The conversation is timely considering the level of uncertainty that innovation professionals often encounter, and the disruptions that executives of all types grapple with, from economic challenges like inflation and layoffs to the conflict in the Middle East and more.
Shute focuses on the importance of mindfulness and compassion in the corporate innovation world, addressing common misconceptions that such practices might diminish an executive’s competitive edge. He shares personal experiences of using mindfulness to navigate career setbacks, and explains how a growth mindset allows leaders to respond to challenges rather than merely reacting out of fear.
Using Mindfulness as a Tool
Your background seems well suited to what is sure to be a great workshop at the FEI Summit, which will feature mindfulness as a tool for corporate leadership resiliency. Can you tell us a little more about yourself?
“At a high level, my career background was mostly in customer service leadership,” says Shute. “At LinkedIn, I was the VP of Global Customer Operations, so I had 25 years of operational leadership and customer-facing roles. I’ve had a lifelong practice, a meditation or contemplation practice. The short story is that I was able to create my own role at LinkedIn. I was the head of mindfulness and compassion for a few years there as part of our leadership development and was able to bring some of these things I’ve been personally passionate about in self-development, mindfulness, and our own internal growth to the workplace. My goal was to mainstream mindfulness and operationalize compassion in that role, and it continues to be my mission.”
Let’s talk about mindfulness in the corporate world. What’s a common misconception about mindfulness or when executives are thinking about this as a counterpart to resiliency and facing setbacks?
“One of the pushbacks with high-performing executives is they don’t want to lose their edge,” says Shute. “Sometimes they feel like if they meditate, they are not going to care about work as much anymore. I would argue these types of practices help all of us be at our best both in our personal and professional lives. I had this young woman reach out during COVID to say thank you for offering these programs. She said I’m a much better version of myself. For her, the context was she was a young mom with two little kids at home, this was the time when all the daycares were closed, so she said these practices have helped me scream at my kids less. We both kind of laughed but she went on to say these practices help me to be a better mom, a better person, a better partner, and they’re helping me be better at work. She was a salesperson with a big quota to meet. It included all the facets of her life.”
Applying a Growth Mindset
Innovation leaders face a lot of uncertainty, a lot of rejection, a lot of pivoting. Where does this mindfulness help transform fear of failure into a breakthrough opportunity?
“Part of what mindfulness does is it gives us space to really respond to life versus reacting to life,” says Shute. “Most reactions are fear based. It’s our survival system. Sometimes those aren’t the best reactions. So it gives us a little space, and with that space when we have things that aren’t going our way. One of the biggest moments in my career, I was about to get promoted to be a VP. I was really excited. I was attached to the outcome, but instead of getting promoted, we got reorganized and my job was eliminated. That was a very hard thing to deal with personally. But this mindfulness practice gave me some space to then apply a growth mindset.”
He continues, “The growth mindset shifts from all the things that are wrong and thinking about how this is not fair and I’m a victim, whatever is going on in our minds, and shifts it to OK, I may not like this but what can I do now? How can I learn from this? It’s kind of an acceptance of where I am now but then an ability to take the next step to create the future I want. That continuous movement every day, whether it’s challenging things or it’s everyday life, that’s the movement that allows us to be more at our best. Instead of just reacting through fear, we’re responding from our best selves in the way that we would like to show up.”
Slowing It Down to Reclaim Attention
The constant rapid world of the corporate environment, now with AI driving acceleration of all these different operations, how do you help leaders reclaim their attention?
Shute observes, “Attention is a foundation of mindfulness, and so it’s really in the big and little things. First, we start with motivation or intention. It’s realizing what’s going on in our lives and choosing that we want something different. The first choice might be I want to be present with my family at dinner or I want to be present in this meeting because I’m distracted by a hundred other things going on. It’s a choice.”
“Once I have that intention, then it’s these little systems that we can put in place,” he says. “It could be that you might work up to a daily meditation practice where you’re sitting and doing that for 20 minutes. You start with this intention, how about once a week, you just sit for one minute. Well, I can do that one minute. Just breathing and paying attention. If you build that habit, one minute turns into two minutes. Two minutes turns into five. One day turns into two days, and pretty soon, you start to see your life change. You start to build the habit, and it feels good. Instead of just reacting, we see ourselves responding in a healthier way, and then we want to continue to do it.”
Facing Your Fears
What’s a practical tool from your workshop that innovation leaders can take away?
“Let’s talk about fear of uncertainty, fear of failure, fear of almost everything. Fear is our natural human response to survival,” Shute says. “It’s programmed into us so deeply for survival. When I talk about reaction versus response, every one of those reactions, almost always, our first reaction is a human survival mechanism reaction. It’s realizing the difference between fear and you could say love, you could say calm, whatever the opposite you want to call the opposite of fear—safety. When you practice mindfulness daily, it’s something that counteracts that fear.”
“It could be a simple something we say to ourselves,” advises Shute. “For me, I like to put my hand on my heart or hand on my chest. When we put our hand on our heart, it’s soothing and calming. There’s science behind us when we give other people a hug, our bodies calm, we release oxytocin, it’s the good chemicals that go into our bodies. A quick hand on our heart is a calming mechanism, and then we just say something about safety. I’m OK. I’m safe. If you really want to go to the next step, one of my favorite practices is if you can say your name followed by, I love you. We work up to that, but what we’re doing is we’re calming our bodies and we’re also calming our mind.”
Bringing a Little Bit of Calm
Corporate innovators deal with their fair share of anxiety, disruption, or uncertainty. Putting all these leadership practices together, how long do you think you could start seeing effective results?
“When you start working out, how long does it take to the point where I can run a marathon?” Shute points out. “Here’s a different question. How long does it take before I start to feel better when I’m running? Every person is different. We all bring a different system or history to these practices. We can start to recognize differences immediately in our practice. Just take a long, deep breath, we can start to see immediately. How long does it take for that to then translate into our interactions with others, or translate to our ability to stay present? For some, it’s days and weeks. For others, it’s months and years. It depends on where you’re headed. How long will it take until I’m fit enough to climb Mount Everest? How long does it take until I’m able to sit and have my mind be completely quiet?”
Shute adds, “For each one of us, we get reasonable about our goals. The goal is not to be able to sit and be completely quiet. That’s almost impossible. When people think that, they often give up. That’s kind of like saying I couldn’t climb Mount Everest the first time I went hiking. What am I trying to do here? I’m just trying to bring a little bit of calm, I’m just trying to bring a little bit of presence to my life, and then bit by bit that gets better and better.”
FEI Summit Mindfulness Workshop
Scott Shute will present the workshop, “Mindfulness as a Tool for Corporate Leadership Resiliency,” during the FEI Summit, October 5 and 6. In this workshop, we’ll discuss ways to shift our mindset, build resilience and practice the skill of seeing opportunity even during setbacks. Specific skill building around being present; attention training; growth mindset; reframing ways to deal with anxiety; cognitive perspective taking; reorientation towards optimism; the power of gratitude; and systems putting it all together.
Click here for more information about the FEI: Innovation Summit
