Designing an Educational Mindfulness Experience for Future Leaders

Abstract

Living in a world filled with mindful leaders is the vision of the Mindfulness & Leadership Club at MIT Sloan School of Management. Yet, the path to developing mindful leaders within an academic setting is unclear and ill-defined. This study uses human-centered design research to develop principles for designing a graduate student educational mindfulness experience. The goal of the experience is to enable graduate students to build a sustainable mindfulness practice and learn how mindfulness applies to leadership. The primary research question explored is: how might we use design research to create a mindfulness experience for students that builds a lasting habit and develops future mindful leaders? Secondary research provides insight to understand both the benefits of mindfulness and mindful leadership and existing methods for teaching mindfulness. Findings illustrate the value of mindfulness and mindful leadership, but existing programs do not focus on connecting mindfulness to leadership or focus on graduate students in an academic setting. Primary research, consisting of one survey (n = 52) and 34 interviews, validates the need for mindfulness education within the MIT Sloan graduate student community and informs a refined definition of mindfulness and mindful leadership. Barriers hindering students from developing a habit of mindfulness are identified with recommendations for addressing those barriers. Research findings result in eight design principles that serve to guide the development of a mindful leadership program for graduate students at MIT Sloan, which can be adapted to meet the needs of different graduate school programs. Future efforts can build on this work by co-creating an educational experience for prototyping and testing. To supplement this work, additional research be conducted into existing graduate student mindfulness programs, habit building, and adult learning processes.