New-look Mindful Command bulletin

I’ve moved my writing to Substack. I intend to maintain a weekly newsletter writing rhythm - but I think I’m going to enjoy it more here.

For those of you who’ve been reading my weekly bulletins for a while, you’ll still receive them every Friday morning. I’ve migrated my mailing list over from Mailchimp and, as far as I know, that means you can read my posts without having to join Substack if you don’t want to.

Or, if you’re already on Substack then please subscribe directly to see other posts / comments from me whenever I’m inspired to write them.

Fyi: my posts will always be free to all subscribers. I won’t be activating a paywall.

Who’s my writing for?

My writing is for people curious about aligning who they are with how they lead.

As leaders, parents, partners, friends, colleagues, we’re all responsible for how we show up and impact others. If we do that in a way that’s true to who we are, we’re more likely to have the impact we want.

That, in is simplest form, is leadership.

A word about my work

I’m known for two things: the Pause Tool and Mindful Command.

The Pause Tool

When I first started coaching around 20 years ago, I kept coming back to this question: how do human beings actually make behavioural change stick?

While at an individual level the answer to that is complex and nuanced, there are three requirements of behavioural change that apply to us all:

1. Awareness: noticing what’s happening, how you’re feeling, what you’re saying and doing, and how you’re impacting others.

2. Responsibility: this thing is yours to do and no-one else’s.

3. Space: to think and act consciously.

The first two requirements are generally well understood, but ‘space’…? Back then at least, less so.

Because in our frantically busy world, it can feel very hard to create the space we need to make the change we want.

That’s why I developed the ‘pause tool’. A simple 3-step inner process that enables you to stop saying or doing the things that no longer serve you and choose to say or do something else.

You simply press an imaginary pause button somewhere around your solar plexus (the base of your sternum), shift your focus to it, and breathe gently in and out.

Ridiculously simple really. And yet, it’s been the thing that has changed people’s lives. I get this feedback all the time.

Mindful Command

Over the last 45 years of being an officer in the UK’s Royal Navy, a business leader, and a leadership coach, I’ve found that impactful leaders all have the capacity to quieten the voices in their heads and speak and act only from their own true voice. When they speak, people listen.

Those leaders have certain qualities in common: they are aware, clear, grounded, stable, and ready to do the right thing in any situation.

Drawing on this experience, I’ve developed the Mindful Command framework: a holistic and practical guide to embodying these qualities from the inside out. It’s for leaders who want to increase their impact by cultivating the right blend of being and doing.

The doing part of Mindful Command is founded on the military principles of ‘commander’s intent’ and ‘mission command’ – a leadership approach that combines clarity of intent with delegated decision-making. The being part embraces the grounded awareness and presence of mindfulness.

The framework itself is formed of four interconnected foundations with supporting tools and practices:

In future posts I’ll talk about each of the four foundations in turn.

With love from the mountain,

Sally-Anne

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