LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

How Mindfulness Improves

Executive Coaching
by David Brendel and Emmie Roe Stamell
JANUARY 29, 2016

The benefits of mindfulness meditation for business leaders are increasingly appreciated and
confirmed by empirical research. Executives and high performing professionals increasingly use
meditation to manage stress, maintain strategic focus, enhance cognitive performance, promote
emotional intelligence, and improve interpersonal relationships. Meditation programs are
increasingly offered in the workplace to promote these benefits. Potential risks of mindfulness
programs can be avoided and advantages enhanced when workers engage voluntarily and
proactively in the process.
However, mindfulness meditation is usually a freestanding offering in workplaces and not tied to
the user’s specific leadership development challenges. Mindfulness meditation has not yet been
rigorously integrated into leadership development programs and executive coaching. These
kinds of development programs can help emerging leaders to identify — and overcome — their
limiting beliefs, behavior patterns, and interpersonal difficulties. Such programs can help them to
develop new skill sets including the capacity to think strategically and motivate others.

Similarly, executive coaching helps individual clients to develop essential skill sets to manage
direct reports, communicate more effectively, develop sound strategic plans, and implement
action plans for success. But since most executive coaches and leadership development
specialists are not also specialists in applying mindfulness strategies, important opportunities
may be missed. While executives may benefit from pursuing meditation as a freestanding stress-
management strategy, their development as vibrant leaders could be bolstered by vigorously
integrating the two approaches.

When executive coaches and mindfulness specialists collaborate closely, they can help clients to
identify their core challenges and focus in-depth on addressing those challenges in a synergistic
fashion. They can hold clients accountable to commitments they’ve made to both processes. The
executive coach can engage the client in dialogue about how mindfulness strategies (such as
controlled breathing and guided imagery) are working in the service of leadership development
and executive functioning.

Meanwhile, the mindfulness specialist can help the client to develop individually tailored
meditation techniques that support the executive leadership goals (such as maintaining a calm,
steady presence in essential meetings in the C-suite or with colleagues across the organization).
The two processes can powerfully reinforce each other and promote enhanced quality of life,
work performance, and leadership capacity. But that is only the case if the executive coach and
mindfulness specialist maintain a healthy dialogue with one another.

In our practice, we work closely day-to-day as an executive coach/meditation specialist team.

Together we have developed an integrative and bidirectional model of executive coaching and
mindfulness coaching. We take the initiative to inform each other regularly about the specifics of
the work we are doing with our shared clients. Our approaches are mutually reinforcing.
When the client achieves a relaxed state during meditation sessions via controlled breathing and
progressive muscle relaxation (temporarily suspending cognition), he or she can then work on
the mindset changes that are the focus of the executive coaching. These mindset changes are
more attainable when they are worked on in a state of meditative relaxation. Conversely, relevant
thoughts “bubbling up” in the client’s mind during meditation sessions are relevant to the tasks
of the executive coaching and leadership development sessions. In some cases, we meet together
with our clients to ensure that the goals and strategies are well aligned amongst all of us.

Here’s an example of the process with one of our shared clients. Steven has been a successful
executive in the tech industry and recently began working with a start up company, at which
point he experienced a major spike in his longstanding anxiety, obsessional work style, and
profound worries about his health. The executive coaching work has aimed to transform his
mindset from focusing on problems and roadblocks standing in the way of success, into focusing
on interesting challenges and opportunities all around him. His capacity to reframe self-
perceived problems as opportunities has deepened since he began to focus on this cognitive
reframe not only during executive coaching sessions, but also during meditation and yoga
sessions. At the same time, during those sessions my colleague noticed that he was expressing
worries about his office set-up and daily work schedule. That information flowing from
meditation and yoga sessions has helped to deepen the executive coaching process by identifying
concrete, worthwhile tasks for him to pursue.

The benefits of a relaxed body state for executive coaching clients like Steven cannot be
overestimated. Once Steven’s self-awareness expanded to include his breathing and his body
state in general, he became more grounded, mentally focused, and capable of making significant
changes. Deep breathing and somatic relaxation moderated his cognitive intensity, which
empowered him to tolerate and transform stressful thoughts rather than being overwhelmed or
detrimentally reactive to them. He thereby succeeded in achieving the executive coaching goals
of transforming his self-perception from being riddled with problems to embracing wonderful
new leadership challenges and opportunities for growth.

The synergy of executive coaching and mindfulness meditation is compelling. Meditation helps
clients achieve a state of being in which they can think clearly about work-related stressors and
goals. And when executives make positive mindset and behavior changes, they are better
positioned to relax and achieve a meditative state — with all its inherent benefits. The two
approaches continually deepen and bolster each other.
By carefully integrating executive coaching and mindfulness strategies in a single practice
setting, we can help clients develop into more self-aware, grounded, emotionally intelligent, and
effective leaders. Executive coaches, leadership trainers, and mindfulness specialists can form
powerful partnerships in the service of an enhanced client experience. Rather than leaving to
chance whether and how clients will engage in mindfulness meditation, executive coaches
should consider partnering with highly qualified and trusted mindfulness colleagues. The
process is more rewarding, and the outcome for clients is far superior, with this kind of
coordinated approach.

David Brendel, MD, PhD is an executive coach, leadership development specialist, and psychiatrist based in
Boston. He is founder and director of Leading Minds Executive Coaching, LLC. He is also co-founder of Strategy of Mind,
LLC. Follow him on Twitter @DrDavidBrendel and on LinkedIn.

Emmie Roe Stamell, RYT, CAy, is a mindfulness meditation specialist, certied Kripalu Yoga teacher, and
certied Ayurvedic practitioner. She is an associate of Leading Minds Executive Coaching, LLC and director of the Sukha
Yoga practice in the Boston area.

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Ryan Bonnici 2 years ago

Thanks for sharing, Emmie. I totally agree with your perspective here. I read another article recently on
https://www.executiv.co that had a complimentary perspective, looking at some parallels between leadership
skills and executive coaching. You can check it out here --> https://www.executiv.co/blog/the-who-what-when-
where-how-and-why-of-executive-coaching

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