Creating Mindful Leaders How to Power Down, Power Up, and Power Forward

Unleash your inner mindful leader

Mindfulness, emotional intelligence and resilience are the “must have skills” for modern leaders—yet many professionals are too stressed to know where to start. Creating Mindful Leaders provides deep insights and easy practices based in neuroscience, brain training and positive psychology to help professionals thrive in the “age of disruption.”

Written by a global COO turned successful tech entrepreneur, the book provides a roadmap to greater health, happiness and performance. It speaks to every professional wanting to reduce stress, achieve greater success and enjoy life more.  

• Offers immediately actionable techniques for professionals at all skill levels
• Provides relatable, real-world advice
• Helps build resilience while changing your relationship to stress
• Shares a roadmap for sustainable performance in the face of ongoing change

Creating Mindful Leaders provides an informed, humorous and expert peak into the sources of stress caused by the modern pace of living and offers practical, actionable tools and techniques as the antidote to manage stress, increase resilience, and improve your wellbeing, performance, relationships, sleep and physical health. 

JOE BURTON is the founder and CEO of Whil, the world's leading digital wellbeing training platform helping employees to reduce stress, increase resilience and improve their performance. He is an entrepreneur in the digital health space, former President of Headspace, and spent fifteen years as a global COO in public companies. An alumnus of Harvard Business School, Joe is a renowned keynote speaker and contributor to Forbes, Business Insider, and HuffPost.

Acknowledgments ix

Foreword, by Josh Bersin xi

Introduction: Being a Leader Is Amazing. And It Kinda Sucks xvii

Part I For You 1

Chapter 1 What Is Mindfulness and Why Should I Care? 3

Chapter 2 What’s Stressing People Out? 25

Chapter 3 The $500 Billion Dollar Slow Leak 35

Chapter 4 Are You Increasing Your Resilience or Decreasing It? 47

Chapter 5 What Does “Performance” Mean to You? 55

Chapter 6 You Versus Technology 61

Chapter 7 Invest Five Minutes a Day to Save Your Life 63

Chapter 8 It’s Not a Religion. It’s a Lifestyle. 67

Part II For Your Company 89

Chapter 9 Reality Check: How Toxic Is Your Work Culture? 91

Chapter 10 Sleepless Nights and the Walking Dead 99

Chapter 11 Look, A Squirrel! Distraction and the Growing Safety Crisis 109

Chapter 12 Turn Depressing Data Into Healthy Employees 119

Part III Emotional Intelligence (EQ) for Everyone 127

Chapter 13 Building Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Skills for Yourself 129

Chapter 14 Increasing Self-Awareness 143

Chapter 15 Improving Self-Regulation 155

Chapter 16 Boosting Motivation 167

Chapter 17 Getting Positive – Don’t Call it a Comeback 181

Chapter 18 Building EQ Skills for Others: Sharing a Better You 191

Chapter 19 Applying EQ Skills at Home (Parenting) 209

Chapter 20 Do or Die: It’s Called Practice For a Reason 217

Free Whil Resources 221

About the Author 223

Endnotes 225

Index 241

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The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.