Heavy Networking 636: Mindfulness And IT Leadership

Today on Heavy Networking we’re talking about mindfulness in the workplace. More specifically, we’ll look at how mindfulness practice could help your IT career, both for workers and leaders, or folks thinking about moving into a leadership role. You might be thinking “If we’re talking IT careers shouldn’t this be about Python or BGP or which cloud cert to get?” And yes, the technical side of the job is important. But you, your coworkers, and bosses  have feelings and behaviors and personalities, and all those things can interact in ways that can be positive, negative, or even toxic. Mindfulness, which is about being aware of your senses and feelings in the moment, could be a useful tool to help you navigate the human side of a high-stress, high-stakes profession. Our guest is Jennifer “JJ” Minella. She’s an IT practitioner, network architect, author, and the founder and principal advisor of Viszen Security. She also conducts workshops on mindfulness for infosec leaders. This episode was inspired by an article JJ wrote for the Packet Pushers Human Infrastructure newsletter on mindfulness and IT leadership. We discuss: * A working definition of mindfulness * Different types of mindfulness practice * What mindfulness has to do with IT work and IT leadership * How mindfulness can help build resilience, strengthen relationships, improve performance * Fostering mindfulness in ourselves and others * More Sponsor: Juniper Apstra Apstra’s intent-based multi-vendor networking solution helps you build your data center network to a specific design, and then make sure it stays within that spec. Apstra enables deployment automation and continuous validation. Find out more at juniper.net/packetpushers/apstra. Show Links: Mindfulness-Based Leadership For IT – Human Infrastructure @jjx – Jennifer Minella on Twitter SecurityUncorked.com – Jennifer’s blog Wireless Security Architecture: Designing And Maintaining Secure Wireless For The Enterprise – Wiley Meditation Timer App Mindspace App