It is 8:30 a.m., and you have just arrived at your desk. 10 unread emails, 3 of them marked "urgent." The first meeting of the day starts at 9:00 a.m., where the company's new strategic direction is to be decided. You are in charge, and the presentation is not finished yet. At 12:00 p.m., you head to lunch with colleagues: superficial small talk and awkward conversations with your superiors await. After that, it continues with a colorful mix of appointments, analyses, conversations and decisions: STRESS and OVERLOAD.
Do scenarios like this sound familiar? Does the stress you feel just reading these lines follow you around the office every day and even all the way home, into your private life? Then you should familiarize yourself with mindfulness. Luckily, you have come across this article: we show you what mindfulness is all about and what practicing it can do for individuals and companies.
The World of Work Is Changing
The changing conditions of the business world are reflected, among other things, in a high pace of change (e.g., ever-shorter cycles), the loss of many jobs, increasing digitalization and globalization, and technological innovation. As a result, health risks are not uncommon. Stress, absenteeism, rising burnout cases, turnover and a lack of employee motivation come with the territory. Many employees are already affected, and the trend is rising.
The effects of these changes are everywhere: high pressure at work, for example from rushing from one appointment to the next, a (digital) flood of information, increasing conflicts in the workplace and a lack of work-life balance.
These challenges and upheavals will continue to grow. Effective countermeasures are therefore needed to restore (inner) balance. Mindfulness is one of them.
What Is Meant by Mindfulness?
"Mindfulness allows us to look at our own experience without fear and to be with what is there right now, no matter how difficult it is" (MBSR Association).
Mindfulness is a state (of awareness) that allows you to perceive and accept every external and internal experience in the present moment without judgment. This includes all thoughts and feelings. It means engaging with the present moment and accepting things as they are, without letting them negatively influence decisions. Those who are mindful perceive, do not intervene and do not seek to achieve anything.
Mindfulness is about training the mind and awareness. You practice dealing attentively with your own thoughts, feelings and body. This can develop a deep understanding of your own being and how you engage with the world. This is the prerequisite for better managing your personal and professional challenges in everyday life. In this way, mindfulness practice shows ways out of daily distraction and daily stress.
This state exists in every person, just to varying degrees. Just as you train your physical fitness at the gym, you can train your mind and emotional intelligence through mindfulness. As esoteric and spiritual as the topic may sound at first, it does not have to be, and more on that later in this article. Although mindfulness originates in Buddhist teachings, it has been enriched by many scientific findings and is free of any religious worldview. It is simply mind training.
In reality, however, thoughts and feelings can be unsettling and sometimes even frightening. You start to dwell on them, judge them, and before you know it, you take your thoughts for reality and identify with them. You lose your inner balance and feel uncomfortable, possibly even stressed.
No wonder, since our brain is wired to evaluate all thoughts, situations and encounters. Why? Because it helps us make quick decisions. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of our perception (tunnel vision). To avoid this and be truly mindful, you should take part in dedicated training. Those who also apply the techniques learned there regularly in their private lives reach a state of mindfulness more easily.
Mindfulness Training in Companies
Two Well-Known Mindfulness Programs
Today, there are numerous providers of mindfulness training, delivered as seminars, workshops and coaching, for individuals as well as for companies. They all have one thing in common: the content is based on science and Buddhist teachings that are completely free of religious worldviews.
The best-known mindfulness program comes from Google: Search Inside Yourself (SIY). It was initiated back in 2007 by Google engineer Chade-Meng Tan. Tan has a vision he wants to realize with the help of Google's influence: to promote mindfulness and create the conditions for world peace. The key to this lies essentially in meditation. Together with scientists such as Jon Kabat-Zinn and Daniel Golemann, he compiled this and other practices into a curriculum (Search Inside Yourself). Its effectiveness has been scientifically proven many times. By publishing the book of the same name, he made this curriculum accessible to a broad audience.
It was the first mindfulness program aimed specifically at companies and the business world as a whole, and therefore did not focus on esotericism and spirituality. Instead, it aims to reach listeners and readers with facts and to break down prejudices, using words everyone can understand. It is aimed in particular at everyone in a company who influences others. What makes SIY special is its combination of mindfulness and strengthening emotional intelligence. This is meant above all to help people manage how they deal with themselves and others more consciously and effectively. It is no coincidence that Google ranks among the companies with the highest employee satisfaction worldwide.
Other companies now offer this program internally as well. SAP and Google even train their own SIY trainers, who hold workshops and seminars on the topic at other companies.
Another mindfulness program is MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction). This is probably the most prominent example of a mindfulness program for stress reduction. It was developed in the 1970s by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn at the university hospital in Worcester, MA (USA) and usually runs for eight weeks: participants meet once a week as a group and also receive exercises to do at home. This makes MBSR suitable for people whose schedules are less flexible or who cannot easily take a day or two off. The program consists of meditative exercises at rest and in motion. It has also been supplemented with scientifically grounded approaches from psychology and stress research. The effectiveness of MBSR has been examined and confirmed in numerous international studies. As a result, it is used worldwide in healthcare, educational and social institutions, and in companies.
Exercises
Various techniques are taught in these trainings. The most common is meditation. Here, too, there are different types, e.g., breathing meditation, walking meditation and self-compassion meditation.
The so-called body scan is also part of the trainers' and coaches' repertoire. Here, you direct your attention to the inner state of your body and scan it piece by piece in your mind.
Companies that embrace mindfulness often hold so-called mindful meetings for this reason. These meetings are characterized by a minute of silence at the start. Many participants are still mentally in the previous meeting or already in the next one, or somewhere else entirely. The minute of silence is meant to counteract this. During that minute, every employee practices mindfulness and becomes physically and mentally present. When difficult or emotional decisions are pending, where nerves can run high, short mindful breaks are taken before the decision is made. All devices that encourage multitasking, such as smartphones, laptops, tablets and the like, are switched off or at least put aside. Mindful, non-judgmental listening also plays a major role in these meetings. Overall, the output of such meetings increases enormously and their duration shrinks, since the relevant topics are discussed more efficiently.
Some companies also offer Mindfulness Motion sessions, a kind of mindful yoga. A silent lunch is a mindful shared lunch, eaten in silence and with full awareness.
All exercises can easily be practiced right at the workplace in just a few minutes, effectively and in a way that fits into everyday business, with no cushion, yoga mat, sportswear or the like.
These and many other training elements aim to help people be more present in the moment, not judge thoughts and feelings, and ultimately treat themselves and others with more contentment and mindfulness. For such training to be effective in the long term, participants must also deepen their knowledge in their private lives and practice the techniques. The training has to become part of their lives.
Benefits
Taking part in mindfulness training:
- has been proven to help prevent burnout and mental illness. Those who pay increasing attention to themselves, their feelings and their surroundings can react more quickly when something is off.
- leads to mental and physical relaxation and increases satisfaction with oneself and one's own work.
- improves perception of oneself and others (empathy).
- strengthens concentration and attention span.
- enables employees and managers to handle daily challenges better through what they have learned, because feelings and thoughts are perceived more clearly and can therefore be actively managed. This includes dealing with stress, anxiety (including fear of failure), inner blocks and much more.
- boosts participants' self-esteem, inner balance and emotional stability.
- gives managers in particular tools to deal with anger. This improves communication and listening behavior as well as self-awareness. It also helps them strengthen their own authenticity. Managers learn how to handle sandwich positions and lead their department or team with confidence.
- uses physical training components to help prevent fatigue, eat more mindfully and recognize symptoms early to avoid burning out.
All these benefits lead to fewer sick days. Participants also gain inner calm and become more courageous and creative. They learn to direct their attention and therefore get distracted less often. Managers suddenly see other paths they can take, find constructive solutions and make decisions more clearly. Participants also learn to focus on the essential topics and not get distracted while working on them. Overall, they are more effective and more satisfied (at work and in private life). This in turn has a positive effect on engagement, turnover, productivity and employee motivation. The company itself benefits from this.
