107: Mindful Leadership and Empathy in the Workplace with Alex Snider

Explore the transformative potential of mindfulness and compassion in the workplace.

With our guest, Alex Snider, we unravel the complexities of integrating mindfulness into professional settings and discuss common misconceptions, such as the notion that meditation requires a blank mind or that there is a right way to do it.

Our conversation also explores the impact of personal mindfulness practices, particularly in leadership roles. We challenge the idea of mindfulness as just a buzzword, viewing it instead as a practical tool for enhancing team care and understanding. Alex shares insights on how leaders can model mindfulness to promote an open and diverse workplace environment, enhance leadership effectiveness, and contribute to a human-centered work atmosphere.

Join us for this insightful episode packed with practical advice and reflections on nurturing a compassionate workplace.

You can learn more about Alex and his writing on his Substack: Human Beauracacy or on LinkedIn.

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Chapters

• 1:14 Mindfulness and Compassion in the Workplace
• 5:57 The Impact of Personal Mindfulness
• 15:02 The Power of Human Connection

Transcript

Alex Snider: 1:15

If mindfulness is a blocker for you, then let's never use it again. You don't need to. The word is not what matters. As I sort of mentioned around leaders, the goal is not to be a mindful leader. The goal is not to be a mindful friend or spouse or friend. The goal is to be a caring one, a human one, and I think using the phrase intention is a really powerful thing. Phrase intention is a really powerful thing.

Manya Chylinski: 1:40

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chilinski. My guest today is Alex Snyder. He's a strategy lead with the US federal government and co-founder of MindfulFed, the first ever government-wide mindfulness community, and we talk today about mindfulness, compassion and leadership and how to approach mindfulness in the workplace. It was a really eye-opening conversation. I think you're going to enjoy it, alex. I'm so excited to be talking to you today. Thank you for being here.

Alex Snider: 2:17

Thanks for having me, Manya

Manya Chylinski: 2:18

This was really fun. The first question before we dive into the topic is what is one thing you have done that you never thought you would do?

Alex Snider: 2:30

What a beautiful question and I love how, just in that question, it is the sense of possibility less than change. I remember jumping on a mindfulness call that we have every week and there was no facilitator there. They missed the meeting and I remember just checking in with myself and just saying I can lead, this Doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be whatever that moment required. And so that moment of like not having to prepare for something and to show up and saying I can provide a supportive mindfulness practice for a couple hundred folks without any preparation, that certainly would have scared me that the living jesus that would be before yes, I like that just showing up, and it doesn't have to be perfect.

Alex Snider: 3:23

Yeah, and if I can add just one thing to that to really respond to what the moment needed versus a, I need to show people what a great facilitator I am. So I'm going to write a really great plan and like have people be impressed by it, Be able to put my hand up and say there's a need and I can help meet that need.

Manya Chylinski: 3:40

Yeah, that's using your mindfulness being very present in the moment, and I can appreciate that. And I can appreciate that feeling when, in the moment, you realize you're doing it as well. So that's kind of that's a very satisfying feeling to hey, I actually, in my case, hey, I actually know what I'm doing. So we are here to talk about mindfulness, and mindfulness at work and in the workplace. This is something you have a lot of experience with. Just to start us off, how does incorporating mindfulness in the workplace contribute to building a culture of compassion and openness?

Alex Snider: 4:26

I think my first answer is it doesn't always and I think in a lot of my experience. More on the receiving end of sort of a mindfulness training, a program going to a session I've seen a lot of the times it really doesn't contribute to a culture of compassion and connection and what it does instead is it sort of isolates folks. There's a little bit of like an opt-in, opt-out culture. So who chooses to go, who doesn't choose to go? Then there's also kind of the personal struggle with mindfulness. All right, so my company or my workplace hosted like a mindfulness session, a seminar, a little teacher come in and give us the tools and tricks, and then we go back to our inboxes. I go back to sort of a stressful meeting and maybe I say something I regret or I make a mistake or I'm not particularly mindful, and so what happens is, instead of this mindful session connecting me a bit more to myself, make me feel more grounded, there's sort of this unsettled feeling of I have the tools, I've learned them, but I'm not applying them. It's my fault.

Manya Chylinski: 5:37

I think that's such a human response to learn something like mindfulness, as you're saying, and then feel like I'm not doing it right or there's something wrong with me that I'm not, I'm not taking in these principles in the right way. I think we do get stuck into that. I'm not doing it right, piece.

