4 Ways To (Actually) Create a Mindful Workplace

Generic mindfulness advice for the workplace is nothing more than a way to temporarily firefight and feel a bit calmer.?

Take a few deep breaths when things get overwhelming.

Do one task at a time, schedule a time for answering email, drink water mindfully.

After all, a calm and happy worker is an efficient worker.

Such advice can be useful for stress management on an individual level. But it often does very little for dealing with issues and creating change on an organisational level.?

It simply leads to happy workers in an unhappy workplace.?

We have more tools for reducing stress, but we just use them as coping mechanisms that prolong harmful practices and unsustainable models.

What is a Real “Mindful” Workplace?

Mindfulness is about promoting harmony on all levels.?

In personal life, harmony is not about just feeling calm and being without stress. It is about feeling, thinking, and behaving in a way that generates more peace and understanding in yourself and the environment.

In business, harmony is about aligning the needs, goals, and actions of individuals with the organisation to generate greater harmony in the workplace and environment.

No one exists separate from their relationships with others and the environment.?

In an individual, there is no way to create harmony without considering social and organisational harmony.

Likewise, in a business, there is no way to create organisational harmony without also considering social and individual harmony.?

Helping individuals become calmer as an attempt to quickly create organisational harmony is a complete misunderstanding of what harmony is.

You don't want an organisation full of people that are perfectly content with your organisation and the world as it is and that deals with stress by taking a few deep breaths and doing yoga.

That is not harmony, it is learned avoidance.?

You want an organisation with people that understand they are not separate from the world, that feel like they can affect change, and that don't shy away from dealing with disharmony, disagreement, and difficulty.

That is harmony.?

1. Make spaces where difficult conversations can happen

Harmony is the constant and never-ending process and willingness to look at what isn't working, what isn't going well, what's unresolved, and what people don't like or don't agree with.

Such questions should be a regular part of the conversation—not simply pushed under the rug as quickly as possible.?

Pushing them under the rug is what happens when profit is the highest priority. Such questions cost time and money and don't immediately move the needle forward.

As humans are also wired to turn away from conflict for survival, it takes a conscious effort to continually recognise difficulty and disputes not as life or death, but as essential parts of working with others and operating a healthy business.?

Avoidance of conflict and short term niceness is a huge detriment to long term success and sustainability.?

Creating spaces where difficult conversations can safely and fruitfully occur begins with revising values and goals from focusing on short-term profit to long-term sustainability.??

2. From short-term profit to long-term sustainability?

Organisations need to make a profit to survive.?

But when profit becomes the main purpose, it's hard if not impossible to see the benefit of initiatives that don't immediately benefit the bottom line.

Focusing on short-term gain is a perfect recipe for not noticing systemic issues, missing out on big market opportunities, and deterring innovation.?

A business often has a main product or service. To succeed, they think they need to keep it working and selling at all costs.?

This defensive position closes us off to new ideas, makes us incapable of taking risks, and makes us blissfully ignorant to the changing environment.?

The only way to be truly stable is to keep changing.?

With change as a fundamental part of your strategy, skilfully managed conflict becomes welcome and absolutely essential.

3. Learn to deal with conflict

Learning how to deal with conflict is one of the most useful skills in life and business.?

And as a skill, it is something that needs to be studied and practiced.

When we don't know how to deal with conflict, we choose the easy route and live in fear rather than showing up, taking risks, and being brave.

This paves the way for a comfortable life in an echo chamber, where we are free from challenge and are not being able to access growth.

There are four skillful responses for engaging in conflict and communicating in ways that lead to more, rather than less, harmony:

Pacifying: “What is really at stake here?”

Pacifying helps us catch the need to defend ourselves and our identities from false threats, cool off hot emotions, and pave a way for peaceful conflict.

It’s our capacity to step into the space of vulnerability and uncertainty while still keeping our ears and other senses fully alive and open.

This means not needing to dissipate the energy of conflict and achieve peace and comfort quicker than the other person can finish speaking.

Enriching: “What is this situation missing?”

Enriching is recognizing when a situation or person is in need of something you can’t offer or provide.

We’re limited humans with limited views, experiences, and perspectives. We’re vulnerable to being hurt, cranky, hungry, tired, fed up, annoyed, etc.

When we enrich a conflict, we accept that we're not the ones responsible for—or even capable of—resolving everything all of the time.

Magnetizing: “What are the similarities here?”

Magnetizing is often simply a case of remembering you're not enemies in opposition, but very similar beings who happen to be in disagreement.

It’s about bringing more attention to the similarities rather than the differences in the situation in an attempt to bring light to and dissolve the perceived distance and barriers that have built up.

Destroying: Being direct to be kind.

Despite the name, there's no aggression or anger in destroying. This is because the act doesn't come from a place of confusion, hatred, or wanting to hurt someone, but from a place of clarity, compassion, and kindness.

It's the equivalent of “tough love” — as long as you make sure the “love” part comes before the “tough” part.

Destroying in action could be openly disagreeing with someone else’s opinion, confronting unethical behavior, punishing a child, not enabling a family member with an addiction, moving on from a struggling project, terminating a friendship or partnership, etc.

Read my full article on mindful conflict here.

4. Change the conversation around stress

Most of these points haven’t been about managing and reducing stress, but getting more familiar with it.

We can't have and wouldn’t want a workplace—or world—without stress.?

When we believe a stress-free life is possible, we create an environment of continual firefighting and perpetual disharmony.?

Trying to get rid of stress offers no chance to understand it and learn how to respond to it effectively. Not least any way to harness the many good sides of stress.?

Before trying to banish stress as an unwanted guest at the party, find out why it's happening. Bring light to the fact that it is real. Stress exists.?

Find out what stresses people out the most. Ask what people are not happy with and what they would like to change.

Stress augments when we suffer in silence. We feel like we are alone in our struggles and that whatever we're experiencing is wrong and shouldn’t be happening.?

Opening and changing the conversation around stress, in place of just reducing it, will likely involve a lot more stress.?

But it also helps create a much healthier, sustainable relationship with stress—not just in the workplace, but in our relationships, and personal lives.?

This is the path to long term sustainability, harmony, and therefore success.

At the very least, it's a way to help avoid the big, avoidable stresses like a failed business.