Abstract:

Background:
Mindful Leadership has originated as a term from several fields: Business, Library Science, Medicine, and Education (Wells, 2022). The different aspects of the term involve: characteristics/competences of a mindful leader and how to develop these competences, as well as designing, developing and implementing mindfulness approaches in specific units and endeavors. Mindfulness is defined by Kabat-Zinn (1992) as “paying attention in a particular way on purpose, in the present moment, and without judging.” Mindful leaders in academia benefit most from expanding their focus, expanding their clarity, expanding their creativity, and expanding their compassion (Buller, 2019). Many authors acknowledge the importance of not only working on becoming a mindful leader but also introducing employees to mindfulness and mindfulness practices for optimizing performance and promoting overall wellbeing (e.g. Lemon et al. 2021, 2022, 2023; McDonough & Lemon, 2018). This systematic review examined how leaders in higher education develop and enact mindful leadership and what are the positive effects in result.
The following three questions guided the review:
1) How do leaders in higher education use mindfulness?
2) What are the outcomes of implementing mindfulness practices by leaders in higher education?
3) What are the positive effects of mindful leadership among higher educators?

Method:
A systematic literature review helps to confirm existing and identify new practices, to uncover the international evidence, and to identify and inform areas for future research. The literature search focused on positive effects of mindful leadership research articles in regards to higher educators. Databases searched included Web of Science, ERIC, and Google Scholar. The search terms used were: higher education, leadership, and mindful*. The research articles were selected for the review in accordance with specific predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Results:
Studies that collected data from leaders and employees in higher education were included in the review. Mindfulness and mindful leadership were found to help with optimizing performance, preventing burnout, and to have overall positive effects on higher educators’ wellbeing.

Conclusion:
The findings of this review highlight the need for further research to strengthen the evidence of positive effects of mindful leadership in relation to higher educators. The next step for the researchers will be to design and implement a set of professional development workshops on mindful leadership for educators and study the positive effects of such an endeavor.

References:
[1] Buller, J. L. (2019). Mindful leadership: An insight-based approach to college administration. Rowman & Littlefield.
[2] Kabat-Zinn, et al. (1992). Effectiveness of a meditation-based stress reduction program in the treatment of anxiety disorders. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 936–943.
[3] Lemon, N. et al. (Eds). (2021-2023). Wellbeing and Self-care in Higher Education (7 books). Routledge.
[4] McDonough, S., & Lemon, N. (2018). Mindfulness in the Academy: An Examination of Mindfulness Perspectives. In Mindfulness in the Academy : Practices and Perspectives from Scholars. (pp. 1–21). Springer.
[5] Wells, C. M. (2022). Mindful Leadership: A Way of Being Under Construction. In The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management Discourse (pp. 1-16). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Keywords:

Mindful Leadership, higher education, mindfulness.