Why “inner stillness” is crucial for leaders in the age of AI
- The exponential growth in technology brings with it a tsunami of information.
- Leaders are reflecting a deep sense of unease that they lack the headspace to do a good job.
- Leaders who want to be successful today and tomorrow must commit to a more rigorous practice of cultivating “inner stillness.”
In the age of AI, there is a new imperative to focus on the mind of the leader. Why? We need this focus because our mind is not naturally equipped to handle today’s relentless onslaught of information and the accompanying demands for our attention. The exponential growth in technology brings with it a tsunami of information, innovation, and complexity that, while offering unprecedented opportunities, also presents significant challenges to our mind and thereby our leadership. This tsunami has been growing for decades, but with the rapid explosion of AI capabilities, it has reached a tipping point. In our conversation with Kristen Ludgate, chief human resources officer at HP, she summarized what we heard from many other leaders: “Everybody’s intrigued, excited, concerned, and afraid all at the same time. We all know that we have to move forward and innovate, and we know we need to think about impacts to our workforce, ethical considerations, and social implications. We need to move with speed and agility and at the same time be responsible. It’s a lot to navigate, but with the right strategies, open communication, and continuous learning, AI will create great opportunities and improve the quality of work for everyone.”
We work with thousands of leaders every year, and far too many of them share concerns of being overwhelmed, overworked, and mentally exhausted. They reflect a deep sense of unease that they lack the headspace to do a good job for themselves and their company. A recent Oracle report found that “70 percent of business leaders are so stressed, they prefer to have a robot make their decisions.” And researchers have found that the primary stressor for most executives is work-related, which significantly affects their sleep, energy levels, and dietary habits and increases their anxiety.
As AI continues to advance and become more integrated into our working lives, it’s likely to further exacerbate the challenges posed by our already-distracted and data-filled environment. Because AI-powered devices and applications are designed to be highly engaging and responsive, they are even more attractive to our easily diverted attention. As AI systems become more sophisticated, they’ll deliver an endless stream of tailored content, recommendations, and notifications. While this information stream can be beneficial, it also has the potential to further fragment our attention and make it even more difficult for us to be our best selves.
This new reality needs—no, demands—a proactive stance. Leaders who want to be successful today and tomorrow must commit to a more rigorous practice of cultivating inner stillness. They need to develop a deliberate, meaningful approach to managing the inner game of leadership—which starts with the mind.
Actively cultivating a mind that is clearer and more spacious prevents leaders from being consumed by this relentless flow of data and enables them to make wiser, more informed decisions. As the speed of business increases, leaders need to slow down so they can calm their minds, open their hearts, and use sound judgment.
Before looking more closely at how to manage our minds, let’s take a moment to explore what the mind is.
What is the mind?
From a cognitive psychology perspective, the mind can be defined as the set of faculties that enable consciousness, perception, thinking, judgment, and memory. These faculties allow individuals to process information, solve problems, make decisions, and understand and navigate their environment. The mind encompasses the physiological aspects of the brain and the psychological, subjective experiences associated with being conscious. So, just to be clear: the mind and the brain are not the same thing. Your brain is the approximately 85 billion neurons between your ears, as well as the 40 million neurons around your heart and 100 million neurons in your gut. In contrast, your mind is the totality of your experience of being you—cognitively, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
The nature of your mind can be explained through an analogy to the sky. Try for a moment to imagine the sky. It is vast, seemingly unlimited. And if you go above the clouds, it is always clear and unobstructed. When a plane or bird passes through the sky, it leaves the expanse untainted. It does not change the vastness or the clarity of the sky. Clouds, in the same way, momentarily inhabit a tiny part of the sky but always pass on, leaving no trace.
The mind is like the sky. It is by nature vast and clear. It is within this spacious universe of human possibility that we, as humans, develop the key cognitive processes of perception, discernment, and response—the foundationally human qualities that, in the leadership milieu, we refer to as awareness, wisdom, and compassion.
You may not have the experience that your mind is vast and clear. You may feel it is crammed and cluttered. But that is only because you are identifying your mind with the busyness you are feeling in the moment. This is like mistaking the clouds in the sky for being the sky. But behind the busyness of thinking and doing—just like behind the clouds—the nature of the mind is always vast and clear.
It is as simple as this: what you identify with becomes your experience. If you identify yourself with the many thoughts, emotions, and distractions you experience, then those things will be your experience of your mind. However, if you learn to step back and recognize the vast and clear nature of your mind, then that will be your foreground.
If you learn to step back and recognize the vast and clear nature of your mind, then that will be your foreground.
This shift is not rocket science. It’s the shift that thousands of leaders we work with have learned to make. As we make this transition, we move from being trapped in our own ordinary perception of busyness into an experience where our thoughts, emotions, and distractions are seen like birds, planes, and clouds passing through the sky, leaving no trace. It’s not that those thoughts, emotions, and distractions are not happening—they are. It’s just that we don’t identify with them. Instead, we recognize and experience the much greater vastness and clarity of mind that is always there.
For the busy leader, this shift can have a monumental impact, engendering an outlook that is spacious, calm, clear, and focused. From that experience of the mind, we make better decisions, respond more calmly to adversity, hold polarities and ambiguity, and are not as fazed by uncertainty. We create this change through our ability to observe and actively navigate our own mind.
