Meditation in The Corporate Boardroom

by Jeff Belyea, PhD

Research at Harvard Business School has concluded "meditation and intuition are the two most valuable executive tools for the 21st century".

Imagine a senior management team or a board of directors who are gathered together to make several important decisions. On the table are crucial matters that could change the course of corporate life, or even make the different between success and failure of the company.

As the chairperson lays out the agenda for the meeting and begins to launch into a detailed analysis of the issues at hand, a loud "buzz" is heard in the room. The chairperson looks up from her notes to see that virtually everyone in the room is engaged in loud chatter, and no one is really paying any attention to her at all. As soon as she recovers from the shock of this surprise, she loudly demands attention. The room goes quiet. But after a few seconds, the buzz picks up once again. Once again, the impatient demand for attention is made. And once again, after a few seconds, the buzz starts up again.

Now imagine this buzz, quiet, buzz scene going on in the boardroom for two or three hours. Unthinkable, you say. Just would not happen, right? How could important decisions be made if most of the people in the room were not really paying attention and their minds were on something else except for a few seconds of intermittent focus?

Would the scene be more easily imagined as possible and believable if everyone's "internal chatter" was somehow made externally audible? Now, that VP of Marketing who is worried about his son who just dropped out of college to take up his true passion, pottery, could be heard calming his wife, or himself, or raging at this son, off and on, through the entire meeting. How about the General Manager who cannot keep his mind off that sweet young thing in merchandising. And then there's the CFO who keeps rehearsing his upcoming meeting with bankers scheduled for later that day.

At a time when focus, clarity of thought, and the applied use of well-honed listening skills are critical, most of the great minds in that room are somewhere else. Maybe this is part of the reason that we read that we only use a small percentage of our brain. Most of us are rarely "in the moment" and attentive to the present for more than brief periods of time. Most of our time is spent reliving the past and anticipating the future, trying to steer the ship of our everyday lives in the right direction, or at least in one that will avoid disaster.

Meditation is a proven and effective way of quieting of the mind, and the relaxation and stress management "techniques" that are at the core of meditation practice enhance focus, clarity of thought, and improve listening skills. When we learn to use the simple tools of meditation, we can consciously quiet the mind's internal chatter. With meditation, we can tap a quiet pool of intuitive wisdom that presents solutions and sees opportunities that the chattering mind misses.

It may be some time before meditation makes it to the mainstream of corporate planning - although research at Harvard Business School has concluded that "meditation and intuition are the two most valuable executive tools for the 21st century". But there are visionaries in corporate life this very minute who are seeking out-of-the-box methods of creative and effective leadership.

Now, where are those elite corporate visionaries who are ready to sign up their senior management team for meditation and intuition classes and send them on executive wellness retreats?

Jeff Belyea is an artist and writer with a PhD in communications, and certification as a business and personal coach, certified hypnotherapist and master meditation teacher who works with individual, group and corporate clients around the country.

For more information visit www.LivingatWow.com.