What do you think?
Rate this book
The Leader's Guide to Mindfulness: How to Use Soft Skills to Get Hard Results
This business book is great for leaders, middle managers and entrepreneurs interested in the following categories;
LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT MINDFULNESS WELLBEINGPERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
"A timely book for anyone who wants to bring out the best in themselves – and others – using simple, effective techniques. Tang’s highly readable style makes this a book that can be dipped into again and again, with observations and examples that inspire. Read it for a more enjoyable, more mindful life!" Lucy Beresford, writer, broadcaster and psychotherapist
"Dr Tang expertly navigates the fact from fiction, separating gimmick from meaningful practice ensuring the reader can drive forward evidence based change." Rich Atterton, Association of School and College Leaders - Council Member
“What a refreshing book! Audrey is not falling into the trap of telling people to be creative without explaining to them clearly how to do it. She makes it easy to take the first steps and to develop your creative potential with clear explanations, efficient tools and fun exercises, relying on multiple solid sources and on her vast experience in the corporate world. Audrey will help you open your eyes to see the true capacities you have inside and help you unleash your creative superpowers through her clever mindfulness approach." Butzi: TED speaker, Magician and Author of The Magic of Crazytivity.
The Leader’s Guide to Mindfulness is a practical guide to help you lead your organisation more effectively using proven mindfulness strategies and tools to unlock top performance and results .
Stress is an inevitable part of day to day work. From the sheer volume of work, to complex decisions, and working with others, leaders and employees are not able to work as effectively.
The Leader’s Guide to Mindfulness is a highly practical guide to help you focus your attention on the present so you and your organisation can perform more effectively. With emphasis on the “why” and the “how” of mindfulness, you’ll discover how to reap the performance benefits and learn how to use mindfulness to become an emotionally agile leader.
Through a combination of ground rules, practical exercises, case studies and no-nonsense advice, you’ll discover how mindfulness can help you and your organisation to:
· Improve wellbeing and resilience
· Improve relationships
· Improve collaboration
· Improve creativity and innovation
· Improve decision making and problem-solving
Happy Reading! Please do share your thoughts with us.
- GenresBusinessManagement
256 pages, Paperback
Published November 14, 2018
About the author
Audrey Tang
15 books7 followersAudrey is a Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol), and author - "The Leader's Guide to Resilience" 2021 (prev. The Leader's Guide to Mindfulness" (Pearson & FT, 2018) and "Be A Great Manager - Now" (Pearson, 2016 and Book of the Month in WH Smith Travel Stores)) with a focus on practical self improvement. She is the resident psychologist on The Chrissy B Show (Sky) the UK's only TV programme dedicated to mental health and wellbeing and a presenter and wellness advocate fronting "Psych Back to Basics" on DisruptiveTV. She regularly offers expert comment as a psychologist through TV, Radio and published media on mental wellness, and broadcasts self development podcast "Retrain Your Brain". A member of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA), she keynotes at National and International conferences in the fields of resilience, leadership and team cohesion, is a CPD accredited trainer and FIRO-B profiler, and regularly consults and hosts webinars & lectures offering accessible and effective practical self-improvement tools for personal and professional success.
Website: www.draudreyt.com
Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1149014
YouTube channel: Dr Audrey Tang - YouTube
Twitter/IG: @draudreyt
Email: audrey@clickproductions.co.uk
Website: www.draudreyt.com
Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1149014
YouTube channel: Dr Audrey Tang - YouTube
Twitter/IG: @draudreyt
Email: audrey@clickproductions.co.uk
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 12, 2019
Audrey Tang’s book delivers what it promises: a set of well-presented exercises (with audio resources hosted on a companion website) aimed at increasing self-awareness and enhancing personal effectiveness for managers and leaders in a corporate setting. She presents her material in easily digestible chapters covering areas such as creativity, self confidence, emotional agility and resilience. Each chapter offers basic definitions, real-world examples, with simple exercises to exemplify and practise the concepts and a bulletted summary of the main points to reinforce the learning.
Tang’s writing has a confident exuberance that is engaging and makes this an enjoyable read. If you are an executive or a manager wanting a clear entry point into simple mindfulness techniques with a very practical application, this book is a great place to start, with many suggestions of ways to bring some flavour of mindfulness into professional life in a way that might be acceptable for (or indeed invisible to!) one’s teams and colleagues.
