BY WALTER BELLIN
*Details regarding the complimentary in-house programme offer for you and 5-7 people from within your organisation, are at the end of the article.
Walter Bellin, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Corporate Crossroads Consultancy, spoke at the Public Sector Women in Leadership NSW Summit in April. “He is a presenter with knowledge and depth to be admired” as described in the feedback we received from the Summit. In the following article, Walter explains the PERSONAL, LEADERSHIP & CORPORATE benefits of practicing Mindfulness Meditation. Regular practitioners retain a vital skill needed for leadership positions: RESILIENCY – that is, being more capable of accepting & effectively dealing with change & are better able to bounce back from difficult situations at work or in their personal life.
Walter Bellin, Corporate Crossroads Consultancy
Over the years, whenever I have introduced people to mindfulness meditation, they have understandably wanted to know what benefits they would achieve by devoting 20 to 30 minutes a day to its practice. While, a vast amount of scientific evidence of these benefits is available in literally thousands of papers, in this article I will focus on the benefits that leaders (and anyone who practices Mindfulness Meditation) typically experience and report- and not on the scientific studies. Yet everything I say about the benefits people personally report has strong scientific backing!
The first piece of good news is that the mindfulness meditation practice itself – taught properly – is extremely easy to do, profoundly relaxing and very pleasant. I say this because there is a common misconception by many people that meditation is very difficult – for example, you must learn to control your mind and control or eliminate your thoughts, etc. Many people who have attended my workshops have previously tried meditation and found it difficult and frustrating because they were taught that such mental control was an essential ingredient in the practice. Almost invariably they didn’t continue meditating because it seemed so difficult. In fact when properly taught people find it extremely easy, effortless and pleasurable from their very first practice. However, the ultimate purpose of the practice is not the pleasure derived from doing it, but rather the benefits that occur in our daily life outside of meditation.
In my decades of teaching mindfulness meditation I have heard the same kinds of reports thousands of times from people who begin the practice: for example, regular practitioners feel both more relaxed and more “centred” in their daily life and they sleep better at night. They find that they are more resilient – that is, more capable of accepting and effectively dealing with change and better able to bounce back from crises or difficult situations at work or in their personal life. They often report feeling more self-confident and are less critical of themselves (and less critical of others too). Yet at the same time they (and others around them) say that they are more self-aware – including being more aware of their own “blind spots” and unconscious biases. Most importantly, people commonly report being more open to, and more capable of changing their attitudes and behaviours– when these attitudes or behaviours are self-limiting or cause unnecessary hurt to others!
People who were anxious or depressed before starting the practice find that these mental states diminish and often disappear completely within one or two months. Virtually everyone finds that their mind is more clear and that they are able to be more focused on the task at hand. Mindfulness meditation practitioners find themselves living more fully in the present, are less likely to dwell on negative things from the past or to worry about the future. Almost invariably people report that their relationships with others – both personal and workplace relationships – improve and are more harmonious, enjoyable and satisfying.
Meditators generally report that they have more mental and physical energy – but it’s a relaxed energy, not the tense “wired” energy you get from drinking a lot of coffee. They find that they are better able to pace themselves, are more organized and efficient in the way they approach various tasks – and that they make better use of their time!
Within a few months of beginning regular mindfulness meditation, people find that they get sick less often (colds and flu, etc.) – and when they do get sick they recover more quickly. This claim is strongly backed up by statistical and scientific evidence – for example, statistical evidence regarding less illness based absenteeism at work and biological evidence of improved immune system functioning. People usually find that their overall health is significantly improved. It is very common that people who practice mindfulness meditation regularly experience that they are more adaptable, more open-minded, more curious and more ready to explore new and different ways of doing things. This openness and adaptability is backed up by studies which indicate that meditators actually are more creative and innovative, that they are both more willing and able to think about and do things differently!
Finally, and most importantly, within a few weeks to a few months of starting the regular practice of mindfulness meditation, people commonly report that they find themselves enjoying an increasing sense of calm and well-being. With time, they notice that the calmness and well-being continue even when they are under pressure at work or in their personal life. Indeed, over time they find that this calmness and sense of well-being become part of their very identity!
All of the benefits I have described above are personal and interpersonal. Yet it is not difficult to see why so many large companies – Unilever, Amazon, Google, Apple etc. and other large organisations like the US Marine Corps – are offering training in mindfulness meditation to all their people. For any one of the above personal benefits will also greatly benefit the organisations in which people are employed. These corporate benefits include very tangible, mundane things ( like cost savings) as well as intangibles.
For example, in a recent article in the Huffington Post, a number of companies reported that saving’s from things like less days lost in sick leave, less medical care costs and less costs involving interpersonal conflicts, was up to 10 times greater than the cost of running the mindfulness program . This didn’t include less tangible but extremely important corporate benefits, resulting 1 from their people being more resilient, more adaptable and more creative.
Finally, it is important to consider what is probably the single most important benefit for organisations that offer mindfulness programs to their people: the workplace “climate” and culture improve, become more positive, less stressful and more resilient. An organisation’s culture shapes – and is shaped by – all of its relationships : the relationships of staff with each other, with management, relationships within teams and between different parts of the organisation, and relationships with the organisation’s various stakeholders. The quality of these numerous relationships has an enormous impact on the organisation’s task objectives and outcomes.
In closing, I want to emphasise again that all of the above benefits that people so commonly subjectively report from practicing mindfulness meditation have an objective basis in numerous scientific studies. The only claim I have made in this paper that has not been directly studied is the effects on an organisation’s culture of many people within the organisation practicing mindfulness meditation. Yet I don’t think it’s a great stretch to think that this would be significant, given that cultures are above all about relationships!
(1 Arianna Huffington: “Mindfulness, Meditation, Wellness and the Connection to Corporate America’s Bottom Line”, Huffington Post, Updated Version 04-01-2015)
As stated earlier, I am offering a free workshop to you and 5-7 people from within your organisation (please note the programme is exclusively run for your organisation – no one external will be attending). Clearly, from our perspective as a business, we are offering this free workshop to demonstrate the great value that Mindfulness training can provide. Thus, after the free programme is complete, you may want to make business arrangements with us to provide others within your organisation with Mindfulness training. But in accepting the free offer, there is absolutely no obligation to do so.
The workshop would be run as a full day session with a half day follow-up about 3-4 week later. We would be happy to negotiate a time convenient to you. Thus, you and whomever you delegate this to can attend, and can offer this to targeted employees or anyone who wants to try it, for up to eight people. The only requirement that we have is that at least one of the participants be senior enough to influence the decision on whether to make the programme more widely available in the organisation.
*If you are interested in taking up this offer, or if you want more information, please contact me by phone or email.
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