Mindful Teambuilding. Why Meditate with a Team and How to Arrange It
Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Kaspersky lab, Yahoo: what do these names have in common? The first thing that comes to mind is that all of them are successful IT giants. They inspire, they guide, they are copied from, they are imitated, and some of them are even worshipped. Hundreds of thousands of people dream of becoming part of their team.
However, another fact allows us to look at them differently. All of these companies have supplemented their employee development program with meditation. Some of them have their own corporate gurus who work with employees instead of the coaches and psychologists, conducting group and individual sessions.
Why is meditation becoming part of progressive teams, and how to apply it in the workplace? Let’s look at it briefly.
When the East is inspiring the West
Like many other trends, the corporate meditation trend originated in Silicon Valley.
Former Google mindfulness coach Chade Meng Tan ( one of the company’s earliest engineers) is confident that one cannot do without meditation in the age of information and high technology. He believes that only inspired and calm employees can create new products and make discoveries. Companies need to take care of their employees’ physical health (medicine, nutrition, sports) and satisfy higher-level needs, such as the search for meaning and emotional connection.
“I realized it’s necessary to remind people why they need meditation. It’s not enough to just say, ‘Let’s look at the world with love and kindness’ — they’ll call it hippie nonsense,” says Chad Meng-Tan in one of his interviews.
He became a Buddhist in 1991, made one of the first Buddhist websites in 1995, and in 2007 designed a Search Inside Yourself course for Google. In this course, he proposed a new use for the 20% of working time the corporation gives each employee for self-development.
The Meng-Tan’s program consists of three stages:
The first stage trains mindfulness: the basis of the human’s higher cognitive and emotional capacities. The task of the first stage is to develop a clear and calm state of mind.
The second stage develops self-awareness and self-control. The goal is to understand how thoughts and emotions arise and flow from the perspective of an unbiased observer.
The third stage creates new mental habits, including compassion and kindness.
Chad Meng-Tan retired from Google as its “Jolly Good Fellow” (the official name of his position) at 45. However, his activities have not disappeared from the corporation and still greatly influenced it. There are long lines to sign up for Meng’s course at Google, and the corporation recently built a massive maze for walking meditations.
Apple is not left out: there is a particular room for meditation at the company’s headquarters, and each employee has the right to devote 30 minutes of his working time to the practice. And the annual Wisdom 2.0 conference, dedicated to combining ancient secrets with the world of high technology, attracts tens of thousands of live visitors and online viewers. Among the speakers are Google, Facebook, Apple, and Twitter employees.
Why does mindfulness matter for business?
Mindfulness coaches in different companies may follow different approaches, but they agree on the goals.
Meditation practice is a valuable tool for both the employee and the employer.
Now people do not separate life at work from life outside work as they used to. The modern office, modeled after Silicon Valley workplaces, is a space for fulfillment and personal development. Employees like it when an employer treats them not just as a resource or profit-making function but as individuals. Those focused on personal growth understand the value of a company where management cares about training their professional skills and well-being.
And competent entrepreneurs, in turn, understand that employees’ productivity is proportional to their mental condition and focus. In a rare activity, there is no stress. The more intense the schedule and the more responsibilities, risks, deadlines, and decisions, the more stressful and worse the condition. If stress accumulates, it leads to burnout. A person becomes much less energetic, may do less good, and is less demanded in the market.
It is the meditation that develops “calm vigilance,”: the quality that allows the employee to engage in work.
This calm vigilance allows you to look adequately at what is happening and accept the work problems as they are. And most importantly, it teaches you to find solutions. So if big changes are happening in the company or the pace of work increases — meditation in the office will help employees cope with these changes.
And meditation is one of the most effective and healthy ways to reduce stress. In addition, through regular practice, one becomes less sensitive to stress in general. This is due to an increase in serotonin and certain insights that one gets during practice.
New-age team building
Meditation among colleagues can also be a team-building factor. Mindfulness expands the boundaries of self-perception, removes unnecessary limitations, and helps to build trusting relationships in the team. For example, this is enhanced by the part of the session where participants discuss the experience they have just had.
And the aforementioned Chade Meng Tan believes that empathy makes employees happier and benefits the company.
First, empathy creates effective leaders who are humble and ambitious and want to create for the common good. Google nurtures leadership by emphasizing inner qualities such as self-awareness, self-mastery, and empathy. Second, empathy inspires all employees and helps create a team where colleagues admire and respect one another. In such a work team, creativity, initiative, and cooperation flourish.
Can meditation be harmful to employees?
Meditation, especially unaccompanied by a specialist, is contraindicated when one has a diagnosed mental disorder. However, with a professional approach, disorders such as panic or post-traumatic stress disorder are effectively treated with mindfulness practices with no side effects.
For example, DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) and ACT (acceptance & commitment therapy) approach involve a great deal of contemplative practice. If no illnesses arise, but unpleasant experiences arise in practice, it is better to discuss them with a specialist — ideally, a therapist knowledgeable about meditation.
The risk in corporate meditations for the employer is that one of the employees may realize through the practices that they are not doing what they want to do and quit. This usually happens to those who initially did not fit into the company, repressed their resentment, and ignored the constant internal conflict. Quitting, encouraged by meditation, is reasonable for the company because those who leave will be replaced by those who share the organization’s values.
How does meditation in the workplace work?
All that is required of the company and employees for meditation is a desire, 10–15 minutes a day. It looks like a meeting and may seem deceptively simple. You sit down in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and simply note the physical sensations in your body and the activity of thoughts in your head. You do not judge but simply observe how these sensations arise and disappear without reacting to them.
Through this, meditators gradually become aware of the volatile nature of all feelings, including pain, anger, and frustration. Over time, this allows practitioners to quiet the mind. As a result, people become less agitated, more focused, and much easier to work with.
If you have a large team, and it’s inconvenient to gather simultaneously, colleagues can meditate individually. But in this case, sharing impressions of the practice in a common space is desirable.
Usually, you can start with 3 minutes of meditation and gradually increase the time to 10–20 minutes. Fifteen minutes of meditation is enough time to feel its effects.
Finding a staff-friendly technical solution for corporate practices is essential: this will determine the engagement. This is particularly significant if part of your team works remotely and can’t attend in-person practices. For example, you can invite an expert who will hold zoom sessions, but in this case, the employees will be tied to a particular time, and it is not certain that it will be convenient for everyone. Another way is to record a video course, wherein the employees can log in at any convenient time.
However, there is a chance that the employee will still feel social loneliness, as they will have to meditate alone with a soulless video. So, the best option is to use ready-made solutions and integrate them into the corporate culture. Classes can be live and recorded, but gamification and various interactive formats allow uniting and engaging people regardless of their geolocation.
That’s when Inite comes to help! Our Web 3.0 mindfulness app is creating functionality specifically for corporate meditations. The gamified interface provides additional motivation and helps track each employee’s progress. After the practice, members share thoughts and insights for work projects or intra-team relationships.
Discover Inite’s business benefits here
Join us for Meditation for Peace in Inite app!
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