Finding the Space to Lead

November 11, 2013
After a week-long mindfulness workshop with Jon Kabat-Zinn, Marturano—then a General Mills executive, now founder and executive director of the Institute for Mindful Leadership—changed her entire view on what it takes to be an effective and calm leader, and changed her strategy accordingly. This book is the result. Her fundamentals of leadership excellence are focused on getting readers out of the endless rat race, and re-orienting themselves towards doing real, meaningful work. Constant movement keeps us reacting, rather than innovating. Change means learning how to give your full attention to what you’re doing, and making sure others know they have your undivided attention while talking. Learned practices such as meditations are effective, as are reflections and purposeful pauses. Marturano provides exercises for meditation practices for leaders to create a useful and self-directed daily routine. Readers are likely to find her thoughtful discussion of multitasking useful, and will appreciate her suggestions regarding leading by inspiration, the role of emotion in leadership, and compassion and kindness in the workplace. While the content can become repetitive, readers looking to find ways to retrain their brains to pay better attention will find this helpful. Agent: Stephanie Tade, Stephanie Tade Agency.

January 1, 2014

New Jersey-based Marturano (founder & executive director, Inst. for Mindful Leadership; Huffington Post) outlines a method for executives and leaders to use meditation and self-awareness to create a meaningful daily work experience for both the executive and the employee. Based on her experiences within a Fortune 500 company, the author provides a practical guide to developing what she identifies as the four attributes of mindful leadership: clarity, focus, creativity, and compassion. The book is divided into three parts. The first outlines mindful leadership and offers the author's own story of how she came to use this method in her role as a vice president at General Mills. The second part introduces basic meditation practices (walking, breathing, pausing) as a way to strengthen values-based leadership. The final section presents a path to becoming the kind of leader who makes a difference within an organization. While the suggested daily meditations may feel too New Agey and turn away readers looking for a results-oriented management text, the emphasis on remembering how to stop and refocus during the day could find traction with those too exhausted from daily task management. VERDICT Marturano's short and accessible guide teaches us how to use breathing and walks as breaks between tasks as a way to inject awareness throughout the day. It will find appreciation among business professionals.--John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston

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