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Leadership is a challenging role and good leadership skills through practice and reflection are conceived. Future leaders can benefit from being able to identify three mental processes that are core attributes of any leadership style namely mindfulness (M), selflessness (S) and compassion (C). Any leader or potential leader can build their own MSC and through a process of discovery, learn how to apply MSC to their people and their organisation. The MSC process begins inwardly with clearly identifying personal cognitive traits. It projects outward to the leader’s team and the organisation. In order for leaders to lead others, it is important to explore self-leadership and to identify personal leadership archetypes. How these archetypes shift leader mindsets is important. The emphasis therefore is on self-discovery and how mindfulness determines the concept of ‘focused attention’ versus ‘distracted outlook’. Students should learn how to become aware of others and situations by adopting a selfless and confident approach versus an ego-centric and diffident approach. Through critical reflection and practical observation, students should learn how to apply MSC to increase their own leadership effectiveness and to transform how others think and behave.

'The Leader's Mind' is a course about self-discovery, how to mindfully-lead yourself including the concept of selflessness and getting out of the way of your people and how to develop compassion, self-confidence and humility. Students will explore the value of self-awareness as distinct from self-assessment, and learn about the difference between passion-bias versus inclusiveness. Students will be exposed to several `awareness training' methods through which they should learn to know more about the `self' - what one thinks and why, what one feels and why - and discover what things are consciously considered as important, and why. Importantly, students should learn about the real consequences of leader actions when the leader is not present, has their own agenda, does not focus, is less self-aware, and becomes less effective as a result. When a leader is constantly distracted, they will not be present in leader-led activities such as committees and meetings. In this course, students should acquire new cognitive and behavioural skills that enable them to increase their focus, avoid action for the sake of action, create focused time, and apply a range of ethical practices. They should also learn that many barriers exist to selfless leadership that need to be overcome before becoming an effective leader. Students will be required to work with the cooperation of their supervisor at work and to engage in peer mentoring. Decisions made in relation to mindfulness activities are a matter of reflection. Finally, they should be able to measure their own leadership archetype so that they can match self-assessment with self-awareness.

On successful completion of this course students should be able to:

1. review current cognitive knowledge about self-awareness as it relates to mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion;
2. distinguish between different mindfulness techniques and their benefits;
3. practice how to be truly selfless with compassion by being present and focused in the moment;
4. critically reflect on different mindfulness techniques and compare these with traditional leadership self-assessments;
5. apply wise compassion, focused involvement, selflessness, interconnectedness and trust with presence to practical exercises at work.