That said, for me personally, with many years of training in Mindfulness and Yoga, it was difficult to engage with such a resolute ‘mindfulness for...’ kind of approach. Although for many readers whether these exercises may be categorised as ‘mindfulness’ with a small or capital ‘m’ is no more than a theoretical splitting of hairs, Tang will herself be sensitive to criticisms of ‘McMindfulness’ (e.g. http://www.embodiedphilosophy.com/mcm...) levelled at the commodification and secularisation of mindfulness practices. She tackles the history of mindfulness with a necessarily light touch given the focus of her book, but does return to the origins of the practice in her final chapter with her own personal understanding of ‘practical Buddhism.’ For this reason, despite the practical approach (with her ‘toolkit’ vocabulary), she manages to retain some flavour of the ethical precepts around mindfulness ideas so that her presentation does not feel devoid of all ethical colouring.
Yet challenges and compromises inevitably exist in the admirable attempt to translate ancient spiritual practices into modern practical applications. Tang seems uncomfortably aware of this when she says: “although this technique would not necessarily be classified under ‘mindfulness’, it is arguably a good means of improving your embodied awareness. ... any technique aimed at improving awareness, compassion or balance that may be of benefit to performance may fall within the realm of ‘mindful practice’... if it works — use it!” (p.8). And this is perhaps a good summary of the book — a coherent and nicely presented series of practical exercises to increase self-awareness with the aim of greater effectiveness in corporate life. If you’re after ‘hard results’ this might be all the guidance you need in mindfulness techniques.
Discolure: I know the author personally and was offered a gratis review copy of this book.
Tang’s writing has a confident exuberance that is engaging and makes this an enjoyable read. If you are an executive or a manager wanting a clear entry point into simple mindfulness techniques with a very practical application, this book is a great place to start, with many suggestions of ways to bring some flavour of mindfulness into professional life in a way that might be acceptable for (or indeed invisible to!) one’s teams and colleagues.
That said, for me personally, with many years of training in Mindfulness and Yoga, it was difficult to engage with such a resolute ‘mindfulness for...’ kind of approach. Although for many readers whether these exercises may be categorised as ‘mindfulness’ with a small or capital ‘m’ is no more than a theoretical splitting of hairs, Tang will herself be sensitive to criticisms of ‘McMindfulness’ (e.g. http://www.embodiedphilosophy.com/mcm...) levelled at the commodification and secularisation of mindfulness practices. She tackles the history of mindfulness with a necessarily light touch given the focus of her book, but does return to the origins of the practice in her final chapter with her own personal understanding of ‘practical Buddhism.’ For this reason, despite the practical approach (with her ‘toolkit’ vocabulary), she manages to retain some flavour of the ethical precepts around mindfulness ideas so that her presentation does not feel devoid of all ethical colouring.
Yet challenges and compromises inevitably exist in the admirable attempt to translate ancient spiritual practices into modern practical applications. Tang seems uncomfortably aware of this when she says: “although this technique would not necessarily be classified under ‘mindfulness’, it is arguably a good means of improving your embodied awareness. ... any technique aimed at improving awareness, compassion or balance that may be of benefit to performance may fall within the realm of ‘mindful practice’... if it works — use it!” (p.8). And this is perhaps a good summary of the book — a coherent and nicely presented series of practical exercises to increase self-awareness with the aim of greater effectiveness in corporate life. If you’re after ‘hard results’ this might be all the guidance you need in mindfulness techniques.
Discolure: I know the author personally and was offered a gratis review copy of this book.
February 24, 2019
The irony for books like this is that so often those who really need them won’t touch them; by emphasising those ‘hard results’ Tang presumably hopes to reach those who wouldn't usually be caught dead meditating. But, as she herself points out, part of the problem is that nobody really knows what 'mindfulness' means anyway. I found myself wishing she had created a new word for what she’s doing, which is actually quite powerful: she’s showing leaders how to tap into their humanness to improve their wellbeing and performance. And of course, by extension, the wellbeing and performance of everyone in their organisation.
