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

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

In this chapter you uncover the positive effects of mindfulness for yourself. You discover the impact of the many positive changes that take place in your own brain as a result of mindfulness practice. And you find out 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 well-being.

Discovering the Benefits for Employees

Being a mindful employee has many benefits. In this section you 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, you 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 lose the contract and your manager shouts at you in frustration and may even fire you. How would you feel? What would you think?

These thoughts are the kind that could arise from such a situation: ‘I failed. I’m so stupid. I messed up. What if I get fired? How will I pay my bills? I should have practised more. What’s wrong with me? I’m pathetic.’

These thoughts emerge from the soup of emotions that’s ignited by the stress you 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.

From a mindful perspective, you notice that you’re having these self-judgemental thoughts. You’re then able to step back from them and see that, yes, 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 feelings affect your thoughts, you can avoid reacting to the imagined threat and deal with the situation in a reasoned manner. You may choose to talk to your boss, explain what happened and ask how to proceed – maybe you can give a presentation for a smaller project, or shift into a different role for the time being, or attend training in presentation skills. Over time, practising mindfulness builds up your resilience to such workplace experiences and you’ll be 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, experiencing 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 away. 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:

• Acceptance: You have the capacity to see what you can change and what you can’t. In the above example, you can’t change your presentation, but you can change your relationship to your thoughts that follow.
• Self-compassion: Allows you to be kind to yourself in the face of adversity. You find out how to be your own best friend rather than harshly criticise yourself. You see your difficulties as part and parcel of humanity’s struggle with life’s challenges, rather than a sense of you suffering alone. There’s over 200 studies showing the positive benefits of self-compassion alone.
• Growth: You are open to seeing difficulties as opportunities to learn and grow. Your mindset is open rather than fixed.
• Creativity: In a more mindful state, the part of your brain geared towards creative thinking is active. You can come up with more novel solutions by visualising different choices you could make, with consequent positive outcomes.

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.’

Working in a resilient way isn’t just for challenging circumstances. Mindfulness is a whole different way of being with your everyday experiences. You discover ways of living with awareness no matter what you’re doing, seeking new challenges and looking forward to learning that may arise from them and drawing upon your insights for everything you do.

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

• Help others. Be mindful of the needs of others rather than just yourself. By seeking ways to help others when you’re not so busy, you’re more likely to be supported when going through difficulties yourself. For example, help John with his report, Michelle with her difficult team or Jane with moving house at the weekend.
• Look after yourself. In addition to helping others, help yourself too! Be mindful of how much sleep you’re getting, how much exercise you’re doing and if you’re taking regular breaks. Muscles strengthen only if they have time to rest between activities. Your brain is the same.
• Nudge your mindset. In any given moment, your brain receives far more information than it can actively be conscious of. So, rather than focusing the spotlight of your attention on what’s not going well, focus it on the positives. What went well today? What are you grateful for? Think about it, make a note of it or email someone close to you and share your appreciation. Your brain will thank you for it.
• Expect change. If you practise mindfulness, you know that change is the only constant. When you try to focus on your breathing, your mind comes up with all sorts of thoughts. If you can see that the nature of the world is change, and you seek to adapt to the change rather than avoid or run away from it, you’re being more mindful and more resilient.
• Seek meaning. When adversity strikes, as it inevitably does, after the initial period of sadness or anger, you do have a choice. You can sink into feeling sorry for yourself or look for an opportunity for growth. Post-traumatic growth obviously takes time but does usually happen. So, look out for what you can find out from the challenges you’re currently facing. For example, losing your job isn’t nice but may allow you to decide on a new career path. Be mindful of the opportunities that arise for you.

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 on in 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 does come into work early but refuses to do more than the minimum that’s required of her. Behind Frank’s back, she gossips about his ineffectiveness as a manager. Frank does the same to her. How could mindfulness have helped?

If Frank were more mindful, he’d have noticed the anger building up in him. As a result, he could have used mindfulness to acknowledge the feeling and make a choice. He could have chosen to speak to Samantha later in the day when he was more composed. At that time, he could go over the issue, explain why the company needs Samantha to be in work on time and the consequences of lateness. Listening to Samantha’s reasons, he may discover a bigger underlying issue – maybe she’s been working late on a particular project and feels she deserves a rest, or perhaps the pressure of deadlines makes it harder for her to both fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning. 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.

The second way that mindfulness improves relationships is by enhancing the ability to listen both to the words being said and the emotions behind them. Good communication is the very heart of relationships. With greater levels of mindful awareness, you become more adept at listening to both the words being spoken and how the person is feeling. You can also pick up someone’s emotional signals by observing their body posture. If you’re checking your text messages while someone’s talking to you, you’re multitasking – you’re effectively saying to the other person that what they have to say isn’t important and, as a result, the relationship slightly deteriorates. If you give that person your full attention, the relationship can develop instead.

