Working With Mindfulness

Mirabai Bush, co-founder of The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and a key adviser to Google’s Search Inside Yourself curriculum, hosts a discussion with Jeremy Hunter, PhD, Assistant Professor of Practice at The Peter F. Drucker School of Management, about The Executive Mind, a series of executive education courses he created and has taught for the last decade, that seek to clarify and redefine how attention-training practices and cultivating quality of mind can enhance productivity and performance. 

Dr. Hunter shares his unique experience of offering mindfulness methods to executives, and highlight why mindfulness is the necessary and fundamental skill for today’s knowledge worker environment. We will explore questions like:

-       How are we stuck in an old framework of productivity that inhibits real innovation?

-       What about today’s working environment makes mindfulness necessary?

-       What new vocabulary and methodology do we need to develop to meet our changing circumstances?

-       Is productivity what we should really care about anyway?

Managers today are asked to improve performance at work with fewer resources and tighter deadlines, all while dealing with equally stressed employees and clients. This combination leads to burnout and harms organizations. However, some leaders are still suspect of introducing mindfulness-based exercises as a natural way to manage one’s responses to stress. Dr. Hunter shares insights on how he overcomes the challenges of teaching these practical methods to executives.