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MEDITATION AND LEADERSHIP
Introduction
Meditation is one of the strongest practices of understanding one’s spirituality and private world. In meditation, individuals employ certain strategies and techniques such as focusing one’s mind on a specific activity, thought or object. Many people also employ mindfulness as technique to achieve the attention necessary to permit awareness while achieving clear mental and emotional calmness. This paper examines Gordon MacDonald’s view of meditation and ordering one’s private world. Mediation may be viewed from different viewpoints including mindfulness meditation, movement meditation, spiritual meditation and transcendental meditation among other viewpoints. Many people believe that meditation is all about having solemn and quiet time to enhance one’s spirituality.
MacDonald’s Premise of Meditation
In his book, Ordering your private world, Gordon MacDonald asserts that the garden of human’s private world is not cultivated only by solitude and silence, but also when people start practicing deliberate, disciplined and purposeful listening. MacDonald claims that very few individuals understand the best way to listen to the Almighty God. While meditation is among the best practices that help individuals to listen to God, most people are busy and do not create time for meditation and that they find it very hard to learn different ways to meditate or other ways of listening to God. MacDonald also argues that many Christians understood the way to talk to God at early age. However, they did not study how to listen well. MacDonald claims that one’s private world will be in order if one is not afraid of being alone and maintaining silence before Christ. As such, MacDonald shows that meditation that involves solitude and silence before Christ provides the most appropriate time to listen to God. During the transfiguration, for instance, Jesus creates a moment of solitude and silence by leaving his disciples downhill and getting up the hill to listen to God.
According to MacDonald, meditation helps in examining one’s inner world, which is highly spiritual and the focal point of making decisions and determination of various values. It is through meditation that people may pursue reflection and solitude necessary for the desirable listening to God’s voice. Through meditation, people would be able to avoid the penetration of modern times spiritual and moral pollutions. MacDonald further claims that one’s private or inner world will be orderly by practicing regular determination to enhance the spiritual center of one’s life. In light of this, MacDonald emphasizes on the spiritual realm of one’s life through careful listening that is highly achieved through solitude and silence before Jesus Christ. Meditation allows individuals to determine their moral and spiritual deficiencies and the desire to correct the wrongs following God’s voice or instructions.
While noting the benefits of meditation, MacDonald considers the soul as individual’s spiritual identity and hence emphasizes that people should develop discipline of the spirit and the mind. He recommends that Christians should be the most creative, strongest and broadest thinkers on earth. Through meditation, the spirit of God enters one’s soul and makes self-disclosure, offers spiritual guidance and directions while sharing God’s wisdom. MacDonald acknowledges the fragility of the private world and thus suggests that Christians must maintain their inner world with prayers, bible study and meditation. In light of this, MacDonald states that a Godly ordered private world is strengthened by the fullness of God’s Holy Spirit. Of importance, individuals should understand the most effective way to use the available time for restoration, search for wisdom and knowledge and promotion of spiritual wealth. Proper use of time can highly be achieved through careful listening of God’s voice. Creating some quiet time to be with Christ alone will be the best time to listen to God. This mindfulness meditation is effective towards developing an orderly private world that is guided by God.
Personal Evaluation on Meditation and Leadership
From a personal viewpoint, meditation may highly increase leader’s performance and success. While agreeing with the MacDonald’s claims, mindfulness can increase a leader’s level of awareness. Meditation increases introspection that help people to have a swift recovery upon provocation. Introspection through meditation may also increase behavior controls while determining the most appropriate conflict resolution mechanisms at work place or in any organization. Practicing mindfulness or mediation can highly cultivate emotional intelligence. Every successful leader must demonstrate emotional intelligence, which is necessary for empathetic and rational decision making. Meditation may be viewed to be a tool for managing emotionally challenging situations such as employee or customer complaints. Leaders need to develop mediation practices because mindfulness have the potential to improve one’s creativity. Recent studies show that individuals are most creative when in their relaxed state of mind or engaged in meditation through purposeful focus on a specific idea.
Based on personal evaluation, meditation can permit servant leadership. Meditation will help the leader to become more aware of the followers and the environment, develop empathy and inclusive mindset that is critical in servant leadership. Besides, mindfulness may help the leader to develop stewardship attribute, hence success in their performance and productivity. I have previously observed that mindfulness makes people to be less vengeful but focused on conflict resolution and forgiveness. As such, mediation deepens relationship between the individuals. Based on this point, meditation can greatly help the leaders to achieve satisfaction and improved relationship with the others. Meditation creates a moment for letting go, controlled anxieties and development of personal confidence. Leadership is often associated with constant anxieties due to the increased demands such as competition strategy development, quality concerns and undesired overall organizational performance.
Meditation helps the leader to avoid irrational and pragmatic decisions, especially when faced with crisis. For instance, the biblical narratives of King David and King Saul clearly demonstrates that leaders will often encounter pressing situations that may lead to hasty and irrational decisions. For example, in 1st Samuel 14: 17 (KJV), King Saul failed to wait for the God’s prophet and hence made a pragmatic and irrational decision to start the war with the Amalekites. The latter did not please God. On the contrary, King David was patient and often created time with God and hence able to consult God’s prophets at all times. The scripture demonstrates that meditation can help the leader to develop inclusive leadership strategies.
Plan to Enhance Meditation
As learned from MacDonald’s meditation viewpoint, the first aspect to enhance personal meditation practice is by developing a daily meditation journal. The Journal will comprise of the achievable daily activities and their time allocation. The second element of the plan to help enhance meditation practice is discipline. MacDonald argues that effective meditation demands discipline of the mind. As such, it will be important to have strict adherence to the set time for every activity. I will have to dedicate specific time and hour of the day for meditation. Combining MacDonald’s recommendations and personal evaluation, it is clear that effective meditation demands adequate sleep. Macdonald states that people who begin meditation without sufficient sleep will make them fall asleep often when attempting to meditate. The plan also incorporates sufficient time for exercises and avoidance anything that may distract the process of meditation.
Conclusion
Although meditation is often perceived to be only a spiritual practice, the contemporary business world has greatly embraced the practice because of its associated benefits. From a leadership standpoint, meditation helps the leader to be highly aware of the private world and the surrounding. Besides, meditation increases one’s ability to focus on a single item for improved performance and productivity. As such, meditation helps individuals to achieve the desired attributes of servant leadership including awareness, visionary, stewardships and empathy. From Christian worldview, however, meditation may not achieve its goals without creating dedicated, solitude and silent moment before Jesus Christ.