You’ll always get what you’ve always got.’
For many workplaces are not working, they have become places to survive, rather than thrive…
Through a willingness to pause and look inwards, mindfulness training increases individual self-awareness and offers the opportunity to examine beliefs and behaviour patterns, to gain confidence in how things could be different…
For workplace mindfulness to be more than an ‘sticking plaster’, organisations also need to be willing to turn the spotlight inwards, to be committed to exploring and co-creating new, better, more sustainable ways of working.
Brain-friendly approaches and psychological safety are paramount if we are to respond skilfully and wisely to volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times.
Organisations committed to healthier, more agile and productive approaches may wish to consider if
- their management and leadership development includes the ‘inner resources packages’ needed to cultivate psychological safety and to lead in more brain-friendly ways?
- the behaviours which underpin organisational values are clearly understood, identified and encouraged?
- behaviours and environments conducive to insight and creativity are understood and promoted?
- the ‘inaction’ associated with meditation* is culturally acceptable and valued within their organisation?
Further information
We very much welcome contact from employers wishing to bring greater awareness into workplaces. If you would like to find out more, please get in touch.
Please note: we are a small team who spend much of our time out of the office. Whilst we very much look forward to speaking with you we aim to put our team’s wellbeing and our wish to model alternative ways of working above and beyond commitments to unrealistic response time pressures. We are conscious that this can be counter-cultural and thank you for your patience.
*Twitter Founder, Evan Williams’ approach to his new organization, Medium, provides an example of this including an internal memo entitled ‘Meditation: Improving action through inaction’ (Gelles, 2015).
