Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) serves as a way of aligning social and environmental concerns with business strategy. It’s doing the right thing by positively influencing society while also improving brand reputation. These, obviously, help profitability.
But CSR also has an aspect of doing the right thing for selfish reasons – to build a good reputation, increase brand value and attract good people. This can be perceived as “greenwashing”, which could hurt the business. I focus on this concern in an early piece I wrote for Geenleaf21.
Cynicism about CSR has given rise to “Environmental, Social and Governance” (ESG) – to do things right – demanded by the public and investors and legislated by governments, which require measuring the corporation’s sustainability and governance.
These responsibilities complicate leading modern organizations
However, ESG presents a threat to organizational leaders: potential litigation on decisions and disclosures. Potential lawsuits may threaten the business and personal assets of company directors and officers.
Such risks call on the C-Suite to place greater emphasis on a purposeful leadership culture that embodies values, practices, and behaviours. They must “walk the talk,” adding to the day-to-day stresses of running the business while being future-focused and strategic.
That is why business leaders need to manage themselves, too — their own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words, and acts1 by being mindful and aware. They need to stay grounded, disciplined, yet flexible in order to manage and lead amid a radically uncertain fast-paced environment, where social media rules and reputations are at stake.
Mindfulness and the Executive Function: Grounded yet Flexible
Mindfulness meditation enhances the prefrontal cortex, the executive function of the brain. Research has shown that mindful meditation increases performance on tasks of inhibitory control, working memory and task-switching.2 It promotes purposeful, ethical, goal-oriented behaviour and steadfast presence, resulting in the kind of self-control required for influential and successful purposeful leaders.
Mindfully aware principled leaders generate solid, sustainable, and profitable revenues
Cultivating a mindfully aware enterprise enhances the collective executive function with an immersive environment, where people help each other look at multiple perspectives to advance a flourishing workplace.
ESG and DEI are complex initiatives. But they can be successfully managed with the help of a mindfulness approach. Mindfully aware principled leaders lead with a compassionate, holistic, open-minded, and systemic approach, making ethical choices to achieve something greater than themselves and the enterprises they lead, even when recovering from ethical missteps.3
Mindfully aware principled leaders generate solid, sustainable, and profitable revenues because doing the right thing and doing things right is good for business, people, and the planet.
- Dee Hock ↩︎
- https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.660845/full ↩︎
- Challenges of Strategic Leadership: Mastering Executive Functions, By Art Kleiner, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, and Josie Thomson. ↩︎
