Chapter 6

Using Mindfulness to Assist Different Business Functions

In This Chapter

Dealing with HR tasks mindfully

Tackling staff health

Improving customer service

Making marketing and PR more switched on

C ultivating mindfulness is a valuable skill for staff working at all levels of the organisation, in all business functions, in all industries. Mindfulness won’t diminish your drive for excellence and attention to what’s important. It won’t make you weak or ineffective, or brainwash you into donating all your worldly goods to a worthwhile cause in a far-flung corner of the world. Also, despite media portrayal of mindfulness, you don’t have to sit cross-legged on a cushion, light incense or become religious!

To get the most from mindfulness, you really need to attend a course, and practise mindfulness each day, but the hints and tips in this chapter should prove valuable to specific business functions. Many of the tips and techniques provided are equally applicable to multiple job roles. We make a start by looking at human resources.

Mindfulness for Human Resources

What’s in a name? ‘HR’ (human resources), ‘personnel’ or even ‘human capital management’ are all names for the business function responsible for recruitment and selection of staff, defining job roles and setting pay structures. HR teams may also develop policies on how staff should behave and be treated, including equal opportunities and employee assistance programmes. Where the learning and development function sits under HR, the department is also responsible for developing staff at all levels. Although some aspects of HR, such as telling someone they’ve got the job or have been promoted, are satisfying, other parts can be highly stressful. Potentially stressful parts of the job include dealing with grievances and dismissals. In this section are suggestions on how mindfulness can help you to mindfully manage three key functions of most HR departments.

Managing downsizing and redundancies mindfully

The economic downturn led to cost-cutting initiatives in both the public and private sectors. In many organisations, these initiatives resulted in downsizing and redundancies, year on year.

While you may not be able to halt the tide of redundancies, you can undertake the process in a manner that’s kinder to yourself and those people at risk of redundancy. We start by focusing on the impact that managing redundancies has on you.

Although managing redundancies and dismissals is likely to be a key element of your work that you’ve probably studied and practised over the years, this doesn’t necessarily make it any easier. Even the most cold hearted of HR professionals are likely to experience some form of negative response to the task. As Chapter 4 explains, everything that you do or think has an impact on your thoughts, emotions and physiology, but in most cases you’re unaware of the impact. This lack of awareness can be a good thing because it frees up your brain to work on other things. It can also be bad news if you start to unwittingly activate your sympathetic nervous system, flooding your body with powerful hormones that can be damaging. You may also unwittingly carry around tension in your body, which can have a profound impact on your decision-making. So although you may think that you’re giving your best at all times, your actions and responses may be being governed by a host of things you’re completely unaware of.

This is where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness training progressively trains you to direct your full attention to where you want it to be. It allows you to passively observe the interplay between your thoughts, emotions and physiology, and make conscious choices about how to best respond, rather than being governed by your unconscious mental programming.

Another factor to consider is the potential impact of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons may cause you to experience the emotions of the people surrounding you, which may impact on your decisions and behaviour. Mindfulness helps you to focus attention on the present-moment experience, allowing you to notice when your emotions are being influenced by mirror neurons, and decide on a wise course of action.

While you can’t necessarily ‘manage’ the emotions of others, you can take steps to avoid any negative emotions you are harbouring from spiralling out of control. By being fully present in meetings with others, you can observe as and when emotions start to spiral and take steps to avoid things escalating.

Here are a few mindful ways in which you can keep your meetings on track when strong emotions arise in others:

You may also wish to try out some of the mindfulness exercises described in this chapter.

Dealing with discipline and grievances mindfully

As with redundancies, dealing with discipline and grievances involves both care and doing the right thing (legally and ethically) for your organisation.

Preparing well for this sort of meeting is crucial. Most HR people are fully aware of the need to check the facts from all concerned, company policy and the law. What you may fail to do is check that you’re mentally prepared for the meeting. In other words, you need to ensure that you enter the meeting in the present moment rather than your body being there but your attention continually being hijacked by thoughts about other jobs you have to do or what you’ll be doing when you get home. You also need to try to ensure that your thinking isn’t overly influenced by past experiences or by what people may be saying or how they may be behaving.

