would like to introduce another concept that can be very useful
to assist with this leadership competency – that is, Mindfulness and the art of

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being present. Mindfulness can also be defined in many ways – “a mental state
achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly
acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations”,
or “mindfulness involves paying attention each moment to things as they are,
with an open hearted and non-judgmental attitude”.

I want you to think again about yourself - How often in your professional life on
any day, do you truly feel completely present and undistracted from anything
but the matter or the person at hand? We live in a highly challenging time with
too many inroads on our time. Again, just quickly now, have a chat to your
partner about how often, and with whom, you feel totally present, and mindful
in your everyday work environments. What do you think are the benefits of
mindfulness?

In a recent AFR Article, Dominic White wrote, Mindfulness is very simple: it’s
the practice of being present in the moment. Whether we’re talking about
meditation – which has thousands of years of history – or the current business
context, it’s really just about being more effective and finding a way to deal
with some of the stress and pressure of modern day business environment. “At
times, you need to react in a negotiation with a lot of passion and force. But
it’s doing that consciously and thoughtfully, and not doing it out of reactivity”.
Emotional intelligence also plays a role here.

What we are starting to engage with is not the art of doing, but more the art of
being. How we show up has an enormous impact on what gets done around us
and by us.

With all this in mind, how do we have better leadership conversations? If we

can stay connected to our own sense of competency around equanimity and
mindfulness, I would like to now introduce the concept of successful
leadership conversations. What they are, and how we undertake
conversations, can really affect our day-to-day business outcomes, and they
can impact our relationships with others, our ability to get things done and
whether or not we manage conflict well.
So, what are leadership conversations? These would include (but are not
limited to) conversations to coach, conversations to provide feedback, and
courageous conversations to deal with conflict. As with all conversations, our
language used and the ability to engage in active listening is also a key
competency to understand.

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We can do a small exercise to experience competitive listening and practice
active listening, to help us understand the difference, and better still, become
more self aware of how often we listen competitively rather than actively and
how it can close down opportunities, possibilities and the ability to have a truly
successful leadership conversation.

Competitive listening is when you are more interested in promoting your own
point of view vs. understanding or exploring someone else’s view, listening for
a weak point to attack, pretending to pay attention before waiting for a weak
point for an opening, internally formulating a rebuttal, or planning a
devastating comeback.

Active listening is when you are genuinely interested in understanding what a

person is thinking, feeling, wanting, is active in checking for understanding,
paraphrases and checks back for verification. Listening with head, heart and
body.

So now, let’s get started with understanding three important conversations a

leader needs to engage in probably every day. These are coaching
conversations, feedback conversations and courageous conversations.

Coaching conversations are about enabling others, often but not always, direct
reports to work out for themselves how to move forward through a blockage
or where there is a pattern of behaviour that isn’t effective. A coaching
conversation serves the individual and the focus is on them, input is from
them, there is no judgment or advice given and the coach and coachee work
together to develop new options and possibilities and find a way forward.
Active listening and open questions are used (how, what, where, when, who –
not why), to help the coachee unlock their issue and find out what they need
to do to move forward.

Feedback Conversations are really important and the intention should be to

develop, motivate, re-align, and grow the individual, and can be positive or
negative. The focus again is on the individual and the conversation has a
desired outcome required by the leader. The difficult part may be how to
engage the individual with that outcome. Feedback conversations should be
timely, specific, anchored to a business impact or performance issue, have
foundation, ie be based on observation of behaviour and or attitude, and must
be a two way dialogue so that relationships can be enhanced and trust built.

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Courageous conversations are aptly named as we need courage to deal with
conflict, and these conversations are always necessary when we feel wronged
or have been wounded in some way, and there is strong emotion felt, or a
silence or feeling of helplessness that is detrimental to the relationship
developing. These conversations have the potential to be difficult, but need to
be had, “not in the absence of fear, misgivings or self-doubt – but action in the
presence of them”. These conversations try to unblock “stuckness” between
people.

As key leaders in our businesses, 5 great questions to ask ourselves is, what is
the courageous conversation I’m not having
- about my future?
- with my customer?
- within my division or community of which I am a part?
- in my work group, and the people I phone, email or communicate with every
day?
- with myself (my own heart and mind) or with my partner, children or loved
ones?

These conversations can be attempted if we plan them carefully so that we

structure the conversation as follows - name the issue, give an example,
describe the impact, examine personal contribution to the issue, put yourself
in their shoes, state your intention about addressing the issue, think of how
you may enrol them in the outcome you want and then agree some action
plans together. Planning the conversation is always the key to a positive
outcome when there is conflict.

Executive Leadership is complex, personal and our ability to constantly develop

our capabilities will certainly drive success. Being able to be more calm and
composed in the face of complexity and emotion, being able to be present and
mindful at all times will build relationships, and developing some powerful
conversational skills in the workplace and in every professional situation will
build trust and ensure remarkable results for oneself and for one’s team. These
key leadership skills of equanimity, mindfulness and conversation are
fundamental to professional development through coaching.