Finding the Space to Lead:
A Practical Guide to Mindful Leadership
One of the phrases in Janice Marturano’s
book, Finding the Space to Lead,
speaks to the epidemic of multi-tasking or continuous partial attention that
takes place during an American’s day at work or home. She writes that this
habit can be exhausting and inefficient because the mind’s ability is limited
and argues that we can develop the brain’s capabilities through daily
meditation and purposeful pauses, in turn creating better leaders and thinkers.
Early on in the book, she describes a business situation, involving food
contamination in a major product, where employees used mindfulness techniques
to develop consensus and offer a decision that employees would not welcome.
Marturano believes the engineering slogan, reduce the noise and capture the signal,
summarizes the concept of mindfulness expressed in these terms: clarity, focus,
creativity and compassion. Her book
serves as a blueprint for those who want to minimize stress, lead with empathy
and regulate their reaction to unexpected events. The author, a lawyer and
former General Mills vice president, guided the merger between Pillsbury and
General Mills, an 18 month process. During
a retreat, she learned mindful leadership and found it gave her mental and
emotional space to deal with the nonstop demands of the workplace.
Marturano, Janice. Finding the Space to Lead: A Practical Guide to Mindful Leadership.
New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.
BF637 .L4 M287 2014
