Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 130: Janice Marturano, How to Be a Better Boss

Episode Date: April 11, 2018

Janice Marturano was a vice president at General Mills working on the Pillsbury merger deal in 2000 when she lost both her parents, and began a regular meditation practice as a way to soothe stress at work and in her personal life. Noticing the relief a daily practice brought her, and wanting to lead by example, she sought out a way to introduce mindfulness to her coworkers, and by the time she left General Mills to start the Institute for Mindful Leadership, she said more than 700 employees had completed mindfulness leadership training. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, 10%ers? From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast.

I'm Dan Harris. What's up, 10%ers? On the show this week, the woman who first demonstrated to me that you can be a hard-charging, high-level corporate samurai and still incorporate mindfulness into your life in a meaningful way. She was a pioneer in bringing meditation into corporate America. And you first met her, if you read 10% happier in that book, her name is Janice Martirano. More from Janice, much more from Janice coming up, but first some business and then some voice mails, and then Janice. So business, two things. First of all, thank you everybody for your comments, questions, etc. on Twitter about the pivot in the editorial direction of the show

that I announced last week. Essentially, my announcement was we're still going to do a ton of meditation, primarily meditation, but we're also going gonna talk to folks who may not meditate or have anything to say about that in particular, but they know a lot about human performance and human potential. And as I like to say, getting your S word together on every level possible. And that's where I think we're heading with this show,

which is that it's kind of chicken soup for the skeptic or self-help for wiseazas. Some people were very supportive of this idea, this kind of pivot, this gentle pivot. Some people though on Twitter were expressing some apprehension about it. I respect that and I appreciate you saying this and let me just say a few things about this.

One is, this is an experiment. My team and I made decide that we don't want to do this pivot after all and please continue to tell us what you think. Second, I think it's just important to know that while this is still obviously going to be a podcast primarily about meditation, if you're serious about meditation, the practice doesn't exist in a vacuum. What you eat, how much you sleep, what your work life is like, what you're parenting and family life is like, these all are inextricably intertwined with your meditation practice.

Because we don't meditate just to become good meditators. We meditate to be better at life. So that's the spirit in which we are attempting this pivot. But please continue to tweet me and tell me that you think this is dumb or smart or whatever. Second piece of business is that I do have a public event coming up to which you were all cordially invited. It's with a guy named Sam Harris. We're not related, but he is kind of a brother from another mother. I look up to him a lot, a controversial guy, but incredibly smart and very serious for a long time about meditation, also the

host of a very popular podcast called Waking Up. So Sam Harris and I are doing an event together in Los Angeles on Wednesday, May 2nd, 8 o'clock at the Skurball. Center. You can get tickets on skurball.org. All right, let's do some voicemails. Here we go, number one. Hey, Dan. Slater calling. Love your work. Appreciate it.

It's helped me out a lot. My question is regarding trying to stay 10% happier while you shop in Costco with everybody blocking the lanes and blocking in the other lanes. If you're ever shopped Costco, everybody blocking the lanes and blocking the other lanes. If you're ever shopped Costco, you know what I mean. So if you could tell us all how to remain calm, meditate through the lovely experience of shopping at Costco, think it could be fun. Thanks.

So I hear you. Every life, maybe there's some exceptions to this, but I'm unaware of them. Every life has experiences that are really frustrating and that we dread, but we have to do anyway. There are parts of the traveling experience, traveling on planes, going through airports

that I detest. So the first thing I'd say is you're not alone. The second thing I'd say is it doesn't have to not suck. I don't think we're expecting to snap our fingers and make everything that's annoying about life, not be annoying. But I think you can use these as opportunities to practice in so much that it's a training.

So what are we training in meditation? We're training to be awake instead of a sleep and to be awake in a way that allows us to see what's happening in our head as we go through whatever we're going through. Clearly enough that whatever random emotion has just ambushed us or random thought has just popped through our mind, it doesn't own us.

We don't necessarily act on whatever urges or impulses we may have. I would just do what's called a noting practice. So, we've probably talked about this before on the podcast, and I know we talk about it a lot on the 10% happier app, but the noting practice is not complicated. It's just that whatever you're doing in your head, you make a soft mental note of it. And so you're, I'm not talking about getting super complicated here. You don't have to note, oh, thinking about calculus, wondering about what life was like on the Savannah during the early days of evolution.

No, actually just make much simpler. So as you're walking, you can just make a note of movement. If you catch yourself thinking, thinking, you catch yourself feeling really angry because somebody's just bought all the kitty litter and you need some, just note the feeling of anger and examine, where is that showing up in my body? It was in my chest buzzing and my ears returning red,

what kind of thoughts am I having? Simple notes that, and some people when they hear this, they think, oh, well, isn't that just thinking, and aren't you not supposed to thank in meditation? Too answer to that. Thinking is inevitable in meditation because you can't stop the mind from producing thoughts. That's what it does.

The point is just to not get carried away by the thoughts, but more importantly, mental noting is the skillful use of thought to direct you to your direct experience. So, just as you're going through this process, you're standing online at the checkout, it's going forever, you notice somebody maybe not going as speedily as you would like, just make a little mental note of anger, seeing, hearing. And in this way, I think actually,

you can reduce the suffering of the experience immeasurably. On my last meditation retreat, it really occurred to me that if you are suffering, if anything is bothering you, there is something you are not being sufficiently mindful of. There's not something you're not being mindful of at all. And when you're mindful of something, even something unpleasant, actually in the little nanosecond when you're mindful of it, it's not bothering you.

You're just non-judgmentally aware of it. So try that. Again, the noting practice. Just making soft little mental notes as you go through this process and then every time you get distracted start again and just make a little mental note of what it is that has distracted you. I hope what I just said made some semblance of logical sense. I should have issued the caveat that I normally do before the I take the calls, which is I'm not a meditation teacher. I'm not a mental health expert, I'm just a guy who tries to meditate a reasonable amount and writes about it, and so you should take everything I say with a grain of salt. Anyway, great question, I hope it works.