The book is in three parts: Practical Applications, Personal Applications, and Mindful Growth. There’s a natural progression here: if you’re not convinced by this fluffy mindfulness business, Tang seems to be saying, let’s start with some down-and-dirty practical applications. If your people are having problems solving problems, if relationships are intractably tricky, or if their innovation is underwhelming, here are some evidence-based techniques to try. The focus drills deeper as the section progresses – I found the section on ‘emotional agility’ particularly interesting – and the hope is perhaps that as the sceptical leader sees the benefits of this mindfulness malarkey in action, he or she might be persuaded to try it on themselves.
In the last chapter – ‘Beyond Mindfulness’ – the book unashamedly embraces its spiritual roots with the inclusion of the 10 ‘practical Buddhism’ teachings of Seet Chee Kim, Tang’s grandfather.
For me this is the great strength of the book, a masterful balancing between the transcendent and the day-to-day realities of the workplace. Tang manages the tone beautifully, with a business-like approach that allows her to smuggle in profound truths (‘Criticism is just the opinion of someone else.’) The book is structured within an inch of its life, presumably to appeal to busy leaders who read primarily in subheadings, bullet points and summary boxes.
But this structure (along with some abysmal copy-editing) is perhaps the book’s weakness: on occasion it feels more like a collection of disparate, even unrelated, ideas and exercises rather than reaching any great depth and flow. I’m not convinced either that transcribing meditations is an effective use of page space: better I think to have pointed readers at the audio downloads and perhaps provided transcriptions online. But getting that balance right – bringing those soft skills to those focused on hard results – is a big ask, and Tang does a good job.
The book is in three parts: Practical Applications, Personal Applications, and Mindful Growth. There’s a natural progression here: if you’re not convinced by this fluffy mindfulness business, Tang seems to be saying, let’s start with some down-and-dirty practical applications. If your people are having problems solving problems, if relationships are intractably tricky, or if their innovation is underwhelming, here are some evidence-based techniques to try. The focus drills deeper as the section progresses – I found the section on ‘emotional agility’ particularly interesting – and the hope is perhaps that as the sceptical leader sees the benefits of this mindfulness malarkey in action, he or she might be persuaded to try it on themselves.
In the last chapter – ‘Beyond Mindfulness’ – the book unashamedly embraces its spiritual roots with the inclusion of the 10 ‘practical Buddhism’ teachings of Seet Chee Kim, Tang’s grandfather.
For me this is the great strength of the book, a masterful balancing between the transcendent and the day-to-day realities of the workplace. Tang manages the tone beautifully, with a business-like approach that allows her to smuggle in profound truths (‘Criticism is just the opinion of someone else.’) The book is structured within an inch of its life, presumably to appeal to busy leaders who read primarily in subheadings, bullet points and summary boxes.
But this structure (along with some abysmal copy-editing) is perhaps the book’s weakness: on occasion it feels more like a collection of disparate, even unrelated, ideas and exercises rather than reaching any great depth and flow. I’m not convinced either that transcribing meditations is an effective use of page space: better I think to have pointed readers at the audio downloads and perhaps provided transcriptions online. But getting that balance right – bringing those soft skills to those focused on hard results – is a big ask, and Tang does a good job.
March 3, 2019
Am absolute fantastic resource, Audrey is fast becoming my go-to business author.
I've been a fan of her first book for a number of years, this second book did not disappoint.
Managing to incorporate the need for mindfulness in today's hectic and over stressed workplace, while keeping core business essentials at the heart of things is no easy task.
Audrey makes it look and feel seamless.
The only downside I see is that I will now be carrying both books to meetings and on holiday.
I've been a fan of her first book for a number of years, this second book did not disappoint.
Managing to incorporate the need for mindfulness in today's hectic and over stressed workplace, while keeping core business essentials at the heart of things is no easy task.
Audrey makes it look and feel seamless.
The only downside I see is that I will now be carrying both books to meetings and on holiday.
December 10, 2020
My practice of mindfulness helps me deal with the relentless change. Being mindful increases my capacity for openness and patience and strengthens my ability to lead.
May 11, 2024
Es un libro para tomar acción, es decir, mientras lo lees debes actuar y escribir tus ideas. Lo recomiendo si ya tienes una organización en la cual te siguen muchas personas ya que eres líder.
November 19, 2019
Some ideas are obvious, however I have picked a few new from the book. It's good that you can use as the exercise book to make your life better
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews