The Secret To Becoming A Mindful Leader with Dr. Ravi Kudesia

The Anxious Achiever

Morra Aarons-Mele

Business, Careers, Management, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.7 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The most powerful leadership tool you have isn’t authority or expertise, but attention. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Ravi Kudesia, Associate Professor of Management at Temple University’s Fox School of Business, to break down the science and practice of mindful leadership. We talk about how leaders can regulate their attention, reset your energy between meetings, disrupt habitual scripts, and guide teams through ambiguity without creating panic. Ravi shares how mindfulness helps leaders read the room, experiment more effectively during change, and model emotional grounding for their teams. Get ready to rethink how you show up and discover why mindful leaders make change feel less like chaos and more like possibility. Check out our sponsors: Northwest Registered Agent - Protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes! Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/achieverfree In this Episode, You Will Learn 00:00 How do you prepare to teach, lead, and be present? 07:00 How to reset between meetings and clear “attentional residue.” 09:45 A breathing reset you can use anywhere to calm your system. 14:30 Why leaders must shift from individualistic to relational leadership mindsets. 21:15 How a leader’s internal state shapes the emotional health of the entire team. 27:15 How do you lead through change? 33:00 Why middle leaders must become adapters and experiment in ambiguity. 39:45 How leaders can ask better questions in the middle of uncertainty. 43:00 How attuning to energy in the room changes the way leaders lead. 46:30 What leaders do to cultivate mindfulness? Resources + Links Get a copy of my book - The Anxious Achiever Watch the podcast on YouTube Find more resources on our website morraam.com Follow Follow me: on LinkedIn @morraaronsmele + Instagram @morraam Follow Ravi on LinkedIn: @rskudesia

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	When you're building a business, it's about a lot more than a great product or service.
0:07.6	Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com
0:13.1	slash paid achiever.
0:18.6	You know you want to start a business.
0:34.3	What you may not know is how to make it a reality. GoDaddy got you. Just visit goaddy.com to get started. That's go daddy.com. Premium features require a paid subscription. See terms on site.
0:42.8	What if you could be a better leader, a better colleague, a better friend, a better partner,
0:46.7	just by tuning in and paying attention to the present moment?
0:50.9	I'm Maura Aaron's Mealy, and this is the anxious achiever, the show that looks at the intersection of mental health and leadership and
0:54.8	work and asks, how can we do it all better? My guest today is Dr. Ravi Kedesia, who's an associate
1:02.4	professor of management at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. And he studies
1:08.7	mindful leadership. Surprise, surprise, leaders who are more mindful get better results.
1:15.7	Now, if you're like me, you've read a lot about mindfulness, you try to practice mindfulness,
1:20.5	but what does mindfulness look like in the middle of a stressful, busy day, in the middle of a
1:27.3	meeting that gets tense, in the middle of
1:29.3	scary change. It looks like tuning in to the immediate present, not diving into the future
1:37.6	or reflecting on the past, but really being there with people. And that's what we'll talk about
1:44.1	today and how to implement
1:45.4	mindful leadership tools. I'm Maura Erin Smealy, and this is the anxious achiever, the show
1:51.9	that looks at the intersection of mental health and leadership and work and asks, how can we do it
1:56.8	all better? I love this episode with Dr. Kedasia because it's super practical. We'll do
2:02.3	breathing exercises and he'll show us tools to really focus our attention, bring it into the
2:09.1	present and get more mindful with ourselves and our teams. I think you'll agree with me that
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Morra Aarons-Mele, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Morra Aarons-Mele and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.