Cultivating Mindful Leadership

The Women in Biopharma Leadership (WBL) Network’s 15th event brought together senior female leaders from across the industry for a transformative session on mindful leadership. Led by Nikki St. Paul, a body, mind, and breath coach, the gathering explored what it means to lead with awareness, balance, and resilience.

Here, we break down Nikki’s five key principles of mindful leadership and how they can help leaders find clarity, connection, and calm in a fast-paced world.

1. Patience: The power in the pause
Sometimes, the best results take time. Just as a plant doesn’t bloom the moment you plant it, our goals often require patience to bear fruit. Practicing patience as a leader means providing room for our team members and ourselves to fully develop ideas, skills, and solutions without undue rush. By practicing patience, we can create a work environment that values thoughtfulness and timing over speed alone.

Micro-moment: Cultivate patience. Try the 4-7-8 breathing exercise to anchor yourself in the moment. Inhale for a count of 4, hold for 7, and exhale for 8. This promotes calm and resets the nervous system, helping us stay centred during intense or high-pressure moments.

2. Beginner’s mind: Embrace fresh perspectives
While experience and expertise bring valuable insights, they can also sometimes blind us to new possibilities. Why not try to approach situations with a “beginner’s mind,” fostering curiosity and innovation instead. By occasionally letting go of this “expert” hat, we instead stay open to new ideas, ultimately creating a more dynamic and creative workplace that enables a culture of learning and experimentation

Micro-moment: Activate your “beginner’s mind.” Practice mindful listening. Select a conversation or interaction where you would typically position yourself as the “expert” and, instead, listen with curiosity, openness and without judgement. Take the time to engage all your senses, fully observing the speaker’s words, body language, and tone. This simple shift will promote open-mindedness and make others feel heard and valued.

3. Trust: Tune into your inner compass
Leadership often demands data-informed decisiveness, but there is power in trusting both data and Rather than solely relying on external inputs like data, or the opinions of others, try incorporating a more balanced approach and tune in to your “inner compass”. Interoception, or the awareness of internal body cues, helps guide us towards decisions that, not only make sense based on the information at hand, but that also “feel” right; which can be more powerful than you’d expect.

Micro-moment: Use your “inner compass”. Before making a decision, take a moment to sense what feels right and attune yourself to this instinct. Pay attention to any physical sensations – such as a sense of calm, tightness or unease – that may arise as you contemplate your options. These sensations often reflect what resonates most deeply, helping you approach decisions with far greater confidence and authenticity.

4. Non-Striving: Focus on the journey
We often focus on outcomes – specific goals or KPIs – and can forget to appreciate the journey itself. Non-striving reminds us to value the process, acknowledging that meaningful growth and innovation often lie in the journey and arise from the freedom to explore. While targets are important, cultivating a non-striving mindset can encourage experimentation, resilience and adaptability.

Micro-moment: Create an “experiment zone.” Encourage your team to spend a portion of their time exploring new ideas, independent of immediate goals. Perhaps instilling a “sandbox” mentality for new projects, where the focus is on discovery rather than outcome. By allowing time to experiment, you empower others to innovate freely and enjoy the learning process, fostering an environment where creative solutions can thrive.

5. Acceptance: Embrace what is
Acceptance is about meeting reality as it is without resistance. When we accept situations without labelling them as good or bad, we conserve our energy and allow ourselves to respond from a place of calm – developing a more realistic, compassionate view of ourselves and our challenges in the process. By embracing what is, we empower ourselves to focus on what we can control while releasing what we cannot.

Micro-moment: Use the R.A.I.N. framework by Tara Brach (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) to encourage the meeting of moments with curiosity and compassion.

Additional techniques for daily mindfulness
If you’re looking for additional ways to seamlessly incorporate mindfulness into your daily life, here are some additional techniques Nikki recommended that you can try:

Extended Exhale: When stress builds, try extended exhale breathing. Inhale for 3, exhale for 6 (or double your exhale length to calm your nervous system). This technique signals to your body that it’s safe to relax, helping release tension.

Finger Counting: In moments of overwhelm, such as returning to a full inbox after a break, use finger counting to encourage calm. Breathe in as you trace up one side of your finger, and breathe out as you trace down. Repeat for all five fingers to ground yourself.

Soft Gazing: Combat screen-induced stress by gazing softly around the room to help reset your nervous system and reduce stress. This simple practice cues your body to return to a state of relaxation.

As we navigate the demands of leadership and high-speed work environments, mindful practices offer invaluable tools that help us stay grounded and remind us that being a mindful leader isn’t about slowing down but about pacing ourselves and making purposeful choices that benefit both ourselves and our teams.

Here’s to a mindful leadership approach – one that empowers us to lead with awareness, compassion, and a renewed sense of purpose.

The Women in Biopharma Leadership network was founded in 2018 with the specific purpose of bringing together the voices of like-minded senior women in the Pharma and BioTech industries.

To hear more about our future events or connect with the WBL network, please contact us or head to our LinkedIn group.