BLACKSBURG, Va., March 30, 2009 – Noted author and former business executive Michael Carroll will present on "The Mindful Leader and the Wisdom of 'Achieving Nothing'" on Monday, April 6 at 4 p.m. in the Multipurpose Room of the Graduate Life Center at Donaldson Brown.
His lecture will focus on how mindfulness meditation can help us build successful, healthy careers.
“As organizational leaders it seems that we are always trying to grow the business, meet the deadline, close the deal, and finish the project. And the speed and pace can be intense - getting it done faster, better, cheaper and smarter,” says Carroll. “Such a style of leadership with all its ambition and energy has its benefits no doubt, but it also has a profound blind spot: in our relentless pursuit of ‘success,’ we too often forget to live our lives. When we lead a career that is excessively focused on being more successful, more admired or just more comfortable, we can deceive ourselves into neglecting the world around us, where we end up managing our lives like projects rather than actually living them.
Bringing his unique experience as a corporate executive and mindfulness meditation teacher to the discussion, Carroll helps people understand how to better appreciate and develop one’s most valued leadership asset: the mind. Participants will learn meditation and explore mindfulness principles for developing clarity, wisdom and inspiration when facing life’s daily joys, demands, and surprises.
Carroll is the author of Awake at Work (Shambhala 2004) and The Mindful Leader (Shambhala 2007) and over his 26 year business career has held executive positions with such companies as Shearson Lehman/American Express, Simon & Schuster, and The Walt Disney Company.