What is mindfulness and what is it good for in companies?
Mindfulness is on everyone's lips and in science the number of published studies on the effectiveness of this practice increases every year. The studies prove that positive effects can be observed when people practice mindfulness regularly:
- Reduction of stress or improved stress regulation
- increase of the immune system
- better ability to concentrate
- more serenity due to improved regulation of emotional impulses
- etc.
If you wish, you could read countless well-founded studies on this at the American Mindfulness Research Association (AMRA), for example. AMRA has taken on the task of reviewing and collecting studies from reputable institutions and making the findings available.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a practice of directed attention that originated in Eastern traditions. In the Western world, Jon Kabat-Zinn has popularized mindfulness as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. In psychotherapy, the Hakomi method has made a significant contribution to using mindfulness in therapy.
We understand mindfulness to be the state, process, and practice of observing in the moment what is happening internally; studying with an interested, observing openness (inner observer) what phenomena we may notice from moment to moment - these may be thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and impulses.
What is the benefit (of mindfulness) of the inner observer?
Inner reactions can be perceived more accurately. Unfavorable reactions that lead to problematic behavior can be observed and, if necessary, regulated so that more choices arise on the behavioral level that can lead to more effective actions.
Overall, mindfulness influences our self-perception, making it more nuanced. This is especially useful and valuable in stress, conflict, or other difficult situations where we would otherwise call upon automaticity that would not be appropriate or helpful in the current situation. The practice of mindfulness has therefore rightly become a valuable tool for personal development.
What the benefit for organizations?
Employees who develop with the help of mindfulness can more easily deal with change and become carriers of a company's cultural development. A more differentiated self-awareness is an important basis for perceiving what is happening around you and is helpful in shaping working relationships that promote the development of a company.
It's not just people who tend to react automatically. The culture of a company is more than the sum of the individual patterns of its employees - companies also collectively shape patterns that are typical of them. These patterns also guide employee behavior so that they can do well in their respective contexts. For example, while one company may be slow to make even the smallest decisions about carefully regulated processes with great detail, another may have no regulation on this at all and a clear expectation that the hierarchy will not be bothered with detailed issues. If you wish, you can check whether this is one of your automatic reactions.
How we use mindfulness in our work
You don't have to practice mindfulness for hours with us.
In coaching, for example, a moment of pausing and becoming mindful can be very interesting to find out what is happening or what pattern is going on.
In mediation, mindfulness helps to slow down in fast-moving conflicts; to notice what state the different parties are in and what (typical) dynamics are unfolding.
In culture development projects, it is important that an organization flexibly and consciously aligns its collective behavior with what serves the success of the organization and its people. For this purpose, it is necessary that individuals, teams and also the entire organization constantly align their actions - one could also say the collective behavior - with what appears to be goal-oriented at the moment. If a group consists of employees who already have mindfulness skills, reflections within the team become much easier. The team's patterns are then more likely to become conscious, and the organization's automatisms are better perceived. It is then also easier to repeatedly realign joint action in a goal-oriented manner.
