Chapter 2

Exploring the Benefits of Mindfulness in the Workplace

In This Chapter

Looking at mindfulness from the employees’ perspective

Discovering that mindfulness is good for your organisation

Making employees happier and more productive

M indfulness may appear to be the ‘in thing’ at the moment, but does it have any substance? What are the actual benefits of mindfulness at work?

In this chapter we uncover the positive effects of mindfulness for yourself. We discuss the impact of the many positive changes that take place in your own brain as a result of mindfulness practice. We also tell you why so many organisations are training their leaders and employees in mindfulness, and explore organisational ways of integrating mindfulness into the workplace to increase staff performance and wellbeing.

Discovering the Benefits for Employees

Being a mindful employee has many benefits. In this section find out how mindfulness changes your brain and how those changes make you more resilient, emotionally intelligent and focused. If you’re in a leadership position, discover how mindfulness can make you more effective in your work too.

Increased mental resilience

Resilience is the process of adapting well when you experience adversity, trauma or a major source of stress. Resilience is sometimes described as the ability to ‘bounce back’ from difficult experiences.

In the average workplace, mental resilience is essential. If you’re resilient, you’re able to deal with rapid changes and serious challenges rather than spiralling downwards when faced with difficulties.

Resilience isn’t a trait. You’re not born with a certain amount of resilience and stuck with it. Instead, resilience involves a combination of thoughts, behaviours and actions that you can learn. That’s what makes resilience such an exciting concept.

Let’s imagine you’ve been working on securing a bid for a huge project. You’ve been developing the presentation and report for months. You’re under tremendous pressure to succeed and, when the day comes, your nerves get the better of you. You struggle to answer questions, as your mind goes blank. You imagine losing the contract and your manager shouting at you in frustration and firing you.

If you did fail to secure the contract, the following thoughts might arise: ‘I failed. What if I get fired? How will I pay my bills? I should have practised more. I’m pathetic.’

These thoughts emerge from the soup of emotions that’s ignited by the stress you’ve experienced. If you’re unmindful, these thoughts persist and you’re less able to bounce back from the experience. You feel increasingly worse and things can spiral downwards.

If you practise mindfulness, you notice that you’re having these judgemental thoughts. You’re then able to step back from them and see that, perhaps the presentation didn’t go well, but all the other things you’re telling yourself are just thoughts arising from your negative feelings about the event — they aren’t necessarily true. By acknowledging that your feelings impact on your thoughts, you can avoid reacting to imagined threats and deal with the situation in a more reasoned manner. Over time, practising mindfulness builds up your resilience to such workplace experiences and you become better able to deal with them.

Even the US Army is using mindfulness to help build resilience in its recruits. Initial studies show that mindfulness helps to develop soldiers’ mental fitness so that they’re more able to make good decisions in stressful situations and less likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder.

Some people mistakenly think that resilient people don’t experience distress — that’s not true. When adversity strikes, to have mental and emotional pain is normal. Developing resilience, however, ensures that, over time, you’re able to rebuild your life.

But, you may be wondering, how does mindfulness increase resilience in your brain? Research by Professor Richard Davidson and colleagues has discovered how mindfulness may help build resilience. They looked at people’s brains when faced with a stressor and found that their amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions and responding to fear) became activated, releasing stress hormones. The research participants also experienced negative, cyclical thoughts long after the stressor had passed. In those participants who practised mindfulness, however, the activity of the amygdala reduced soon after the stressor was removed. Davidson states that better control of the amygdala may be the key to resilience.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson believes that mindfulness offers other ways to build resilience too. They are:

So, following an unsuccessful outcome to months of hard work, you may say to yourself: ‘Beating myself up is pointless. I worked hard but I wasn’t successful this time. I’m sure there are things I can discover from this experience. Perhaps I could ask for feedback and tips from others and, after a few days of well-deserved rest, I can have a go at a different project.’ Mindfulness offers a whole different way of being with your everyday experiences.

Here are five steps you can take to use mindfulness to help build your resilience:

Improved relationships

You’ve probably had to work with someone difficult to get on with. Maybe they’re rude, critical and rarely offer praise. They say the wrong thing at the wrong time. You wonder how they managed to get into the company in the first place. You may even think that you’re better off avoiding certain colleagues altogether.

Relationships matter. A lot. In fact, the human brain is designed to be social. Learning, emotional processing, creativity and insight are often enhanced when in conversation with others. If that’s the case, why are workplace relationships so often fraught with difficulty? And how does mindfulness improve workplace relationships?

