Four New Studies Point Toward Three Benefits To Cultivating Moment
Research says mindfulness works for individuals. But does it work in the bottom-line-driven workplace, or is it just a frivolous feel-good program?
This is the question tackled in a growing number of studies. Here are three ways, based on four recent studies, that cultivating moment-to-moment awareness might improve workplaces.
Meditation might build self-confidence in leaders
A.D. Amar and colleagues at the University of Westminster measured the self-perception of leadership skills among a sample of senior managers in the London areaand then put them through a 12-week secularized Vipassana meditation-training program.
Their results, in the Academy of Management Proceedings, revealed that training significantly enhanced their overall self-confidence, as well as the individual skills like inspiring a shared vision and demonstrating moral intelligence.
However, conclude the authors, meditation did not statistically significantly enhance participants skills as a role model and enabling others to actareas that will need more study in the future.
Mindfulness might work best in conjunction with autonomy
Mindfulness thus appears to act as a protective factor in controlling work environments, conclude the researchers.
Online training can enhance employee well-being
If mindfulness works in the office, then whats the best way to deliver the training?
Focusing On The Present
This is the ability to focus on what is happening in front of us right now and be present in the moment.
Focusing on the present allows us to appreciate everything as though we are seeing the world around us with new eyes and to develop a sense of curiosity for every small thing.
Focus on the present is developed through meditation and other practices that involve concentrating on something and brushing away gently other thoughts that distract us.
Mindfulness concentration involves all the senses. For example, one exercise can involve observing an object and noticing all its details, another one can be about listening to a particular sound, or tasting some food, or being aware of ones posture and feelings in the body.
The key though is to really concentrate on one thing at a time and notice every nuance and detail of that object/experience.
Mindfulness In The Workplace: 3 Benefits For Every Organization
by Liz Alton
9/11/2017
Mindfulness in the workplace is one of the most important trends that businesses are paying attention to. As part of a series dedicated to must-read books for HR leaders, we’re exploring key lessons from “Mindful Work: How Meditation Is Changing Business from the Inside Out” by David Gelles.
Gelles notes that there are numerous benefits from mindfulness. “Across industries, there is an elite subculture of accomplished professionals who are discovering the power of mindfulness,” Gelles says. “They are becoming more effective and more focused and in the process getting better at their jobs.”
For HR leaders who are contemplating different strategies to help foster a healthier, happier and more productive workplace, here’s a look at three key benefits of incorporating mindfulness into your work culture.
1. Better Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence affects the workplace at all levels, and mindfulness can help improve EI, according to Harvard Business Review . “Mindfulness means being aware of our experiences, observing them without judgment, and responding from a place of clarity and compassion, rather than fear, insecurity, or greed,” Gelles says. When mindfulness in the workplace helps teams achieve more emotional clarity, it can have numerous benefits, including:
2. Improved Focus and Productivity
3. Enhanced Creativity
Stay up-to-date on the latest workforce trends and insights for HR leaders: .
Other articles in this series:
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Mindfulness In The Workplace: Boost Sales With These Tips
Mindfulness is a surefire way to improve your own quality of life as well as the quality of life and mental health of your employees. There is plenty of evidence as to how the long-term benefits of a positive mental health environment impact the success of a business and the retention of employees.
If youre looking to increase sales year over year and revitalize your sales process, mindfulness in the workplace is where you want to focus.
Mindfulness opens the door to increased confidence, improves listening skills, reduces stress, strengthens mental resilience, and better regulates emotional control.
What Are Examples Of Mindfulness In The Workplace
What about mindfulness for the manager? There is no doubt that managers must learn to manage themselves. And when they do, all sorts of research suggests that they will become more effective as a leader.
If they lead well enough, their companies will become more successful and ultimately lead to career advancements. This will likely be due to the fact that the workers they manage, especially in the knowledge economy, were able to work in a more productive and effective manner.
Consider the manager who thinks about a new venture. The mindfulness trained manager has moved beyond being effective to changing the way they see and relate with the world.
They have learned how to manage their nervous system by calming down. They also have a better sense of how to solve problems in a world that does not yet exist.
The non-mindfulness trained manager is more likely to think about how the new venture could fail and therefore reflect on his or her abilities poorly. One mindset creates opportunity and while the other shuts it down.
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Mindfulness Has Undeniable Psychological Benefits Not Just For An Individual But Also In The Workplace It Enhances Crucial Aspects Of A Healthy Workplace Read On To Learn More
Even before COVID-19, a mental health pandemic already existed. As the global pandemic took its hold, however, 69 percent of employees globally reported higher levels of work-related stress working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a year after lockdowns were issued, the dramatic shift to remote work still upends the day-to-day realities for many employees, shifting the conversation of mental health in the workplace from the sidelines to the forefront.
Employees are now experiencing a new range of challenges that are impacting their mental health, resulting in:
This unique set of challenges necessitates the need for practices that can revamp mental health mindfulness strategieswhile at work.
