Chapter 7

Applying Mindfulness At Work Training

In This Chapter

Exploring mindful communication

Dealing with difficult people and strong emotions

Mindful working in times of change

In Chapter 6 you discovered some of the basics of mindfulness and started training your brain to be more mindful. This chapter builds on these foundations by exploring key things that you do at work, and some alternative mindful strategies that pay dividends. You continue your Mindfulness At Work Training by applying mindfulness to communication, difficult people, strong emotions and work related change.

Continuing Your Mindfulness at Work Training (MAWT)

This section takes you through what you need to know about mindful communication in the workplace, how to deal with people who challenge you, the expression of strong emotions in the workplace, and the difficulties arising from change.

Week 3: Mindful communication at work

If you’ve been participating in this course, in week 2 you discovered how the mind and body are more connected than you think. You practised the body scan to help you reconnect with your body. You discovered the benefit of appreciating the good things in life.

Week 2 Reflection: Jot your responses in your journal

• How did you get on with the body scan exercise in week 2? Did it have on impact on your mood or work in any way?
• Did you find some areas of the body more difficult than others?
• Did you try the three-step body check? Did you find it beneficial?
• Did you manage to spend more time appreciating something that you enjoyed or found good at work? Did this impact on your mood or work in any way?

Week 3 is all about communication at work. You explore mindful communication strategies, mindful meetings and how to present more mindfully. You start by looking at mindful communication.

Mindful communication

Mindful communication is all about cultivating the skill of listening more closely to colleagues and developing greater clarity about how to respond. In the busy world of the modern-day workplace much of our communication is conducted without listening enough, and jumping to solutions before we’ve even identified what the real issue or problem is. When trying to juggle multiple, conflicting demands we’re often distracted and only pick out of conversations what we want to hear without hearing the whole story. Ideally we need to be as fully present as we can when communicating. Being fully present allows us to get to the nub of the issue more quickly, and saves time and frustration for all concerned.

Mindful communication involves four steps. When communicating mindfully at work, you need to:

1. Connect. See things through another person’s eyes. Listen to them mindfully in the present moment and ask for clarification if necessary.
2. Agree. Identify areas that you agree on.
3. Collaborate. Work with the other person as an equal to find a way to resolve the situation.
4. Achieve. Work together to find a mutually agreeable solution or compromise, or simply agree to disagree.

I (Juliet) have a friend who works as a factory line supervisor – lets call her Gill. Gill worked for a well-known frozen food producer. Her boss asked her to increase the line’s production by 10 per cent. The production line was already working at full capacity, and Gill knew this directive would be unpopular with the staff. She also knew from experience that when she tried to get the line to go faster more mistakes were made and production actually decreased. Also, some product lines were being moved to another plant and she was anxious her production line might be moved, and her team face redundancy. Gill had recently moved to a new house and started to worry about what would happen if she lost her job. She was also worried about Paul the packer, who was reaching retirement age but had little else in his life but work. How would he cope if he lost his job; would he become reclusive and depressed? And what would happen to Marie? Her son had special needs and she was paying for additional tuition out of her low wage. Gill started to feel overwhelmed and that she was a failure

Consider Gill’s predicament. Re-read the four-step mindful communication model above. Apply the model to the case study. What could Gill have done to address this issue with her manager and her team? Jot your ideas in your journal.

3.1: A mindful minute

When practising mindful communication for the first time, you may benefit from this short exercise, which helps you prepare to communicate. Although the exercise is called the mindful minute, you can extend it if time permits. This exercise is designed to be done anywhere, anytime, seated or standing. You can also find an audio track (Track 10) to accompany it online at www.dummies.com/go/mindfulnessatworkuk Follow these steps:

1. Centre yourself (about 20 seconds).

   Feel your feet feel in contact with the ground. Imagine that your feet are rooted to the ground and that your legs are like tree trunks, firmly supporting you in place. Use your feet as an anchor for your attention.

2. Acknowledge what’s going on (about 20 seconds).

   Now focus your attention on everything that’s going on – the thoughts entering your mind, sounds, smells and bodily sensations. Acknowledge your experiences and let them go without judging or getting involved, just noticing the present moment.

3. Take a mindful pause (about 20 seconds).

   Now focus your attention on nothing but your breath. Feel the breath coming in, and the breath going out. If thoughts arise, kindly acknowledge them and let them go.

Using this exercise before mindful communications isn’t essential, but many people find that it helps by creating a short space between the busyness of their working mind and the present moment state that’s ideal for mindful communications.

Try using the mindful minute technique during your work day, in preparation for a mindful conversation with someone. When you’ve practiced this three or more times, complete the reflection below.

Reflection on ‘a mindful minute’

Note your responses in your journal.

• When and why did you use the mindful minute technique?
• How easy or difficult did you find it?
• Did you feel different before and after the exercise?
• How did it impact on your communication with colleagues?

Another essential ingredient for successful communication is working in approach mode: approaching the topic of conversation with open curiosity and interest and avoiding the temptation to jump to conclusions or make decisions without the full facts.

3.2: The approach technique

In order to move from an avoidance to an approach state of mind, you need to be aware of the motivations behind your thoughts and emotions. Discovering these may take time, effort and practice.

The next time you’ve a decision to make, large or small, try applying this simple technique:

1. Use the ‘mindful minute’ or ‘three-step break’ technique to centre yourself. Observe your mental chatter and bring yourself back to the present moment.
2. Define the decision that needs to be made. Write it down on a piece of paper if it helps.
3. Identify two or more other possible courses of action. Undertake this task with a ‘beginner’s mind’ just like a child might when approaching a task for the first time, with gentleness and curiosity. Don’t spend too much time thinking about them, just make sure that you explore all possibilities and don’t dismiss the absurd or seemingly impossible.
4. Identify your default response, that is, how you’d normally respond. Write it down if doing so is helpful.
5. Identify which of the courses of action are ‘avoidant’. Spot which possible decisions are based on avoiding something undesirable and which are more ‘approach’ focused.
6. Make your decision. If your chosen course of action involves a new way of responding, ensure that you give it a chance and try not let any inbuilt negativity creep in. If you decide that your ‘default’ reaction is the correct response, that’s fine too. The important thing is to create a small gap between the stimulus (a call to action or need to make a decision) and your response (how you behave and think), so that you can decide on the best way forward.

Try this activity three or four times during the week and then complete the following reflection.

Reflection on the approach technique

Reflect on the questions below and note your responses in your journal

• When did you use the approach technique?
• How did you feel?
• Did you feel different before and after the exercise?

Applying the approach technique to every decision isn’t practical, but using it regularly helps you develop a greater awareness of what is motivating your decisions and actions. This knowledge can help you break out of behaviour and thought patterns that no longer serve you well.

Mindful meetings

Many studies show that meetings are unproductive and costly. A mindful approach to meetings can help them become more productive from both the leader’s and the participants’ perspective. Chapter 9 covers mindful meetings in depth.

So how can mindfulness help you to have more productive meetings? You need to start by approaching and re-examining what you’re trying to achieve. Read the section on mindful meetings in Chapter 9 and try out the exercises for yourself. The next time you lead or attend a meeting, spend a few moments afterwards reflecting on your experiences.

To best prepare you for leading or participating in a meeting, try listening to the accompanying audio track (Track 11) which prepares you to be mindful before and during the meeting itself. You can download it from www.dummies.com/go/mindfulnessatworkuk

Reflection on mindful meetings

Reflect on the questions below and note your responses in your journal

• Did you mindfully prepare for the meeting? (If so how?)
• What, if anything was different about the meeting?
• Did you manage to remain ‘present’ in the meeting?
• Did any emotions arise during the meeting? How did you handle them?
• What was the most useful thing you gained from adopting a more mindful approach to attending or leading meetings?

Mindful presentations

Research suggests that many people fear public speaking more than death. Giving a presentation is unlikely to kill or mortally wound us, and yet your threat system may well be activated in the same way as if we face a life or death situation.

Listen to the audio track ‘Mindful presentation’ (Track 12 at www.dummies.com/go/mindfulnessatworkuk), which helps prepare you mentally before giving a presentation. If you found the guidance helpful, make sure you spend a few minutes listening to the track before you next deliver a presentation.

As you have discovered earlier in the book, practising mindfulness can help you to stop the fight or flight reaction, or notice when it occurs and take steps to stop it escalating further.

Here are some tips to help you present in a mindful way.

• Allow plenty of time to prepare. The human brain hates uncertainty, and attempts to create certainty by trying to anticipate what might happen next. By creating a structure and content, uncertainty is reduced and the brain is free to focus on other things
• Before you present, try to set aside some time to be mindful too. The simple action of focusing on the breathing and recognising moment by moment sensations will bring your mind and body back to equilibrium. This can be done with eyes in soft focus if you are in a public place just before you present – no one will notice. As mindfulness is about ‘falling awake’ you will remain fully aware of what’s happening around you as you ground yourself in the present moment.
• Stretch your body mindfully. The way your body is feeling can heavily influence your emotions and thoughts, often at an unconscious level. Before presenting, if possible physically release tension by stretching, wiggling your hands and feet and rotating your shoulders. Feel the sensations in your body as you stretch. You can also mentally release tension by detecting tension in the body, and releasing it with the out breath.
• Let go of ideas of ‘success’ or ‘failure’. When you start your presentation, it's time to relax as all you can do is present to your audience now, in the present moment, and it will be as it will be. By recognising the brain’s tendency to be on the lookout for problems, you can make a conscious effort to balance, and not allowing your thoughts and emotions to spiral out of control.
• Don’t forget to breathe! It’s amazing how many times even professional presenters can forget this. Sometimes the act of becoming tense can lead you to hold your breath. Your mind goes blank and the brain focusses its attention on keeping you alive by prompting you to breathe again.
• Speak slowly, with pauses. Speaking slowly signifies to your audience that you are in control rather than panicking. The slower pace also gives you time to think and reflect on what you want to say. The pauses also offer a moment for you to connect with the audience, to check how they are responding to your talk. Most people speak too quickly when presenting, so watch out for this one. Be mindful of the way you use your voice - if your throat aches, you are probably pushing it too hard. Be kind to yourself – try to work in harmony with your body, treating it as a friend rather than an enemy. Speak from your belly and sips water from time to time.
• Manage the situation if you get flustered or feel your tension rising. Create a few moments of mindfulness for yourself by trying one of the following:
  • Asking the audience to ‘take a moment to consider’ something you have just presented. Leave 30 seconds to a minute for them to do so, while you have a mindful pause to re-centre yourself
  • Asking the audience to discuss something amongst themselves. While they are doing this you can grab a few moments of mindfulness before asking them to feed back
  • Asking the audience to ‘Think of a time when you …’ and while they are thinking, grab a few mindful moments for yourself.
• Remember, you are in control of the room. Irrespective of your job role or status, when presenting, you are the leader in the room, you are in control. Use this powerful thought to take and hold control throughout your presentation. You can get the audience to stand, sit down, listen, or discuss. Remember that in most presentation situations, you are the only one who knows exactly how the presentation should go, so if you deviate, miss a bit out, take less or more time on one part – only you know. This realisation can be truly liberating!
• Try turning fear into focus. The feeling of butterflies, in your stomach the wobbly knees, or a cold sweat is simply a natural surge of adrenaline, preparing you for action. You get this same chemical reaction when we are really looking forward to something, but experience it as excitement or a buzz. By approaching and embracing this, you can use it to help you focus and give the performance of a lifetime!

You might also like to get your audience to try out some mindfulness as you start your presentation. I often use start meetings and presentation with a quick three step break. I explain that mindfulness is a form of brain training that helps people to focus their attention, then suggest that if they are happy to give this technique a try, to settle into their chairs with their eyes closed or in soft focus. I leave them around 30 seconds focusing on observing thoughts, 30 seconds on observing breathing, and the last 30 getting a sense of how their body feels. Most people are happy to join in, and those who aren’t, are happy to sit quietly for a minute.

Hold your breath right now (for as long as you can) and at the same time try to think about something.

How did you get on? Was it more difficult than expected? This shows the importance of speaking slowly and taking breaths when you present. Try to slow your breathing down if you are getting tense, remembering that a better oxygen supply to the brain will improve your quality of thought and ability to get your message across.

Reflection on mindful presentations

Think about a presentation you gave in the past that did not go to plan. Read and reflect on the questions, and jot your answers in your journal.

1. What thoughts were in your head as things went wrong or you found yourself off track?
2. What emotions did you experience?
3. What sensations did you feel in your body? Where specifically did you feel them?

   Now think about a presentation you’re planning. If your work does not require you to present, imagine that you’re giving a presentation to your manager and the top team on how productivity can be increased in your department.

4. What are the key things you will do to prepare for the presentation?
5. How will you use mindfulness before and during the presentation?
6. If you begin to feel fearful or anxious, what steps will you take to counter the negative effects of these emotions?
7. What three main things will you take away from the activity on mindful presentations?

Week 3 reflection

Read and reflect on the questions, and jot your answers in your journal.

• What are the three main things that you will take away from this week’s activities?
• How will you apply what you’ve learned to help you communicate better in future?
• What mindfulness practices do you feel would best help you improve your communications at work?

Week 3 home practice

Your home practice for week 3 should focus on the following:

• Practice Mindfulness or breath or body scan each day
• Try to apply mindful communication techniques into three work activities during the next 7 days

Week 4: Mindfully working with difficult people and strong emotions

In week 3 you discovered how to apply the mindfulness lessons you discovered in weeks 1 and 2 to improve the way that you communicate at work. You also applied mindfulness to day-to-day work communications, meetings and presentations.

Reflection on week 3

Read and reflect on the questions, and jot your answers in your journal.

• How are you getting on with practicing mindfulness of breath and body scan?
• Describe occasions in the previous week when you applied mindfulness to your communications at work.
• What happened as a result that was different?
• What (if anything) was difficult?
• What aspects of mindful communication do you need to work on?

Week 4 is all about working with strong emotions – both in yourself and in others. You start to train your brain to be more aware of your emotions as they arise, and use this awareness to restore your sense of equilibrium quicker. You also explore powerful techniques to help you when confronted with strong emotions from difficult colleagues. You discover how to better manage your responses to difficult situations at work, thus maintaining your equilibrium and sense of well-being. You can start by looking at how mindfulness can help you to manage your own emotions.

Managing your emotions mindfully

In order to find out how to manage your emotions better, you need to understand a little about what emotions are and how you generate them. Advances in neuroscience in recent years have helped us to understand how the brain generates emotions.

Emotions such as love, hate or joy are specific responses to a particular stimulus, and are usually of fairly short duration. In comparison, mood is a more general feeling, such as happiness or sadness, which lasts for a longer time. Emotions are complex and have both physical and mental elements. Emotions consist of subjective thoughts, physiological (body) responses and expressive behaviour.

When one of my (Juliet’s) clients – lets call him Charlie, a junior account manager, received a call from a particular client, his heart sank. He knew that this client was usually highly demanding, and in the past had complained about him to his manager.

He told me that in the split second before lifting the receiver, he thought, ‘Best be on my guard; whatever I do he’ll never be happy.’ His body became tense, his heart beat a little faster and he felt nervous. He felt his confidence ebbing away.

So what was going on? The work situation (a client he perceived to be difficult) triggered thoughts (be on guard; I can never make this person happy). The thoughts triggered physiological changes (tension and heartbeat) and generated emotions (anxiety, fear and negativity).

This short example illustrates how a situation triggers thoughts and, in turn, these thoughts (or judgements) trigger changes in the body and emotions. If you’re like most people, you’re unaware of this process happening because it does so unconsciously. Sometime later you may (or may not!) notice that you’re tense and angry, but probably won’t connect the physiological change or the emotion to the thoughts that triggered them.

Thoughts are powerful things. Each time you generate a thought, you develop a new neural pathway in your brain. The more you think something, the stronger the connection becomes in your brain – so you are, literally, what you think! Your thoughts are often the culprits that are responsible for triggering emotions. Emotions are the result of the release of hormones into your bloodstream by the parasympathetic nervous system or the sympathetic nervous system (for more on these, see Chapter 5).

Emotions can be challenging to manage for three reasons:

• You’re often unconscious of the chain of events that has caused the emotion. This makes it difficult to stop the emotion from happening.
• When in the grip of strong emotions such as fear, your brain may divert energy away from rational, higher-brain thinking to the muscles in your legs and your heart rate in order to help you escape from the perceived threat.
• You’re often driven by fears and emotions locked in your body as much as by thoughts and feelings locked in your brain. The body is acutely sensitive to even the tiniest emotions that move across your mind. The body can detect thoughts before you’ve consciously registered them yourself – often reacting as if they were real rather than just thoughts. The body’s response to these thoughts can then further enhance your fears and worries.

Mindfulness has proven to be highly effective in teaching people to manage their emotions better. Here’s how it works. It all starts with awareness. Practising mindfulness helps you observe thoughts as they arise. Treating thoughts as ‘mental processes’ rather than facts, stops you responding on auto-pilot and regarding them as real, and your brain triggering a physiological and emotional response.

4.1: Using mindfulness to explore difficult emotions

This activity helps you to observe your emotional responses dispassionately. You’ll find an accompanying audio track, Track 13, at www.dummies.com/go/mindfulnessatworkuk. Follow these steps:

1. Find a comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed for 10 minutes or so. Ensure that you’ve a comfortable chair to sit on.
2. Focus your attention on nothing but your breathing for a few minutes. Feel the breath coming in and the breath going out. Experience how your lungs feel when they inflate and deflate as you breathe. Don’t try to judge or categorise what’s going on, just observe your breathing with kindly curiosity.
3. Shift your attention to a difficult or challenging situation at work. Try not to pick anything too challenging or raw, as at this stage you’re just starting to find out how to use mindfulness to deal with emotions.
4. Picture the difficulty or work challenge in your mind’s eye. Picture it as vividly as you can; really put yourself in the situation as if it were happening right here, right now.
5. Observe what’s going on. Try to look at the situation as though you were a scientist looking in. What thoughts are drifting into your mind? How does your body feel? Can you feel tension in any specific area? Are you experiencing any emotions and, if so, what are they? Be careful to remain detached; don’t get involved, don’t look for a solution, don’t make judgements – just observe.

   If you find you’re becoming too uncomfortable, just let the situation you’re visualising go and return your focus to your breathing. Likewise, if you notice that your mind has shifted from being mode (observing what’s going on) to doing mode (trying to solve the issue or thinking about it), just return to observing with kindly curiosity.

6. Refocus on your breathing. When you’ve observed the thoughts, bodily responses and emotions generated by the situation you’ve visualised, return to a focus on your breathing for a few minutes before finishing the activity.

Reflection on exploring difficult emotions

Read and reflect on the questions, and jot your answers in your journal.

1. What was the situation or difficulty you focused on during this activity?
2. What thoughts did you observe?
3. Did you observe any responses in your body (for example, tension, changed heart rate or other sensations)?
4. Did you detect any emotions emerging?
5. Did you observe anything that surprised you or you did not expect?

Practising activities such as using mindfulness to explore difficulties, the body scan and mindful breathing makes you become more aware of emotions as they arise. You become more aware of your mind–body connection, that is, how thoughts, physiology and emotions trigger and change one another. This knowledge helps you detect emotional responses early on before they escalate into something more difficult to manage.

Four key mindfulness exercises to help you manage your emotions better are:

• The body scan, which helps you detect changes in your body so that you can use your body as an early warning system.
• Mindfulness of breath, which helps you to notice thoughts as they arise, helping you to create a gap between a situation and your response to it and thus buying you time in which to decide on a wise course of action.
• Mindfulness to explore difficult emotions, which helps you explore the impact of specific work challenges on your thoughts, body and emotions. This knowledge helps you stop things escalating.
• A mindful minute, which creates a gap and allows you to detach from the situation for just long enough to put things into perspective and avoid responding on emotional auto-pilot.

Mindfully dealing with difficult people and strong emotions in others

So, back to Charlie, the junior account manager, and the call from his ‘difficult’ client. Charlie had just lifted up the receiver. Sure enough his client was being demanding and, what’s more, he sounded really angry. He wanted some reports from Charlie that were not scheduled to be sent over until next week, and thus were only half written. He wanted a further discount on a venue that he’d already been offered a substantial discount on and he was moaning about a venue he’d used the previous week. Ultimately, he threatened to take his business to a competitor. As he was a major client, Charlie was desperate not to lose his business. He’d been assigned to this particular client in the first place because his company had always had an easy working relationship with him in the past. His company thought that the client was such a sure bet that Charlie, a junior with little experience but plenty of drive and determination, would be able to manage him.

Charlie was not in a good place to take the call. His mind was racing, his heart was pounding and he was starting to panic.

I used mindfulness to help Charlie work through what had occured. We identified together the facts:

• Facts about Charlie: Charlie recognised that he was young and inexperienced as an account manager. He did not understand why this ‘easy’ client had suddenly become ‘hard’. He was keen to prove himself and progress within the company. He had determination and drive. He wanted to do a great job for all his clients.
• Facts about the client: He had recently been promoted to a new role managing the sourcing of corporate venues. His predecessor was regarded by colleagues as being too lax and poor at bargaining with suppliers. He wanted to prove that he was able to drive down costs and get a better service from suppliers.

I explained the need to create a few moments to centre himself, observe his emotions and see things more objectively. I suggested that a good way of doing this was to summarise what he thought the client wanted from him, and agree to take action and call him back at some later point.

Mindfulness training had taught Charlie that thoughts are only ‘mental processes’, so he decided to acknowledge and let go of his doom-laden thoughts and start his next call in the present moment with no past baggage.

His next call to the client went much better. As no one was in the office just before he called, he practised mindfulness for three minutes before picking up the phone. Charlie’s calmness and understanding of the client’s needs had a positive impact on the latter. The call ended on a positive note, for both Charlie and his client.

Reflection on managing emotions case study

Reflect on the case study and the questions which follow. Note your responses in your journal.

• If Charlie had continued his call when the client first phoned, what do you think may have happened? Why?
• How did Charlie’s mindfulness practice help him prepare for his next interaction with his client?
• Can you make any other observations?

What Charlie’s story illustrates is the need to recognise how your thoughts impact on your emotions and physiology. Only by recognising what’s going on in your own mind and body can you manage yourself and be in a fit state to identify what’s going on in others. From this position you can then recognise that, in most cases, you are not causing others to become angry or exhibit other strong emotions, their own issues are responsible, many of which you’re completely unaware of.

When you’ve practised mindfulness for a little while, you’ll develop the ability to step out of auto-pilot, where your life is spent trying to anticipate the future based on what’s happened in the past. You’ll develop the capability to observe your thoughts, and how they impact on your body and emotions. By having a greater awareness of what’s going on, you can nip things in the bud when you start to spiral down into despair, panic and ‘catastrophising’.

4.2: Using mindfulness to help you work with difficult colleagues or clients

Encountering difficult people at work is probably a universal experience. Try the following activity to prepare you for your next challenging encounter.

1. Spend a few moments thinking about an encounter with a difficult colleague, client or customer. Briefly summarise it on a sheet of paper
2. Sit comfortably in a chair, with your feet on the ground, in a comfortable upright dignified position. Focus your attention on your breathing. Feeling the breath coming in and the breath going out. Count six breaths (one inhalation and one exhalation equal one breath).

   If your mind wanders, don’t worry. Just congratulate yourself on recognising that your mind has wandered and begin counting again at 1.

3. Now bring to mind the difficult encounter. Approach it with openness. Focus on it fully. Observe your thoughts, emotions, and any sensations in your body
4. Approach and explore this difficult encounter with kindness and curiosity. Stay in being mode – being with the memory of the difficult encounter. If you find yourself trying to find solutions to problems or alternative ways to behave, you’ve slipped into doing mode. Kindly escort yourself back to the present-moment experience of observing what’s going on. If things feel too difficult, remember that you can let it go, and return back to your breathing at any time.
5. Shift your attention to focus on observing how the ‘difficult person’ is behaving. How are they behaving? Can you notice anything about their body (for example, is it stiff or relaxed?).
6. Wish the person you’ve been thinking of well in his or her life and career. Wish them happiness and good health. If you’re uncomfortable doing so, that’s fine; this step of the exercise can be challenging. Don’t get annoyed, just acknowledge that at this moment in time you find it hard, and skip to the final step of the exercise.

   Let the memory of the difficult encounter go and focus on your breathing again until you reach a count of six in- and out-breaths. Open your eyes and return to your day.

Reflection on approaching difficulty

Please reflect on the following questions and note your answers in your journal.

1. Were there any patterns or themes that emerged in your thoughts about the difficult person?
2. How did the memory of the difficult encounter impact on your body and emotions?
3. What did you notice when observing the other person’s words, emotions and bodily response?
4. Did you feel able to wish the other person well? How was this experience for you?
5. How do you feel now about the other person?
6. Are there any things you can do to help you manage your own emotions better in future encounters with this person and other difficult people?

When you try this exercise for the first time, you may be surprised at just how strong your bodily and emotional response is to something that is, after all, only a thought – just a mental process. Thoughts can be powerful. When you’re not aware of your thoughts, your actions are driven by old memories and assumptions about the future. As you’ve seen from this exercise, just thinking about a difficult encounter can produce strong emotions and have a profound impact on your body. Imagine how different your encounters with others may be if you were able to approach them in the present moment, observing what’s going on right now, without bringing past baggage, concerns and expectations about the future into the equation?

When you next feel yourself becoming emotional, or you encounter others displaying strong emotions, try adopting out a quick mindful approach. Follow these steps:

1. Stop and observe the thoughts going round in your head. Acknowledge them and let them go.
2. Check to see how your body feels, right here, right now. Are you holding any tension? Is your heart beating faster? Observe and acknowledge
3. Check your emotional state. Observe and acknowledge

This exercise need take no longer than three minutes, and many people complete it in one minute. When you’ve completed it, you’ll have a better understanding of the impact the encounter is having on you and can decide what to do next, based on present-moment, up-to-date data rather than on auto-pilot based on old data.

The exercises outlined in this chapter can be challenging at first, so don’t forget to be kind to yourself as you practise them. Remember, you’re not a machine – you’re a person!

Week 4 reflection

Reflect on your experiences in week 4.

• Reflect on your learning in week four of the course. Note your responses to the questions below in your journal.
• What are the three main things that you want to take away from this week’s activities?
• How will you apply what you’ve discovered to help you deal with emotions in yourself and others better in future?
• What mindfulness practices do you feel would best help you manage your emotions in the future?

Week 4 home practice

Your home practice in week 4 should be:

• Continue to practice Mindfulness of breath or Body scan each day. If you find it boring, remember that you don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.
• Try identifying one or more people you find difficult to work with. In a quiet time when you will not be disturbed, practice using mindfulness to approach them (one at a time!) with an open mind and observing the impact that the situation has on you, as outlined earlier in this chapter.

Week 5: Mindful working in times of change

In week 4 you explored how mindfulness can help you manage your emotions better. You began to notice at an earlier stage when your emotions started to emerge and your thoughts started to spiral you away from the present moment. You also learned to observe your emotional response to others and observe their responses to you.

Reflection on week 4

Please reflect on the following questions. Note your responses in your journal.

• How are you getting on with practicing Mindfulness of Breath and Body scan?
• Did you have any ‘difficult encounters’ with colleagues or customers this week?
• Which mindfulness techniques did you try using?
• What impact did using these techniques have?
• Can you make any other observations?

In week 5, you discover why humans can find it so hard to change. You explore more mindful strategies for both leading change and coping with imposed change at work.

Exploring why humans can find change so difficult

Change is nothing new; it’s the only constant in life. What is new is that the pace of change is accelerating. In the past, management theories on change assumed that change in a work context had a distinct start, a period of adaptation and a return to business as usual. Nowadays, one change follows another in rapid succession, with little or no business as usual.

So, if change has always been a factor in human lives, why do so many of us find it so difficult? In order to understand why this is so, you need to understand several factors: the human threat system, the human negativity bias and habit formation.

As you read in Chapter 5, humans have a highly evolved threat system. We are always scanning the horizon looking for potential threats and problems. In an effort to minimise threat and maximise reward, we devote more brain activity to looking for potential problems than looking for potential opportunities and new ways of doing things.

Your brain is an energy-hungry organ. To conserve energy, behaviours that you repeat frequently become stored in the more primitive, energy efficient area of your brain. The benefit of this is that it allows you to function more efficiently and apply your precious brain power to new things. The downside is that when things become habits you do them on auto-pilot, and they may not always be the most effective or the most appropriate thing to do.

Charlie, the junior account manager you encountered in week 4, had certain ways of doing things that worked well for him. When his company was faced with the need to reduce costs, it cut some posts in the administration and finance teams. This meant that Charlie was given additional responsibilities for these aspects of his work. Charlie was not too happy with the changes but understood their logic and was glad to have kept his job. Over the next few weeks Charlie tried hard to adapt, but struggled to change. At his appraisal, his manager raised concerns about his performance and future prospects.

So why was it that Charlie, an intelligent man, determined to get on, who understood the need for change at work, found the situation so challenging? Many of Charlie’s working methods had become habits, hard-wired into his brain. He’d reinforced these habits over time by being rewarded (via praise from colleagues and success in securing contracts) for the results they produced. His brain’s attempt to maximise reward (continuing to be praised and receiving bonuses for performance at work) and minimise threat (not meeting targets, disappointing or alienating colleagues and clients) was driving him to continue working as he had in the past. No matter how hard he consciously tried to change, and understood the logic and need for the change, he resented his new administration and finance responsibilities, and unconsciously avoided doing them, prioritising other tasks instead.

The problem with changing habits is that they are, by their very nature, unconscious. Only by becoming conscious of what is going on can you change them. The problem is compounded by the fact that habits are stored in the more primitive areas of the brain. Messages from this area travel faster through the brain than messages from the higher brain. This means that habits are likely to kick into action long before you’re consciously aware of them.

Mindfulness can help you to change habits over time by making you more aware of your thoughts and actions in the present moment, creating a gap between a stimulus (such as the need to do a task at work) and your response to it.

5.1: Habit releasers

Unhelpful habits can be replaced with more productive ones – with a bit of practice. Use the following activity to try something different and observe what happens:

1. Think of a different work-related habit each day this week. For example, maybe you always tackle your emails first thing in the morning, always sit in the same place in meetings or always arrange your desk in a certain way.
2. Do something different and observe your reaction. Reflect in your journal
   • Your response to the change (thoughts, emotions and physiology)
   • What impact (if any) this had on other people?
3. Use your journal to make a note of the impact your habit releasers have each day. Include in your notes:
   • The day of the week and what you changed.
   • The impact of the change on your thoughts, emotions and physiology
   • The impact of the change on others?

Mindfully leading change

Most leaders nowadays spend much of their time implementing and managing change. Many older models that you may have learned connected with managing people through change, such as the change curve, assume that change has a start, period of adaptation and end where the new way of working becomes the norm. These old models of change management are proving ineffective in the modern-day climate of ‘bumpy change’, where one change is rapidly followed by another and then another.

In order to be effective in leading change today, you need to focus on two things. First, you need to manage your own thoughts, habits and emotions, and generally take care of yourself so you’re fit to lead others. Chapter 14 covers how mindfulness can help you manage yourself. Second, you need to understand the reasons why people resist change and take steps to help them embed change in their brain and replace old work habits with new ones.

5.2: Understanding how to lead change mindfully

Try this new mindful approach to leading change the next time that you’re called upon to do so. Follow these steps:

1. Understand why humans resist change.

   Research shows that at a conscious level, most employees accept the need for change. However, this doesn’t mean that they like it! As a leader, you need to understand that many of the behaviours that you want your staff to change may have unconscious drivers, which take time to alter. You need to acknowledge that, although many of your staff may say they want to change, at an unconscious level their brains are screaming, ‘Danger! Danger! Go back to your tried and tested ways of working! You know they work!’

   As a change leader, you need to apply knowledge of the human negativity bias and habit formation to your change leadership strategy. You need to make an eight-week or longer plan that actively helps employees to change their mental mind-set. You need to plan activities that help people explore and become rewarded for new desired

2. Clearly define between four to six key things that you need to be different after the change. Note them in your journal.

   Most people cannot retain more than seven things in their working memory at the same time, so in this case less is more. Detailed change plans may be great for you, but are not the best way to get employees to remember and memorise the desired outcomes.

3. Help your team understand change from a brain perspective.
   • Explain why the negativity bias (see Chapter 1) exists, and how our threat system, intended to help us escape from life-and-death situations, is often triggered by things that aren’t life-threatening at all, and when in a state of fight or flight our capacity for rational thinking is diminished.
   • Explain that many things that we do at work over time become habits. These habits are good because they’re energy efficient and allow us to do more things, but as they are mainly unconcious they can be difficult to change.
   • Explain that current theory suggests that it takes around five to eight weeks to form a new habit, and that if the team is to change it will take a conscious effort from all concerned to do things differently and practise what they preach.
   • Explain how brain training techniques such as mindfulness can help them through the change process.
4. Engage your team in creating the solution.

   Invite your team to a change planning session. If you’re comfortable doing so, lead your team through a quick mindfulness exercise to get them centred and ready to work through the change task with an open mind. The three-step focus break (see Chapter 5) or a mindful minute (described earlier in this chapter) are good exercises to try. When introducing mindfulness exercises to your team for the first time, consider your language. You may want to call the mindfulness activities ‘attention training’ or ‘focus breaks’ or ‘a purposeful pause’. Choose language that suits the culture of your organisation. Explain to the team why the change is needed and describe the four to six outcomes that must be achieved to make the change a success.

   Mindfully monitor yourself (thoughts, emotions, physiology) from time to time to ensure that you’re in a good place to lead the session. Also monitor your team members’ emotions and physiology. Negativity breeds negativity, so try to nip it in the bud by moving on to a different subject or actively engaging with a more positive team member. Some tension in the room is natural – change is an emotive subject, but if you detect too much emotion or tension, try taking a break or working on another area where success is more easily achievable.

5. Apply the action plan that your team helped you produce.

   If the action plan involves redundancies, it will probably be difficult to engage staff in new ways of working until the uncertainty surrounding which members of staff are leaving is over, and any staff due to leave have left.

   If you’re comfortable doing so, encourage staff to discover about mindfulness at work via a book, online course or taught course so that they’re better equipped to deal with the change.

   After this period has passed, hold regular meetings, and regularly interact with your staff, actively making opportunities for them to practise working, thinking and acting in different ways. Make sure that you recognise and reward staff when they display new, desired ways of thinking and acting.

   In your interactions with staff try to always be fully present, working in approach mode. Let go (as far as you can) of expectations about how meetings should go, and the extent to which the changes have been embraced at this stage of the process. Although at times change can be a brutal process, try to encourage self-kindness among your staff. As a result of practising self-kindness, your staff are less likely to activate their fight-or flight response, (which can lead to negative thinking), and more likely to activate their parasympathetic nervous system, helping them to feel calmer about the changes. Use your mindfulness skills to gain a greater appreciation of the dynamics at play in the room, observing events as they unfold, and choosing the best way to respond for long-term individual and organisational benefit.

   Ensure that your new plan of action is adhered to over an eight-week or even longer period.

   Many scientists believe that while people can never erase a habit from their brains, they can replace it with another one. Until recently it was thought that forming a robust habit takes 21 days. In 2010, researchers working at University College London concluded that habit formation takes approximately 66 days, with some people taking as little as 18 days and others over 84 days.

6. Continue to recognise and reward staff for displaying new desired work behaviours.

   To ensure that new working habits become embedded fully, and are more dominant in the brain than old ones, as a change leader you need to continue to reinforce new behaviours in your staff. Consider awards for innovation or ways to reward individual staff who have contributed to greater efficiency.

Reflection on mindful change

When you’ve had the opportunity to try out this activity for yourself, complete the following reflection, recording your thoughts in your journal.

• How did this method of leading change differ from your previous methods?
• How did staff react to your use of mindfulness in meetings?
• How easy or difficult did you find it to confine your desired change outcomes to between four and six?
• Did you notice any old habits coming back into play in yourself or your staff? If so, what actions did you take?
• What was the outcome of your change efforts?

5.3 Mindful strategies for coping with imposed change

Think of an occasion on which a change was imposed on you at work. Then answer these questions – recording your response in your journal:

• What was your initial reaction?
• How did the reactions of others shape your reactions and thoughts?
• Did you jump to any conclusions that were later proven to be wrong?
• Did you experience any stress or excess tension during the process? If so, what steps did you take to help yourself?
• After the change had taken place, were things better or worse than you expected them to be?

Change can be a positive thing, for example moving to a new house, getting a new job or marrying someone you love. At work, if you’re not in a supervisory, management or leadership role, chances are that at some point you’ll be subjected to an imposed change at work.

Imposed changes are different to changes that you choose for yourself. Some people may immediately embrace the imposed change, while others may express denial, anger or extremely reluctant acceptance.

When unexpected, unwanted or imposed changes are announced, try applying this simple model. Follow these steps:

1. Give yourself a mindful minute when the change is announced. Doing so brings you firmly back to the present moment and allow you to observe things in a calmer, more rational manner
2. Notice the announcement’s impact on you in the present moment. Observe your thoughts and changes in your physiology – Is your breathing or heart rate faster? Can you feel any tension or other sensations in your body?). Pay attention also to your emotions.

   Make sure that you explore what’s going on for you with openness, kindness and curiosity. Avoid flipping into doing mode – trying to solve the problem or anticipate the consequences of the change. Simply observe.

3. Take steps to notice and release any tension in your body. If possible, give yourself a three step body check (see Chapter 6) and, if you encounter any tension, try releasing it as you breathe out.
4. Check your understanding of the change. Make sure that you’ve a firm grasp of why the change is needed and what the next steps are going to be. Don’t base your opinion on rumour, or the opinions of others. If you are unsure about anything, ask your manager for clarification.
5. Focus your efforts on the things you can change or influence. Arguing about an aspect of the change that has been set in stone saps your energy and impact on your mood. Accept what you cannot change, and focus your energy on things that you can change.
6. Practise mindfulness on a regular basis. Doing so helps you reduce tension and see things more clearly.

Week 5 reflection

Reflect on the following questions and note your responses in your journal.

• Which three main things will you take away from this week’s activities?
• How will you apply what you’ve discovered to help you better cope with change in the future?
• What mindfulness practices do you feel would help you most during times of change?

Week 5 Home practice

For your week 5 Home practice:

• Continue practising mindfulness of breath or Body scan each day. If you have time, try practising one after another to stretch yourself further.
• Try applying some mindfulness to changes you are facing, and observe the results

Post-Course Summary

You’ve now reached the end of the Mindfulness At Work Training.

In weeks 1 and 2 you discovered the bare essentials of mindfulness and started to establish mindfulness practices of your own. In weeks 3, 4 and 5, you applied mindfulness to everyday work challenges including communication, dealing with emotions felt by yourself and others, and coping with change. You also continued to embed a regular mindfulness practice into your life.

The more you practise mindfulness, the easier it becomes to switch it on and off as you need it. Shamash and I recommend that you try to practise some form of mindfulness for at least 10 minutes each day. Doing so is time well spent and an investment in your career and sense of well-being. Check out the activities on the audio downloads and practise those that work best for you.

When you understand why each activity is structured as it is, and the importance of the language used, feel free to create your own mindfulness practices to help you in specific situations.

• Mindfulness is about being in the present moment, not about visualising yourself in a beautiful place far away from the here and now!
• MAWT is about cultivating awareness of how work situations impact on your thoughts, physiology and emotions, and the interaction between these three responses to any given situation.
• Practising mindfulness can be hard, especially when your mind is restless. Focusing and refocusing your attention on your breath or other chosen anchor is what you aim to do. Relaxation may or may not be a by-product of the process.
• When practising mindfulness, be kind to yourself to avoid triggering an unwanted threat response.

Although taking time out to practise mindfulness when you’re really busy seems counter-intuitive, doing so always pays dividends. Just a few minutes of mindfulness is sometimes all it takes to return you to peak performance.

We were only able to fit a basic version of the MAWT course in this book. If you or members of your organisation would like to attend a full version of MAWT taught in-person or via an online course, visit www.mawt.co.uk for further details and free downloadable resources. We’d love you to pay a visit!