Call me back and let me know. Here's question number two. Hey Dan, good morning, welcome up in Rhode Island. Question few is staying present. Obviously, the real main goal here, that's kind of the holy grail if you will, however as a guy who owns his own business and also as a parent of a special needs child, there is a fair amount of time that I need to spend thinking about where I want the company to go, how you get there, what are going to be the steps

as well as you know coming up with scenarios for when the inevitable emergencies pop up with my son and so you know those things are kind of best planned out in advance. So how do you sort of balance what just being there with okay so these things are going to be constantly thrown at you uh... and you know and how you could create a business plan for the future uh... while doing that mindfully in the present thank you all really appreciate it so you talked about two things one being uh...

business owner and two being the parent of a special needs child i know a little bit about the former given that I'm the last couple of years have been dabbling as in the world of business as the co-founder of the 10% happier company and I have a some sense of how it's like a running existential crisis all the time being in business. So I feel you on that. I too am a parent but not of a special needs child. So it's hard for me to imagine the amount of stress that that would entail. And it has to be significant. So I would say, again, based on my limited meditation experience and some experience in

the worlds that you're describing, that the planning that you describe as being necessary sounds absolutely necessary. And from a business standpoint, you need to think of worst-case scenarios, you need to figure out how you're gonna develop the business, how you're gonna grow it, who should be hired, who should be let go. There's a lot of thinking and planning

that needs to be done. And then again, from the parenting standpoint, you talked about sort of thinking and planning that needs to be done. And then again, from the parenting standpoint, you talked about sort of thinking through how we're going to handle any number of tricky scenarios that could arise vis-a-vis our child. All of that, to my ears, sounds absolutely utterly reasonable, non-negotiable, you have to do that stuff. For me, it reminds me of a conversation that I had with my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, that I wrote about in 10% happier, where I was on a meditation retreat, and we were nearing the end of the retreat, and he said to the group, this was a silent meditation retreat, but the teachers were allowed to talk, and this was actually during the very short period

every day where you were allowed to ask questions of the teacher, and so he said something about, okay, we're getting toward the end of the retreat, you're gonna start thinking about what you're gonna be doing when the retreat is over, try to resist that. And I raised my hand and said, well, win a minute, if I miss my flight,

that has real world consequences. It's not, this isn't a, and just a, um, a thought that's disconnected from reality. And he said something brilliant, that truly, and this is an overused phrase, but, but in this case, apt, changed my life. He said, yes, it's true. If you miss your flight, that's a problem. But on the 17th time that you find yourself running through all the horrible things that may or may not happen to you as a consequence of a missed flight,

maybe ask yourself a one simple question. Is this useful? And I remember kind of rocking back in my chair and thinking, oh yeah, my whole life has been organized around the principle of protective fretting, you know, just worrying and gaming out all the potential moves to be made in the event of whatever horror movie might arise in my life. By the way, most of those things never happened, as Mark Twain has reputed to have said, the worst things that ever happened to me never happened.

But many of us operate on this idea that we need, the only way we're going to survive is to constantly worry. So my argument to you, based on that advice that Joseph gave to me eight or nine years ago that I've road tested every day of my life, is yes, of course you need to be thinking about business issues and parenting issues, but at some point you reach the point of diminishing returns. And at that moment, that's the time to ask yourself,

is this useful? Somebody sent me on Twitter the other day that they've actually made that the home screen on their phone, or they get a reminder on their phone that pops up every hour or so, that just asks them, is this useful? It's an incredibly, sorry to be repetitive, useful little mantra to employ.

So, and then I guess the other part of your question is how can you stay mindful while doing this planning and worrying? Yeah, absolutely. You just use the tools that we're learning in meditation, which is, can you occasionally pull yourself out of your head and back into your body just for a nanoseconds at a time to make you less crazy, less lost in the swirl of thinking that goes on when we're planning. But of course,

you're going to get carried away, and that's just part of the deal. Don't expect perfection here, but just rely on the basics of the practice which will remind you to come back to right now what's happening in your body, in your mind at a given moment, and also throw in this mantra, get in the habit of using that, because you'll notice that actually we cross the line often between what I call constructive anguish, you know, useful worrying, and the other side of that line, which is useless rumination. So thank you, Walt. Good luck.

I hope that helps. If you want to call and have me lamely answer your questions, here's the phone number, 646-883-836-646-883-836-836-836. All right, our guest this week, she's a star, Janice Martirano. If you read 10% happier, you met her because I met her many years ago. I think in 2010 or something like that, I had heard about her work. She was a vice president at General Mills. And she was kind of virally spreading meditation through General Mills,

which as I often joke, is like the most American company you can think of, they make hamburger helper and they're based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and I flew out there and she had very successfully injected meditation into the executive level of this company so much so that they actually have meditation rooms in every building in their corporate campus in Minnetonka. And she really helped me see that you can be in, you know, in, in, let's just say counterintuitive environment for meditation, maybe even a hostile environment for meditation, not only surviving,

but also thriving, and more than just thriving, also helping other people thrive. So she's since left general mills, she now runs something called the Institute for Mindful Leadership, which is a nonprofit, and they teach people in leadership positions both in the corporate world and outside of the corporate world, how to use meditation to make themselves better at what they do and better at their actual lives as well.

Before we start, I just wanna say that if you're interested in her work, she doesn't talk about this during the podcast, but I will talk about it now. Starting on May 1st, she's got this online program. It's called Finding the Space to Lead, and you can learn more about it at her website, which is mindfulleaders.org.

Okay, here we go, Janice Marta Rao. Anybody who read 10% happier, and if you didn't know, it's the matter with you, we'll know, we'll have seen at least your, a little bit of your backstory, but just as a refresher, let's do the long version here, because I think it's really interesting, I've heard it before, but it's really interesting.

How did you come to meditation given your kind of unique circumstances in Minnesota at the time? Sure. Okay. So, go all the way back to the turn of the century, the year 2000. At that time, I was what I call the 21st century juggler, which is what probably most of us in the work world would consider ourselves. And that's you have lots of balls in the air.

And for me, the main goal every day was to try and keep them from falling. And so the balls in the air, where I was at that time, a new vice president, I was married, two school-aged kids, the daughter of aging parents, and the president of a nonprofit board in the Twin Cities. So lots of balls in the air and actually I felt very happy. I was pretty much doing what I had always hoped I would be able to do.

I had interesting work. I enjoyed what I did. My kids were great. My husband's great. I loved my parents. They're real important to me. I was able to give back in the community. So I kind of felt like, oh, this is great. I loved my parents are real important to me and I was able to give back in the community. So I kind of felt like, oh, this is great. And then the phone rang one spring morning. And it was our CEO and he said, uh, General Mills is going to buy Pillsbury. So an acquisition of equal size organizations. My original training on Wall Street was as a deal lawyer, so doing deals was not new to me, but as it would turn out, and surprising to everyone, this would turn into the deal from hell,

and rather than take five or six months for a whole host of reasons, it would drag out to a full 18 months. Well, about six months into this, I remember coming from my car to the office, one early one morning, and I ran into someone from an officer from Pillsbury. And he asked me how the latest round of interviews at the FTC went. And I explained to him, well, you know, federal trade commission. So that was what was getting, it was getting hung up, hung up on the fed. Yeah, it was getting hung up at the FTC and actually one person at the FTC. And Dan, I should tell you that that whole deal now that I'm not in that line of work right now, I can say it was all about 99 cent cake mix if you can believe, but that's the whole

mother topic anyway. So I came back and said, you know, I thought we answered all our questions. We brought them some, the experts they wanted it all went great. The interviews seemed to go well and on the way out of the door, they handed us another pile of questions to respond to. And he sort of nodded and he, okay, I get it. But as he was walking away, he said, you know, if you can't get this deal through 10,000 Pillsbury employees are going to lose their job.

So it's not like I needed more stress that that would want more pressure to get this done because the team and I were already working seven days a week to satisfy a million questions and get everything that they wanted done. And we literally, I remember days where I would work out twice a day to have energy at night for the strategy sessions or for filling out more questions. So I was really burning the candle at both ends.

And around that same time, my mother who had been ill passed away. This rocked my very foundation. I was very close to her. No time to agree. No time to do anything. Had to get this deal done. 10,000 families, 10,000 jobs, and in my mind that meant 10,000 families. And especially because both headquarters were in the Twin Cities, to me that felt like 10,000 neighbors who were going to be affected. So, okay, back to work right away. About six months later, still within that 18-month window, my father, who was not ill, had some surgery, and as a

complication of surgery, became a quadriplegic and passed away. So, all this confluence of personal tragedy, professional challenges beyond anything I had encountered meant that during that period of time I wasn't sleeping well, I'd lost 20 pounds, all this kind of stuff. And yet, I did what we do. We're trained to play hurt. We just keep going because that's what has to happen. There's a lot at stake. And then it was over. And the deal went through. And I had a little bit more time. And I thought, okay, now bounce back. But I didn't. And what, that was a big surprise to me. Because as I said, I'd done deals before and they're crazy and hectic. And then you have some space and you bounce back. Only this time I didn't. So although I started juggling again, that 24th century juggler stuff started again, I was profoundly aware that something

had been lost during that period of time. That although on the outside, I looked like I was doing everything, I knew something had been lost, significantly lost. And what I would learn later from the work that I would ultimately do the research before the development of the mindful leadership curriculum, what I would learn from neuroscientists was that you can get to a point of such depletion that your resiliency is gone. And it's not easy to bounce back. A good friend of mine was a physician and Numi very well and said, you know what you need to do? You need to go to a spa.

That would be the answer. If you go to a spa, you'll sleep, you'll eat good food, and you'll bounce back. It'll be okay. Go to a spa for a week. Okay, so you have a young son. I had young children at that time. The last thing I could think of doing was going home and telling their moms going on vacation without you. As it was, my husband, my wonderful husband and my children, I had to send on vacation twice during that 18 month period without me because I could not get away. So this was not happening.

But he was very insistent and he sent me this link of the number ones that got survey, spa in the country. And one morning when I got this link, he had sent it in an email and I was really feeling tired. I just clicked on the link and it opened to this magnificent photographs of this place in Arizona. And you felt better just watching the pictures, just looking at the pictures made you feel better.

It was just gorgeous. And I was thinking, okay, yeah, it's a gorgeous spot, but I'm not going to a spot for a week. And then I saw this little blurb in the corner they had special programs. And one was the power of mindfulness and intensive retreat for executives. And honestly in my warp little mind at that point I said, aha, maybe if it's intensive, it's okay to go to a spot. And for executives. And for executives. Right. What else could you want?

Anyway, I went home. I spoke with my husband about it. I did some research into this too, because I was like, what is this mindfulness stuff in the business world? Nobody knew with this one. And this is the year what, 2000? 2000.

Still 2000. OK. So you're a 2001. Very important. Mindfulness wasn't cool at that point. No, it wasn't even known. 10 years away at that point. No, it wasn't even no way from being cool Yeah, it wasn't even known and my full leadership didn't exist at all and but mindfulness was not in the business world And I looked in as like well, what is this right? I mean I grew up here in New Jersey

I went to school at NYU. I don't hug trees I don't chant I'm not burning incense, what's this stuff? And so I liked to tell him, who's John Kabbat's son? Because he was teaching, I was like, who's this guy? And then I felt better because I said, oh, he's an MIT guy, okay, he's into science, okay, training the mind, I get that. That makes sense to me because I actually grew up with that idea. I had a father who believed that mathematics would train your mind. So the idea that you could do things that could train in a capacity of mind wasn't a hard leap for me to make. So I think, okay, what's this?

We just quickly say that if anybody's interested in John Cabin's then he's a former guest on this podcast, so you can go listen to that. Yes. All right, so ultimately I went. Six days, Arizona does, or to this day, Dan, among the 10 hardest things I've ever done in my life. What was the name of the place you went to? Mirival. Okay, yeah, I've been there. I was giving a talk, not I wasn't chilling.

So just anyway, go ahead. But it would be okay if you were chilling. Right, so there you go. There you go. So I remember the very first day, John, small group, there were 12 of us in the desert, right? 12 of us. Even though it was a beautiful resort,

we had no time to enjoy the resort because we would go six, thirty in the morning till nine o'clock at night, practicing, engaging in dialogue. Okay, so the very first night, sitting in a circle, first time we're together, and Johnson's already gonna be sitting by clock time, about 45 minutes, and I remember thinking, we're gonna do what for 45, we're just gonna sit here, I'll go crazy, I'm like, out.

And in fact, after a day and a half, I was ready to go and told him so. It's like, man, this, not, I can't do this. He was being the fabulous and talented and amazing teacher that he is. We talked and I stayed. And I will tell you that from that first time where I thought I won't survive five minutes. To the last day, when I remember going

for the first early morning, 6.30 in the morning, we would carry our cushions out to the edge of the desert and sit in this Kiva For our morning silent practice and I remember that last day carrying my little cushion out to the edge to have our morning and all I could think of all that was in my mind was Only an hour. It'll never be enough That's what happened in six days. So I was hit hard by this. So that's how I was introduced to mindfulness.