What to Consider When Introducing Mindfulness
There are a few points you should definitely keep in mind when introducing mindfulness; otherwise, unwanted costs and other negative side effects can occur. Avoid inviting uncertified mindfulness trainers into your company. Trainers should also have experience in "mindfulness in companies" or be successful in a business context themselves. In addition, the trainer should have practiced mindfulness personally for several years to bring the necessary expertise.
Also avoid placing such mindfulness programs under workplace health promotion, as this often creates the assumption that something is wrong with you if you participate. This approach could lead employees to become defensive: they close themselves off, and the course can no longer be held without prejudice or bias. It is better to place these programs under leadership or change management.
Find ways to integrate mindfulness into your corporate culture. In doing so, avoid imagery like lotus flowers, stacked stones and other clichés. Choose the right wording and make the topic accessible to your employees and managers on a level that relates to your business and day-to-day operations.
Mindfulness Under Criticism
Although mindfulness does not have to be an esoteric or spiritual topic, it carries that image, especially in the business world. Besides this credibility problem, there are other critical voices: critics see mindfulness as yet another way for senior management to make employees even more efficient through mental optimization.
To counter the widespread distrust, prejudices and misconceptions in particular, it helps when top managers openly commit to the practices and show their own affinity for the topic. They can also initiate pilot workshops in their areas and model mindfulness for their departments. Another option is to integrate the content into existing training courses and health management.
Peter Bostelmann, Director Global Mindfulness Practice, who leads mindfulness at SAP, says that especially in a business context, you have to argue based on facts. In his talks on mindfulness, he presents the results of an internal study: absenteeism dropped drastically after the program was introduced, while the program's return on investment has been shown to be 200%.
He also says:
"For us, it is not about making people's inner lives more efficient, but about personal development. Employees should learn to see more clearly what matters to them in life, and their employer benefits from that too. [...] It also happens that an employee leaves SAP."
If someone comes to this realization, he says, that is also in the company's interest. So it is by no means about optimizing employees.
Conclusion
Our lives are changing, and faster and faster. We face new challenges every day and often no longer know which way is up. Mindfulness is a state that helps us regain our balance and perceive everything in the present moment, inside and out, without reacting to it. This state is the foundation for overcoming our individual hurdles without falling into panic and the like. To get there, we need to train our mental abilities through mindfulness programs. Everything is already there; we just need access to the source.
The benefits and effectiveness of such programs have been scientifically proven many times over. Nevertheless, a great deal of distrust still exists. Yet in companies in particular, mindfulness is a strong driver of sustainable, people-centered employee development. It helps prevent mistakes and leads to greater creativity and satisfaction. And practicing mindfulness can help prepare for the upcoming upheavals within companies and in the world at large: it helps us treat ourselves and others more consciously. We move from "me" to "we."
Mindfulness is therefore about much more than just reducing stress. It is also about actively shaping how we live together and improving its overall quality. In this way, as Chade-Meng Tan already set out in his vision, mindfulness ultimately helps contribute to world peace: one for all and all for one.
Sources:
MSBR-MBCT Verband, URL: https://www.mbsr-verband.de/, last accessed: 05/15/2019
Haufe Akademie: WARUM ACHTSAMKEIT FÜR IHR UNTERNEHMEN WICHTIG IST [Why mindfulness matters for your company], 06/10/2019, URL: https://www.haufe-akademie.de/blog/themen/persoenliche-kompetenz/achtsamkeit-im-unternehmen/, last accessed: 06/15/2019
Berliner Zeitung (Lachmann, Akiko): Konferenz der Stille [Conference of Silence], 03/01/2019, No. 51
Loving HR Podcast: Mindful Leadership with Angelika von der Assen, 01/30/2019, No. 52
Tan, Chade-Meng: Search Inside Yourself. Optimiere dein Leben durch Achtsamkeit [Search Inside Yourself: Optimize Your Life Through Mindfulness], 6th edition, Munich: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 2015