What do you think about when you hear the word ‘mindfulness’? The perception of mindfulness is often perceived as a relaxation technique, most likely associated with meditation and looking at trees and smelling your cup of coffee. Although these are all potential parts of mindfulness, there are at least 33 different definitions of mindfulness. One of the most common ones is by the mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn who defines it as ‘paying attention to the present moment, on purpose, and nonjudgmentally’ (Kabat-Zinn 1994).
Mindfulness is usually seen as a personal practice, but there is a large body of research that looks at collective mindfulness – which translates as how we can be mindful of one another and the people and teams around us. This type of mindfulness is much less known.
So what does an organisation that has a high level of collective mindfulness look like?
First of all, they tend to have a culture that is able to see and predict when difficult things are about to happen and how to respond to it. In a way, it is a way to work on reducing stress on a collective level.
University of Michigan psychologist Karl Weick and his colleagues highlight five aspects that are clear signs of collective mindfulness:
- Being aware of what happens day-to-day in organisations, and spotting any changes that can impact the organisation and making sure team members are aware of these too
- Pro-actively thinking of, and planning for the ‘worse case scenario’ and anticipating problems before they become disasters
- Empowering people who are experts in the organisation to be able to make their own decisions, not always those with the highest rank
- Focusing on making sure team members are familiar with each other’s roles and responsibilities so that they can help each other when things are busy, valuing the flexibility this enables
- Accepting that work is complex and it is not a good idea to try to simplify difficult issues, and always striving to improve and learn about new ways of doing things
This has been extensively studied in medical settings and a survey in the US showed that collectively mindful teams have far fewer medical errors for example (Vogus and Sutcliffe, 2007). It goes without saying that in this instance, this type of awareness can be the difference between life or death, but it doesn’t have to be that serious for us to realise the importance of this in organisations.
Many times, organisations are too busy to spot growing issues and tackling those issues head on, before they get out of hand.
Do you think your organisation has a high level of collective mindfulness? We’d love to hear from you