That's not how mindful leadership came about, but that's how I was introduced. What was happening in your mind that was so useful for you? When I stopped, it was a lot like hitting a brick wall because I had been living a life that was going 150 miles an hour for so long that I had no idea what it was like to actually stop and inhabit this moment and actually fully be here for this moment as opposed to being on autopilot and being that juggler. And it opened up a whole amazing aspect of my life to me. It also started to teach me one of the big aha moments, which is why it's such a critical part of the work that I do now at the institute is the idea that you could notice thoughts was

mind-blowing to me like oh my gosh you could actually just rest and notice thoughts arising and dissolving because that gave me a different way of being in relationship to those thoughts. So they're not owning you as much? So you go back to General Mills, did you tell everybody about this? No. In fact, I was a closet meditator because I went back and here was the big issue. I come back. I walked it. First, I walked into my home.

My husband noticed the difference in moments after I arrived home like oh my gosh This is like what happened And I started to have a regular daily practice, but I had no support No support around me at all. So here I was a corporate executive. I Absolutely told no one about this and much of that was because I didn't know how to describe this shot I was very, very sad. I was very sad. I was very sad. I was very sad. I was very sad. I was very sad.

I was very sad. I was very sad. I was very sad. I was very sad. I was very sad. I was very sad. I was very sad. I was very sad. I just said about learning, and I learned from many teachers, from many different theologies. It was important to me, I wanted to hear from a lot of folks and begin to notice that

the idea of living into the best of humanity actually exists lots of places, lots of theologies, lots of cultures, and the idea that we can train parts of our mind in certain ways, and it has physiological changes, so I wanted to learn the neuroscience. So I was in learning and practice mode for years before I started to consider that I really had to bring this out and it really became a head to. I considered it for a long time and kept saying no and this is going to be my thing and that's enough. And I started almost immediately within a few months seeing how it was changing the way I was not only at home, but also at work with my department in my company.

And then I was, then came the day. And it literally was one day when I decided this has had such an impact on leadership. And in the training I had been doing just kind of traditional leadership development and how it began to intersect in phenomenal, powerful ways. You mean you were already involved in traditional leadership development within the corporation? Yes, for decades, not only in that company, but in past companies.

They should be helping executives get better, rise up, etc. Yeah, and people in my department, as part of a corporate officer, I was involved and I was always interested in my own leadership. How do I get better at this myself? And then I started to see very big changes that were happening in my own leadership and in the way I was coaching others and mentoring others. So I was at an officer's meeting one day where they had set aside an entire day to talk about innovation, gathered all the officers from all around the world together for a full day, had some consultant,

we were going through all kinds of stuff exercises the sent me other thing And finally got to the end of the day not much progress had been made and One officer who's a good friend stood up and said look here's the deal It's not that we don't have bright people in this organization. We do we have bright creative people But here's what happens we get a group of people together We want to be more creative about something. We want to approach something a different way. Somebody says something. And before the words even touch the table, eight people pounds on it. We've tried a bit

before. There's no funding. We'll never get approval. Blah, blah, blah, blah. All this stuff. And it dies before the seed even has a chance to, is there something here? Should we turn it this way in that way? And to me in that moment, it felt like that was all a lot of storytelling, a lot of reactivity. I also had a great deal of feeling of compassion for people in that room who I knew so many of them personally had great regard for these people as individuals

knew that these are people with bright minds and good hearts and they get crushed and overwhelmed by stuff that I knew from my own experience A certain combination of mindfulness and leadership development would make better. So how did it go? I mean, I would want to put a fine point on this because now meditation is in all sorts of corporations. It's not surprising when you hear that apple and Google and Twitter and Etna and all these other corporations are doing mindfulness for their employees, but this was not common when you started to gingerly broach it with your colleagues. So this was a risk.

So how did you go about taking this risk? Yeah, it actually was a very big risk and I knew it was a big risk and that's why I said, it really got to a point where I couldn't not do it. I saw so much, you know, it's a big word and I'm about to say suffering, but you know, people hear that word and it can get creepy meaning to it. And what it really just felt to me like, there's a lot of potential here. There's a lot of angst here that doesn't need to be here. There's a lot of potential here that's not being tapped.

And it just felt like I had so much caring for my colleagues that I said, all right, I'm going to try. And I'm going to see what happens. So the way, how do I try? How do you do this? So I just started to, literally, I would be walking the halls I'd be in meetings with people doing my job as the deputy general counsel.

And I'd see someone. And I'd say, oh, that's him. He's pretty open-minded about stuff. Let me just see. And I'd say, have some kind of conversation about, hey, you know, I've been exploring this kind of interesting training of the mind. It has some really big effects on leadership. And you know, Dan, the thing that surprised me was the answer I got from people was, oh,

is that what's been different about you? Is people noticed? And that was a surprise to me. I knew it, but what I underestimated was how much other people saw it. And so what I got was, yeah, I don't know what you're talking about with this mindfulness stuff, but if that's what it was, sure,

I wanna learn about this stuff. And just to have a start, I just, this proves a point that I say a thing all the time, which you're saying better just in many ways. People ask, you know, what if I get really into meditation, how do I get others around me to do it? And I always say, don't talk about it because you're probably going to be very annoying enough putting. And you did this thing, which was to lead by example, they saw in you something they wanted

for themselves. And so you just modeled it. And by the time you broached it with people, it wasn't annoying. It was like, oh, okay, well, give me some of that, please. Yeah. Yeah. And that is, that is so, so important. You can't make someone do this and so although

We work with individuals and we work with organizations and teams We always ask if somebody says to me, hey, I've got this leadership team We want to come on retreat with you for your five-day retreat and we want the whole team to come the first question I ask is does everybody want to come? Because if it's the leader of a team and they're saying, well, no, we're making everybody come, that's a disaster. Because you know, this is hard. It's not easy. You really can't get to the kind of things

that we're talking about. This kind of transformative leadership, the kind of touching into your best self so that you can increase focus and clarity and creativity and compassion. You can't do that by flipping a switch or doing this for three minutes a day. So if somebody is saying, we want to invest in this for our whole team, I often, or my other instructors at the Institute, will often have a phone call with everybody and say, okay, what are your questions? What do you think is going to happen here?

