Practice Is Perfect: A Leader's Guide to Building a Mindfulness Practice
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Mindfulness for leaders isn't about achieving a calm, clear mind — it's about learning to notice when attention has drifted and choosing to return to the present moment, repeatedly and without judgment. A consistent practice, even just three to five minutes a day, builds the capacity to pause between impulse and action — the space where better decisions live. The single most important factor isn't how long you meditate, but whether you do it at all.
The Benefits of Mindfulness for Leaders
Mark Flanagan will be the first to tell you he's no guru.
When Pete Behrens jokingly bestowed the title, Mark deflected with a story about his morning walk with his new puppy, Jasper. "The new puppy who doesn't necessarily want to go the way I want to go," he said. "I was seeing if I could pause. I don't always pause with the new puppy."
Mark is a certified meditation teacher and longtime practitioner. He came to facilitate a session for our alumni as someone who has lived the practice imperfectly for more than 20 years, found his way back to it when life demanded it, and now helps others do the same.
That session brought together ALJ alumni for something a little different: not a discussion about leadership, but an experience of one of its quieter foundations. The premise was simple. We are all navigating a chaotic world. Decisions come faster, the noise is louder, and the space between stimulus and response keeps shrinking. It's in that shrinking space that leaders often get into trouble.
When we react rather than respond — when we fire off an email, snap at a colleague, or make a call before we've fully processed what's in front of us — the cost is real. Not just to relationships or culture, but to the quality of our thinking and the outcomes we're responsible for.
Mark's message wasn't about achieving some transcendent state of inner peace. It was far more practical: a consistent mindfulness practice gives you access to a pause — a moment of choice — that most of us could use more of. Over time, that pause builds into something leaders consistently report as genuinely useful: reduced reactivity, greater presence, and the capacity to respond to what's actually in front of them rather than what their stress is telling them is there.
What Is Mindfulness?
Before leading the group through practice, Mark addressed one of the most common misconceptions about meditation: that the goal is to banish thought.
It isn't.
"You're never going to banish your thoughts," he said. "Your mind is constantly spinning." He described the typical unattended mind as a hamster wheel — not productive, just running. Thoughts about the past, worries about the future, judgments, plans, mental to-do lists. Spaghetti, as he put it. The practice doesn't eliminate the spaghetti. It helps you notice you're in it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program in the 1970s, offers a widely used definition:
Mindfulness is awareness that arises by placing your attention in the present on purpose, non-judgmentally.
Each word carries weight. On purpose means you know what you're doing — you're choosing to pay attention. Non-judgmentally matters because the moment we start evaluating our meditation, we've added another layer of thought on top of the thoughts we were already having.
This is also where Mark shared Viktor Frankl becomes relevant. The Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor — whose work explored meaning, choice, and human resilience — described what a consistent practice makes possible: a space between impulse and action. "That was something I definitely knew I needed when I started meditating," Mark said, "this idea of non-reactivity, of being able to respond to something rather than react." For leaders navigating high-stakes decisions and real pressure, that space is where better judgment lives.
Rashmi F. shared that for her, meditation is what helps her "find my centre — an opportunity to disconnect from the chaos." That framing resonated throughout the session. This isn't about retreat from the demands of leadership. It's about developing the inner steadiness to meet those demands more effectively.
How to Practice Mindfulness:
A 3-Step Exercise for Busy Professionals
Mark walked the group through a deceptively simple three-step approach. No special equipment required. And, as he demonstrated when he couldn't find his phone and simply substituted the word "ding" for a bell, no perfection required either. The spirit of the practice, it turns out, is built right into how it's taught.
Step 1: Take Your Meditation Seat
More intentional than simply sitting down. Find a position that's comfortable but alert — what Mark described as "upright but not uptight." Chair, floor, standing, or even lying down if you can stay awake. The posture, rooted in 2,600 years of teaching, comes in four recognized forms: sitting, standing, lying down, and walking. Head, neck, and back in alignment; shoulders relaxed; jaw unclenched. Eyes open with a soft downward gaze, or closed — whichever works for you.
Step 2: Place Your Attention on a Meditation Object
In this practice, that object is the breath — not a deep, theatrical breath, but the ordinary one that's always there. "It's not something contrived or expanded. It's not extra deep. It's not extra long. It's just the ordinary breath," Mark said. The breath works as an anchor because it's always available. You're holding yourself to this moment rather than some other one.