Mindfulness Can Help Us Withstand Controlling Bosses
The more mindful the supervisor, the lower their employees emotional exhaustion and the higher their job satisfaction, according to research published in the journal Mindfulness. But that study also revealed a caveat: When basic psychological needs like feelings of autonomy and connection with other people arent being met, the employee can lose the benefits of having a mindful supervisor.
A separate studybuilds those findings by specifically exploring the link between mindfulness and autonomy. The researchers recruited 259 participants, assessing them for their mindful traitslike the ability to pay attention for long periods of timeand exploring how much autonomy they felt like they had on the job .
Echoing that previous study, the researchers found that both autonomy and mindfulness had direct relations with employee work well-being. Feeling less-empowered at work was associated with a lower level of health and happiness. These indirect effects, found the researchers, were moderated by mindfulnessmeaning that more mindful people were less likely to feel frustration, even when supervisors squashed their independence.
More mindful people were less likely to feel frustration, even when supervisors squashed their independence.
Mindfulness thus appears to act as a protective factor in controlling work environments, conclude the researchers.
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People Who Practice Mindfulness Meditation Are Not Inclined To Entertain Self
Rumination in psychology is a bad thing. When people ruminate, they repeatedly entertain negative thoughts about what-ifs and if-onlys in their lives. This leads to feelings of inadequacy, helplessness, and even depression. Doing this every day can be stressful on a person, and he or she usually responds by binge-eating or drinking too much alcohol.
When you or someone you know starts ruminating, stop the negative thoughts from taking hold through mindfulness meditation. Rather than focusing ones mind on what happened in the past or the bad things that are happening in the present, direct that attention to the sensations experienced by the body and willfully studying the kinds of thoughts that are passing through ones mind.
Train your mind not to dwell on the negatives in your life and to adopt a positive outlook that translates to a cheerier disposition.
Employees who meditate are likely to have greater job satisfaction and self-confidence.
Mindfulness meditation will also help outsourcing staff to deal with the ups and downs of the job. And so, theyre less anxiety-driven and more motivated to excel.
Other knowledge sources about mindfulness meditation you may find useful in your workplace:
Notice And Name Your Emotions/feelings
The first step to being more mindful at work is to notice when youre not being mindful. Make it a habit of noticing when you feel stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, or your thoughts are jumping all over the place. In these moments, pause and take notice of your inner and outer world.
Is your heart racing? Is your stomach in knots? Are you sweating?
Did you know that our minds and bodies are connected as one? When youre thinking stressful thoughts, it manifests as physical and emotional experiences of stress in the body.
Next time youre feeling physical discomfort, take a moment and check in to see whats going on.
Can you name the emotion and describe the sensations youre feeling? Naming emotions helps us notice the gap between thoughts and feelings.
Instead of I am anxious, you can state, I am feeling anxiety and tightness in my chest right now. This simple strategy helps you begin to detach from the emotion and observe it without judgment. Recognize that learning to feel your feelings is one of the SECRETS to becoming unstoppable, as I share in this video.
As you pay attention to what youre feeling, simply take a few breaths and sit with it. Allow it to wash over and pass through you. Almost all feelings pass within 60 seconds, and youll feel better after!
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Practicing Mindfulness In The Workplace Why Its So Important
Its one of those early Spring days where, after a stretch of dreary, cold weather, the sun is finally out. You step outside, turn your face to the big orange ball in the sky, and breath in deeply. For a minute, all you notice is the sensation of heat radiating on your face, the smell of the fresh, crisp air, and the sound of birds singing. Youre simply in the moment. If you have ever done this before, you were practicing mindfulness and may not have even realized it.
Where Mindfulness Falls Short
Today, more than half of all large companies offer their employees some form of mindfulness training a broad set of practices and techniques focusing on increasing awareness of the here and now. But new research suggests that these programs dont always improve peoples wellbeing or their job performance. Specifically, for employees whose roles require them to act inauthentically , becoming more mindful of their emotions in the moment can actually have a negative effect on their mental health. Based on these findings, the authors offer four strategies to help organizations successfully implement mindfulness programs at work while limiting these negative side effects. Ultimately, the authors argue that mindfulness is an important tool in the managerial toolbox, but it is not a cure-all, and it must be applied thoughtfully to be effective.
Over the last several decades, mindfulness has gone mainstream. To be mindful means to be fully present in the moment, and it is a quality that can be enhanced through a broad set of activities that help us focus more intently on our physical and emotional states in the here and now. Mindfulness practices such as meditation, breathing exercises, and other techniques can be applied to anything from reducing stress and anxiety to quitting smoking, losing weight, and resolving conflict and today, theyve become so popular that more than half of large corporations offer some form of mindfulness training to their employees.
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Contributes To Ones Physical Health
Last but certainly not least, improving mindfulness has been linked to several physical health benefits. So while improved productivity, teamwork, and emotional intelligence are valuable, one can argue if we are unwell, none of it really matters. Benefits to our physical health when practicing mindfulness include lower blood pressure, reduced risk of a stroke, reduced risk of heart disease, improved immune system, reduced body dissatisfaction and increased feelings of self-worth.
