The Impact of Meditation for Leaders: Lessons from Lodro Rinzler
When you think of Buddhist meditation, you might not immediately see the connection with great leadership and a healthy workplace culture. And yet, the latest episode of the We Are Human Leaders podcast illuminates just how profound – and perhaps even essential – a consistent meditation practice is for modern leaders.
And the good news? It's also highly accessible for all of us.
In this episode, Sally and Alexis speak with Lodro Rinzler, a Buddhist meditation teacher with over 20 years experience, and award winning author of seven books, including The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, The Buddha Walks Into the Office, and Take Back Your Mind: Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times.
The conversation will change how you think about the impact of meditation for leaders – and might just convince you to start, restart, or restrengthen your own meditation practice!
How does meditation impact our leadership?
Lodro shares how the notion that meditation is somehow separate or disconnected from the rest of life, including our leadership, is frankly false. He unpacks how the benefits of the practice, especially when cultivated consistently, permeate everything we do at work and beyond.
Research backs this: Buddhist meditation offers quantifiable benefits for leaders, especially when it comes to managing stress, enhancing focus, and fostering emotional intelligence (which form essential aspects of Human Leadership).
We explore the malleability of the mind, and how a meditation practice can support continuous evolution of your thinking with distinct benefits for human-centered leaders. As Lodro frames it,
“The brain is incredibly pliable. We can make new choices.”
This impact translates directly into how you show up as a leader. Meditation encourages metacognition – thinking about your thinking – which enables you as a leader to become more aware of your biases and assumptions. This awareness fosters open-mindedness and helps you adapt to complex situations with greater cognitive flexibility. In turn, this improves creativity and innovation, as you are better able to detach from habitual thoughts and explore novel solutions to problems.
Are you making decisions out of fear?
Lodro shares his experience of running a scaling and successful business and the pressure of decision making as a young leader. His key tips? Don’t rush the process, and don’t make decisions from a place of fear.
He advises to ask yourself, “Am I doing this out of fear? And what is that fear?” This often takes longer, but it helps ensure the right decision much more often.
This insight landed viscerally for both Alexis and Sally!
Your choice when dealing with life’s challenges
We also uncover the power of the Buddhist parable of the second arrow, which explores how we experience and handle pain and suffering, and discuss its implications for our lives at work and beyond.
The second arrow parable teaches about handling pain and suffering. The Buddha explains that while we cannot avoid the "first arrow" – the initial pain or unpleasant event – our reaction to it often brings a "second arrow" of additional, self-inflicted suffering.
The first arrow represents inevitable pain, while the second arrow represents the mental anguish we add by ruminating, feeling anger, or resisting what happened. The lesson is that by accepting the initial pain without overreacting or dwelling on it, we can prevent ourselves from adding unnecessary suffering.
What’s the biggest thing that stops us meditating?
Throughout the conversation, we return to the theme of a frequent misunderstanding about meditation: That it should instantly feel good and we should instantly be ‘good’ at it.
Lodro dispels this myth:
“Learning to meditate is a gradual process. It's like learning a new language or instrument. At first it's very complicated. We don't know how to pronounce a thing or where to place our fingers on the instrument. And then gradually we learn the basics until before we know it, we're speaking fluent Spanish or playing Mozart. It happens over time. Same thing with meditation.”
What are the benefits of meditation for leaders?
The benefits of a consistent meditation practice for leaders are pronounced. In Lodro’s words:
“When we stick to meditation, it is absolutely life changing. It makes us kinder, more present and allows us to live our life in a meaningful way, because we're actually showing up for it.”
Science backs this: Research shows that meditation offers significant long-term benefits. Over time, regular meditation can enhance emotional regulation by reducing activity in the amygdala, the brain’s emotion-processing center, leading to greater resilience against stress and an overall balanced emotional response. It helps us become calmer and less reactive, and improves our ability to navigate the challenging situations that arise for leaders.
Not sure yet? Further research shows that long term meditation strengthens the immune system and supports cardiovascular health by lowering blood pressure and promoting heart rate variability, which helps the body adapt better to stress.
And, other studies highlight cognitive benefits: meditation has been found to enhance memory retention by up to 60%, which can aid leaders in better information processing and strategic decision-making.
Meditation also helps us connect with self-compassion and our inherent value as human beings, a core belief for us at Human Leaders. As Lodro explains:
“The Buddhist view is that inherently, fundamentally, we are good. We are whole. We are complete. We are enough. This is sometimes referred to as basic goodness. It is this notion that we aren't basically messed up, as much as society may have whispered in our ear at some point.”
Ok, ok, I’m in. So how do I get great at meditating?
As Sally, Alexis and Lodro can each attest, there is no fast track or instant fix. However, as they can also attest: it is absolutely worth it. Like many of life’s most rewarding activities, meditation takes time to build and to start to feel the benefits. So, what’s the best way forward?
Lodro advises starting with a 21-day window of daily practice and working from there using the following tips:
Get clear on your intention and take time to connect to why building a meditation practice is important to you (make this about moving towards something e.g. I want to feel more connected to myself, I want to feel calmer in my body, I want to create space for clarity each day.)
Find a consistent time of day and amount of time that suits you (research suggests you start with 6 minutes, and build to 15-20 minutes per day).
Find a technique that works for you (focusing on the breath, using a body scan, meditating together with others).
Listen to this heart-warming conversation that’s peppered with practical insights wherever you get your podcasts, or right here.
