Written by Aang Lakey, Life Coach, Consultant & Speaker
Aang Lakey is the founder and CEO of Increasing Consciousness, a company dedicated to facilitating global equity through leadership coaching and education. Aang is well known for connecting key research areas in the self-development, human intelligence, DEI, and violence prevention realms to empower leaders to facilitate systemic change.
Embracing daily practices that enhance consciousness not only elevates personal growth but also transforms leadership effectiveness. The practices covered below are designed to foster mindfulness, emotional intelligence, intentional listening, and sustainable habits. By integrating these tools into your daily routine, you can cultivate a leadership style that is more inclusive, intentional, and impactful.
Top 10 practices to increase your leadership consciousness
1. Mindfulness meditation
There are many different types of mindfulness meditations, from breath awareness and walking meditations to guided and unguided practices. The tip here is to start each day with a few minutes of mindful meditation that works for you so that you can begin to cultivate presence and awareness.
Practical application:
Try a breathing practice: Practice deep breathing exercises, box breathing, or a 1:4:2 before starting your workday and 4:7:8 ratio breath practice for a few minutes to relax at the end of the day.
Aang’s tip: If these feel too complex, start with slow breathing, counting your breaths from 1 to 10, and start over every time you reach 10. Just focus your attention on your breath for 3-5 minutes and work your way up to 15-30 minutes.
Try an app: Use a meditation app like Insight Timer, Headspace or Calm for a 10-minute guided session each morning. Even YouTube has plenty of free meditations!
2. Reflective journaling
Dedicate time to reflect on daily experiences, emotions, and thoughts, helping to bring unconscious patterns to light. Reflecting on our experiences is the only way that we can develop our self-awareness and actively shape who we want to be. Whether it is as a person in general or as a leader, we must dedicate time to reflect on our actions and how they have impacted others. And even more importantly, how will we change our behaviors based on what we learned?
Daily reflection prompts:
Exploring a challenging situation: Journal about a challenging situation you faced, how you handled it, and how you might handle it better in the future.
What you learned: Spend five minutes each evening writing about three things you learned that day and how you can integrate that knowledge into your life or leadership style.
Goals and progress: Write down your goals for the next day, week, or month, and reflect on your progress towards your long-term goals. What do you want to achieve in the short term and how will you get there? Have you made progress toward your long-term goals and do you need to make any adjustments to get there? Don’t forget to celebrate your small wins and practice gratitude for all that you accomplished!
3. Emotional check-ins
Regularly check in with your emotions throughout the day to understand and manage them effectively. We cannot hope to effectively regulate our emotions if we do not have a basic understanding of our own highs and lows and what that looks and feels like in our bodies. If we want to master our emotional regulation, which is non-negotiable for leadership, then we must first be able to sit in and acknowledge our emotions and how they are impacting us daily.
Emotional awareness examples:
Morning check-ins: Start your day by identifying and recording your current emotional state and monitoring it over the long term. Our habitual patterns start with our daily routines. Are you setting yourself up for success with a morning routine that capitalizes on your emotional state?
Set reminders to check-in: Set reminders to pause and check in with your emotions at midday and end of the day. Life is complicated and ever-evolving. If we want to check in with ourselves more regularly to have more control over our emotional states, we need to remind ourselves to take time to check in and document where we are.
Record and track emotions: Use a mood-tracking app to log your feelings and identify patterns over time. Do you notice any habitual emotions? Are they tied to specific events or activities? How can you organize your day to capitalize on your emotional insights?
4. Practice gratitude
Incorporate a gratitude practice into your daily routine, acknowledging and appreciating positive aspects of your day and interactions with others. This is one of the most important practices that we can do for our overall health and well-being. Acknowledging gratitude helps to keep us grounded in all that we have in the world.
Gratitude examples:
Three things you are grateful for: Write down three things you are grateful for each morning and evening. Be specific and share exactly what it is that you are grateful for and why you are grateful for it. When we can put our lives into perspective, it helps us to understand where we truly are and balance our desires with all that we already have.
Positive interactions: At the end of the day, reflect on at least one positive interaction you had. Our brains have a tendency to only focus on the negative experiences we have. By forcing ourselves to acknowledge at least one positive experience, we are forming new neural connections and teaching our brains to find and celebrate the positives.