Let me answer your questions about it, so they know what they're getting into. But so then the first group, very brave group, right? They went away. At General Mills. Yeah. This first, very first group of 13. They went away for four nights. So this was not a, hey, come listen for an afternoon. If you want to do this, you got to jump in. And so we had an intensive retreat. And they came back. And I was very interested in gathering feedback, you know, and I wanted our researchers to do it because they

didn't want it to be me. I had our researchers do that. The number one most used term from these and every single person there was an officer or director. The number one most used term was transformative. But here's the problem. They came back and said, what's that thing you did with Janice? You know, there, you know, people they work for, their colleagues and their departments, what's that thing you did? You were gone and what would you do? Nobody could describe what it was. So all they would say was, you know, I can't even describe what it was. You just have to go do this. So go do it. You know, you next time she offers it, you go do it too.

And as a result, of course you can't send everybody away for four nights. So as a result, the great leaders do what great leaders do when they're touched by something. They want other people to touch it too. So within a week, I had one of the VPs from that retreat say, I want my whole division to have access to this. If people want it, I want to make it available to them, but I can't send them all away. So what else have you got? And so I took that curriculum and turned it into a weekly seven week exploration that was open to everyone because I firmly believe that every single one of us is a leader. And every single one of us has the capacity to lead with excellence. And that was the beginnings, that General Mills.

By the time I left to start the Institute, more than 700 employees had had full training in mindful leadership. And I met you when you were in the throes of this thing. I flew out there, I think, 2010 or 2009 and did a story for ABC News about you doing this, and then I used you in the book as the example of, like, the least likely meditator and the least likely meditation spot. And by that point, I mentioned this in every speech I give that my general mills, you know, the people who make hamburger helper have meditation rooms and all the buildings and their corporate campus in Minotunca, Minnesota,

which is amazing and because of you. So you left and you started the Mindful League, the Institute for Mindful League. Institute, yeah. What does it do and what's your life like now? Yeah. So another leap off a cliff, because again, still not in the

business world when I'm starting it, but those five day retreats had word had spread outside of general mills. So we had started to allow professionals from other organizations to come on those retreat along when we usually had those between two and four times a year. And we'd let other people like somebody would tell a colleague at another company year. And we'd let other people, like somebody would tell a colleague, at another company, or whatever, and we'd let them come as well. And then the demand got so big that I started to have those same feelings of over like too much, like the Phillsbury deal. And only this time a little smarter, instead of, okay, I got a pick here. Something has to happen.

And so I decided to start a non-profit the Institute for Mindful Leadership and do this full time and recruited people who would apprentice with me to learn what this is. So what we do is we work, we have several open registration events in a year and they range from one full day to four weeks live online. So all of our teaching is live online and then we still do the five day for night intensive retreat and so that's one of our missions and then we do customized all of that customized for organizations and teams who want it. We work with the government, we work with nonprofits and we are a nonprofit,

and we're very happy to be a nonprofit that allows us to do, always make sure that nonprofit leaders have access to our work as well, so we always have that available. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellissi. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us?

The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar,

which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app. So if I'm out there and I'm in a corporation and I'm interested because people ask me all the time, I work for this X or Y company, and I'd like to introduce mindfulness,

how do I go about it? Giving you a call will be one way to go about it. That would be great. And looking at our website's easy, it's mindfulness.org. Just remember plural, mindful leaders, and dot org because we're not a company, we're a non-profit. So that's the place to get information.

And either join us individually or have us. And I have all of our instructors, our people who have been in what I call, been in the fire. So they are presidents of international companies and managing director of financial organizations, social workers from healthcare organizations. But these are all people who themselves know both sides.

They know about leadership and they know about mindfulness. Well, when you say leadership, what do you mean? Yeah, so a leader at its core is someone who influences, right? It's about influence. If you think about who's a leader, it's someone who has influence. Okay, so if you think about us individually and just stop for a minute and think about it, every single person, every day with our actions, our inactions, our words we influence for better or worse every day. We influence our community, our families, the people around us,

the work we do. So in that context you can think of mindful leadership training as a curriculum that is about teaching ourselves to more often influence for better and less often influence for worse. So you can be a leader without a title. In fact, we have all seen that many times in our lives if we stop to think about it. We can probably think about it right now. If you work in an organization, is there someone in your department who may not have a title, but is somebody who really has an influence on the department, who really has an influence,

either they're compassionate, they're creative, they're really smart, they're just the kind of open person who you want to bounce ideas off of, and they may or may not have a title. The opposite is true as well. We've seen people with titles, big titles, sometimes big titles in DC, who have influences, but not for better. Influence for worse. So, or no influence.

So, it's not about leadership is really about influence, and then you say, okay, well, how do you influence for better? Well, we have a very specific way that we encourage that. So when we talk about mindful leader, someone who influences for better, we're talking about someone who has cultivated their innate capacity to strengthen what I call for fundamentals, focus, clarity, creativity, and compassion, and they do

it in the service of others. So mindful leadership training is never about greed, it's not about self alone, it is always with those for fundamentals. So focus, right? Your ability, even in the world of technology, and constant distractions, to stay in attention when you need to. Clarity, knowing your own filters. What is it that filters my ability to make a clear decision in the moment to answer that question, what's called for now? Not react, or to know where my filters are on unconscious

bias. So that's the work of really understanding what's here. And that's where noticing our thoughts helps us, who start to see what pops up. Creativity, innovation, so neuroscience tells us that it's in the spaciousness in our mind that we put things together in new and novel ways. Well for constantly doing the loop of the to-do list, there's no space. There's no place for that to happen.

And I like to tell the story there of, you know, you work at it, trying to solve a problem and you talk to people and you really think about it. You go to sleep in the morning, you're in the shower and, aha, the answer comes up and you're saying, wow, that's an easy answer. How come I shows up in the shower? It's not the magic of shower water, right? What happened? Your mind hasn't started the loop yet. There was a little bit of space. The good news is that with training, we can cultivate that quality of spaciousness through reflection. And that's why leadership reflection is an important part of what we teach.

And then compassion, compassion as we use it is about deep understanding. So it's not sympathy, it's not empathy, but it's deep understanding. Because when we allow ourselves that deep understanding, we also often notice that pull toward an act of kindness. And the hardest thing I've learned in now all these years of teaching, more than a dozen years of teaching that mindful leadership, is that those folks with those bright minds and good hearts, self-compassion is hard. Self-compassion. Self-compassion is hard.