That said, the breath isn't the only option. As the group discussed, different anchors work for different people. Kumaresh R., an experienced practitioner, uses mantra — silent, mental repetition of a phrase — because it keeps his intellect more engaged. Randy H. has found body scanning, systematically bringing awareness to physical sensations from head to toe, to be a grounding daily reset. Tracey W. came to meditation through yoga and finds focused breathing, combined with movement, her natural entry point. The anchor matters less than the consistency of returning to it.
Step 3: When Your Mind Wanders, Notice It and Return
Not if — when. When you realize you've drifted into a story — planning tomorrow, replaying a conversation, working through your to-do list — you simply notice it, label it as "thinking," and gently come back to your anchor. No judgment, no frustration with yourself. Just return.
Mark reminds us, "The practice is not to banish thought. The practice is to just keep coming back. That's it."
Every time you notice your mind has wandered and bring it back, you're building something real. The returning is what matters.
What to Expect When You Start a Mindfulness Practice
After a 20-minute guided practice — led with what Pete described as a beautifully calibrated pace, "you ramped down, popped in, and then pulled back" — the group reflected on what had come up. For leaders who tend to bring achievement orientation to everything, several themes surfaced quickly.
The Self-Judgment Loop
Dave B. described what he called "second arrow moments" — the additional suffering we create by judging ourselves for having the experience we're having. In meditation, that sounds like this: "You start thinking about something and then you're like, 'Oh crap, I shouldn't be thinking about something.' And then you start feeling bad about thinking about, you know, the thing." He laughed, adding: "I can tell I'm out of practice."
Mark noted: "Now you're even judging yourself about judging yourself."
Pete recognized the same pattern in himself, if slightly differently dressed: "I'm not judging. I'm more analyzing. It's like, stop analyzing yourself, Pete." For many leaders, the tendency to evaluate performance doesn't switch off easily — even when the practice is explicitly about letting go of outcomes. Noticing that tendency is, itself, the practice.
Watching Your Own Mind
Randy H. connected the session to something from a program he'd attended years ago — an image that had stayed with him: "It's like a door. If a thought comes through the door, notice the thought and let it go." Mark extended it with a metaphor of his own: the thoughts are people coming through the door, and the doorman holds the door for them — "but he doesn't follow them to the bathroom."
The goal isn't to prevent thoughts from arising. It's to stop following them down the hall.
The Power of Practicing Together
The group reflected on how meaningful it felt to practice together, even across time zones and through a screen. Mark confirmed that this sense of shared presence is real, adding that in-person practice amplifies it further — but something genuine is present even in a virtual room full of people choosing to pause together.
Different Paths to the Same Place
Not everyone in the room came to stillness the same way. Kumaresh R. uses mantra rather than breath, finding it better suited to how his mind works. Josh F. described briefly drifting off during the practice, then waking to a feeling of unexpected clarity: "My thoughts are there, it's all happening — but there are some nice moments of stillness that I really appreciate." Randy H. has a daily phone alarm set to remind him to do a body scan. Pete B. finds active meditation — cycling, hiking — more natural than sitting stillness, and is honest about the struggle. Rashmi F. offered a reframe: "The thing to remember is that we are training awareness, not control."
What the session made clear is that there is no single correct path. There is only the practice of returning, whatever form that takes for you.
Why Consistency Matters More Than Duration
Rodrigo C., joining the session from São Paulo, candidly shared that he used to practice regularly, but since becoming a new father, the time has simply disappeared. It's an honest admission that most busy humans recognize in some form — the value of the practice is clear, but life has a way of crowding it out.
This connects directly to one of Mark's central messages: how long you meditate matters far less than whether you do it at all.
Mark started with three minutes a day. Before apps, before meditation timers, he found a three-minute MP3 file online — just audio with a bell at the end — downloaded it to his iPod, and pressed play each morning. "This is how nerdy I am," he said. That was the whole practice. Three minutes and a bell.
"The amount of time is far less important than consistency," he told the group. "Consistency brings the benefit into the rest of my day. It brings mindfulness to the rest of my day."
Pete echoed this from his own experience and from coaching others in building leadership habits: "It's consistency over time — whatever it is you're doing, you're practicing, you're trying to get better at it."
For those of us drawn to achievement — who measure progress, set goals, and push toward outcomes — meditation can feel almost counterproductive at first. There's nothing to complete. No level to unlock. As Pete put it at the close of the session: "I need an achievement. I need a goal. And to me, the biggest thing here is: no. Just settle down."
That settling — practiced steadily, imperfectly, consistently — is the purpose.
How to Build a Daily Mindfulness Practice
Whether you're new to this or returning after a long gap, here are practical ways to begin:
- Start absurdly small. Three to five minutes is enough. You're building a habit, not hitting a performance target. Make it easy to show up again tomorrow.
