21440 Management Skills

Mindfulness in Management

Part A-Literature Review

Today the type of challenges we have to face on our daily lives is increasingly becoming a big issue both in professional and personal perspective. This has been largely contributed by a number of factors which include increasing pressure and demand from also the two variables. Example, in the past few decades of technology, has significantly changed the corporate perspective in subjects such as enhanced connectivity with items such as social media and devices. In general, people have been subjected to handling numerous changing urgencies, balancing the competing demands in our professional and personal lives, working with increased expectation, and handling the continuous changing environment surrounding their lives. This issue has been described as one of the increasing challenges in the corporate world where Australia employers are reported to offer about 40% of the employee population counseling guidance (Spadaro and Hunker, 2016). The approach has been led to the continuous awareness in the management in the issue of minimizing mental cases and stress at work.

Through the example set by one of the largest corporates today like Target, Aetna, and Google, through the introduction of mindfulness in the workplace, the method has been described as of the best minimizing in stress today. The introduction of mindfulness has been found to have a couple of benefits which include improved performance, emotional intelligence, better decision making, and enhanced clarity of thinking. Mindfulness practice has been described as a very old practice which has been in existence in over 2500 years (Wylson and Chesley, 2016). The practice has been commonly interrelated with Siddhartha Gautama who was a spiritual teacher. In accordance with the Buddhist practice, mindfulness practice is majorly focused to reflect on our well-being i.e. the ability to control our anxieties, thoughts, regrets, and practice quiet minds. Mindfulness practice is described to help us improve on how we choose our daily lives on the present events which reflect on the choices they make have to reflect on the present moments (Zeidan and Vago, 2016).

Mindfulness is majorly characterized into three major groups which include attention, intention, and attitude. As a manager practicing mindfulness the right intention should always be set on the present situation. This is also the same case in the attention situation, they should always offer the required attention in everything happening around their environment irrespective of how small they seem to matter (Moses and Choudhury, 2016). For example, checking emails, coffee breaks, or even talking about emotional concerns. Through this applications, the attitude of the individual is also improved greatly where one is able to be more patient, open-minded, trustworthy, and non-judgmental. In other words, the main goal of mindfulness is to reflect on personal feelings and thoughts. Some of this task like reflecting on personal thoughts seems to one of the many things most of us opt to ignore while focusing our attention to most of the things we haven’t figured out yet in our lives (Zeidan et al., 2016).

According to the study taken by the University of Virginia to find out how people are willing to have personal thinking, shows most us when we are awake we opt to spend most of our time while using a technology. The study showed that 700 participants kept in a quiet room, 67% of the participant was willing to shock with a button inside the room than just keeping quiet and using the time to think (Spadaro and Hunker, 2016). The smartphones and the internet are one of the examples today which help us to witness the things people opt to do daily just to escape any alone time. Through the practice of mindfulness, people can be able to improve on ways of coping with daily stress by focusing on their inner feelings and thoughts. This therefore also allows them to more understanding of how to approach their current situations more effectively (Wahbeh, Goodrich, Goy, and Oken, 2016).

According to several studies taken, mindfulness practice has been tested and proven to improve brain functionality. People who practice mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), have been described to have more increased gray matter concentrations in the brain during self-referential processing, memory and learning processing (Geiger et al., 2016). The study of the people believed in practicing mindfulness their brain functionality has been described to be more enhanced in innovation and creativity, improved cognitive flexibility, empathy, and emotional regulation. One of the main attributing factors to this development in the brain is the improved attention. In respect to stress reduction, mindfulness helps in the minimization cortisol in the brain which is one hormone known to initiate stress (Shearer, Hunt, Chowdhury, and Nicol, 2016). With the minimization of cortisol in the brain, one can be able to more focused than usual times leading to a more productive performance in one’s day-to-day activities. The minimization of cortisol in the brain is considered as a very beneficial factor in the health of an individual this is through enhancing the body immune system, lowering the blood pressure, and improving the emotional control (Black and Slavich, 2016).

