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Begin Your Corporate Mindfulness Journey With Silence

Forbes Human Resources Council

Anne Krog Iversen is the Co-founder, Chief DNA & Culture Officer at TimeXtender.

Mindfulness is a topic that has grown in popularity exponentially over the last few years. Even before Covid-19 hit and changed our daily lives and work habits, the power of mindfulness was on the rise. For years, people have studied and put into practice exercises related to mindfulness such as meditation, breathing, visualization and relaxation techniques.

Most recently, companies have looked into how they can embed mindfulness into their company culture to strengthen performance but also provide a platform to help each of their employees explore mindfulness themselves. The term “mindfulness in business” is one we hear quite regularly in business circles these days.

But what are the steps for implementing mindfulness into your work routines and instilling these principles into your company culture? There are various ways to go about this, but let’s start by offering a simple, yet effective framework for doing just that.

At my company, TimeXtender, company mindfulness is something that has been an integral part of our DNA and corporate culture for years. I’d like to share some ideas that we have found work very well to help you get started on your journey toward greater peace, tranquility, decision-making, confidence and mindfulness.

First off, start small and keep it simple. Introduce your mindfulness program in your company by offering one initiative. A great way to start is by establishing a minute of silence at the start of your business meetings. A minute of silence can help all meeting attendees land, focus and connect—regrouping from their previous activities and landing for the new meeting or event that is about to occur. You can use an hourglass or timer on your cell phone to manage the one minute of silence. During the minute in silence, you'll train your awareness muscle.

To begin practicing silence, pre-frame how you're going to do the one minute of silence as it will likely surprise many people and some might feel uncomfortable at first. To help overcome this, prepare people in a gentle and inclusive manner by explaining the reasoning behind the one minute of silence (clearing your thoughts, re-energizing and recharging, taking a mental break and preparing for a new meeting) and inviting them to join in if interested. Make it voluntary rather than compulsory, and explain that there’s no right or wrong way to participate. But understand this interesting point: In my experience, the most common reaction from participants trying the one minute of silence for the first time is “thank you.” Be patient, and you will see and feel the results in time.

You can then add new methods to help you reflect such as introducing moments of silence during the meeting, in between meeting agenda items or before making an important decision in the meeting discussion. Doing so will give people time to think and encourage the introverts to speak up and share great answers. This is ideal as we want to bring out ideas and invite all the minds at the meeting to share their perspectives to help generate more creative answers to complex problems.

Once you have established the minute of silence to begin your business meetings, and have considered additional moments of silence during the actual meeting, you can also introduce other related training during the workday to help strengthen silence sessions. These may be weekly recharge sessions or introducing various kinds of breathing techniques or different forms of meditation for training and inspiration. These efforts will give people the tools they need to spend time in silence by themselves and with others, training their awareness and presence. During the workday is a great time to do this as people often don't make the effort to engage in silence on their own, at least until they have been exposed to the practice and recognize the benefits such as resetting, improving focus and enhancing creativity.

While it can take some dedicated effort to show employees the value of silence, it might also take some effort to convince management of the same. An excellent article in Psychology Today, published in January 2022 and written by Camille Preston, Ph.D., details the “7 Ways Mindfulness Can Improve Your Business.” The story lays out the benefits of implementing a program in the workplace and includes various other sources that you might also find helpful in learning more about mindfulness for your company.

Overall, business leaders can begin incorporating mindfulness throughout the workday, such as a moment of silence before or during meetings, to further embed the principle in their company cultures.


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