Mindful of Authority: Exploring the practice of meditation, mindfulness, and leadership with commissioned Canadian police officers.
Date
2023-12-07
Authors
Sylven, Les
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Abstract
Police leaders in Canada are facing a daunting series of new challenges that will require significant personal resources to address. In addition to ensuring their organizations are evolving to meet greater community expectations, they must also address a crisis of wellness occurring inside many of their organizations. Mindfulness, meditation, and other related contemplative practices appear to benefit leaders in other professions; however, little is known about how these mental practices may, or may not, be helpful for police leaders. Accordingly, this exploratory qualitative study set out to answer the research question, “How might meditation and mindfulness practice support police leaders in Canada?” Guided by a reflective thematic analysis approach, data from semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 11 Canadian Commissioned Officers who have regular meditation practices were analyzed and the results are presented in three manuscripts. The first manuscript examines the specific practices these Officers engaged in and why they began meditating. The second explores their perceptions of how meditation influences their leadership. The third investigates how participants believe meditation and mindfulness training should be introduced into their large Canadian police service. This dissertation concludes with a summary of the findings across the manuscripts, as well as the potential study limitations and areas for future research. Although this study extends aspects of the literature on mindful leadership into policing, and provides practical suggestions for introducing mindfulness to police organizations, it also identifies the need for significantly more research to understand if mindful leadership could become a catalyst for police reform.
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Keywords
Police Leadership, Mindfulness, meditation, and contemplative practice, Canadian Police Leadership Challenges, Mindful Leadership