Andrew McNeill - Mindfulness for organisations

Resilience Unravelled

Keywords

Resilience - Mindfulnes - Performance - Leadership - Workplace Culture - Stress

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Andrew McNeil, a leadership consultant who helps individuals and teams thrive under pressure, discusses how mindfulness can be used as a tool to improve both well-being and performance in high-pressure environments.

Andrew spent 20 years in senior leadership and throughout his career led large teams in high pressure environments. He is also an accredited mindfulness teacher and brought these two worlds together in his book Organisational Mindfulness - a How-to Guide in 2019. By integrating his leadership experience and insights from being a mindfulness teacher Andrew has developed a method to help leaders and their teams embed and implement techniques which improve performance, build psychological safety and support their own and their collective wellbeing.

In this podcast Andrew shares his personal experience of discovering mindfulness while in a high-pressure leadership role and how it helped him cope with stress. He also explains that mindfulness is about non-judgmental present moment awareness and choosing where we place our attention intentionally.

Main topics

• The implementation of mindfulness in organisations, particularly in meetings.
• The importance of noticing one's own biases and reactions, choosing to respond rather than react, and being present for effective decision-making.
• The need for cultural change towards mindful practices but acknowledging that it should be done thoughtfully as some people may not want to participate.

Timestamps

1: Introduction - Russell welcomes the guest, Andrew, and introduces the podcast. 00:00-00:23

2: Andrew's Work - Andrew explains that he is a leadership consultant who helps individuals and teams thrive under pressure. 00:56-02:03

3: Mindfulness - Andrew discusses how he discovered mindfulness and how it can be applied in a work context. He provides a practical example of how to practice mindfulness, and explains that it is a life-long practice. 02:05-08:28

4: Organsational Mindfulness - Andrew speaks about his book, "Organisational Mindfulness," which explains how mindfulness can be applied in a work setting. He discusses how mindfulness can help organisations support their people and deliver objectives. Andrew also explains how to implement cultural change and build skills to navigate high-stress environments. 08:51-15:24

5: Mindful Meetings - Andrew provides an example of how a program board meeting can be a practice in shared mindfulness. He explains how mindfulness can help people choose to respond rather than react in difficult meetings. 15:35-19:41

6: Conclusion - Russell and Andrew wrap up the podcast and provide information on where to find Andrew's book and services. 19:41-25:05

Action items

Find out more about Andrew's book Organisational Mindfulness.

Find out more about Andrew at https://lxleaders.com/