- Use a guide if silence feels impossible. Apps like Waking Up or Headspace offer structured beginner series that gradually introduce silence over time. Guided instruction is a legitimate on-ramp, not a shortcut. As Kumaresh R. noted from his own experience: "Once we catch up a bit, we are able to make sense of it and are able to guide our own minds."
- Find an anchor that works. Breath, mantra, body scan, focused breathing — any of these can work.
- Expect your mind to wander. A lot. This isn't a sign that you're bad at meditation. It's the practice. The returning is the whole point.
- Bring micro-moments into your day. Three conscious breaths before a difficult meeting. Feeling your feet on the ground before a high-stakes conversation. Pausing before you respond when you feel reactive. These small moments reinforce and extend what you build in formal practice.
- Miss a day? Begin again. There's no streak to protect, no starting over from scratch. There's just today.
Mindfulness Resources and Guided Meditation
Listen: Guided Meditation with Mark Flanagan
Mark led our alumni through a 20-minute guided mindfulness practice during the session. You can listen to it here and practice on your own or share with your team.
Download: A Simple Guide to Continuing Your Mindfulness Practice
A concise, practical reference from Mark that you can keep on hand as you build your practice.
Closing Reflection
Leadership has always required clear thinking, sound judgment, and the ability to stay steady when things get uncertain. What's changed is the pace and volume of everything pressing against those capacities.
Mindfulness doesn't promise to simplify what's genuinely complex. It offers something more modest: the ability to notice what's happening — inside and around you — before you react to it. That noticing, practiced steadily, imperfectly, consistently, is what creates the conditions for better leadership.
Near the end of the guided practice, Mark offered a closing wish to the group — one that extended the practice beyond the individual and into the world each person would return to:
"I just want to end with a wish that the qualities that we realize in doing this practice that benefit us also benefit those we come in contact with today — and then radiate outwards from there."
For leaders, that's not a small idea. The steadiness you build shows up in the meeting where you pause before reacting, the conversation where you actually listen, and the decision where you respond rather than fire back. It radiates.
About Mark Flanagan
Mark Flanagan is a certified meditation teacher and longtime mindfulness practitioner who facilitates community and workplace meditation sessions centered on stress resilience and grounded presence. His teaching is clear, accessible, and grounded in the belief that mindfulness is developed through steady, imperfect practice. He supports individuals in cultivating sustainable meditation habits that foster clarity, equanimity, and a more balanced relationship with the challenges of daily life.
Mark also contributed to the final editing of Into the Fog by Pete Behrens, and we are grateful for his insights.
Learn more about his work and upcoming sessions at
practiceisperfect.com.
Frequently Asked Questions About Mindfulness for Leaders
How long should a leader meditate each day?
Consistency matters far more than duration. Starting with just three to five minutes a day is enough to begin building the habit. The goal is to practice regularly, not perfectly.
Do I need any experience or special equipment to start meditating?
None. The practice described here requires nothing more than a place to sit and a few minutes.
What is the difference between mindfulness and meditation?
Mindfulness is the quality of awareness you're cultivating — present, intentional, non-judgmental. Meditation is one of the primary ways you build it. Think of meditation as the practice and mindfulness as the result that gradually extends into the rest of your day.
What if my mind won't stop wandering during meditation?
That's not a problem — it's the practice. The moment you notice your mind has wandered and choose to return to your anchor, you've done exactly what meditation asks of you. As Mark Flanagan, certified meditation teacher, put it: "The practice is not to banish thought. The practice is to just keep coming back."
Is guided meditation better than silent meditation?
Neither is inherently better — they serve different purposes. Guided meditation is often more accessible for beginners because it provides structure and reduces the intimidation of sitting in silence. Many experienced practitioners use both. A useful progression is to start with guided practice and gradually move toward silence as the habit develops
Does the meditation anchor have to be the breath?
No. The breath is a common starting point because it's always available, but it isn't the only option. Examples of meditation anchor variations include:
- Mantra — silent, mental repetition of a word or phrase.
- Body scan — systematically moving awareness through physical sensations from head to toe.
- Focused breathing — bringing deliberate attention to the rhythm and sensation of the breath, sometimes combined with movement practices like yoga.
What matters most is choosing an anchor that you'll actually return to — and then returning to it, consistently.
Can mindfulness really help with leadership effectiveness?
The evidence suggests it can, particularly in building what Viktor Frankl described as the space between impulse and action — the pause that allows leaders to respond thoughtfully rather than react. Reduced reactivity, greater presence, and improved focus are among the most commonly reported benefits for leaders who maintain a consistent practice.