When you’re mindful, you’re better able to regulate your emotions. For example, Frank works for a large oil company and is responsible for the refining division. He talks to Samantha about her recent lateness at work. She starts giving excuses. This pattern repeats over several days. Eventually, in a fit of anger, Frank starts shouting at her. She shouts back. In the weeks that follow, Samantha comes into work early but her working relationship with Frank deteriorates further.

If Frank were more mindful, he’d have noticed the anger building up inside him. As a result, he could have acknowledged his feelings, and made a conscious choice about what to do next. Speaking to Samantha later in the day when he was more composed might have revealed a bigger underlying issue. Seen in this bigger context, Frank is less likely to react with anger next time, and more likely to develop positive working relationships with colleagues.

Mindfulness improves relationships by enhancing the ability to listen both to the words being said and the emotions behind them. Good communication is at the very heart of relationships. With greater levels of mindful awareness, you become more adept at listening to both the words being spoken and their emotional signals. By giving a person your full attention, the relationship is enhanced.

When engaged in mindfulness, you’re also a better listener. You’re better able to listen because mindfulness enhances focus. Research shows that the more you practise mindful exercises, the better your brain becomes at focusing on whatever it chooses to. Being better able to focus has obvious benefits when you’re trying to listen to someone at work.

Mindfulness also helps you to help others, by seeing the bigger picture. Rather than just thinking about yourself and what you need, you think about others more.

Use the following tips to be more mindful in your workplace relationships:

Honed mental clarity and focus

Imagine lying in a darkened room and shining a torch around. What you can see is whatever that spotlight is shining on.

Your mind works in the same way. Your attention is like a spotlight, and in a moment of mindfulness you can decide where to shine it. You can focus within yourself, on a particular part of your body or even your body as a whole. You can focus on your thoughts or emotions.

Focus is one of the most overlooked skills that humans possess. Most people think that focus is something they do or don’t have. But that’s not true. Your attention is like a muscle — the more you flex that brain muscle, the stronger it gets. With time and effort, the regions of your brain responsible for maintaining focus will grow. And these changes happen within days, not years. Mindfulness offers a way to train that muscle in your brain so you can decide where you want to focus, and stay focused for longer periods of time.

When you lack focus, you feel scattered. Your attention can get caught by another person’s conversation, a thought about the event you attended yesterday or just noise outside. The more your attention snags on other things, the less able you are to complete the tasks in front of you and you begin to feel inefficient. When you practise mindful exercises, your mind gradually shifts from being frazzled to being focused. You then become more efficient and, as a result, have more time to rest and relax.

One of the other benefits of greater focus is greater levels of happiness. Research suggests that people are happiest when they’re fully focused on something. That focus can be on anything: Skiing downhill, painting a picture or writing a sales report. When fully focused, people enter a ‘flow’ state of mind, which results in a heightened feeling of wellbeing. As you develop your ability to focus, you’ll enter this flow state more often when working. And if you’re happier, you’re immediately more creative, productive and confident.

How can you improve your focus in the workplace using mindfulness? Try these tips:

Mindful leadership

A mindful leader values both inner reflection and outer action. Rather than reacting automatically to everyday challenges, mindful leaders ensure that they’re consciously making the right decision with awareness, compassion and wisdom.

Mindful leadership does not mean that the leader is always practising mindful exercises and walking around in a Zen-like bubble! A mindful leader is very much a person of action, but understands the value of rest, reflection and renewal.

A mindful leader can make a positive difference to an organisation. Because they’re better able to see the bigger picture rather than just immediate threats or opportunities, an organisation with mindful leaders can create solid corporate values and a clear mission statement.

Mindful leadership begins with self-awareness. These leaders are aware of their own thoughts, ideas, opinions, beliefs and emotional state, from moment to moment. Through this self-awareness, they can challenge their interpretations to discover new solutions. And through this self-awareness, they’re better able to relate and communicate with others — they have high levels of emotional intelligence. (You’ll find more about mindful leadership in Chapters 9 and 10.)

Some of the benefits of mindful leadership are hard to measure but easy to see. A mindful leader is more present, exudes a sense of control and makes their employees feel more cared for.

If you’re in a leadership position, whether you manage 2 people or 2,000, try the following exercise to help you to be more mindful in just a few minutes:

Write down one idea for yourself and your staff, and, if appropriate, carry them out. The exercise combines mindfulness and compassion. The mindfulness part helps you to tune into your current state, and the support part is an act of self-compassion. Finally, considering ways of supporting others shows compassion and leads to staff feeling more valued. Looking after and appreciating staff can help you get far more from them than a pay rise or promotion.

Looking at the Organisational Benefits of Mindfulness

A mindful organisation is aware of and cares for its people, whether that’s employees, volunteers, customers or suppliers — whoever they work with. The organisation understands the need to focus on revenue generation, but in the long rather than short term. The company is based on sound ethical and sustainable values; it aims to make a positive difference to the world. When hard decisions about discipline or redundancy are necessary, the organisation can make them but only after considering all other options. The organisation encourages physical exercise and good nutrition, mental wellbeing through mindfulness classes, and emotional wellbeing through social interaction and training. In order to get the best out of people, working hours are flexible, as are many of the working practices. The organisation celebrates success and fully engages staff when making major changes and decisions about the organisation’s future. It helps staff to do more of what they really enjoy and to find meaning in their work in a way that benefits both the individual and organisation.

An unmindful organisation is highly short-term focused. It may want to increase its profits for this quarter rather than care for staff or customers. Its products or services may cause harm rather than provide value for its customers. Employees display a low level of interaction, communication and emotional intelligence because they work in a climate of fear. The wrong people are in the wrong positions and are unclear about their roles and responsibilities. Working hours are long and unsustainable, and the organisation frowns upon a healthy balance between work and home/social life. It doesn’t respond effectively to changes taking place in its sector.

A mindful organisation may sound idealistic but high levels of workplace stress, burnout and inequality; lack of creativity; unethical corporate behaviour; and too much short-term focus on profit mean that creating a mindful organisation isn’t a luxury but an urgent necessity.

Happier, more engaged employees

One of our favourite business books is Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness (BusinessPlusUS, 2010). The author founded a company called Zappos in 1999. Zappos grew from zero sales in 1999 to $1 billion worth of sales in 2009. Hsieh says this success was the result of making customers happy — and he achieved that by making his employees happy.

Zappos has a set of 10 core values that the staff created together. They provide the foundation of the company’s culture and are a guide to how to treat customers, suppliers, employees and sales reps in a mindful way. These values include:

Happiness isn’t usually a term bandied about in a workplace environment. Traditionally, if you wanted to increase productivity, you made employees work harder or attend a time management course, or looked for ways to automate tasks.

Mindfulness does make employees happy. So much so that the effects of happiness can be seen in brain scans! Happy people show greater activation in the left pre-frontal cortex. Completing an eight-week mindfulness course has resulted in employees demonstrating greater activity in that part of the brain — the mindfulness literally made them feel happier.

But so what? you may ask. It transpires that happiness is linked to a whole host of benefits in the workplace. Happier staff are more productive, creative, take fewer sick days and are more likely to be promoted. So good work doesn’t make you happy but being happy creates good work.

Try the following tips to boost your happiness in the workplace using mindfulness. Share them!

Greater creativity

How important do you think creativity is in your organisation? Is it important to innovate and find new ideas for products or services? Or do you simply keep doing the same thing and hope that your competitors won’t catch up? Most people agree that, in the current economy, without innovation your competitors will soon overtake you. So, to be a successful organisation, you need your employees’ brains to be as creative as possible. Creative solutions not only help your organisation, they also help to meet the needs of your customers.

Take a few moments to consider the stance of a creative brain — open, flexible, attentive and not too stressed. In fact, when you’re in a mindful state, the creative part of your brain is activated.

Mindfulness creates the ideal conditions in your brain for creative thought. When you’re unmindful, you’re on auto-pilot, thinking the same old thoughts. When you’re mindful, you’re more awake, energised and aware of new ideas as they emerge.

Think back to the last time you had a creative idea. Were you feeling anxious or relaxed? Were you in the moment or mired in a fog of worries and concerns? Were you feeling happy or sad? Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi draws on 30 years’ experience of researching mindfulness to identify the following five stages when engaged in the creative process:

Mindfulness comes into play in all the different stages but is most important in the second, incubation. In Figure 2-1, you can see how the often creative, unconscious brain struggles to offer new solutions because of a busy or negative mindset. When your mind is more open and calm through mindfulness, creative solutions can rise up into your unconscious brain.

Try the following exercises to boost your own creativity at work. Then share them with your colleagues to help you develop a more mindfully creative team.

Increased productivity

Productivity isn’t just about getting things done. Productivity is also about choosing what you need to do and doing those activities at a time of day when your energy levels and focus are highest.

Productivity is about working smarter, not just harder. There’s nothing wrong with working hard when at work — being lazy at work doesn’t lead to a fulfilling life or an effective organisation, sorry folks! But working smarter is about learning what you need to do and deciding how, when and where to do it.

Mindfulness improves focus. One of the direct benefits of greater focus is increased productivity. You stop being distracted by other thoughts, a text message or sounds in the office. Instead, you’re able to keep your attention on whatever requires finishing.

Mindfulness of your own energy levels has a huge impact on productivity. As you become more mindful, you notice the subtle fluctuations in your energy levels. Noticing such things is an important skill. Everyone’s energy rises and falls at different times of the day. When you recognise when your energy is at its peak, you can tackle your most challenging tasks. When your energy levels are naturally lower, you can use that time to chat with colleagues or take a break.

For example, if Gary knows that his energy levels peak in the morning and are lowest between 1 pm and 3 pm, he can make sure that he spends his time writing that important report in the office before anyone else arrives. In the afternoon, satisfied with a productive morning’s work, he can call up his managers in London and catch up with progress over there.

Your energy levels also increase because you experience less emotional reactivity. Mindfulness increases your emotional awareness. So when you feel low, frustrated or angry, negative emotions don’t creep up on you. You see the mood coming and you accept the feeling. You know that moods coming and going is part of being human. When something happens at work to make you feel upset or angry, you deal with your emotion before speaking. You express your emotions without losing control of yourself. This way of behaving is much more energy efficient, which means that you have energy left over to productively complete your work.

Practising mindfulness also gives you more energy because you worry less. Worrying causes your brain to use up 20 per cent of your energy, even though it comprises only 2 per cent of your body weight. Think back to the last time you spent a few minutes worrying — did you feel energised or drained afterwards? Most people feel drained. When you’re mindful, you’re more focused on the moment and what needs to be done, and you don’t waste energy worrying. Remember, worry is like a rocking chair — it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere. Mindfulness exercises help you to reduce your worrying.

Finally, by being mindful, your mind has the flexibility to step back to see the bird’s eye view. Taking a quick overview means that you don’t waste your time doing tasks that are unnecessary. Productivity isn’t just about doing what needs doing, but also not doing what doesn’t need doing!

Here are a few tips for making your organisation more productive:

Improved decision-making

All CEOs know that high-quality decisions can make or break their organisation. When managers make effective decisions, staff work more efficiently, they feel more in control and the results can be seen in sustainable income for long-term growth.

You can make good decisions when your brain is functioning optimally. You can read all you like about decision theory, but if your brain isn’t working optimally, you fail to take all factors into account and make bad decisions.

Think back to the last time you came home after a tough day at work. What sort of decisions did you make? Did you decide to eat a healthy fruit salad, go for a swim, practise mindfulness and phone a friend who needed cheering up? Or did you eat too much chocolate, slump in front of the TV and snap at your partner? The latter scenario is more likely — because your brain wasn’t able to make good decisions. Your long-term goals of losing weight or being healthy or socialising more were overtaken by a brain starved of rest. This situation is called decision fatigue. The more decisions you make, without adequate breaks, the less effective your decisions will be. One way of countering decision fatigue is practising mindfulness exercises.

Another way in which mindfulness can help with decisions is by switching off the auto-pilot response in your brain. When operating without mindfulness, many of your decisions are automatic and based on previous decisions. They lack freshness and don’t have access to any new information. If the employees of an organisation are more mindful, they can spot new ideas, see the activities of competitors, notice a need for new processes or consumers, and make a different decision — and thus move the company forward successfully.

For your day-to-day decisions, try the five-step approach shown in Figure 2-2.

By taking a mindful minute, or mindful pause (see Chapter 3), you can optimise your brain function, reduce decision fatigue and make better decisions.

Bear these tips in mind to improve your decision-making:

Reducing staff turnover

High employee turnover hits the bottom line. The cost of replacing an employee and training them can cost up to twice that employee’s salary. Consider the time involved in recruitment, for carrying out interviews as you screen candidates and the loss of productivity as the new employee learns the ropes. Maybe the new employee won’t even work out and you then have to repeat the process. On top of that, constant changes of staff can negatively impact staff morale.

Mindfulness can help lower staff turnover by helping employees to cope better with stress. Stress can lead to illness and ultimately result in people being on long-term sick leave. But even for staff who aren’t overwhelmed by stress, mindfulness can build their resilience and improve their performance, which will make them feel more valued.

Too much stress leads to burnout. According to Professor Marie Asberg, burnout is the end of an exhaustion funnel when you gradually stop doing things that you deem ‘unimportant’ such as exercising and socialising, and instead obsess about your workplace outcomes. Research carried out in 2009 found that doctors who practised mindfulness experienced decreased burnout rates.

Prevention is better than cure. Yet most organisations focus on fixing staff after they become ill rather than preventing stress-related illness in the first place. Most employers spend 200–300 per cent more on managing ill heath than on prevention.

Use the following mindful tips to help lower staff turnover: