Last month, I had the pleasure of attending The Innerwork Center’s spring keynote speaker event. It featured Dr. Chris Reina, the Executive Director of The Leadership Institute at VCU School of Business. Dr. Reina presented on mindful leadership, and there are a few ideas I just can’t stop thinking about it.  

Mindful Relating

Mindfulness is not a new practice for me – however, I often thought about it as a personal practice, something to help facilitate my own well-being. Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of your present experience, focusing your attention on a particular thought, object, or activity, and decentering yourself, disconnecting from your thoughts and emotions to view them nonjudgmentally. Consider decentering as moving from first person to third person (because everything is not about you, respectfully). Mindful relating is using mindfulness practice when engaging with other people. Dr. Reina’s research asserts that in the workplace, we should move from having interactions at work to having relationships at work through mindfulness.

Surface Mindful Relating to Deep Mindful Relating

As a mental health professional, I knew the importance of listening to others and carried this understanding as I elevated to a manager role. I was committed to creating a better work environment. The people I supervised stated they enjoyed working with me. I had positive interactions with all the staff, and I believe I had their respect; however, the staff continued to resign and move on. We would laugh and joke one day; the next day, they were “no call, no show” or putting in a two-week notice, which was never enough time. I thought it was the nature of direct service/nonprofit work and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t change certain aspects of our work. After listening to Dr. Reina discuss the different types of mindful relating (and my recent commitment to radical responsibility *sigh*), I understood what happened during my managing experience. Dr. Reina states, “Deep mindful relating emerges when an individual exhibits both high attention as well as a high decentering.”*

I would say my ability to give people my attention is pretty good – I can focus on others and their words and notice when my mind wanders. However, I realized I did not decenter myself, which is vital for deep mindful relating. I recognized that I was thinking about myself, how I would respond to what was being said, whether or not I could actually do something in response to what they were saying. Dr. Reina stated, “Surface mindful relating emerges when an individual exhibits high attention, but low decentering.”[1] He asserted that this makes the relationship ambivalent – and most likely the reason I was surprised when I couldn’t retain staff.

This has been quite a revelation for me as I’m recognizing the effects of surface mindful relating in many areas of my life (and trying not to feel shame about it). I desire to be a mindful leader to support my commitment to making the workplace better. The good news is deep mindful relating is something I, and anyone else, can work on and improve. Dr. Reina made an optimistic point that leadership can be learned and so anyone can be a leader. I plan to continue sharing what I’ve learned from Dr. Reina because much of his work is relevant to the changes we’re experiencing in the workplace. His research provides us all with the opportunity to build communities where relationships can be centered to achieve the mission of our work.

* Reina, C. S., Mills, M. J., & Sumpter, D. M. (2022). A mindful relating framework for understanding the trajectory of work relationships. Personnel Psychology, 00, 1– 29. Advance online publication. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/peps.12530