Only through practising mindfulness regularly do you gain an appreciation of the elaborate stories that your brain creates when trying to anticipate the future. The problem with these stories is that your brain can treat them as reality, and you can start to experience emotions in response. For example, if when entering a grievance session you think that the manager concerned will become angry and the employee tearful, you may unconsciously interact with the manager in an assertive or even aggressive manner and treat the employee with patience and concern.

By being in the present moment and following an appropriate meeting structure, allowing each part to unfold moment by moment and responding to present-moment facts, your meeting is likely to run more smoothly for all concerned.

Increasing employee engagement

Several research studies suggest that training staff in mindfulness can increase employee engagement. In addition, mindfulness has been shown to improve interpersonal relations, help employees improve the quality of relationships, increase resilience and improve task performance and decision-making. Mindfulness training can improve your ability to cope effectively with your own and other’s daily stresses, thus improving the quality of your relationships.

Applying some techniques

The following techniques have been developed for HR staff, but may be equally applicable and useful for other business functions.

Dropping into the present moment

When dealing with difficult issues, maintaining your balance and wellbeing by dropping into the present moment every now and then is important. Doing so helps you to:

This can take as little as three minutes or be extended to take up to ten minutes.

Sit yourself in a comfortable upright position. Close your eyes or hold them in soft focus. Regain your equilibrium using this NOW technique:

Open your eyes and make a decision on what’s the best use of your time now, in this moment.

Mindfully managing difficult meetings

When planning difficult meetings, such as discussing job losses or giving notice of redundancies, being in the present moment is important so that you can judge the situation as it unfolds based on present-moment facts rather than mental projections about what may happen in the future or did happen in the past.

Following these steps will help make the meeting less stressful for all concerned:

Mindfully supporting staff

In your role you’re likely to have many one-to-one informal and formal meetings with staff who may be worried about a variety of work-related issues. Your role isn’t only to provide them with sources of information and support, but also to tap into how you can best help them in this specific moment in time. Unfortunately, if you’ve been involved in many meetings with staff over the years, acting on auto-pilot is all too easy. You need to remember that each meeting is unique and should be approached with a beginner’s mind — as if you’re experiencing it for the first time. Although approaching meetings this way may require a little more effort, the outcomes make it worthwhile. Follow these steps:

Mindfulness for Occupational Health

A great deal of research has concluded that mindfulness is great for wellbeing. Hundreds of research studies over the past 40 years have demonstrated the effectiveness of mindfulness in reducing anxiety, stress and depression. Mindfulness has also been proven to help people with chronic pain, such as back pain, and even to boost immunity. Several workplace studies have demonstrated its effectiveness in reducing sickness absence from work.

Improving staff wellbeing with mindfulness

Taking proactive steps to improve staff wellbeing is now more important than ever. Ongoing restructures and redundancies are taking their toll on those who are lucky enough to still have a job. Research conducted in 1997 identified that, not only do survivors of redundancy frequently feel guilty, but continued uncertainty can have a huge impact on people’s health and increase long-term sickness absence. A constant sense of uncertainty can cause excessive stress, which can also lead to increased occupational accidents and serious illness such as heart disease, high blood pressure or diabetes.

Organisations can work to improve the wellbeing of their staff in many ways. Offering mindfulness courses to staff is a good way to improve not only wellbeing but also productivity and interpersonal skills. Some organisations offer staff mindfulness courses in work time and some outside working hours; some make attendance on mindfulness courses compulsory for certain staff, while others prefer it to be optional. Some organisations prefer to stick to the most widely researched methods of teaching mindfulness, while others integrate aspects of mindfulness training with other wellbeing initiatives. See Chapter 8 for more information on introducing mindfulness to your organisation.

Tackling stress with mindfulness

It should come as no surprise that stress has become one of the greatest causes of long-term sickness absence from work. Mindfulness has been used to treat stress since the 1970s.

As with all mindfulness at work interventions, evaluating staff both before and after taking part in a mindfulness course using well-recognised measures is important. If you wish to reduce stress specifically, you first need to measure individuals’ current levels of stress. Consider getting staff to complete the DASS 21 — a shortened version of the DASS (Depression Anxiety Stress Scales), developed by the University of New South Wales in Australia. The DASS 21 measures the severity of a range of symptoms common to depression, anxiety and stress. This measure can then be used as a benchmark pre- and post-mindfulness training.

