Be less reactive. A buddhist monk shares practical strategies for mindful leadership

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Welcome to Meet the Leader, the podcast where top leaders share how they're tackling the world's toughest challenges.

In today's episode, an entrepreneur who's also an ordained Buddhist monk shares how we can all be a little bit more calm and a little less reactive.

Subscribe to Meet The Leader on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your favorite podcasts, and please don't forget to rate and review us. I'm Linda Lacina from the World Economic Forum. And this is Meet the Leader.

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Knowing how and when to pause before reacting, that space between the tension of reacting and the stimuli is everything.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Quick question: do you react more than you reflect? That's a hard balance to strike, especially in this very fast-paced world that rewards quick decisions more than good thinking.

As we all know, being too reactive can be harmful. It makes us overlook long-term priorities, big goals we've set. It might even make us make assumptions about people's intentions, damaging assumptions that create fuzz and friction and make it harder to get big things done.

One man can help with that. Shogun Mahadumrongkul. He is a Thai entrepreneur, a deep tech and AI investor, and the founder of Avant Labs. It's an incubator that advises founders from emerging markets on things like how to go to market or find investments. But critically for us, he's a Buddhist monk who helped launch the Zenful Institute. That is a leadership platform rooted in mindfulness, human connection, and purpose that helps burnt out corporates and executive types reclaim their agency, refine their purpose, and refind their North Star.

He talked to my colleague Anna Bruce-Lockhart in Geneva this summer about how leaders can use practical mindfulness to be less reactive, more calm, and more reflective. He'll share a slew of mindsets that can help anyone be more effective and sidestep the short-term thinking that can hold our biggest goals back.

They'll get into all of that, but first, they'll talk about his journey into Zen Buddhism.

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Had grown up in quite a spiritual family, so I was ordained as a Buddhist monk three times in my life and I've always been instilled with like the importance of being mindful and like understanding my inner world and everything else. I think it's extremely important to have that inner peace in order to do anything else in life. The self-understanding that comes from understanding the roots of your psyche and emotion through meditation practices is extremely important in navigating today's society. It's very busy out there and so having a groundedness that comes from these practices is very helpful.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader So you say you were ordained three times. Talk us through it.

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Ordination in the Buddhist context in Thailand, it's more common than you think. When I ordained the first two times, I was ordained as a novice monk at the age of nine and fifteen. At the age nine, my parents wanted me to go into the temple because it was the place to teach me meditation and discipline. But the second time, I really found inner peace and I wanted to go in to learn more ancient practices of Buddhism and mindfulness. And the last time that I went, I wanted sort of, you know, readjust, recalibrate. I ordained as a full monk instead of a novice monk, following many more precepts than before. And it was a way for me to come back to my roots and understand where I'm going to head, which allowed me to go into the investment space and launch the incubator that I did today.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader If you are pretty committed to a career as a Buddhist monk, and for most people I think, I assume that that would mean leaving the world behind, but that's not the case in your case. So how did you marry the two?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder I found a lot of inner peace when I was a monk, and actually when there I heard a lot of stories from the head monk, from farmers. At that time Thailand in 2011 had one of the worst flood crises in 50 years. And at that time I wanted to help the monk consoled them spiritually, but I wanted to support them in other ways as well. And that's why I carried the same spirit of wanting to help people gain inner peace, but also resolving their physical plights. And that's why I left the monkhood, but carrying the same spirit to help people and support them.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader You've brought Zen philosophy into leadership development. What does Zen offer today's leaders that traditional philosophy might not?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder So there's a few ways that zen is very helpful for today's leaders. The first is the concept of a beginner's mind. So we're starting problems or new activities from a place of humility. It's very important in entrepreneurship and in the workplace because they have to flatten their ego and look at the problem as if they're a beginner. Sometimes they're so fixated on the same problems that they keep allocating budgets to something that doesn't have a clear outcome. But then once you lower that ego and start as a beginner, you're much more agile and adaptable and are able to understand things from a place of guess-first principles. And the second thing is understanding the concept of impermanent. In our world there's a lot of changes that are happening and we need to be able to adapt to these changes because nothing is permanent and certain. Just as in the world of entrepreneurship things are always constantly adapting the markets are always evolving and so if you don't evolve or change you will die and so this concept directly applies to to corporates because once they know this concept they'll be able to pivot much faster and they don't have to hold on to something that doesn't generate revenue or that doesn't sell anymore.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader Just knowing when to let go and to move on.

