Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Mastering the Moment: A 5-Day Training in Mindfulness
Mindfulness is quickly becoming a priority for companies seeking to enhance their employees’ productivity and creativity as well as their overall heath and well-being.i Google, Target, Proctor & Gamble, Harvard University, the US Military and The Centers for Disease Control are just a few who now provide formal mindfulness training.
The High Cost of Mindlessness
Mindlessness is a significant challenge in our age of information overload and continuous multi-tasking. We are deluged with e-mails, texts, phone calls, meetings, appointments and constant performance pressure at home and work.
We largely cope by operating through continuous partial attention, skimming through life and hoping we glean the most important details. This generates stress, distraction, and overwhelmed (often negative) coping strategies. All of which show up in a range of staggering organizational costs.
Health Costs – Stress-related illness and negative coping cost companies over $500 billion in lost productivity. These also factor significantly into the $1 trillion corporate health insurance bill.ii In an effort to manage these costs, companies pour another $6 billion into Employee Wellness Programs that produce little return.iii
Performance Costs – Multi-tasking costs $450 billion a year in lost productivity, with people persisting in the activity despite consistent research that it is ineffective (and that habitual multi-taskers often perform worse than occasional multi-taskers).iv
Training Costs – Learning decay ranges as high as 90%, raising serious questions about what US companies are getting for their $150 billion annual spend on training.
Innovation Costs – stress, multitasking and poor thought skills all restrict our ability to see things in new, more effective ways.v
The Mindfulness Solution
Research into mindfulness shows a wealth of benefits: reduced stress, increased immunity and overall health, higher employee engagement in their work, better concentration and productivity, higher learning and improved creativity and innovation. By boosting our ability to experience more clearly, fully and creatively, mindfulness contributes to substantially more effective and enjoyable work.
A Unique Applied-Training Approach
Mastering the Moment teaches core mindfulness skills in manageable increments. On each of four 30-minute sessions across consecutive days, participants learn 1-2 primary skills they can apply immediately and then discuss/adjust on the following day. The full skill set is integrated in a 60-minute Day 5 program with an emphasis on continued application. Options are available to refresh the learning over following weeks and months as necessary, including training in-house facilitators.
Program Overview
Day 1: Mastering the Moment Core Skill: Focusing on the moment. Mindfulness is about mastering the moment. Day 1 provides a brief research review but emphasizes the experience of mindfulness through simple eating and breathing exercises. Participants assess their current state and identify a personal focus for the week by completing a Distraction Factor Assessment.
Day 2: Thinking Core Skills: Concentration and contemplationConcentration is vital to accomplishing tasks but interruptions and multi-tasking rule the day. Contemplation is vital for recognizing needs or opportunities beyond the way we’re currently working. Mindfulness boosts and unifies these critical thinking skills to boost productivity, work quality and life satisfaction.
Day 3: FeelingCore Skills: Self-awareness and self-regulationAnalytic reason is the official language of work. As such, we often fail to acknowledge (or even realize) emotions, which means we fail to manage them effectively. Small stresses and slights feed negative workplace politics and pile up until “final straws” occur. Such emotional hijacking is largely avoidable when we learn to mindfully surface and channel emotions.
Day 4: ListeningCore Skill: Active listeningResearch shows we typically listen to someone else for 7 seconds before starting to form our reply. We fill in blanks, finish others’ sentences, infer meaning and emotions that aren’t there and a commit a host of other listening sins. Mindfulness helps us step outside our personal agenda and build collaboration through truly understanding other viewpoints.
Day 5: Communicating Core Skill: Effective engagementDay 5 blends the skills from Days 1-4 into an extended focus on being an effective communicator. From e-mails to meetings, participants learn to mindfully reflect intent, objectives, audience, context, emotions and more, with a commitment to collaborative “wins.”
For larger companies, managers should be trained prior to the larger employee population in order to model and encourage application during and after the training.
Distraction Factor Assessment
Rate how frequently the following statements are true for you.
1 – Rarely 2 – Sometimes 3 – Often 4 – Very Often 5 – Most of the time
1. _____ I rush through things rather being attentive to what I’m doing.
2. _____ I get so focused on goals that I lose touch with what I’m doing right now.
3. _____ I tend to walk quickly without paying attention to what’s around me.
4. _____ I listen to someone with one ear, doing something else at the same time.
5. _____ I become preoccupied with the future or the past.
6. _____ I keep a lot of programs and documents open on my computer.
7. _____ I snack without being aware that I’m eating.
8. _____ I channel surf while watching TV or listening to the radio.
9. _____ I get lost in thoughts and feelings.
10. _____ I am easily distracted.
11. _____ I daydream or think of other things during chores like mowing and dishes.
12. _____ I do several things at once rather than focusing on one thing at a time.
13. _____ By day’s end I find I’ve spent more time on low value tasks than I intended.
14. _____ I find it difficult to stay focused on a project from beginning to end.
15. _____ I struggle to stay fully attentive in meetings and conference calls.
16. _____ I lose track of time when browsing the Internet or using social marketing.
17. _____ My mind is constantly busy.
18. _____ While doing something, I think of other things I need to do.
19. _____ I talk on the phone or listen to the radio while driving.
20. _____ If I’m on a conference call, I take time to read e-mail or organize my desk.
If you answered 3 or higher to more than 10 questions, you will definitely benefit from strengthening your attention muscle. But you can make substantial gains even if you wrestle with only a few items. Imagine the effect of even a 10% improvement on any of the items.
Mindfulness as a means to build attention and awareness is growing quickly at companies across the US from Google and Target to Harvard and the US Military. Find out more and try a selection of attention-building exercises in Mastering the Moment: How to Clear Your Brain & Focus at www.linkedin.com/in/ericzook/.
This assessment adapted from Siegel, R.D. PsyD. (2010). The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems. (2010) New York: Guilford Press
i The Mindful Revolution, Time Magazine, February 3, 2014.
ii Finding extrapolated from data reported in The 2013 Employer Health Benefits Survey, The Kaiser Family Foundation
iii Do Workplace Wellness Programs Work? Usually Not. The New York Times, September 11, 2014.
iv The Effects of Multi-Tasking on Organizations (Realization 2013)
v Amabile, T.M. and Kramer, S.J. (2011). The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
