Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Janice Marturano served as the Vice President of Public Responsibility and Deputy General Counsel for General Mills, Inc. for 15 years. In the early 2000s, she played a key role in the merger of General Mills and Pillsbury, working to secure anti-trust clearance from the Federal Trade Commission. An officer from Pillsbury told her that if she couldn’t get the deal approved, 10,000 people would likely lose their jobs.
During the 18 months it took to get the deal approved, Janice often worked 14-hour days. Six months into the process, her mother passed away. Six months after that, her father passed away. She was exhausted.
Once the deal went through, Janice thought she would find the time to grieve and to regain the energy she needed to function each day. It didn’t happen until she discovered the practice of mindfulness.
The practice not only helped her to grieve, and recoup her energy, it helped her to lead with increased clarity, focus, and calm. She gradually began helping her peers at General Mills to practice mindful leadership as well. Janice has been teaching mindfulness ever since.
In 2011, she left General Mills to found the Institute for Mindful Leadership, a non-profit organization dedicated to training and supporting leaders in the exploration of mindfulness and the fundamentals of leadership excellence.
The institute has brought the intensive training of mindful leadership to corporate, non-profit, academic, government, and military leaders.
In 2013, Janice was invited to share her understanding of the importance of mindful leadership a
t the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and again at the 2014 World Economic Forum Conference in Tianjin, China.
Janice is also the author of an excellent book called Finding the Space to Lead, which I highly recommend.
In this episode you’ll get a chance to learn the following from Janice:
- How mindfulness training helps us to develop the influence that is essential for leadership, with or without a title
- How a simple, mindfulness –based tactic that can dramatically improve the productivity of meetings, and thereby reduce the number of meetings we have
- How mindfulness training helps us to create the win-win-win situations that tend to result in better long-term business outcomes
- How the way you brush your teeth can affect your leadership effectiveness
To connect with Janice, please visit http://instituteformindfulleadership.org/.
If you’re interested in attending a workshop or retreat with Janice this fall, please visit http://instituteformindfulleadership.org/course-and-workshops/.
Show Notes
3:19 – Janice’s life goal
4:11 – How mindfulness training helps us to develop the influence that is essential for leadership, with or without a title
8:04 – Janice’s core values
10:07 – A simple, mindfulness –based tactic that can dramatically improve the productivity of meetings, and thereby reduce the number of meetings we have
14:31 – The greatest personal struggle mindfulness helped Janice overcome
17:23 – The greatest professional benefit she’s received from practicing mindfulness
19:49 – How mindfulness training helps us to create the win-win-win situations that tend to result in better long-term business outcomes
25:00 – The four qualities of leadership excellence that are developed with mindful leadership training
28:57 – Why mindfulness is not about “clearing your mind,” the only three things you need to begin a daily mindfulness practice, and a few things you certainly don’t need
33:44 – How to transform brushing your teeth into an opportunity for leadership development
40:51 – How mindfulness can help us transform a negative habitual reaction into an opportunity to change someone’s life forever in a positive way
46:50 – Why positive thinking won’t work unless you do this first
51:26 – How mindfulness training helps us lead through inspiration instead of leading through expectations
55:35 – The book Janice is currently reading = Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
55:50 – Her favorite online resources for mindful leadership = Mindful.org and the leadership blogs on the website for the Institute for Mindful Leadership
56:40 – Some of her favorite living teachers of mindfulness = Jon Kabat-Zinn, Sharon Salzberg, Mingyur Rinpoche, and Saki Santorelli
57:14 – Favorite retreat center = Menla Mountain Retreat Center
57:38 – Favorite books on mindfulness = Joseph Goldstein, John Terrant, Mary Oliver, Read My Pins by Madeleine Albright, and It Worked for Me by Colin Powell
59:09 – If Janice had 60 seconds left to live, here’s the advice she would give how to live an awesome life
Are you enjoying this podcast? Would you like to help share the miracle of mindfulness?
If so, please take a moment to subscribe on iTunes and leave an honest review. Here’s the link –
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mindfulness-edge-podcast-mindfulness/id1122150502
And, if you’re so moved, please share the podcast with anyone you like.