Mindfulness isn’t a silver bullet. Simply attending a mindfulness course will not reduce stress. Reducing stress takes effort and commitment on the part of the stressed participant, who needs to practise what they’re taught for a short time every day for the entire duration of the eight-week course. Research suggests a direct correlation exists between time spent practising mindfulness and the benefits experienced. In general, the more time spent practising, the more benefit is derived. Note also that, if a staff member is very severely stressed, a mindfulness course may prove unsuitable as the staff member may not be in a fit state of mind to work with the techniques they’re taught. In this instance, seeking clinical help would be wise.

Reducing sickness absence with mindfulness

Well people who are well managed result in a well organisation. Wellbeing at work isn’t the sole responsibility of the occupational health team but the responsibility of the whole organisation. Policies and working practices can have a huge impact on staff wellbeing, and are worth reviewing if staff absence and sickness are on the increase.

Mindfulness can equip staff with the tools to deal with life’s challenges more effectively, which can reduce stress and anxiety. Mindfulness can also help people to stop small things escalating out of control and causing unnecessary stress. Mindfulness can help people live with long-term health conditions, including back problems and even cancer, by giving them new ways of dealing with their mental and physical pain.

Offer staff a place they can go to practise mindfulness in work time when the need arises. Just knowing that there’s somewhere quiet that they’re allowed to go to centre themselves and regain a more positive frame of mind can make a massive difference. Organisations offering this facility to staff report that the facility is rarely abused and is highly valued. Allowing staff to leave their desk for 10 minutes every now and then can save hours of unproductive time in the office and weeks off sick.

Mindfulness for Service Delivery and Customer Service

Customer service and customer-facing staff are among the most important personnel in organisations nowadays. They’re the face of the company, interacting with customers on a day-to-day basis. Top companies appreciate the need for excellence in customer service, and the importance of achieving customer loyalty.

In order to be fully effective in these roles, you need to be fully in the present moment and avoid auto-pilot responses. This can be easier said than done, especially when you’re dealing with customers face to face or on the phone all day long, many with similar questions and issues that need addressing. This section provides some mindful strategies for maintaining customer focus, dealing with customer feedback and communicating with clients.

Maintaining customer focus

Maybe you think that you know what your customers want and need, but are you sure? When was the last time you really listened and fully focused your attention on the customer? Many companies focus intensively on customer needs and desires when they’re bringing a new product to market, but fail to keep their finger on the customer’s pulse as soon as sales targets are being met. Wise companies dig beneath online reviews and recommendations, regularly making opportunities to hear what the customer has to say and act on it to ensure that their products and services continue to meet or exceed customer needs. When interacting with customers (one to one as a customer service representative or when running a focus group), mindfulness can be highly beneficial.

Take a few moments before talking to customers to observe your mental chatter, acknowledging whatever arises, and letting it go kindly without judgement or any further action.

Dealing with customer feedback mindfully

While most companies have some form of procedure for dealing with complaints, few have a process for dealing with positive feedback.

Dealing with criticism and hostility can be particularly challenging. When people are critical or hostile, feeling threatened is natural, even when you know that it isn’t personal, and the customer is far away at the end of the phone line. Most customer service staff have been trained to deal with situations like this in a manner that’s professional, polite and that, hopefully, leads to a happy customer. Unfortunately, dealing with difficult customers can take a toll on the staff member, as customer service training rarely shows you how to manage your mind and the importance of self-kindness.

The next time you have to work with a customer who is distressed or angry, try this:

If you work in a call centre or in an environment in which you don’t have full control of your time, try to use your breaks to recharge your batteries and check in with yourself using the third of the three preceding tips. Taking a few minutes out a few times a day is good for you and good for business. When in a state of (often unconscious) stress, your ability to provide an excellent service to customers is reduced, and you are much more likely to pick up bugs and viruses as your auto-immune system is diminished. Maintain your peak performance with these mini mindfulness exercises.

Communicating mindfully with customers

Mindfulness can be powerful when communicating with others. The same principles apply to your communications with customers, whether face to face or via the phone, email or letter.

When you’ve just written a letter or email, pause and take a few full breaths before you send it. As you do so, try forgetting the email and everything else and just focus on your breathing. Then read the letter or email from your customer’s perspective. (Refer to Chapter 5 for more on mindfulness and communicating with technology.)