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder I think it's about seeing things the way that they are and knowing that sometimes we can't control, don't have everything under our control. So we can only try our best. Maybe there's a strategy that one can be very convinced in, but then that might fail as well. So like being able to keep trying and pivot and adapt to the market conditions, being so fixated is a very important component of Zen.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader But how do you do that? So like, you know, you're having a bit of an ego fight with a colleague who's trying to get ahead of you maybe, or maybe your boss doesn't appreciate all the good work that you've done and you feel underappreciated. There's a lot of ego involved there, right? There's quite justified indignation. Every day brings up a new ego challenge, doesn't it? What do you tell people who are suffering from those kind of daily challenges?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder I think that it's important to practice compassion in one of the mindfulness practices, trying to understand the world from other people's perspective. Once one does that, they'll realize that other people have perspectives that are valid as well and trying to really understand where they're coming from and being able to have conversations and clear communication with them will eventually allow one to sympathize with their point of view but at the same time reach that place of diplomatic understanding and they can collaborating in the future.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader That's very good advice, but I wouldn't know how to get from my position of being annoyed and upset to getting to a point where I'm being diplomatic. So is there a kind of trick? What do I tell myself in those moments when I'm feeling my anger rise or my indignation and I'm upset and I am not necessarily rational? How do I get back on track?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder I think mindfulness is really helpful in sharpening a leader's skill in that because it teaches you the tool of emotional regulation, knowing how and when to pause before reacting. That space between the tension of reacting and the stimuli is everything, is very important especially in tense conflicts and situations. Leaders can practice the emotional regulation comes from Vipassana, understanding how sensations arise in your emotional psyche and learn where it's coming from, but at the same time not be reactive. Ding towards it, then you can much better control anger or frustrations in the conflicts.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader Lovely idea. So you've spoken about conscious and moral leadership. What does that mean to you?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder To me, moral leadership means understanding the stakeholders who'll be involved in the decision that we make today. In the future, those people might not be sitting in the same decision-making table, and it's important to understand how our decisions will affect them and include them into the decision- making framework. In addition, it means really leading with compassion, understanding problems and solving them from a humanistic point of view and sometimes prioritizing humanity over profit. So that's my view of moral leadership. Having an intergenerational perspective in leading and making sure that all stakeholders are included.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader It's quite tough though in the real business world because it's a very competitive environment so you feel like anybody who has an approach that is a bit more empathetic, it will just slow them down and they might end up failing, so how can leaders balance that?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder I think that having values and sticking to the principles that one has, even though at times it might be more enticing to switch gears too. Prioritizing profit and short-term gains over the long run, it's important to have sets of morals and values and that should be codified into the institutions. And once we have that framework to operate from any sort of short- term external benefits that like a corporation can try to partake in, I think that they will be able to operate from a much more rational and ethical point. We want to play the long-term game here. I feel like the arc of karma is long and so customers will see your intention and they will react accordingly.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader I think there's something in that, you know when you trust a company, it's not often material signals that tell you that.

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder Yeah, I truly agree with that and we see the difference between like responsible and ethical corporations versus ones that are just like trying to cut back competition and also really earn the profits for the shareholders as much as they can at the moment because in the age of AI we have access to all the information available so customers are much more conscious about aligning the products and services that they're buying with their values and so if the company is reacting in ways that don't align with their morals, then customers eventually will step away from that.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader You mentioned taking that pause to reflect and not react to things and then that gives you an opportunity to be more constructive, I guess, and to think properly and then potentially that is more helpful.

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder Yes, I think everyone needs to reflect and constantly be more aware of what's driving them, having that time to pause and relax and also reflect. But at the same time, knowing your purpose and driving towards it, striking the right balance between the two is extremely important in this day because we're being fed with so much information that we don't have the time to be with ourselves. So this balance will be more effective in whatever we do in our daily lives.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader Now, most people think meditation is about relaxing. How has meditating influenced the way you have made decisions?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder Whenever I become stressed, I go back to meditation and breath work. And I can practice observation without judgment and see things really for the way they are, which is very useful because sometimes we encode our own personal biases towards our decisions and our day to day, I guess, like work activities, but then by understanding things the way they are, even though they're not the way that we want them to be, we can restart and we can make decisions that eventually will gear us towards where we want to be. And the second part is about a focus and a concentration. So sustained meditation really fosters that attention ability, which is important for one to separate noise from signal and learn how to prioritize the information that matters the most, which is an edge when it comes to making decisions in this fast-paced world.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader You also mentioned earlier, they have to take care of their own mental health first. But a lot of very successful people probably haven't spent a lot of time doing that and that's one of the reasons that it's so successful because they've been so single-minded about getting somewhere. How does someone know whether or not their mental health is okay?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder I think sometimes people don't know until they crash and burn or they reach a pinnacle of success and then it becomes very empty for them. And so they try to seek ways, other ways, you know, like find meaning in their lives. So it's really hard to be self-aware, but just listening to what your body truly wants and your intuition. Oftentimes you keep driving and going forward because the society wants us to keep generating value. But the best thing that we can do is sometimes just to take a break and pause and rest and understand where our intuition is guiding us and like how our traumas are coming out into this world. And we need to be aware of that energy we're putting out before we can really create a positive change. Leaders need to be aware of that. And sometimes there's a lot of successful people who are not zenful, who are mindful of that, and they create a lot of harmful effects to the world.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader Is there any salvation for a leader or even just a normal colleague who isn't really aware of the harm that they're doing? They're not particularly balanced, they're not really aware. What would you advise in that situation?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder I think that having a very honest communication with them. About how they can be improved but also like take them to a place where they can really reflect and be vulnerable Understanding the roots of why they're reacting in certain ways even like asking questions that make them more self-aware of like What's the root cause of their intentions will be good for the leaders to understand the second part is understanding their emotional Composition what drives them and how they react to external stimuli Meditation practices help with that, but it is very difficult to get someone to sit and properly meditate. So teaching them the basics of emotional regulation or wellness, because we need to be well in order for us to make an impact at all. So if they're not well or if they are always constantly stressed and don't have time to reflect, they won't know what they truly want. And so allowing them space to reflect in a retreat format or just giving them a chance to reflect through conversations will be very helpful for these leaders.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader So how do you draw the balance between sticking up for what you need to stick up for but at the same time letting go and being super zen?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder I think sometimes mindfulness teaches us not to be demotivated, it actually teaches us to be driven, but at the same time, when to keep trying and when to not. We can still be as motivated as these most assertive leaders, but have a sense of calm when things don't turn out the way that we want to, and then try to figure out new ways to pivot. And so it gives us that clarity instead of the constant drive and push towards something that sometimes doesn't matter or doesn't end up giving us the same results that we wanted. So that's what meditation gives and allows us to be. Zenful doesn't mean that we're less motivated than before but it gives us the tools to constantly pivot and see things clearly.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader And what would you advise people to do, you know, because when they clock off from work and then they go straight on their phone and they're desperate for some dopamine, like Instagram, give me the dopamine. Would you advise that people take at least like five minutes in the day at some point to just sit in and quiet?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder There's been a lot of studies and research that shows the benefits of meditation. Just five to ten minutes away a day reduces a lot anxiety in individuals and can serve as a good complement to antidepressants. And it's a very natural remediation method, right? So I think I highly recommend for people to do things that are meditative and sustain their focus, not quick pace. So journaling, reading, spending time with nature, meditating and observing your breath. This is the most fundamental thing that we can do, coming back to our breath and breathing, because it's the only constant in our lives. Knowing that at the end of the day. We are nothing but our own breath and consciousness. We come and go. From there, after we have that self-awareness, we can then engage with the world in the way that we want, know that life is finite and limited, but then it depends on what we want to do in the world, the impact that we wanna leave, but it comes from that place of self-understanding and awareness.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader Very nice. So it doesn't have to be sitting in silence, which can be quite hard.

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder I think mindfulness means being present and in touch with your emotions and inner sort of workings. So sometimes reading is very meditative and it sustains your focus as well. Obviously the most pure version of it is observing your breath and like doing vipassana meditation which is the practice of understanding external sensations and how you're emotionally reacting to it. But then there are also many other forms of ways to be mindful and meditative.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, Meet The Leader If you could encourage everyone in the business environment to adopt one daily habit, would you say that the most important daily habit is meditation?

Shogun Mahadumrongkul, Avant Labs Founder I think the most important daily habit is wellness, whatever you can do to take care of your emotional needs and physical needs because the body needs sufficient rest, but at the same time you need to understand where your emotions are throughout this whole day and come back to that centeredness. So whatever tool allows you to come back to your groundedness and centeredness, I highly recommend everyone do that every day.

Thanks so much to Anna and Shogun. And thanks so much to you for listening.

Like this episode? We ran an entire episode on tips for how to focus on what matters most last month. I’ll put a link in the show notes.

If you know someone who would be grateful to have more strategies that help them be more effective in their work day? Send them this episode.

Shogun is a member of our Global Shapers community, that’s a community from the World Economic Forum with more than 10,000 young leaders in more than 500 city hubs around the globe. They drive a range of projects from tackling climate resilience to bridging health gaps and helped 2.2 million people last year alone. You can learn more that that - i’ll have a link in the show notes.

This episode of Meet The Leader was produced and presented by me, with the interview by my colleague Anna Bruce Lockhart, editing by Taz Kelleher and Gareth Nolan driving studio production.

That’s it for now - I’m Linda Lacina with the World Economic Forum. Have a great day.