How To Practice Mindfulness in Meetings
By Roger Porter and Olga Brandeis
With nearly 20 years in commercial real estate finance, I recently launched my own company – Brand Capital, Inc., a full-service commercial real estate mortgage brokerage firm – and I’m discovering new ways to succeed and how to better serve my clients and community. My new business has me thinking: How do I redefine my idea of success to fit the vision I have for my new venture? And how does that go with the larger industry that is going through its own changes?
Many of my friends and colleagues in the industry are grappling with the same questions. Disruptions in the financial markets – Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank closing in recent months – and the incessant interest rate hikes have the whole market in flux. I’m wondering if what folks in finance (myself included) need is a push toward something that grounds us in the human side of business.
I stumbled upon the concept of mindfulness in recent years, a nebulous idea that has been kicked around the past decade or so; but it’s not complicated. “Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention to the present,” as defined in Psychology Today, “described as observing one’s thoughts and feelings without judging them as good or bad.” I used to think business and mindfulness were two separate things, but the launch of Brand Capital has given me the space to bring the two together and work in sync. And it is the idea of mindfulness that guides me to put the client first, merging my new business with a practice that perhaps is the key to redefining success for the next chapter of my career.
When I first dug deep into mindfulness’s life-giving precepts, I developed my own practice – I call it ‘mindfulness in meetings’ practice – to let it breathe life into every part of my being, especially my career. Why is a mindfulness practice in my business important to me? The answer lives in my truth that when I’m at my best, colleagues, clients, employees and the various partnerships I engage with across every aspect of my job benefit. In other words, when you tend to your garden, the whole ecosystem flourishes.
The first tenant of my mindfulness in meetings practice is to listen.
My job is high-stakes and quick-paced. But when I take the time to listen to my client, the practice allows me to better perceive their business needs. The foundation of strong listening skills is attention, a way of keeping my client and business partners in full view. Once this foundation of attention is established, all deal-making parties are open to better collaboration, creativity and problem solving. Don’t believe me? Even science backs me up. A mindfulness study put on by Harvard Medical School found that “mindfulness training increased the efficiency of brain pathways that process information…the boost in attention helped the [study] participants to literally see information more accurately.”
The second tenant of my practice is intention.
Although attention is key for understanding the client’s business needs, intention broadens the scope to make mindfulness a practice that spreads to my employees, business operations and growth; it fosters partnerships and deepens relationships across the commercial real estate finance marketplace. “After all, investing in the well-being and resilience of all employees is simply the right thing to do…it allows businesses to decrease stress, reduce turnover, improve productivity, recruit top talent and increase innovation,” writes Forbes for a piece on Increasing Mindfulness In The Workplace. When my intention in the workplace is clear and purposeful, a top-down effect takes hold, and I hope to see it make waves in my industry.
And third, my mindfulness practice is about connection.
Staying connected with your industry, network and partners is the glue that keeps us together in the wake of change. We’re in the midst of an industry seachange, as mentioned above, with the failure of SVB and Signature Bank, a devastating blow not seen since the 2008 financial crisis, according to the New York Times. As such, I see it as an imperative to stay rooted in connection because the collective gives us strength. And when turbulent industry seachange comes, our connections help us to brainstorm innovation, share ideas and navigate to calmer waters. Essentially, mindfulness trains our brains to seek out and strengthen our connections for feeling rooted in community.
My business – and every corner of my life – is bright with the promise of living my truth. It started with turning inward and getting in touch with myself and using my mindfulness practice as a tool to nurture my true inner self, which in turn mirrors a reality that is at once healthy and hopeful. As Michael Singer, celebrated author of The Untethered Soul puts it when he writes about mindful clarity: “Once refocused, you will realize that you not only have the ability to find yourself, you have the ability to free yourself.” How about you, business professionals? What do you do to make mindfulness an integral part of your work life? I’d love to hear from you! Send me a message in the contact form and let’s keep the conversation going.
