Two Tools Are Better Than One: Mindfulness and Developmental Coaching for Leaders

Leveraging Inherent Awareness

The deepening of mindfulness practice also brings recognition of a more basic level of consciousness that underlies the ongoing flow of thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Many growth technologies point toward, but rarely explicitly name, that level—the state of inherent awareness—the fundamental underlying capacity of mind that recognizes itself as aware. It is a steady and ever-present quality of consciousness that can tune in to what is going on within oneself in any given moment, inclusive of habitual thought patterns and emotional reactions, but only if attention is paid to it.

Developing familiarity with inherent awareness, one’s basic essence, and cultivating the ability to connect with it and recognize the insights emerging from it, invites movement and initiates the shift from identifying with self as subject to taking self as object; it activates enormous growth potential, as the realization that the “self” is not fixed begins to permeate perspective. This recognition further leads to an even more transformative insight—the idea that we have a “self” that needs to be “made better” or somehow “unstuck” is itself a misperception. Recognizing that our perception is both relative and selective invites us to shift our identification to something more constant—our basic state of inherent awareness, which can be accessed and cultivated through mindfulness training. This state is the wellspring of presence, authenticity, compassion, wisdom, and ethical conduct, competencies known to enhance mindful and skillful leadership.