Let me ask you a bunch. Let's get down to brass tags and talk to practical stuff here. So, sell us to start where you ended. Self-compassion. If I have compassion for myself, am I not going to go soft and just give myself a break and not have high standards? Oh. Self-compassion is about finding those ways of nourishing yourself so that you can

do your best work. So that deep understanding of yourself could be something as simple as taking an example, as simple as noticing because I've been paying attention to my body that I feel exhausted. I wake up exhausted. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted. I wake up exhausted. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted all day long. And I start to understand that that's here, that I feel that in my body. So self-compassion, that pull toward an active kindness can be something as simple as,

I'm going to go to sleep a half an hour early every night this week. I'm just going to do it. It can be something as small and simple as that. It doesn't mean you don't try to ace the project you're working on. It makes you more likely to ace the project, in fact, because when you're exhausted, you can't access your best self. So what about compassion for other people? I mean, we work in competitive environments. If I'm walking around worrying about what the people over at NBC might feel about me scooping them, am I going to be a fat, not that I've done that recently, but you know, am I going to be a fat nut that I've done that recently, but you know, am I going to be effective in my job? I'm in a competitive environment. Right. So again, if we think about it as deep understanding, it's really more about MI treating people with equanimity. Am I tuning people with respect? Am I listening openheartedly to people?

It's not about giving away a competitive advantage. In any way, that doesn't enter into it. Where it might show up is if the way you got that scoop is that you stole something for it or you bribed someone for it or you did something that was not respectful, was not in alignment with your principles and was not ethical.

Many of us, and actually not speaking about my, I'm genuinely not speaking about my own situation right now because I have a very, I'm lucky enough to have great relationship with my current employers. But many of us, having the past,, in the future, are now working for malignant human beings. And how does one deal with that situation mindfully? Yeah. I had that situation, and I can give you an example, and it's not that this is the solution

for everyone, but I can tell you just an example that might give folks some ideas. So I'm always teaching that we can't change people around us. What we can change is our relationship to what is here. And as an example, I had someone that I had to work with in one of the jobs I had, who was such a toxic person that if I was sitting at my desk and their name showed up on the collar ID, I'd get chest pains. It was that kind of like, they were just difficult. I didn't think they were nice in any way. And it wasn't even like, oh, I want people to be nice to me. It was, they were harsh. They were toxic to the department. They were just not

Good. They weren't good for the business. Nothing about them, but they were there and so one day when I noticed that chest tightening and This person was asking for a meeting and they were happened to be in another building. So I had a long a decent walk Eight-minute walk, to get there. Normally what would happen is the whole way there, here comes my story, my full-length feature film in my head. Why is she so difficult? This is going to be miserable. I'm never going to be able to get her to where we really need to go with this. This meeting is just going to be contentious and she's going to be

blah, blah, blah. You know, by the time I arrived at the doorway, can you imagine how I was, right? Defended tight. There was virtually no chance that anything positive could come from that just because I arrived that way. So one day I decided to take my practice into that situation in a very simple way. And so next time this happened, or this phone call happened, I said, okay, I'm going to try something differently. And I know you're familiar with kindness practice. Some people call it loving kindness practice. But what it really simply is is just thinking of phrases that would be things that everyone wants, like feeling healthy or feeling happy or feeling strong or being at ease, you know, the kind of the basic humanity shared goals, you know,

what does each individual want. So what I did in that entire walk was with every step I would say one of those things. May she be happy? May she be healthy? May she live at ease? I would go every step that way. I had no idea what would happen from this, but I thought try it experiment. I'm a big fan of experimenting. I arrived there and I was amazed at this sense of calm and openness sat down. We had a meeting. I'm walking out of the meeting and at the doorway she stopped me and said, hey, Janice, that was a really great meeting. I didn't said nothing to her about what happened. There was nothing changed, except how I arrived there. So sometimes we can look at, is there a way

to meet what's difficult in our lives with a little more openness, a little more ease for ourselves? And that can begin to make things. Did we become best friends now? But it was a different relationship. And so when we work for people who are toxic, what we can look at is, is there some way that first, I can meet this in a way that's not adding to the difficulty

and then from that, is there some way that I can make it a little better, a small step? But why is it on us? We're not the toxic ones. Because you can't change the people around you. You can only change how you meet what's here. And if we decide that we're going to change the whole world to be like, we want it to be, that is a futile effort. And that's really going to just deplete us in my experience. Speaking of toxicity, do you think boosting the mindfulness quotient in the corporate life could have a positive impact on what we're now learning is a scourge of sexual harassment? I think it can help with making women feel empowered to take some small steps themselves

to some of what holds women back is a very real lash back. And some of what holds women back is a fear that we feed in our heads. And this isn't just about women, but oftentimes one of the great gifts of being on this mindful leadership journey was noticing the times when we are telling ourselves stories and how those stories keep us from our best lives and our best leadership. Impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome, but more that sometimes in an organization we start telling ourselves, like let's take an example, one of the things we work with is calendars because people feel like they have no time and we actually do a reflection on calendars.

And one of the things that people start to notice is, well, why am I going to that meeting? There are five people from my department going to that meeting. Why am I going there? And then to answer that question, well, why are you going there? So we start to look at, oh, because I've told myself this

that, well, people will think I'm not interested if I don't go. interested if I don't go. Or if I don't go, there's going to have an impact on my career. Or someone's host is going to be talking about us. That's my favorite one. You know, someone's host is going to be talking about us. The reality is, nobody's talking about you. Yeah.

We think people talk about us, but we don't talk about other people, and they're not talking about us. So many times, we have this fear that drives us to do things in the business world, that when we can stop and again have that different relationship to the stories that are coming up in our mind, say, what I suggest people do when they're in that practice of working with their thoughts is just hold it gently. Hold thoughts that arise simply as, and I don't mean hold on to them, but notice them with the enough spaciousness to say they may or may not be true.