Alex Snider: 5:58

What motivated me to become a mindfulness facilitator about five, six years ago now that I've been leading was because I was relatively new to the practice. I had only been practicing for three or four years at that point and I talked to a bunch of friends about mindfulness and they would say something to the effect of I'm so bad at meditating. I I try to sit quietly and like six seconds later I'm like running through these thoughts and I can't stop. And what I want to say is you're doing it like you're aware that you're distracted and you're like that is mindfulness. It's not this sort of bunk on a hill or the kind of proverbial perfectly blank mind where everything is just tranquil. It's having your mind go to your shopping list, go to wanting to go to Instagram and then recognizing that the mind is there and it's doing these crazy things. And I want and like part of why I chose this journey is because I wanted this. Like give them a hug and say you're doing it, go a little bit easy on yourself.

Manya Chylinski: 7:00

Yes, I've heard that as well when I've talked about my meditation practice. Oh, I can't meditate because my mind goes everywhere and I think I don't always say, but I often think the same thing no, that's okay, that's what it is. But we do have this picture that it's somehow this perfectly blank mind and again we focus on I don't think I'm doing it right. There's a lot of fear of that. I don't entirely know where that comes from. I have a hypothesis.

Alex Snider: 7:35

I think it comes from a really beautiful place. I have a hypothesis. I think it comes from a really beautiful place.

Alex Snider: 7:55

There's this quality of self-improvement, of learning and growth that I have certainly felt in my life ever since I was like a good student in high school and getting good grades, and like getting my major in college and having the professors sort of see my learning and growth and there is a sense of the more effort I put in and the more I strive and I try, I'm going to get better at this. You know something that applies to that, to all the fitness groups, all these sorts of other areas too, and we kind of bring it into this mindfulness space of like I need to do better, I need need to do more. And I think the challenge is the goal is sort of set up as this elusive, impossible thing of the clear mind, as opposed to watching everything and being aware of things, and so it's sort of like maximizing against sort of a and like illusory goal of like stillness and perfectly zen mind in that sort of mindset.

Manya Chylinski: 8:41

Yeah, as you're saying that, I remember I was taking a mindfulness class and back in the day when we left our homes more to do things and I was late, and I was going to be late and it was clear that there was no way I was going to arrive before the session started and the amount of stress I had that I was going to be late was off the charts and I'm someone who's not generally late for most things, so that also played into it. That also played into it, and it didn't even occur to me until I got there and the instructor was this is fine, you're here now, it's all good. How I don't know contradictory it was to get so panicked that I was going to be five minutes late for a class where I was or not a class, but a session where I was learning how to be present.

Alex Snider: 9:45

Yeah, it's interesting, Manya. I mean I think my reaction would be not to say it's contradictory, but it's an illustration of how artificial these boundaries are between what is mindfulness practice and what is not. And you know one of the. You know I'll come back to this example in particular in a second but it kind of brings to mind like when you talk about therapy and sort of like what is the therapeutic context? And one of the big parts of that is actually your relationship with the therapist. It's not just like dredging up stories of your childhood, it's actually how are you feeling about sharing that or being present?

Alex Snider: 10:21

And for me, for example, I had all these stories about being late for therapy appointments and what the therapist would think about me and judge me, and that was my own work around, how I felt about. Signals were there and perhaps that's what's coming up for you. And then, specifically with the idea of having this anxiety about being late and showing up in this mindfulness context, like just what you're demonstrating, there is your awareness of what's happening in your mind and sort of where this like relational context of what are people going to think about you, what will the teacher think about, how you're valuing their offerings. That is itself just as valuable as sitting with your mind and seeing how you relate to writing a shopping list while you want to be counting your breaths.

Manya Chylinski: 11:16

That's it. I appreciate that way of thinking about it. I didn't feel particularly mindful in the moment. I probably was more than I was willing to admit, but I appreciate your input. You talk about mindfulness at work and it is entirely a personal thing. It's in our own minds. We do our practice. But how does it relate to being in the workplace or what is it like to do mindfulness in a work setting?

Alex Snider: 11:42

Well, I do want to spend a moment with, kind of the intro to the question of saying mindfulness is a personal thing. I think that's something that's worth exploring for a couple of reasons. I think about when I'm getting ready for a family gathering, how I show up in that setting, being reactive, having unmet needs, wanting people to be a certain way in controlling behavior, what I do with my mindfulness before that setting. Am I finding space to go for a run? Am I taking some stillness and some slowness, or am I like rushing straight from a stressful workday into that family setting? That has an impact on the family that I'm with. That own sort of like personal sort of practice that I have actually has a huge relational impact. And then and I'll get to the workplace in a second that moment we have with our family and sort of the quality of that connection, quality of the listening. That's going to go back to how I feel after that setting. So when I leave that family setting and whether I feel activated and stressed and anxious or a sense of joy and peace and calm is based off of what is happening in that family setting. Energy is how much people are paying attention, whether we're able to get into stupid fights about dumb things or able to really see each other and to feel connected and feel that joy of coming back together.

Alex Snider: 13:12

I think in a workplace there's a similar dynamic at a place.

Alex Snider: 13:15

So the way that I show up before 9am, when I sign into the workday, that affects what happens in those meetings. When they go off according to plan, when there's not what I expect happening, how do I respond to? That is based on my own personal practice and then also how those meetings go. If a colleague responds to me with grace and forgiveness for my mistake, if they, you know, highlight some mistake that I did and really rake me over the coals for that, that's going to filter out into the rest of my day how I treat my family, how I treat that stranger in a coffee shop, and so these boundaries between sort of a personal, independent practice and what happens during our workday. I would sort of argue that it's really more of a continuum of how our own personal sense of self and sense of what we're striving for impacts others that we're with, but also how qualities of joy and happiness and connection that other people are sort of bringing to us, showing us as an example, modeling help us channel those qualities as well. How does that land for?

Manya Chylinski: 14:26

you? Yes, I see what you're saying and, again, it's the question that you asked when we first got on this call, before we hit record, which is how are you showing up today? And I love that question, but, as you just explained, that is something in me, but that is also how I relate to the people around me, and in this case, we're talking about the workplace. That affects my colleagues and my team.

Alex Snider: 14:58

Do you mind if I tell you a quick story?

Manya Chylinski: 15:01

Please do.

Alex Snider: 15:02

So I used to work at the State Department and I worked sort of in the same office for about 10 years give and take, and I had this fascinating experience during my farewell it was over Zoom, since it was during the pandemic, and it was this really strange experience where you know sort of these farewell things, you sort of people say nice things about you, then you say nice things about them, and it's a little bit of a weird dance.

Alex Snider: 15:29

What's so interesting about it was when I was going through my list of things that I really appreciate about the office, sort of this quality of generosity and supporting me when I was traveling or out of the office, being bringing a sense of humor to work. That was actually difficult, sometimes working in pretty, pretty dangerous places, um, sort of this, this general like kindness and like really caring about one another more so than just the normal like work day and nine to five. Those qualities that are really valued and saw in my colleagues were actually the same ones that they mirrored back and they saw and valued in me and it was just, you know, being there for long enough to sort of see that growth of the qualities of myself and finding some play and fun amidst the difficult work. That was something that I brought, a little bit based on my own sense of self, my own personality, but it was also cultivated and reinforced and made stronger by the people I worked with.

Manya Chylinski: 16:35

Yeah, wow, that's a cool story and an important observation, again on that same topic of how do we show up affects, how people show up for us in that moment. Well, thank you for sharing that. And to think about the workplace, like how can leaders model mindfulness for their teams, can they?

Alex Snider: 17:03

I'm taking a moment because I'm wondering whether modeling mindfulness is the point.

Manya Chylinski: 17:09

Okay.

Alex Snider: 17:10

What I think about mindfulness is it's not the goal, just like the goal of meditation is not to become a good meditator and the goal isn't necessarily to be more mindful.

Alex Snider: 17:21

It's what that allows us to do. And so I think what a leader needs to do is not say I'm just going to be mindful. Remind someone to be mindful. They need to think about what they're trying to do with them, and so one thing I would offer is a role of a leader is to care for their people, to really understand what their needs are, both sort of like physical needs as well you know, a paycheck and the time off and the sick leave but also the emotional needs, sort of feeling valued, feeling appreciated, feeling like they're actually contributing to a team. And so for a leader that wants to go and kind of model that to their team, I think what I would offer is you have to start by caring about your team and like that's the starting point, and that means noticing when they contribute in small ways behind the scenes, and then what mindfulness allows you to say is like oh interesting, my colleague went above and beyond I know it was after hours and they helped me with this thing.

Alex Snider: 18:21

It helped me get this project to my boss in time, and what mindfulness allows you to do is to sort of slow down to that moment to see the person and actually appreciate them. And one of the things that I've read about before is the definition between recognition and appreciation, where recognition is the simple like you did your job, thank you to actually seeing the person who did that and did it in a certain way, whether that was their creativity or their kind of dedication to it and really seeing that quality of them that's worth appreciating and valuing versus sort of a generic. I should appreciate you because I'm a boss and we're told we should recognize our employees.

Manya Chylinski: 19:06

Right.

Alex Snider: 19:07

I sort of sidestepped your question, but I think one more thing I wanted to add. I talked about, you know. You asked like how can leaders model mindfulness? And I mentioned one idea which is sort of appreciation, really noticing how people show up and that quality of care. The other is kind of noticing your own mind and your own sort of sense of self.

Alex Snider: 19:26

And so, for example, I've been guilty myself of going into meetings when I'm leading a conversation, trying to get to a decision on a certain project or proposal, and then noticing that there's a quality that I have of wanting to be the leader, wanting to be decisive, and what mindfulness looks like in those settings is being aware of this sense of maybe it's an ego, maybe it's a role that I'm playing, I think I need to embody, and then noticing how that might stand between myself and connection and listening. And so what a mindful leader would do in that context would be to say, okay, I'm noticing that I have this idea. I'm sort of like gripping onto it pretty tightly. It seems like there are people who have different ideas and I really want to understand what those are, and I'm also noticing a bit of attachment to my idea that I brought in here, and so what you're modeling is sort of this awareness of yourself and an intention to have other voices and other perspectives, to really value them and invite them in.