Consider someone you know who is mindful. How do they listen, talk and move about? When you’re in their company, do you feel comfortable? Most people enjoy being with someone mindful because they give them the time to speak. They listen non-judgementally to your views and don’t criticise. They understand the challenges you face. Being with someone like that makes you more mindful – mindfulness spreads.

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 step outside of yourself. Rather than just thinking about yourself and what you need, you think about others more. We coached one corporate executive whose brain was so frantically busy that his life was a blur. He had no chance of caring for others because he could hardly pay attention to what he had to do to look after himself. His relentless streams of thought made him see the world through cloudy glasses. Mindfulness helped him to step back from those thoughts, a bit like removing those glasses. The thoughts were still there, but not so close and not so relentless. He was then better able to offer attention and care to his colleagues. He now finds colleagues often come to see him for personal advice. He’s better able to see things from the perspective of other people – a vital skill in all relationships.

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

• Really connect. Make a conscious effort to look people in the eye when they’re speaking to you. Listen to their words and try to pick up on their emotions too. If you have the tendency to interrupt, resist it. Listen more and ask questions to clarify what the other people is saying.
• Take a mindful pause. Stop and think before speaking to someone you find difficult. Notice whether you react emotionally to that person and, if you do, try to step back from your habitual emotions and thoughts. If you carry on doing what you’ve always done, you carry on getting what you’ve always got. Use the mindful pause and see what effect it has on the relationship.
• See things from their viewpoint. Use mindful awareness to step back and see things from the other person’s point of view. Maybe the person you’re dealing with doesn’t have the necessary social skills to cope with her staff. Possibly she makes rash decisions because she’s anxious. Seen in this way, her behaviour appears far less threatening and you may feel sorry for her rather than annoyed.
• Wish them well. As you walk about in your workplace, rather than negatively judging people, or even being neutral towards them, you can wish them well. As you encounter people, think ‘May you be well, may you be happy. After all, they’re human beings just like you, and want to be happy, just like you. By wishing others well, you shift your attention away from your own worries and towards a more positive and mindful mindset. This may sound like a strange exercise to do, but certainly worth trying.

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 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 experiencing greater levels of happiness. Research suggests that people are at their happiest when they’re fully focused on something; that is, not when they’re relaxing watching TV at home or eating chocolate. 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 well-being. As mindfulness develops your ability to focus, you’re therefore more likely to be able to enter this flow state 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:

• Start the working day with a short mindful exercise. Try mindfulness of breath or a body scan. (Chapter 6 takes you through the steps.) Even a mindful jog in the morning can help.
• Avoid multi-tasking as much as possible. If you can, do one task at a time and give it your full attention. Too much multi-tasking reduces your brain’s ability to focus.
• Feel your breathing whenever you remember. Your breath is your anchor to bring you back to the present moment. If you’re on the phone and find your mind keeps wandering, feel a few of your breaths to centre you in the present.
• Record your progress. Keep notes on what you complete in each hour to make you more mindful of your use of time. You can then begin to focus more effectively in each hour that you use.

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 in these changing times. 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.

For example, say that you’re a manager in a medium-sized organisation. You’ve a meeting scheduled in town, arranged weeks ago, but a few hours before one of your employees says they want to shift it to a different time. You’re annoyed about the last-minute change and are just about to send a scathing email to the employee. But then you stop. You take three mindful breaths and check on your inner state. You notice that you haven’t had lunch, are in an irritable mood and are emailing out of frustration, not to optimise the performance of your team. Instead, you pick up the phone, have a quick chat about meeting times in a calm voice, and all is resolved. You use discipline when necessary, but out of necessity, not out of emotional anger.

Mindful leaders use the principles of mindfulness in their leadership approach; they are:

• Physically able to look after themselves and their workforce, understanding that mind and body are not separate.
• Mentally focused, clear and flexible. They use mindful exercises to train their brains to be in the moment and able to connect with others.
• Emotionally intelligent. They’re aware of their own emotional state as well as that of their team members. They can sensitively make choices based on these emotional states rather than make decisions without reflection.
• Values driven. They’re aware of their own values and align them with their work in an authentic way. In turn, they appreciate the importance of values in an organisation.
• Able to balance acceptance of what can’t be changed and action to implement what can and needs to be changed.
• Able to make time for stillness and reflection as well as time for activity and serving others.
• Compassionate. They care for both themselves and their colleagues. They see other members of the team as equals and don’t develop a false sense of superiority.
• Passionate. They’re driven by will to make their values real, helping others to fulfil their potential.

Research in mindful leadership is beginning to accelerate as mindfulness rapidly moves to the mainstream. A study by Ashridge Business School, ranked as one of the top 20 business schools in the world, looked at the effect of meditation on its members. It discovered that 90 per cent of members found some form of benefit resulted from practices such as mindfulness.

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 her 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 be more mindful in just a few minutes:

1.Practise a short mindful exercise. Try mindfulness of breath for a few minutes. (See Chapter 6)

2.Spend a couple of minutes reflecting on your own state of mind. Consider how you’re feeling. What thoughts are popping into your mind?

3.Think about your staff for a couple of minutes. Consider what challenges they may be facing.

4.Ask yourself: ‘How can I best look after myself now?’

5.Ask yourself: ‘How can I best look after my staff now?’

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. Mindful leadership can develop this mindful, compassionate way of operating.

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 well-being through mindfulness classes and emotional well-being 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 does not 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 my 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. These values are:

• Deliver WOW through service
• Embrace and drive change
• Create fun and a little weirdness
• Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
• Pursue growth and learning
• Build open and honest relationships with communication
• Build a positive team and family spirit
• Do more with less
• Be passionate and determined
• Be humble

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 less days off sick and are more likely to be promoted. And greater happiness pays. For every employee, the New Economics Foundation predicts that an organisation can save:

• £250 – assuming a conservative 1 per cent increase in productivity as a result of increased happiness
• £104 – assuming a reduction in sickness absence by just one day
• £160 – assuming just a 10 per cent reduction in staff turnover

That’s £514 saved for every employee, each year. And that’s a very conservative estimate. If your organisation has 1,000 employees, you can save over half a million pounds a year!

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 with your colleagues too!

• Spend two minutes practising mindfulness of breath (see Chapter 6), then write down three things about your workplace for which you’re grateful.
• Go for a 15-minute mindful walk for every 1.5 hours of work you do. Master violinists were found to use this balance of work and rest to optimise their performance and well-being. Violinists who worked hard all day with fewer breaks were less successful.
• Have a mindful conversation with the happiest colleagues at work. Happiness is contagious. If you’re consciously present with happy colleagues at lunch, in your break or over a quick drink after work, you feel happier.
• Commit to doing at least one task really mindfully when at work. Start small and build up from there.
• Spend a mindful penny, if that’s the only space available at work! Or ask the company to provide a room dedicated to quiet time and mindfulness.

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.

I (Shamash) am currently training a professor of architecture to teach mindfulness online. She finds that the more mindful she is, the more creative her work. She ran mindfulness sessions at a creativity and design conference. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive – the designers loved the new way of using their minds to get the creative juices flowing. Even their designs are beginning to be more mindful – spacious, calming and sustainable, with areas for individual quiet time.

Personally, I (Shamash) am much more creative in the mornings. By the afternoon, I feel less energised and work better in conversation with other people. I’m more creative before midday because I’m in a more focused frame of mind. I am in the moment. My mind is relatively clear. New ideas and concepts can easily emerge. Mindfulness, a present focused state, helps me to come up with creative ideas.

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:

• Preparation: Immersion in an interesting problem that requires a creative solution
• Incubation: A period of inner reflection
• Insight: The ‘Aha!’ moment when the solution begins to emerge
• Evaluation: Deciding whether the solution can work
• Elaboration: Turning the chosen solution into a final product

Mindfulness comes into play in all the different stages but is most important in the second, incubation. When an idea is being incubated, your mind needs to allow the problem to sink into your subconscious. The unconscious mind is far more creative than the slow logic of the conscious mind. Just think how creative and unusual dreams can be! Mindfulness helps you to gradually step back from your conscious mind so that more creative ideas and solutions can emerge from your unconscious mind.

In Figure 2-1 below, you can see how the often creative, unconscious brain struggles to offer you 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 exercise to boost your own creativity at work. Then share them with your colleagues to help you develop a more mindfully creative team.

1. Become mindful of the problem. Be crystal clear about what you’re trying to solve. As Einstein said, ‘If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.’
2. Incubate. Go for a mindful walk. Try practising mindfulness of breath. At home, take a bath and just enjoy the experience. Be in the moment rather than trying hard to solve the problem with your conscious mind. Let go. Allow things to be. Reflect.
3. Collect solutions. Come up with as many solutions as possible, no matter how weird or wacky. They may not work, but write them all down nonetheless. Allow ideas to flow from your mind to the sheet of paper. Be utterly non-judgemental as you compile this list.
4. Evaluate. Consider each solution in turn and analyse whether it would work. Use mindfulness by being aware of each solution, one at a time. Avoid multi-tasking or other distractions. Take regular breaks as necessary. Keep your mind in optimal condition so you can make the right choice. Being mindful at this stage means that your brain can work in optimal conditions to achieve success.

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 and 3p.m., 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 New York and catch up with progress over there. Without this knowledge, if Gary made calls and emailed all morning, by afternoon he’d struggle to write that report, end up working late in the office, get home late – and the cycle continues.

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 discover how to deal with your emotion before speaking. You discover how to 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. Mindfulness can also make you less emotional over petty things too – so other people’s comments or behaviour, which may have irritated you before, no longer do so.

Practising mindfulness also gives you more energy because you worry less. Your brain uses 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, one of the skills you develop with mindfulness is the ability to step back from whatever you’re doing and see the context within which your task fits. How often have you completed a task, only to later discover that you were doing it the long way? Or that you’d already done the task before? By being mindful, your mind has the flexibility to step back from time to time 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!

The short exercise below helps you to mindfully consider the circumstances that prompted you to be particularly productive. Follow these steps:

1. Think back to an occasion on which you were really productive. What time of day was it? Where were you? Try to visualise yourself in that moment in time.
2. Describe your state of mind. Were you mindful or unfocused; in the present moment or thinking about the past or the future; judgemental or non-judgemental; curious or bored; calm or excited?
3. Remember how much effort you were putting in to achieve that level of productivity.

Your responses to these prompts may help you to be more productive in the future. Try to recreate those conditions and see what happens.

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

• Dedicate a room to quiet time, mindfulness, prayer or meditation. Taking a break in this room gives staff time to reflect and recharge their batteries.
• Discourage working late. Working long hours reduces efficiency and productivity and has a negative impact on employees’ home life, which inevitably affects their work life too.
• Encourage all staff to attend a mindfulness workshop and ensure that they have access to online courses, books or e-learning. Even a 1 per cent increase in productivity more than pays back the cost of the training and resources.

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.

Good decisions lead to:

• Increased opportunities for growth
• Higher revenue
• Healthier, happier employees
• Ability to hire the best employees for each role
• Improved quality of products and services for customers

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, meditate 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, all 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, for example, younger consumers and make a different decision – and thus move the company forward successfully.

Kodak provides an example of a company’s inability to see beyond habitual ideas. The company recently went bankrupt, mainly because CEO after CEO decided not to take the plunge into the digital photography market, despite all the signs showing that this was the way to go. Ironically, an engineer at Kodak actually invented the digital camera, but the company decided not to pursue the concept. Kodak’s competitors jumped on the digital bandwagon, and the rest is history.

Could a more mindful management have helped Kodak? I think so. With a better ability to see the big picture and a willingness to let go of what didn’t work, maybe Kodak could have gone on to be leaders in the digital photography market. But because it stuck to its habitual pattern of using chemicals to develop photographs, it lost almost everything.

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

By taking a mindful minute (see Chapter 7), you can optimise your brain function, reduce decision fatigue and make better decisions.

Bear these tips in mind to improve your decision making:

• Ensure that you schedule meetings at a time of day when people’s energy levels are high, making mindful awareness more likely.
• If you’re chairing a meeting, take a mindful pause before you start to ensure that you’re in the right state of mind. End the meeting if you notice people’s attention beginning to wane.
• Remember that you’re a human being, not a machine. You can’t keep making decisions all day and expect them to be of a high standard. Take a mindful break every 90 minutes, even if just for a minute.

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 practising mindfulness, exercising and socialising, and instead obsess about your workplace outcomes. Research carried out in 2009 with doctors found that practising mindfulness decreased burnout rates in this cohort.

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.

Research by the iOpener Institute found that increasing employee well-being in one company reduced staff turnover by 46 per cent and reduced sickness absence by 19 per cent. Mindfulness is one way of increasing well-being and reducing staff turnover.

Use the following mindful tips to help lower staff turnover:

• Measure staff well-being and then implement means to improve it. Search online of ‘University of Pennsylvania Authentic Happiness’ website for lots of wellbeing questionnaires that you could try.
• Set up a regular mindfulness group for all staff to attend for free in the workplace.
• Identify staff who may be susceptible to burnout. Ensure that they have access to more regular mindfulness courses and other forms of help.
• Train managers in mindfulness so they’re better able to listen to their staff. Being better listened to makes employees feel more cared for and they’re less likely to leave the organisation as a result. Not being appreciated and listened to is one of the causes of high staff turnover.
• Help employees to maintain a work/life balance. A nationwide survey found that 20 per cent of employees left their job as a result of poor work/life balance and 20 per cent because of workplace stress. Mindfulness can help improve productivity so employees can get home earlier, thus improving their work/life balance and reducing their stress levels.