Mindfulness @Work: Reduce Stress, Increase Focus & Improve Results [Rotman School of Management Magazine]
IN MY LAST ARTICLE FOR ROTMAN [“Meditation:A ‘New’ Approach to Managing Workplace Overload”, Fall 2012], I highlighted early research supporting mindfulness benefits at work and the organizations using it. In this follow-up, I will dig a bit deeper into various programs and their results.
While mindfulness programs are becoming more standardized, there are still considerable differences between them. Currently, the research available includes everything from testimonials at one end of the spectrum to quantifiable third-party research at the other. Having combed through much of it, I am pleased to present some current examples of leaders and organizations that have embraced this valuable approach to meeting the demands of the 24/7 work world.
Google Google’s Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program was started by Chade Meng Tan in 2007. Known as Google’s ‘Jolly Good Fellow’—yes, that is his official job title—he developed the program along with a Zen master, Stanford University scientist, and emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman. Not only is it grounded in science, but Meng also found a way to describe this contemplative practice in engineering terms: “Perceiving the process of emotion at a higher resolution.” Needless to say, the program has been a huge success, with over 1,500 ‘Googlers’ (the name for Google employees) having attended, and another 500 now on the waiting list.
The program’s success lead to the creation of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI), a not-forprofit corporation that brings the SIY program to external organizations like Plantronics, Autodesk and VMware. SIYLI’s Core program is 16 hours in length and available in either four half days or a two-day intensive. The program has three steps:
1) Attention training
2) Self-knowledge and self-mastery (e.g. observing thoughts and emotions to develop self-mastery)
3) Creating useful mental habits while focusing on the five domains of emotional intelligence: selfawareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.
Benefits participants have experienced include greater choice in how to respond in the moment or in emotionally difficult situations; better focus; mindful listening; and tools to build in pauses to deal with overwhelm. While SIYLI will soon have research data available from its programs, it was not yet available at press time.
Plantronics Barry Margerum, Chief Strategy Officer at Plantronics, had been meditating for four years and experienced concretebenefits: he felt more at ease, wasn’t getting as worked up about things, his aches and pain virtually disappeared and his relationships both inside and outside of work improved. Convinced his company could benefit in similar ways, he shared his experience several times with CEO Ken Kannappan; but Kannappan wasn’t sold.
Barry then audited a session of Google’s Search Inside Yourself program, along with his Senior VP of HR, which he found to be “excellent,” since it was geared to being more successful in business. Afterwards, he gave his CEO chapters from Chade Meng Tan’s book Search Inside Yourself (SIY), and it was the science in those chapters that finally sold the CEO.
In the spring of 2012, Plantronics ran a SIY pilot with a handpicked group of participants, including the CEO. The program ran for two hours over eight weeks, with the following results from respondents:
• 97 per cent improved their active listening skills;
• 80 per cent were more self-aware;
• 72 per cent felt more present in the moment; and
• 70 per cent engaged more effectively in difficult conversations.
Here is what CEO Kannappan had to say about the program: “The SIY course made me a better listener and helped me bemore responsive to both the content and feelings [of] others. This helps me with both everyday discussions and difficult conversations.”
In the fall of 2012, Plantronics opened up this program to all employees and sold it on the following benefits: adaptability, achievement, team leadership, and developing others, to name a few. The program was oversubscribed, and another one is planned for late in 2013. In the meantime, Barry has been running weekly ‘alumni classes’ that include meditations and supporting topics like the neuroscience of change.
Wisdom at Work Another organization that has helped Google expand its SIY program is Wisdom at Work. Founders Joel and Michelle Levey have been bringing wisdom and contemplative practices to develop healthier workplaces since the early ‘80s. Their boutique approach involves bringing customized programs to clients that include Hewlett Packard, Intel, Traveler’s Insurance and the U.S. Army.
At Google, they created a Mindfulness & Meditation Laboratory, which was composed of four one-hour sessions over four weeks, highlighting how to bring meditation practices into everyday life. While it started with one live location, it quickly spread to 24 video-streamed locations internationally. Topics for the laboratory included optimizing productivity, creativity and innovation, and sustaining attention at work. All participants in the lab ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ that they could apply their learning to their work. Meditation Apps for Googlers, a web-based learning hub composed of guided meditations, videos and research links, also evolved out of this work.
In 2000, when the customer service area of Intuit was going through dramatic changes, Wisdom at Work created the Leaders New Work Program for six levels of its leaders. The program, geared towards developing inner skills, consisted of two three-day workshops and a final day, all about a month apart. There was also a final half day session to ensure application of learning into work and best practices. Topics covered in the program included: mindful leaders, change resilience and dialogue and communication.
Follow-up survey results revealed that participants strongly agreed or agreed with the following statements:
• More aware of choices that I make that affect my work performance (100%);
• I am more accountable and focus more on what I ‘can do’(87%);
• I am more aware of when my team or I approach the “danger zone”, burn out or rust out (84%); and
• I am more self-directed and self-motivated (87%).
Business results also supported the program’s success: the group surpassed the majority of its goals to create a new profit center, increase revenues, improve teamwork, develop leadership capacity, and improve corporate culture, despite higher volumes, a more technically challenging product and higher performance standards.
Corporate Based Mindfulness Training As a 20-year meditator, Rasmus Hougaard found mindfulness so beneficial that he brought it into the corporate world to address its stress and suffering. He incorporated The Potential Project (TPP) in 2009, which is now in 17 countries, and collaborated with leading scientists, mindfulness masters and business leaders to develop Corporate Based Mindfulness Training (CBMT).
CBMT is typically 13 hours in total, although the length of the course and weekly sessions can be tailored to client’s need. The sessions are composed of three parts:
• Mindfulness training;
• Mental attitudes – like joy, acceptance and presence, that develop more constructive models of behaviour;
• Workplace application — how mindfulness can be applied to e-mailing, meetings, priorities etc.
Another critical component of CBMT is train-the-trainer sessions, where in-house trainers are taught to deliver daily 10-minute meditations. One of the most impressive aspects of TPP’s work is their third-party research of CBMT within two major corporations. In August 2012, Carlsberg’s IT department offered the CBMT program to staff, either in person or virtually.
Professor Jochen Reb of the Cambridge University Business School, evaluated the 11 one-hour workshop program. In terms of focus and attention skills, participants were found to decrease their absent-mindedness while increasing their internal awareness (e.g. thoughts, moods, emotions), external awareness (e.g. impact on others), and focused attention. Additionally, participants increased job satisfaction, company loyalty, organizational citizenship (e.g. actions beyond the job description) yet decreased emotional exhaustion, a key element of stress and burnout.
IF insurance, Scandinavia’s largest insurance company, also participated in CBMT for a total of 13 hours in the fall of 2009 to early 2010. Participants were found to have an increased ability to stay focused and counteract stress. What was unique about this study was:
• 76% experienced a sharp rise in cooperation and positive relationships within teams; and
• 59% experienced better relations with family and friends.
The results continue to come in, and while we have much to learn, it is already clear that the benefits of mindfulness go beyond the individual to include workplace and relationship benefits. With the growing number of corporate meditation programs and organizations adopting it, meditation in the workplace is here to stay.
Source: The Magazine of the Rotman School of Management, Fall 2013