How Mindfulness Can Transform Your Team

Mindfulness training in the corporate setting has been doing the rounds for some time now.

Realising the growing pressures of modern work life in a digital economy and rapidly changing business environment, organisations are looking for ways to support their people to improve their performance and wellbeing.

This is undoubtedly a good thing and much needed, especially when workplace research suggests that our minds are wandering off task almost 50% of the time.

However, one of the aspects that mindfulness can be particularly helpful with that is not getting as much airplay within organisations as it is in the sporting arena, is team performance.  

This is because many organisations seek out mindfulness training for improving the wellbeing of individuals within organisations – very rarely for intact teams – and not with specific emphasis on how the skill of mindfulness can support truly effective collaboration, creativity and greatly enhance connection amongst teams.

How Mindfulness Develops Game Changing Team Skills

One of the most critical skills a team with a shared goal can develop, is the ability to notice. In particular:
1. Noticing how people are feeling, including themselves;
2. Changes in context, sensing into emerging needs – be it of the customer, the team, the project they are working on;
3. The dynamics at play in the systems which they are part of (e.g. the organisation, the sector, the market).

This capacity to notice is the first step in cultivating emotional intelligence as well as self-regulation and effective action.

If teams are unable to pay attention to these three critical elements, then they will be seriously ill-equipped to respond to quickly changing conditions, and less able to seize opportunities and manage risks. 

“Mindfulness training can significantly enhance a team’s capacity to notice - emotions, changes in context, and the systems which they are part of.”

How does mindfulness training cultivate this ability in teams?

 Slowing Down To Speed Up

 A key aspect of mindfulness training is learning how to slow down and manage your attentional focus.

Practicing pausing and learning how to slow down to speed up is probably one of the most critical benefits that a mindfulness practice can develop.

When teams learn this skill together, they start to notice how often they don’t slow down enough to reflect, to sense make and take in data that allows them to see that they need to course correct. They start to get a sense of how much they have been operating reactively, hurtling from task to task, meeting to unproductive meeting.

Learning the ‘power of the pause’, is one of the best ways that we can get off autopilot and habitual ways of operating. It allows us to get out of or at least respond more skilfully when we are in that trusty habitual response we have when we are stressed or feel under threat - fight, flight or freeze.

Making Room For A Wider Range Of Experiences  

Mindfulness training also involves learning how to expand your range of awareness so that you can ‘make room’ for more information, even when that new information may be uncomfortable to ‘let in’. (For example, uncomfortable feelings, negative feedback, warning signs).

When teams intentionally cultivate these skills through mindfulness, they learn how to be present to a wider range of experiences. 

The more we practice noticing and ‘being with’ emerging experiences – as opposed to judging it – the more tolerance we cultivate for a wider range of experiences, or data.

Why Is This So Beneficial For Teams?

When we make more conscious what is often unconscious or avoided, even if unpleasant, we increase the range of choices available to us and sometimes even change our perspective on it.

We also increase our tolerance levels for having the difficult conversations that teams often need to have, as opposed to suppressing or ruminating on them.

This might be about performance issues or relationship dynamics, or about noticing and discussing the level of burnout and resilience issues.

It might lead to someone instigating a change of direction in approach or management of a project, or even coming up with an innovative way of solving a persistent problem.

It can also increase our capacity to work with difference – be it in terms of gender, background, personality, values – across teams, simply because we have grown our ‘tolerance’ muscle and learnt critical skills for calming ourselves down!

 Getting A Higher Perspective – On Self And Others

A third critical skill that is particularly beneficial for teams and developable through mindfulness training is the capacity to get perspective. Leadership expert Professor Ron Heifeitz calls this ‘getting on the balcony’, and argues it is a critical leadership skill if you want to be an adaptive leader.

I like to think of it as ‘zooming out’ or “going meta”.

Building the capacity to have distance – perspective – on how we are coming together as team, what is working, what is not working, what roles we individually play in collective pursuits and achievements, can again shift teams out of habitual ways of operating into truly innovative, thoughtful and energised teams.

It allows us to become an observer of our own thoughts, feelings, sensations, creating more space to watch them without getting ‘hooked’ by them, and choosing which ones to pay attention to.  

It is this capacity to neutrally observe the contents of our mind, and in turn our team behaviours and patterns of interaction (quality and content), that paves the way for better self and team regulation.

How Can Teams Develop These Skills? 

Firstly, teams can learn about the benefits of mindfulness, together. This involves understanding what the neuroscience says and why it is so beneficial.

It also involves learning how to practice it and then practicing together, consistently over time.  

This needn’t be a massive meditation complete with omms and clanging Tibetan bells! Research suggests that just ten minutes of focused mind training a day is enough to get the benefits. This can be done independently or in a team setting.

Individual practices that team members can support each other to do include simple things like encouraging each other to take breaks away from their desks and phones and getting a moment outside or a quick walk around the office.

Having regular breaks can be game-changing for energy levels and renewal of creativity. Agreeing to not be on email or send emails at certain times can also be something teams commit to.  I have worked with teams who have described these types of agreements with each other as ‘transformational’.  

Teams used to emailing each other and responding to emails at all times of the day and night often suffer from increased stress, burnout and can start to resent their colleagues and their work, to the detriment to ongoing productivity and performance outcomes. Having designated timeframes where people are encouraged to prioritise family and outside of work commitments can result in a significant increase in engagement and discretionary effort at work.

I also recommend teams focus on simple micro practices when they come together - like having a few moments of pause and to ‘arrive’ before a meeting, or intentionally pausing to stop and slow down throughout a workshop or the day.

Team Mindfulness Practices

 Being ‘mindful’ as a team can be as simple as building a habit around taking a moment in the middle of team meetings to check in, get on the ‘balcony’ and reflect and inquire together:

• How are we ‘showing up’ today?
• What is our pattern of conversation? Are we stuck in problem admiration or are we moving towards solutions?
• Are we listening to each other just as much as we are advocating our perspectives?
• How well are we aligning to how we want to behave as a team?

Creating space for team members to share what they are noticing, allows for a more reflective conversation. These types of conversations, while can feel at first awkward and  are essential for particularly for teams wanting to be more intentional with how they come together and move away from falling into habitual patterns of interaction.

Those teams that learn how to slow down for long enough and together, start to realise that it is the little tweaks that make the biggest difference to performance, energy and feeling a sense of connectedness to one another. And they become the teams that not only create the most value for the organisations that they serve, they are the teams that everyone wants to be a part of.

 What do you think? How could learning and practicing mindfulness most benefit the teams you are a part of?