Mindfulness for Marketing and PR

In 2013 the job-finding website CareerCast listed ‘public relations manager’ as the fifth most stressful job in the US. Stress can be helpful, motivating you to strive and achieve more. But it can also cloud your judgement, have a negative impact on your mood, reduce your ability to make good decisions and cause serious illnesses.

In some organisational cultures, stress can be worn as a badge of honour; if you’re not seen to be openly stressed, you’re judged to be not working hard enough. Similarly, some organisations may encourage a culture of working long hours. Both stress and a poor work-life balance are bad for business. The statistics and research backing this up are hard to ignore.

When you’re really busy, stopping and ‘doing nothing’ — even for five minutes — may seem counter-intuitive. Spending five minutes practising mindfulness can sometimes feel like doing nothing, but in fact you are working hard to develop the neural pathways in your brain associated with directing your attention to where you want it to be, and switching yourself into a more helpful mode of mind. For example, you may want to direct your full attention to communication, consumer trends, culture or your own working methods.

Communicating powerfully

The foundation that underpins powerful communication is a deep understanding of yourself: Your beliefs, perceptions, judgement and intentions.

Humans are strongly motivated by their beliefs. These beliefs are often unconscious, but can override or impede what you consciously intend to do or say. Remaining fully present is impossible unless you understand what’s motivating your feelings and behaviour in the moment. Practising mindfulness can help you develop a conscious understanding of your beliefs. This conscious understanding allows you to decide the extent to which your beliefs shape and influence your work.

Although you may think that you see the whole picture, your brain just picks out what it feels is most relevant at any given time and you make up the rest based on past experience and knowledge. If you accept that your perceptions of any given situation are likely to be limited, you can use mindfulness to help train yourself to see more and guess less.

Your judgement also plays a role in how you communicate. Again, this may be unconscious and can be highly damaging, both to yourself and others. When you feel judged harshly by others, your threat system motivates you to take defensive action. Practising mindfulness helps you recognise this response and minimise its harmful impact.

Lastly, but most importantly, you need to ensure that the outcomes you desire from your communication are linked to your intentions. Make sure that you are fully aware of your intentions before you start to communicate, as these intentions gently steer you through your meeting or presentation. Try to remain open to what others are trying to communicate, and what a positive outcome looks like from their perspective.

You need to create a supportive atmosphere where powerful communication can thrive.

Keeping in tune with consumer and cultural trends

However much time you spend reading trade journals and industry reports, try to accept that you’ll never be 100 per cent in tune with consumer and cultural trends. A better starting point is accepting a 50–70 per cent level of understanding, and using your eyes and ears to fill in the gaps when working with consumers or conducting market research. Don’t forget that, while you only have one mouth, you have two ears and two eyes — use them wisely to see and hear what’s unfolding in front of you in the present moment.

When analysing consumer research and sales data, quickly note down your top three observations immediately after reading. Take a mindful minute, or mindful pause (refer to Chapter 3). This mindful pause can take the form of focusing your attention on taking 10 full breaths, or mindfully drinking a hot drink, focusing on nothing but the present-moment sensations, smells and tastes. What you do doesn’t matter; the important thing is to quieten your mind, jump fully into the present moment and reduce your state of arousal so that you can view things with a clear, open mind.

Following the mindful pause, revisit the documents and look for any alternative trends or key facts you may have missed. Bear in mind that the researchers or authors of the documents will have interpreted the facts they were presented with according to their own judgement. They may have missed or discarded something that you think is important. Looking at the documents with a beginner’s eyes can yield surprising results and aha moments.

Improving responsiveness

When you practise mindfulness, you discover that a distinct difference exists between ‘reacting’ and ‘responding’. Reacting is seen as defensive, often based on auto-pilot reactions stored in the fast to react primitive areas of your brain. Reactions are often fuelled by emotions, rather than rational, higher-brain thoughts. Responding is altogether more thoughtful. By pausing before acting, you allow yourself time to apply your more powerful higher brain. Responses contain reasoning, and are guided less by emotion and more by logic.

Although responding may seem more passive, a response is more active and can change the direction of an interaction. Practising mindfulness helps you to become more centred and aware of others. By embracing mindful prevention of reacting, you can focus on more beneficial responses that improve your interaction with clients and colleagues alike.