Sharing kindness & appreciation: Send a thank-you note or kind message to a colleague or team member once a week. This is one of the simplest and easiest ways to spread joy, both for ourselves and others. It may only take you a few minutes, but it will sit with others throughout their day. Sometimes even weeks or years!
5. Body awareness and tension release
Practice recognizing and releasing tension in your body through techniques such as deep breathing, stretching, or progressive muscle relaxation. Everyone carries stress and tension in their body every day and if we do not take time to release it, it can have disastrous effects on our health and wellbeing. This is especially important when we know we have to enter into a stressful situation and do not want to bring our previous tension into the dynamic.
Body scan and relaxation techniques
Practice a five-minute body scan meditation to identify and release tension. Even if you haven’t mastered releasing tension in your body through various practices, this practice is still extremely beneficial for identifying where we hold stress and tension in our body and offers us insights on how we might best manage our own self-care.
Use progressive muscle relaxation techniques during breaks to reduce stress and increase focus. Anyone who has ever worked in a stressful environment knows how critical this skill is. If we can periodically relax muscular areas in our body, we can teach our body to let go of unnecessary tension, improving our overall health and well-being.
Incorporate stretching or yoga into your morning or evening routine. Movement is one of the best ways to release stress and stored trauma from our bodies. By developing a simple movement routine, we can force our bodies to let go and release unnecessary tension.
6. Enhance cultural awareness
Engage in activities that enhance cultural intelligence, such as reading about different cultures or attending events that focus on sharing unique identities and perspectives. The biggest mistake we can make in our leadership is to not understand the unique needs of the people we work with. By bringing intention to our learning and understanding of other cultures and identities, we can create space for the people in our lives who want to be seen and heard as their authentic selves.
Cultural learning plan examples:
Dedicate time: Dedicate time each week to read articles or books on different cultures, identities, and perspectives. No single person can know or understand everything about all the unique identities that exist in the world, but we can dedicate time each week to make sure we are learning as much as possible. Especially for the specific identities and cultures that we have on our teams.
Learn in new ways: Attend cultural events or webinars to broaden your understanding and appreciation. Learning about new cultures or identities doesn’t have to be just reading google insights or news articles. Take the museums or monthly heritage events in your local area. Have you ever been to a transgender day of remembrance? Ever tasted various cultural cuisines? Ever been to an Indian wedding?
Expand your awareness: Initiate conversations with colleagues from diverse backgrounds to learn about their experiences. Everyone on our teams brings a wealth of knowledge in things that we may never understand ourselves. Engaging in meaningful dialogue with our team members can help us to expand and grow, while also cultivating deeper relationships with those we lead.
7. Embody intentional listening
Practice active and empathetic listening in all interactions to fully understand and connect with others. When we do not intentionally listen to the people in our lives, this can create a biased perception that we do not care about what they have to say and can compromise our trust and credibility. Practicing intentional listening demonstrates that we genuinely care and can help to increase psychological safety.
Active listening examples:
Don’t interrupt others: During meetings, focus on the speaker without interrupting, and summarize their points afterward. This one seems simple, but you’d be surprised how often this basic rule is overlooked. Remember that the most effective communication is simple in theory and difficult in practice. Make sure you consistently remind yourself to stick to the basics.
Confirm understanding: Practice reflective listening by repeating back what someone has said to confirm understanding. Make sure to ask them if you captured what they are trying to share effectively and give a safe space for them to provide corrections.
Ask open-ended questions: Use open-ended questions in conversations to encourage others to share more. Even when we may need a direct response or think we know the best answer, we can still skillfully ask open-ended questions that allow room for other perspectives and invite opportunities to expand the dialogue.
8. Consistent self-evaluation
Regularly assess your actions and decisions to ensure they align with your conscious leadership goals and values. We cannot create change in our lives if we do not have an understanding of what needs to be adjusted. Regularly reflecting on how you can grow will help to ensure that you can take meaningful action toward your desired end state.