You don't have to dismiss them or push them where anything else, just that much. They may or may not be true. And what if I can notice it in that way and then ask myself that question, what's called for in this moment when that thought arises? But do you think that having more people with some meditation under their belt might in any way cut down on sexual harassment? People more mindfully surfing their urges as opposed to just acting them out? Well, in general, I think we can have less reactivity,

but there's so much that goes into why people feel free to engage in sexual harassment. I think it's a lot to put on mindfulness as, well, that's going to cure it. I think just like any behavior, whether it's disrespect or harassment or any number of ills that we could talk about, it will be helpful but not the panacea. So I certainly wouldn't say it's going to take it out of the workplace if everyone meditates. Yeah, I think it's one way to, you know,

different penalties, making it completely unacceptable, having more women in leadership roles. There are lots of things that need to be done. You mentioned calendar, so I'm intrigued by that because I would say the biggest problem in my life is that I am too busy. I often describe it as drowning in chocolate and I love everything I'm doing, so it's all chocolate, but I'm still drowning. So I'd

love to hear your thoughts on busyness. Yeah. So one of the things that when I go back to when I was first developing my own practice and bringing it into leadership and looking at that, one of the practices that I started to look at was my calendar. And every morning when I came in and I turned my computer on and I'd start to look through what was on my agenda for that day, what was coming up in that day, I take a few moments and try to look at each thing as if I had never seen it before and pay attention to what was arising in my mind, the thoughts, and also in my body.

And it was a very telling exercise to do every day. So you might want to try it out just once a day in the morning, taking a look, pay attention. It takes three or four minutes. And then I would leave myself every day with a question. Is there one place today where I can make a conscious choice that is, and you can fill in the blank for whatever is meaningful for you? That is more personally nourishing, that is more efficient, that is less wasteful. You can fill in that blank for whatever is meaningful for you at that time. That is not going to burn me out.

That is going to allow me to connect more deeply with my family, fill in the blank for yourself. That's a wonderful practice to start with. What people often discover is that the most important thing, truly the most important things, are not on our calendars. And so that can lead to an intention to put them on their calendars, to actually make space on their calendars for whatever is most important in your life. So it is a combination of reflecting on what's important, of looking more critically at it. I know for me I had a wonderful assistant for many years when I was a VP and in the interest of being of service and of doing a good job, I'd accept or she would accept on my behalf, everything.

And I realized at one point that there were, I don't remember the number now, but at the time, they're probably 55,000 employees. And I realized that 54,999 had the right to put time on my calendar, and only one person didn't, and that was me. And that was one of the aha moments in terms of, how do I do this more effectively?

How do I do this more efficiently so that I can have that little space? And speaking of space, one of the things that's related to calendaring, and something that I noticed in the early years of my own mindful leadership journey Was that even when we finish things and maybe Dan you you relate to this as well We finish things people tell us gee that was great, you know did good job on that that that

Project went well that interview went well that class did well under your guidance We do a lot of work with teachers as well and yet We feel yeah, it was it was good, but There's just kind of nagging sense or there was for me that yeah, but still not my best Still something could have been and again fill in the blank could have been more creative Could have been more compassionate could have been more forward-thinking could have been more creative, could have been more compassionate, could have been more forward thinking, could have been more whatever, film the blank. And I started to pay attention to that nagging feeling of, yeah, but not really my best, not really what I thought I could do.

And in those early years of teaching mindful leadership to the other execs and people at every level at General Mouth, I started to hear the same thing from the officers, from the directors, that nagging sense. So, I turned it into a reflection for myself and for them. All right, what's missing? What do you need to be the absolute best that you think you can be? What's missing? What do you need? Now, in normal situations, the new ass leaders or professionals, what do you need?

I need a bigger budget, I need more people, I need better direction, you know, fill in the bank again, but that's what you'd hear. I didn't hear any of that from the people who had on this mindful leadership journey and it's not what came up for me. What I heard over and over again and what came up for me was a really simple thing. What do I need? I just need a little space. I just need space. And that in fact was the inspiration for the book, finding the space to lead. It's that space that we cultivate when we start to do things like the calendar exercise,

like we do reflections on inspiration, on leadership principles. We start to learn more about ourselves, what's important, how to lead in a way that is more often for better and less for worse, whether that's in our family, our community, or in our companies. So what does that mean practically? Like, I've started to experiment recently with like saying no nicely to people like, you know what, I'm a little overloaded right now, I can't do that. Is that what you're talking about in terms of space?

And then what do you do with that space? I know what I do with it, but what do you recommend? Yeah, okay. So that's exactly, that's a perfect example. Is that what you're talking about in terms of space? And then what do you do with that space? I know what I do with it, but what do you recommend? Yeah, okay, so that's exactly, that's a perfect example. So that's one of the examples. Some of it is about letting go of our ego because our ego sucks a lot of time out of our days when we start to look at,

and it's not like ego's a bad thing, but sometimes we feeding our ego with things that really aren't about what's important to us. That's why it needs to be both things. What's really important to you professionally? What's really important to you personally? Where are we sucking time out of the day that really doesn't feed those things that are

about that? It's also can be something as simple as putting a space into every week, into every day, and one group that I worked with, which was a whole department, and they wanted to improve their innovation. And we put in place for everyone a space, and we called it free parking, like the monopoly game. And the reason we called it free parking, if're a monopoly fan or for those who aren't, it's a corner piece. And when you play monopoly, it's a place where you get to take a breath, right?

Because nobody's going to take money from you there, nobody's going to. And it's also the place the way my family always played where you'd put all the fine money. So if you actually landed there, you got new riches, you got surprise, something that helped you. So we called these one hour times during each week free parking spaces and they were sacrosan. Nobody could touch that one hour on you so you know you couldn't give it away. Nobody could intrude on it. You know that was it that one hour in the work week. And then to your question,

there was a great question, well what do you do with it? Well all the week, we gave people a free parking little note path, stick by their computer. And during the week, we all have these things where you say, we see a headline and say, you said, I'd like to know more about that. So you draw it down. Or, I really want to run this past so and so. I wish I had time to make a call. I wish I had time to set up coffee with somebody or whatever it is.

And you'd make a list. So when you come to that hour, you open up your book and say, Oh, okay, which of these things? Yeah, this is all the stuff I didn't get to all week. It started to make an enormous difference in people's quality of their lives and their ability to stretch to the stuff that's interesting to them, that's nourishing to them, and that really move through the dial in ways that were personally important to people. I have one last question then I want to get to this prop you brought. This last question you may think is a little obnoxious, but I'm going to ask it anyway. So there's a criticism of what you do, which I just for the record am a supporter of, not the criticism of what

you do, although I think the criticism has merit. The criticism is that introducing mindfulness into corporations is some believe questionable. Now, for example, you work for General Mills. There are a lot of people who criticize General Mills, the nutritional quality and content of the products, et cetera, et cetera. So in the end, what are we doing? Who are we helping by bringing this to people

who are executives who may be, you know, slashing our benefits or selling stuff that's not good for us, or you know, maybe they're introducing mindfulness into the corporation to make more client employees. There's some of the criticism that we've heard. So how do you respond to this? Yeah, it's a good question.

