The words “mindfulness” and “consciousness” are increasingly appearing in contemporary leadership training programs and organizational discourse, and for good reason. These ancient concepts and coupled practices have wide reaching, empirically validated and impressive workplace outcomes, such as improved decision-making, a reduction in destructive leadership behavior, stress, turnover intention and more.
We have, however, witnessed the well-intentioned transformation of these two terms (mindful leadership and conscious leadership) into misused buzzwords, and want, therefore, to bring additional clarity to the definitions of and differences between them.
While there are many different and valid definitions and opinions out there, we at Mindsmatter adopt the following: