31 Mindfulness: The Power of Mindfulness

Mindfulness: The Power of Mindfulness

The Power of Mindfulness

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There are many seminars, insights, techniques and philosophies around mindfulness. By the way, you will find more about mindful practices and mindfulness insights in other units as you explore the many units available to you.

Here we will keep it simple and suggest some ways that mindfulness works and why it is essential in what we call High Reliability Organisations (HROs). HROs and the people in them are experts in managing for the unexpected.[1] They are hyper vigilant, and they are flexible, especially when they know that they are operating in complex and ambiguous environments. They are organisations, just like yours, where errors and mistakes can have catastrophic consequences. Much of the work and training within HROs is focused on safety and careful execution. There is much more about HROs in other units if you want to explore their nature and purpose in more detail.

Karl Weick, a US psychologist, academic and consultant, has dedicated his life, along with his colleagues, to researching disasters and finding ways to help organisations like yours to avoid them, or at least mitigate the degree of damage caused. He is a great advocate of awareness that leads to mindfulness.

This is Weick’s definition of mindfulness: “a rich awareness of discriminatory detail”.[2]

He writes that when people do things in their work environments they must be aware of their environment, they must be able to notice the difference among details, and also notice things that are different from their expectations. He also builds a very strong visual image by saying that “mindful people have the ‘big picture’, but it is a big picture in the moment”. [3] [pp 32]

One of the facilitators at QUT sends his workshop participants into the nearby Botanic Gardens which are close the Gardens Point QUT campus in the centre of Brisbane. The instructions are simply to walk slowly, run hands along the leaves, walk on the grass, and feel the breeze. The impact and differences as a result of those simple actions are often quite profound. He asks firstly that as they walk their focus is simply sensing what is around them. He believes that this simple activity helps become to both be aware of their immediate contexts and also opens up the mind to possibilities.

Given that example, take a moment to pause, and use this technique or others you have used, to ‘bring yourself into the moment’, and notice what is around you. [can we bold this or make it clear it is action?]

Read on! The next part of the exercise is coming up.

Quote:

Awareness improves when attention is not distracted, is focused on the here and now, is wary of pre-existing categories ….  This pattern of awareness and attention is called mindfulness.[i] (Page 42)

Mindfulness is shown to help individuals in their personal lives. It is also beneficial in relationships with others and in the workplace. Given you role in the Army, how you ‘show up’, how you relate to the life you lead in the Army and how you perform in that role and in that life, matters. Chade-Meng Tan, who has long been associated with Google[4], suggests that strong, stable and perceptive attention allows for calmness and clarity. These characteristics also tend to be related to self-awareness because we can see ourselves objectively, from a third person perspective.

This can also help us with response flexibility which is the ability to pause before taking action. [highlight this sentence]

Building mindfulness is clearly an important step in this response flexibility.

Remember that your Reflective Practice unit gave you some great ways to help you be aware of what’s around you. Refer back to your Reflective Journal for tips and reminders.

Activity: You just spent some time ‘bringing yourself into the moment’. We want you now to be aware of the power of this response flexibility. We want you to do this by exploring a situation from your recent past.

Think of a situation where you needed to make sense of what was happening around you. Describe the situation. What was the importance of the situation? What did the pause feel like? What was the outcome and what steps did you take that enabled a productive outcome?

If you can’t think of a situation describe one that you have observed. What did it look like? Why did the response flexibility lead to better outcomes? How did it enable better thinking?

To completely benefit from the power of mindfulness experts suggest that you work to take the practice into all parts of your life.

Highlight this as an action section

Here are three concepts for you to explore that focus on effective communication that are built on mindful techniques

These have been adapted from Karl Weick’s work[5] and the work of Chade-Meng Tan.[6] By the way, there are many others who highlight the power of this mindset. We have chosen these practitioners because they are experts in exploring the practice and benefits and how they apply in organisations like yours.

The three concepts are:

Mindfulness in activity

Mindfulness towards others

Mindfulness in conversation.

[highlight these in some way]

Mindfulness in activity as the name suggests is the act of giving full attention to what you are doing at any one moment. A good way to get started on this practice if it doesn’t come easily to you is to practice walking mindfulness. Now, in the Army being aware of how you carry yourself and how others around carry themselves is a clear expectation and probably something that you do without even thinking.

Let’s shift this natural sense of self into a self-conscious sense of self. Pick a route that is very familiar to you. Make the mental journey along the route before you set out. Picture all the steps and physical evidence along the way including sounds you remember and the type of surface on the way.

Now make the journey. Focus on every sensation using every sense. Notice your footsteps, your back, the light, colours and any air movements along the way.

[linking statement] Now that you have explored ways to be very present in yourself, it is time to turn your attention to others.

Mindfulness towards others is powerful. Give your full attention, without judgement, to another person or group of people. It works because the practice is for the benefit of others. This creates a bond because it involves tuning into how others are feeling, what is happening to them generally and in the moment and also allowing them to share and talk about what they deem important at the time.

The power of attention comes because of the experience of paying attention only to that person and the perception that the person has that you are giving them your full field of consciousness, as Chade-Meng Tan calls it. He goes on to say that by doing this you show that you care.

Mindfulness in conversation includes three components. These are mindful listening, looping and dipping. Put together, these components help to create carefully constructed conversation techniques that are beneficial to all parties. You already have learned about mindful listening in the previous section about mindfulness towards others.

Looping is a technique of closing the circle of conversation. It is a clear back and forth where the listener carefully repeats what he or she has understood from the previous part of the conversation. The speaker then gives feedback and clarifies anything that didn’t transfer well. This is a collaborative activity and both parties become good at this with practice. They will both in time learn more about how to communicate, how to listen for insights and then how to give feedback and clarify. It leads to more full understanding in the communication process.

Dipping is the process of checking in with ourselves. Often, we aren’t listening because we are distracted by our own thoughts. This happens perhaps because we are reacting to what is being said or because we are waiting to say something. Dipping helps us to notice those internal distractions. If we can’t shake them simply by noticing Tan suggests that we are least be aware that they are there and hold them as a side thought. This is a process of being mindful of ourselves during conversation.

Activity

Let’s pull these three techniques together as a practice exercise.

Mindfulness in activity is the act of giving full attention to what you are doing at any one moment. Mindfulness towards others is the act of giving your full attention, without judgement, to another person or group of people. Mindfulness in conversation is a communication process based on listening, looping and dipping that enable conversation effectiveness because we are focused on the other during the process, we are clarifying what we hear and say and we are self-checking our thought.

Now, the next time you are preparing for a high-stakes conversation, prepare the conversation in your Reflective Journal. Note the three steps of mindfulness in activity, towards others and in conversation. Keep your Journal at hand in case you need to check the steps.

When you are finished the conversation makes notes about how it went. Think about each step of the process and when and how you practiced the mindfulness steps. Over time these become part of your everyday and you will find that others appreciate their conversations with you because they are productive and you can discuss challenging issues without becoming lost.

In the next section you will start to explore your personal strengths and capabilities. This is the perfect time to practice mindfulness. As you prepare for the next section start thinking about what you do every day and what you bring to those activities. Bringing mindfulness to your daily actions helps you to understand and appreciate your strengths and your contributions.

[1] Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2011). Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty. Wiley. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=GU55MJOp1OcC

[2] Ibid.Page 32.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.