Back with another episode of Space to Think and it feels like just the right one for this moment in time. In this episode, I chat with Maggie Farrar about presence in leadership. Maggie has worked in Education for many years as a teacher and as a leader, and found that her personal mindfulness practice was a cornerstone of her leadership practice. Having trained as a mindfulness practitioner, her work with leaders focuses on supporting others to cultivate mindfulness in life and work.
We explore how mindfulness practice and wellbeing, in general, have become more acceptable to talk about and how well they integrate into leadership practice and development. Maggie has a wonderful way of honouring the tradition in which her work sits and sharing it in a way that engages and supports busy, tired and often overwhelmed leaders.
In 2022, Maggie published her book Leading With Presence, It’s An Inside Job. Her experience of leadership programmes was that they tended to focus on the outer world of leadership, leaving the inner world of leaders neglected and unexplored. She hopes that her book helps to re-dress the imbalance and supports leaders in cultivating awareness and practical ways of developing mindfulness and presence.
I love that connections and threads are emerging between and across my Space to Think conversations. Maggie mentions those micro-moments of pause and attention that Robert Poynton also talked about in episode 1, as simple as pausing to consider how we enter a room and where you place your attention.
So let me invite you to take a micro-moment to stop and pause before you join our conversation.
Connect with Maggie via her website or on X.
Next episode: Leadership with Peter Dewitt
Thanks for listening to Space to Think, a podcast where I create space to think through conversations with guests exploring their knowledge, insights and stories.
Each conversation holds the potential for ideas to grow wild.
E.6 Cultivating Presence in Leadership with Maggie Farrar