In today’s world, many employees are opting to work from home to de-escalate stress levels immensely. Therefore, creating mindfulness in virtual leadership positions has become an important part of cultivating a successful global virtual team. Mindful leaders have been found to decrease the amount of stress, both for workers and management. As more companies embrace the cost-cutting benefits of allowing many of their teams to go virtual, mindful virtual leaders will begin to take center stage and become the rising stars of their companies.

Benefits of Mindful Virtual Leadership

Mindfulness is defined as “paying attention in a particular manner: on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” It can be achieved in the virtual workplace by focusing on thoughts and emotions rather than getting the job done as fast as possible.

Mindful virtual leadership is as important to our health as regular medical checkups. There are many benefits, including:

• Thinking outside the box
• Improving focus and clarity of thought
• Better mood and more positive emotions
• Less panic and feelings of guilt
• Helps lengthen attention span
• Helps strengthen the immune system

Mindful leadership is becoming more of a staple in companies’ leadership training programs and is considered a necessary topic in most management training classes.

Increasing Mindfulness Awareness

Although mindfulness training is just recently being considered in today’s leadership training, it’s not a new idea. Mindful stress reduction programs have been used by some medical facilities to treat chronically ill patients and had huge success. Now, it’s being used to treat healthy people and to keep them from developing stress issues in their lives.

Mindfulness is gaining wide attention now because organizations are becoming more cognizant of what effective leadership is all about. Findings are that the best leaders are self-aware and centered in their self-confidence and capabilities. When potential leaders learn how to focus on one task at a time and turn their attention to the larger vision rather than numerous small tasks, they tend to become much more effective managers and leaders.

If you want to become a true leader of a virtual team or organization, find out more about mindful leadership and how it can help you draw on your inner reserves to achieve clarity of purpose and train your mind to meet any challenge you might face. Check out Leading a Remote Team? Rally Your Virtual Team to Optimal Efficiency and Productivity, a virtual leadership training webinar, to learn how to keep remote teams engaged.