According to Latham (2016), mindfulness practicing can be associated with improving the mental health of an individual by also decreasing the levels of depression, anxiety, and pain of the practicing individuals. The acceptance of mindfulness has continued to improve in the last decade with many scholars reviewing its benefit and importance in today’s corporate world. According to the psychological perspective, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) has been described as one of the most effective approaches especially when dealing with suicidal patients. The practice has continued to be applied in a corporate world where countries such as the US and UK have reported significant success on the outcome of the entire company performance. This has increased to be a public interest with the approach of improving well-being perspective of people and thus also the improvement of the entire social development (Petchsawang and McLean, 2017).

In respect to the global corporate culture, the integration of mindfulness in business is considered as one of the challenging experiences. The approach of telling employees to slow down and reflect on their present is actually against almost every organization goal and objective strategy. However, this is also one of the key importance that makes the value of mindfulness in an organization keeps on increasing daily. With the application of mindfulness in an organization, there has been reported a series of benefits which include the improved cognitive functionality of employees, reduced absenteeism, improved job satisfaction, and talent maintenance, improved employee engagement, and generally improved productivity in the entire organization (Lueke and Gibson, 2016). Mindfulness has also been described to improve on the mental health and help to nurture imagination growth. People believed to practice mindfulness are considered to have better communication skills, innovative capabilities, and have the ability to cope with stress and challenging situations better. The practice of mindfulness as an organization is set to improve the efficiency of the organizational decision making in all levels thus incorporating a very enhanced system (Hilton et al., 2016).

Apart the help employees can benefit from mindfulness, senior management/leaders are also considered as one of the most beneficial people with the application of mindfulness. The part of being a leader involves a lot of ridicule, backstabbing, hate, and other negative factors which causes a lot of stress and discouragement (Frizzell, Hoon, and Banner, 2016). On the same, being a leader it requires a lot of you as an individual in different situations which mostly comprise of critical decision making and dealing with different types of people. The use of mindfulness is, therefore, a vital tool every leader should be able to apply on his or her daily lives. Mindfulness can be used to improve the cognitive and psychological perspective of leaders where they can be able to relate better with other people and improve their decision making (Hanh, 2016). Through the increasing challenges in management due to issues such as globalization, workplace diversity, and others, mindfulness is one effective approach to learning better ways of improving adaptability and flexibility.

Google is one of the largest companies today which have managed to successfully integrate mindfulness practice. The implementation by the company was reported to take approximately two and half years with the help of participants in the company. The main parts of the implementation include three parts which are creating mental habits, self-knowledge development, and attention training. In training and/or creating mental habits, the company focused on improving the kindness virtue to the participants (Quach, Mano, and Alexander, 2016). To achieve this, the participants were taught to reflect on the other person happiness and with the effective application of training, kindness is perceived as a natural mental habit. Self-knowledge is concentrated on approaches on knowing oneself through individual self-evaluation. This is because we all face different challenges in life and we have different capabilities for dealing with different situations. According to the participant’s development, self-awareness and self-knowledge can be described as a gradual process which improves with time and thus requiring a lot of patients. The attention training was majorly focused on helping the participants to be able clear and calm their minds in a different situation which led to any kind of stress or anxiety (Khusid and Vythilingam, 2016).

Google has reported mindfulness practice as one of the most successful approaches that have ever been applied in the company which has led to improved emotional intelligence and team building development. In measuring physical changes of the participants, their heart measurement seemed to improve with time as they also seemed to improve on their stress management program. On the same note, the performance of the individual participants also improved drastically when they were correlated with their health improvements (Hafenbrack, 2017). To make as an official practice in the company, there is a meditation room in almost every building with also weekly programs which are help employees keep track of practice. Since the introduction of mindfulness practice in 2007 in almost all google stations, the company has also continued to report increase number of willing participants which currently stands at about 84% of the total number of Google employees (Altizer, 2017).

Currently, with the continuous increase in challenges and issues in the society, mindfulness practice has been described as one the majorly required developments in leadership, management, and a personal level for social development. One of the main methods that should be increasingly utilized to explain the dynamics of mindfulness is the use of ‘Neuro-Plastic’ (Gong et al., 2016). The main focus of the research should be based on the explanation the different types of relationships involved in mindfulness meditation and the extent of benefits involved in the practice. In other words, in order to fully understand and maximize the use of mindfulness, intensive research should be conducted in various areas. Given the empirical evidence in large corporations such as Google, Mindfulness has a significant impact on the performance of an organization and the entire social development (Crescentini et al., 2016). Therefore, the application mindfulness in curriculum learning should be more clearly approach being one of the current emerging issues in today’s world.

Future research developments should be able to implement some of the issues such as formal mindfulness meditation practice with clinical or professional supervision. Also, according to the current research studies, there have some limited developments in various areas such as the emotional measurement development where the relationship between counselors and clients is defined as quite hard to be monitored in terms of improvement (Tang, 2017). Correlation of the practice with some of emotional and character traits have not been exclusively researched and measured in terms of expected outcome. For example, how do mindfulness practice changes the compassion and empathy of participants and are some of the expected outcomes of this traits, and what is the effect of mindfulness practice to a different kind of workforce environment. On the other hand, mindfulness practice has been considered as one of the most effective tools in managing self-care (Rose, Sheffield, and Harling, 2018). It has been described to be able to mend one of the increasing emotional distress and the ability to improve our individual weaknesses which therefore helps in the improvement of work-related stress and effective management and/or leadership.

Part B- Implementation, Summary, and Reflection

Timeline of Activities

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Implementation

The implementation of mindfulness practice in the three weeks’ time period was majorly done in parts. The first step of the daily route was to make sure I centered myself by understanding my roles and what is expected of me. In all three weeks, one of the major activity that I usually start my day with is a morning jog or walk. Most of the times I usually go alone but sometimes my friends also join me where we also go to a meditation meeting which occasionally took place at the park or at the theater. Throughout the implementation time, one of the main aspects that have really helped me attain a successful implementation process is watching Ted talks and movies on mental health. With this, I have been able to improve on myself reflection and I also learned different ways of maintaining mental health example being daily exercise and enhanced relationships with the environment around me. In the course of the implementation process, the self-reflection part was one of the best processes that have enhanced my understanding of mindfulness practice and how to improve on day-to-day activities (Hoge et al., 2018). Most of the daily reflection were during the night before I went to sleep where I could reflect on my day was, challenges encountered during the day, and the course of action in the event I found myself in the same situation.

Summary and Reflection

According to the study on mindfulness practice, it’s one of the major tools that should be highly utilized both in the corporate world and society at large. The application of the mindfulness in some of the large corporates such as Google company has reported as one of the most successful approaches that have led to significant improvement in the company performance and its employee care (Gallant, 2016). Despite my expectation, I must confess that mindfulness practice has been one of the fruitful methods that have enhanced my psychological understanding and also personal development. This has been through the ability to understand my surrounding environment i.e. the different kind of stressors which I faced on daily routines and other substantial stressors.

Through the personal evaluation and understanding, I came to realize that by working in different jobs and same time focusing on my education requirements was a challenge I had to accept as part of me. with the help of meditation classes, I have been able to improve on my stress management and ways of dealing with different kind of challenging situations. I must also admit that it was not an easy task as I had earlier thought where the implementation process required a lot of patience and continuous practice for a successful outcome. Through the mindfulness practice, I have also noticed that I have improved on my social and academic skills. Judging from the experience during the three weeks’ implementation and practice period, I intend to make mindfulness practice as one daily routine in the approach of continuous improvement in both personal and professional life.

References

Altizer, C., 2017. Mindfulness: performance, wellness or fad?. Strategic HR Review, 16(1), pp.24-31.

Black, D.S. and Slavich, G.M., 2016. Mindfulness meditation and the immune system: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1373(1), pp.13-24.

Crescentini, C., Chittaro, L., Capurso, V., Sioni, R. and Fabbro, F., 2016. Psychological and physiological responses to stressful situations in immersive virtual reality: Differences between users who practice mindfulness meditation and controls. Computers in Human Behavior, 59, pp.304-316.

Frizzell, D.A., Hoon, S. and Banner, D.K., 2016. A phenomenological investigation of leader development and mindfulness meditation. Journal of Social Change, 8(1), p.3.