Self-evaluation examples:
Ask yourself daily if you acted in alignment with your values and goals and write down the specific behaviors and actions that were in alignment with your specific goals/values. If you cannot think of any examples, this is a clear indicator that you need to be more intentional in modeling behaviors that demonstrate your values.
Rate your performance on key leadership behaviors and identify areas for improvement weekly. What areas did you do particularly well at this week? What behaviors could you be more intentional about in the following week?
Reflect on feedback received from colleagues and how you can incorporate it. Can you remove the emotions or ego from the feedback to address the root concerns presented? Once you have identified the core areas raised, can you then find ways to be more intentional about demonstrating changed behavior in those areas?
Set a personal development goal based on your self-evaluation results and review progress monthly. Once you have identified key areas for your personal and professional growth, how will you specifically take actions towards those areas and how will you demonstrate those behaviors in practice?
9. Community engagement
Actively participate in building and maintaining supportive communities, both within and outside your organization. This helps to encourage and empower you to live in alignment as well as provides a valuable space where you can be held accountable to the standards you’ve set for yourself.
Community involvement examples:
Join a professional group or network and actively participate in events and discussions. Plan to contribute both as an individual and as a mentor or sponsor. People are much more willing to engage in meaningful ways if you can demonstrate that you can be both a work in progress and successfully leading your teams.
Volunteer for a community project or initiative related to your interests or expertise. Not only does this demonstrate your commitment to specific causes, but it also provides more impactful ways for you to engage with others.
Organize regular team-building activities that foster a sense of community and belonging within your organization, while also creating a space for community accountability. Teams are much more likely to be willing to hold others appropriately accountable when they have already navigated difficult circumstances as a team and succeeded.
10. Set purposeful and meaningful goals
Set clear, intentional goals aligned with your values and revisit them regularly to stay focused and motivated. One of the biggest obstacles to living in congruence with your values is not being able to articulate where you are and where you are going at any given time. By consistently setting and reviewing goals, you can bring intention to the goals you have for yourself and more easily act in alignment with the direction you seek.
Examples:
Break down big goals: Break down a long-term goal into smaller, manageable steps to track and monitor progress. This helps us to see and celebrate small wins that encourage us to keep taking action toward our larger goals, while also giving opportunities to others to recognize and join our cause.
Review and track goal progress: Review and adjust your goals weekly to ensure they remain aligned with your overall vision. Sometimes the goals we think were the key areas to focus on turn out to be just a stepping stone to a larger goal or a roadmap to readjust our direction. Either way, reviewing where we are and where we are going provides valuable insight for our best next steps.
Smart goals: Set a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goal for a project. While this approach can sometimes prevent us from thinking in bigger and more comprehensive terms, it is helpful to make sure that we keep ourselves on track and that we have identified areas that can actually be accomplished. This is especially important as we navigate the complexity of equity work and consciousness related topics.
Pro tip: Be intentional and find consistency
Integrating intentionality and consistency into each practice ensures that your actions resonate positively with yourself, your teams, and your broader community.
Recognize the impact: Evaluate the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual impact of your daily routines and make adjustments that are in alignment with your values.
Embody practices that work for you: Find personalized ways to integrate sustainable practices into your daily life for long-term benefits.
Build community for accountability: Foster a culture of sustainability within your teams through regular discussions and collective action and explore ways to incorporate practices into your one-on-ones, team meetings, and group events.
By incorporating these practices into your daily routines with a focus on sustaining your practices, you can foster an environment of growth, resilience, and positive change within yourselves and your organizations.
Ready to take the next step and you’re not sure where to start?
Check out the free resources in my member portal with access to meditations and courses on gratitude, mindfulness, self-care, and more!
Read more from Aang Lakey
Aang Lakey, Life Coach, Consultant & Speaker
Aang Lakey is a leader in ushering in a new wave of global consciousness. Their work facilitates global equity by educating and coaching leadership teams to integrate reflexivity, intentionality, and anti-oppressive practices into their daily lives and leadership styles. Through the principle of refraction, Aang encourages leaders to touch as many people as possible by living with integrity and emanating congruence in their leadership. Their approach is simple: elevate your own consciousness and watch the ripple effect that has on every aspect of your life and with every person you interact with.
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