And I don't think it's an unfair question. I think it's a question that should be asked. I go back to a couple of things. I guess there's two things I'd answer. The first thing I would say is corporations are not corporations. Corporations are groups of individuals. And while that sounds simplistic,

it's important to remember that the people are the ones who make choices. So it's not general mills making a choice. It's an individual. It's a group of individuals who are making choices. And so in my experience, when you can have a sense, which I certainly had at General Mills, that and with most of the organizations that I work with, and I will tell you that there are some that I will not work with, that the Institute has said no to. And I can get into that, that not by name, but I can tell you why if we have time. But for the ones where we're happy to work with people, these are people who are some of

our best and brightest. They're well educated. Most of these people are people, as I said, right minds and good hearts. They get overwhelmed with pressures and stress and they become reactive when they should be responsive and not should be, but it would be better for them to be responsive. And so when we're able to start teaching people how to reach their best selves to touch their principles, which is why our stuff isn't about teaching somebody to meditate for 10 minutes with their breath, our curriculum gets to, what are your principles?

What are your ethics? Where does it show up? What do you do when there's dissonance between what you're asked to do and what you now know are your core principles. That's all a part of our curriculum and what we aim for and hope for and encourage people to look at is where are the win-win-win choices. You need to keep the organization healthy, yep, because you want people to have jobs, but where's the win-win-win? Where's the choice that's good for the organization, good for its employees, and good for the big picture, good for the community.

And I have seen again and again and again that when given the ability to not feel overwhelmed and reactive, that they want to find those choices too. And when we give them the chances to be their best self, it's what I believe then is the best hope for us meeting the problems is to take these people who are our best and brightest and who I believe most of them have good heart and we help them meet what is here in a different way and find those win-win wins? I think a good place to close would be on this prop that you brought me, which is nobody can see this, but I can see it, and it's a word cloud. So tell me about this.

One of the earliest exercises we do in the Institute's curriculum is a reflection on leadership excellence. And to do this, we first teach people that, although we've been well trained to use our minds for analysis, which is an important part of leadership, we have to know how to analyze. We also need to cultivate and develop our minds capacity for reflection, because reflection is that spaciousness, that place where we can be more creative, more innovative, and also where we touch our own wisdom. And everyone has this abundance of wisdom

that we need to tap into more. It's that connection that we all have as well. So we do this reflection. And I guide this reflection on by inviting people to call to mind someone who has had an influence on their lives that really touched them in some way. So someone that as we said leadership is about influence, someone has influenced their lives either at work, school, in the community, doesn't matter where, it could be in your family. What somebody would say, that was a great leader

because that person knew how to influence for better. And we have them bring that person to mind, really bring that to mind, and then ask just one reflection question, why, I have everyone who's touched your life, what did that person come to mind? What is it about him or her? And when we do this reflection, the words that arise, we then ask people to say,

what are the words of phrases that arise? And so that tag cloud that you have in front of you is a compilation. I'll read some of the words listener and supportive or right in the center, respectful, genuine, humble, visionary, compassion, patient, connected. Those are the biggest words. Yes, and it does not matter whether you do that reflection. In our experience, we have done this reflection. I've done it. I'll just speak about my own experience here. I've taught that reflection at the world economic forum. I've taught it in China, Australia, all over North America.

Does not matter where I do it. It doesn't matter where the culture is. It doesn't matter what the profession is. It doesn't matter what level of employee these same words come up. And never have I had anybody say met the quarterly earnings or say, met the quarterly earnings or worked well with the board or any of those things, any of those kinds of things. And yet I can remember decades of training leaders and evaluating professionals on their leadership qualities and we would not be including virtually any of those words on it. And so this is a big ah-ha for people, especially experienced leaders at that point, to say it. And so this is a big a-ha for people especially experienced leaders at that point to say,

ah, so this is what we're talking about when people are touched and why is it important for people to be touched? Because when you're in the trenches, when you're doing something that's difficult or stressful or time sensitive, you want people to feel like they're all in and that they're connected to you and that you're going to have their backs and that you're going to be there for them, that you're not just commanding control, you're not leading by division, you're not leading by bullying, you're not leading in those ways that are not excellent, are not mindful. And you're going to get the best out of people, for sure. I mean, it's funny when I think about, I've never worked for him. But when I think about who would come to mind for me

as a great leader would be, actually, my younger brother, Matthew C Harris, who doesn't listen to this podcast. So I can say nice things about him because normally I tease him. But yeah, these words are all would be what I would describe my brother as being. Before we go, let's do what I call the plug zone. Let's just plug everything. Give us, I know you've mentioned it, but let's just go back on the website, the name of the book, any where you are on social media, anything you'd like to get out there. Great, okay, thank you. So, mindfulleaders.org is where you can find information. We are happy to work individually with organizations. We work with government and nonprofit and for-profit.

We work with teams and whole organizations. And then we also have, for the folks who want to do it on their own, or for the folks who want to check us out before they bring us to their organization, we offer basically three things. One day, which is called finding the space to lead, a four-week live, which is so once a week for 90 minutes, but it's live in real-time within instructor and then our four-night, five-day four-night retreat, which is obviously residential and are most intensive training.

And that's usually a wonderful gathering of international leaders. And so you can check us out on the website, social media where all those regular places, Facebook and LinkedIn and all the rest. So I'd encourage people to come and the book is finding the space to lead. It's a practical guide to mindful leadership. And so along with the book comes a whole host of free meditations and leadership reflections. Right on you can look at finding the space to lead.com.

That's a.com. And we have it in English and Spanish meditations. And Twitter? Yeah, we're a Twitter as well. What is it? It's actually my name, Janice Martirano, is our Twitter, but Institute for Mindful Leadership is also there. Awesome.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Great job. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% happier podcast. If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also if you want to suggest topics you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. Importantly I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Cohen, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who helped make this

thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at 1dory.com slash survey.