Gallant, S.N., 2016. Mindfulness meditation practice and executive functioning: Breaking down the benefit. Consciousness and cognition, 40, pp.116-130.

Geiger, P.J., Boggero, I.A., Brake, C.A., Caldera, C.A., Combs, H.L., Peters, J.R. and Baer, R.A., 2016. Mindfulness-based interventions for older adults: a review of the effects on physical and emotional well-being. Mindfulness, 7(2), pp.296-307.

Gong, H., Ni, C.X., Liu, Y.Z., Zhang, Y., Su, W.J., Lian, Y.J., Peng, W. and Jiang, C.L., 2016. Mindfulness meditation for insomnia: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of psychosomatic research, 89, pp.1-6.

Hafenbrack, A.C., 2017. Mindfulness meditation as an on-the-spot workplace intervention. Journal of Business Research, 75, pp.118-129.

Hanh, T.N., 2016. The miracle of mindfulness: An introduction to the practice of meditation. Beacon Press.

Hilton, L., Hempel, S., Ewing, B.A., Apaydin, E., Xenakis, L., Newberry, S., Colaiaco, B., Maher, A.R., Shanman, R.M., Sorbero, M.E. and Maglione, M.A., 2016. Mindfulness meditation for chronic pain: systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 51(2), pp.199-213.

Hoge, E.A., Bui, E., Palitz, S.A., Schwarz, N.R., Owens, M.E., Johnston, J.M., Pollack, M.H. and Simon, N.M., 2018. The effect of mindfulness meditation training on biological acute stress responses in generalized anxiety disorder. Psychiatry research, 262, pp.328-332.

Khusid, M.A. and Vythilingam, M., 2016. The emerging role of mindfulness meditation as an effective self-management strategy, part 1: clinical implications for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety. Military medicine, 181(9), pp.961-968.

Latham, N., 2016. Meditation and self-control. Philosophical Studies, 173(7), pp.1779-1798.

Lueke, A. and Gibson, B., 2016. Brief mindfulness meditation reduces discrimination. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 3(1), p.34.

Moses, J. and Choudhury, S., 2016. A “Mechanism of Hope”: Mindfulness, Education, and the Developing Brain. In Handbook of Mindfulness (pp. 447-458). Springer, Cham.

Petchsawang, P. and McLean, G.N., 2017. Workplace spirituality, mindfulness meditation, and work engagement. Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 14(3), pp.216-244.

Quach, D., Mano, K.E.J. and Alexander, K., 2016. A randomized controlled trial examining the effect of mindfulness meditation on working memory capacity in adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health, 58(5), pp.489-496.

Rose, S.A., Sheffield, D. and Harling, M., 2018. The integration of the workable range model into a mindfulness-based stress reduction course: a practice-based case study. Mindfulness, 9(2), pp.430-440.

Shearer, A., Hunt, M., Chowdhury, M. and Nicol, L., 2016. Effects of a brief mindfulness meditation intervention on student stress and heart rate variability. International Journal of Stress Management, 23(2), p.232.

Spadaro, K.C., and Hunker, D.F., 2016. Exploring The effects of an online asynchronous mindfulness meditation intervention with nursing students on stress, mood, and cognition: a descriptive study. Nurse education today, 39, pp.163-169.

Tang, Y.Y., 2017. Traits and states in mindfulness meditation. In The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation (pp. 29-34). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Wahbeh, H., Goodrich, E., Goy, E. and Oken, B.S., 2016. Mechanistic pathways of mindfulness meditation in combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of clinical psychology, 72(4), pp.365-383.

Wylson, A. and Chesley, J.A., 2016. The Benefits of Mindfulness in Leading Transformational Change. Graziadio Business Review, 19(1).

Zeidan, F. and Vago, D.R., 2016. Mindfulness meditation-based pain relief: a mechanistic account. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1373(1), pp.114-127.

Zeidan, F., Adler-Neal, A.L., Wells, R.E., Stagnaro, E., May, L.M., Eisenach, J.C., McHaffie, J.G. and Coghill, R.C., 2016. Mindfulness-meditation-based pain relief is not mediated by endogenous opioids. Journal of Neuroscience, 36(11), pp.3391-3397.