Mindfulness, business ethics and leadership

Mindfulness is most often associated with reducing stress, but as we find out in this interview with Dr Dominique Steiler from Grenoble School of Management, it extends into how leaders make ethical decisions and how companies can promote sustainable value creation.

Mindfulness is most often associated with reducing stress at work, but its value stretches into how leaders grow themselves to make ethical decisions rather than simply following the flow, the place of the individual in the organisation and how companies can promote sustainable and shared value creation.

Unusually for a business school, Grenoble School of Management not only has a Center for Personal and Managerial Development, but also an endowed Chair in Mindfulness, Well-being at work and Economic Peace.

The Director of the Center and holder of the Chair, Dr Dominique Steiler, is a Senior professor at Grenoble Ecole de Management whose research and consultancy focusses on personal development, stress management and well-being and their relationship to performance and value creation.

After first studying Chinese and then social rehabilitation for people with disabilities, Dominique spent six years as a naval fighter pilot in the French Fleet Air Arm. For the last twenty years, he has been dedicated to transforming individual and management behaviors and business towards a more peaceful economic market place.

In this 20-minute interview with Dawna Jones, Dominique Steiler talks about what has guided his personal journey and experience with mindfulness and why companies were willing to fund his research chair.

They explore how mindfulness is the mediator for leaders, managers and employees in making ethical decisions, why keeping your heart open as a leader makes you stronger than those who hide their feelings 'cyborg-style' and why taking your whole self to work and life spreads well-being.

Dominique has delivered leadership programs and coaching interventions for corporate executives and top athletes and holds a doctorate in Management from Newcastle University in the UK.