Mindfulness in the Workplace with Faisal Hoque

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Yeah, I could start there.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:16)
Shiny and new.

**Stephen** (0:19)
So yeah, I got the Love Boat theme song stuck in my head because my daughter is watching the show. Faisal, it sounds like you need a boat yourself. What's going on with the office there?

**Faisal Hoque** (0:29)
Yeah, I do. Well, office is kind of messed up. Water came through the wall, destroyed the floor, destroyed the wall, had to reseal the wall, redoing the floor. At some point, I thought I'd put a heated floor because we live in East Coast and it's cold. I mean, we have snow outside, right? So now I'm forced to put a heated floor.
That's my week.

**Stephen** (0:56)
There you go. Yeah. I think the last rainstorm we had, I had like 10, 12 buckets out. It was just nuts. I'm like, this is nuts.

**Faisal Hoque** (1:04)
Anyway, that's unpredictable.

**Stephen** (1:07)
Yep. For sure. Welcome to the show, everyone. This is The Bliss Business Podcast. I'm joined by my co-hosts Mike Lusky and Tulio Siragusa. Today's conversation centers on a powerful, yet sometimes misunderstood concept of mindfulness in the workplace. Mindfulness is more than meditation or stress reduction. It's a leadership tool that enhances clarity, resilience, and decision-making. In today's business environment, leaders who cultivate mindfulness don't just survive, they thrive. Mike, why don't you introduce our guest today?
Yeah.

**Mike Lusky** (1:45)
Looking forward to doing that, Stephen. Thank you so much. Our guest today is Faisal Hoque. He's a serial entrepreneur, best-selling author, and a thought leader as well, who's dedicated his career to exploring the intersection of mindfulness, innovation, and business transformation. We're going to have a very interesting conversation. He's the founder of Shadoka. It's an organization focused on enabling sustainable business growth through innovation, transformation, and mindful leadership. He's also been recognized as one of the top global thought leaders on business leadership, digital and AI transformation, and entrepreneurship by Thinkers 50 and others as well. So Faisal, welcome to the show. We are so happy to have you here with us today.

**Faisal Hoque** (2:36)
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.

**Mike Lusky** (2:39)
So maybe to help us kick things off, Faisal. Many think of mindfulness as something that's kind of personal to somebody.
Think of this sort of abstract thing. But you talk about mindfulness as a business advantage. Can you maybe walk us through why mindfulness is essential to leaders?

**Faisal Hoque** (3:00)
So my introduction to mindfulness was when I was in Collins. But I didn't exactly know that's what I was being introduced to. I was a Graviate Shift janitor in Southern Illinois Carbondale Engineering School. And my supervisor would, you know, would middle of the night while I was buffing the floor, he would say, be one with the floor. And I said, what the hell that means? And I was this 19-year-old kid, fresh off the board, came from Bangladesh. I just couldn't relate to what he was talking about, be one with the floor.
But that's kind of, I didn't realize then, but many years later, I connected the dot that what he was talking about is just shut out all the noise and just focus on what you're doing. And I grew up in Bangladesh, I was very much introduced to the classic Eastern philosophical tenet and Sanskrit and Bengali literature. And I kind of like, that kind of stayed in the background and then as time went by, I got farther in my career, I started traveling, I went to Japan a couple of time, and I got reintroduced to Zen Buddhism and all that stuff kind of rushed back. So we're talking about maybe 15, 17 years ago. And what I realized is that it's really what I was doing, or what I was told to do is be one with the floor, meaning focus on one thing at a time and shut out all the noise so that you can be utterly dedicated to the conversation, to the person you are with, or the task at hand, or things that you're thinking of. And it kind of took me a couple of iterations to kind of finally figure that out, because, you know, I mean, when I was in Japan, I did spend some time in lots of monasteries, or, you know, got some pretty deep thinking from Buddhist, you know, monks around mindfulness. And obviously, as you started the show early on, saying that, you know, a lot of people think it's about meditation, it's a very spiritual journey. But mindfulness is really a way of living, you know, how you live. So, you can be running and it could be one with, while you're running, with yourself. It could be cooking, that could be your meditation, it could be sweeping floor, whatever the case may be. If you can shut everything down and be one with whatever you're doing, that's what mindfulness is. And that kind of like, you know, and I wrote a book called Everything Connects, this is almost 10 years ago. I really explore this notion of when you do that, what's the net effect and how do you practice to do that? And how it elevates you to the next level as a person, as a leader, but also maybe the organization that you're leading.