The Benefits Of Mindfulness In The Workplace
Mindfulness should no longer be considered a nice-to-have for executives. Its a must-have: a way to keep our brains healthy, to support self-regulation and effective decision-making capabilities, and to protect ourselves from toxic stress. It can be integrated into ones religious or spiritual life, or practiced as a form of secular mental training. When we take a seat, take a breath, and commit to being mindful, particularly when we gather with others who are doing the same, we have the potential to be changed.
-Harvard Business Review
Alongside the overall benefit of improved performance that comes from mindfulness, there are several other benefits that contribute to overall well-being at work:
Reduces Stress & Anxiety
Mindfulness makes perfect sense for dealing with stress and anxiety because it takes you out of fight-or-flight mode and brings you into a relaxed state of mental clarity and calm. By becoming more aware of your thoughts and body, you can better assess and identify your feelings and approach them in a more positive way. Scientifically, Mindfulness practice reduces activity in the stress initiating part of your brain called the amygdala.
Improves your Focus
Enhances Creativity
Increases Emotional Intelligence and Resilience
Improves Communication
Mindfulness & ROI
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Mindfulness Can Enhance Overall Well
If mindfulness works in the office, then whats the best way to deliver the training?
A study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine sought to determine whether an online mindfulness program created for a specific workplace, the Dow Chemical Company, could cut stress while enhancing the resiliency and well-being of employees.
Eighty-nine participants completed scientific scales designed to measure their degree of stress, mindfulness, resiliency, and vigor. They were then divided into two groupsone to take the online class and one to sit on the wait list.
After the first group finished, the researchers came six months later to see how everyone was doing. They found that, in fact, the group that took the class was doing a lot betterthey were less stressed, more resilient, and more energetic than the group that couldnt yet take the class.
This online mindfulness intervention seems to be both practical and effective in enhancing overall employee well-being, conclude the researchers.
This article has been adapted from one that originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeleys Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindfuls partners. View the original article.
Work Stress And Mindfulness
Another reason why mindfulness is important is because it can help combat and manage employee stress . Chronic stress is a widespread problem in society, perhaps most especially at work.
According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health , 26% of workers say that they are âoften or very often stressed at workâ . Workplace stress has a significant impact not only on individuals, but also the effectiveness of organizations.
Going back all the way to 1990, workplace stress cost American business as much as $150 billion every year⦠Mindfulness training has proven benefits for employee health and wellness, including to help decrease workforce stress and build resilience .
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Mindfulness At The Workplace : The Practice And Disciplined Required
Operations Sr Director | Customer Experience | UX | UI | Project Management | Transformation | KYC | Agile | Innovation | Data Science |
I’m on a mission of spreading mindfulness practice benefits for both, individuals and organizations. This article initiates the “Mindful at the workplace” saga. I will be sharing some of the benefits that the participants of “The 8 Week Mindfulness Program” – which I facilitate – have reported as well as my own experience leading CX, operations, innovation and transformation teams for +20 years.
For the benefit of the readers that are not really related to the Mindfulness practice I would like to recall what the Mindfulness practice looks like and the discipline that requires.
Mindfulness is the practice of maintaining a nonjudgemental state of heightened or complete awareness of our own thoughts, emotions, ideas, sensations or experiences on a moment to moment basis.
There is plenty of scientific research that shows that practicing meditation for at least 15 minutes per day can have a great positive impact.
Different surveys have reported that whenever a meditator explains why they meditate, these are the results:
- 84% say that it helps to reduce stress and anxiety
- 53% say improves concentration and memory
- 52% say improves performance at work or school
- 39% say it helps them to increase energy
- 30% say it helps to improve general health and wellness
What Benefits Do Employees Get When They Practice Mindfulness
Hundreds of published studies shows that our brains are malleable and can actually be rewired through a mindfulness practice. Research on the brains of conflict meditators has documented neuron growth in the area of the brain associated with learning, memory and emotional control.
Neuron growth also occurs in the area of the brain responsible for awareness. Functional MRIs have noted other positive brain transformations in as little as eight weeks and with a daily practice of just under 30 minutes.
Here is a huge review of all the research that documents the benefits of mindfulness.
So do employees practice mindfulness in the workplace? Yes they do. There are organized efforts all over the country to lead the mindfulness movement. Many larger firms have helped their employees learn mindfulness in the workplace skills.
Employees at Google have learned to calm themselves when they want and this helps them be more productive at work. Essentially, they learn how to deal with the unknown even before they know there is something they dont know.
Mindful employees are often able to perceive their own growth particularly when it comes to their relationships with their colleagues.
But can practicing mindfulness in the workplace help deal with difficult managers? If it is true that you can only control yourself, then it doesnt pay to be angry at a boss no matter how difficult!
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