Manya Chylinski: 20:31

So it's really building a sense of awareness, self-awareness, awareness of what's going on around us. And I say that, I guess, for people for whom the term mindfulness feels a little too woo-woo, because I get that too when I talk about mindfulness and meditation, the response of people who feel, well, I'm more practical, and that is kind of way out there. And it isn't. It's something that we all do at some point in our lives. It's just doing it with intentionality. Am I saying that right?

Alex Snider: 21:12

Yeah, I think naming intention is a really powerful word in this context. Yeah, I think naming intention is a really powerful word in its context. One of the frameworks I might offer and I think you're absolutely right like, if mindfulness is a blocker for you, then let's never use it again. You don't need to. The word is not what matters. As I sort of mentioned around leaders, the goal is not to be a mindful leader. The goal is not to be a mindful friend or spouse or friend. The goal is to be a caring one, a human one, and I think using the phrase intention is a really powerful thing.

Alex Snider: 21:46

One of the examples I might offer is I imagine everyone who's listening to this has had the experience of being on cloud nine, of like having good news from work and like watching a really beautiful movie. The weather's perfect and we have this sense of resilience. Like the cab driver can be mean to you, your food can be cold, someone can say something kind of cruel to you and it just watered off a dog's back. We all had that experience, and we've also had the experience when we're like really crappy and really tired and exhausted and someone can like say something that's pretty anodyne but it feels like a slight to us and we're so reactive.

Alex Snider: 22:23

And so what I think about mindfulness whatever you want to call it, what it does is it takes this sense of how we want to show up in our life, the sort of intention of how we want to be, and we all know it Kindness, compassion, forgiveness, generosity.

Alex Snider: 22:39

Like it's in our life, the sort of intention of how we want to be, and we all know it Kindness, compassion, forgiveness, generosity. It's in our DNA, it's human, and so it's the gap between how we show up, how we want to show up, and then how we actually do on a daily basis. We're stuck with the small issues stubbing our toes and having a rainy day when we were hoping to have a picnic and also the more challenging ones whether that's so that could be an election loss, that could be something like the death of the family, that could be a more difficult situation at work or interpersonally, a breakup. And so when you have those really challenging things to deal with, what mindfulness does and that can also be self-awareness or other things it helps narrow that gap between how we want to show up in that ideal situation and how we actually can on a daily basis when we're stuck with the challenges of life.

Manya Chylinski: 23:31

I like thinking of it that way, that closing the gap between how we want to show up and how we do show up. Alex, we're getting close to the end of our time. What is giving you hope these days?

Alex Snider: 23:47

What feels alive for me is there's such an existential sort of focus in a lot of our world that's like the election, all these difficult things, and what's giving me hope is just this human thirst to connect, and I've seen that. I was at a running group this morning and I was imagining these 30 people could have gone on a run by themselves on this kind of cold Friday morning and it would have been a totally different experience than what it was like running together, running as a group. And so I think this moment, if it does anything, drives us more towards each other and it reminds us that, yeah, we can do things alone, including mindfulness, including meditation but also when we do it together, when we share this experience with other people, it's just a much different one and a much richer one. And so I think this human thirst to connect on just a very individual, human basis, like that, is something that does get me out.

Manya Chylinski: 24:51

Oh, that's a lovely thought. Thank you for sharing that. And before we wrap up, a lovely thought. Thank you for sharing that. And before we wrap up, tell our listeners how can ?

Alex Snider: 25:08

Part of what I get excited about with writing is thinking about writing as something to explore together. It's kind of a topic that people can go and read an article and then react to it and sort of treat as something to experience together with other people, and so that's why I started writing, and so I have a sub stack. Human bureaucracy is where you can find most of my writing. I also write for psychology today, but I've linked to all those things on my sub stack, so that's the best way to find me, and feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or other places. We'd love to connect.

Manya Chylinski: 25:38

Excellent. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our conversation today.

Alex Snider: 25:43

Thanks Manya.

Manya Chylinski: 25:46

Thank you for listening. I'm Manya Chylinski. I help organizations analyze their culture, focusing on building environments where well-being and resilience can thrive. Focusing on building environments where well-being and resilience can thrive. Through this process, we identify areas for growth, develop strategies and create the necessary changes to build healthier, more supportive organizations. If you're ready to make a change, I'd love to connect. If you haven't already done so, please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us. And if you want to continue the conversation, connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com. Thank you for being part of this journey with me.