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- What is the organization hoping to accomplish with the intervention?
- Who is the target of this intervention (e.g. employees, managers, etc.)?
- What population is this intervention intended for? (e.g. type of organization or industry)?
- What problem does this intervention seek to solve, and/or what positive outcome does this intervention seek to enhance or create?
2. Has the presenter adequately described the components of the intervention?
- What are the psychological (or physical) mechanisms this intervention seeks to impact? (e.g. Would it work by creating positive habits of attention? By increasing self-efficacy? By causing a positive physiological shift?)
- What are the expected outcomes and practical results you would anticipate from its implementation? (e.g. Would it result in more positive emotions? Greater productivity at work? Reduced crime rates?)
3. Has the presenter provided empirical and theoretical evidence for the intervention?
4. Has the presenter made a strong case for his or her intervention?
5. Does the implementation plan seem well thought-out and appropriate for the population? If the team already implemented the plan, did they adequately describe their thought-process and learning?
6. Do the expected outcomes seem supported by evidence? If the team already tested the intervention, were the outcomes well measured and explained? Do you think this intervention would work with other populations?
Dear Hitomi,
Thank you for sharing your presentation; this intervention would be extremely valuable in the workplace. I look forward to learning more and hearing of outcomes achieved.
Kind regards,
Dina
Hi Dina,
Thank you for your kind words! It would be wonderful to share more insights on this with you and others at the conference. I hope we have a chance to connect in person in July! 🙂 (If you have any questions or thoughts in the meantime, please feel free to comment on this page)
Hi Hitomi, let’s make sure that we do connect at the conference!
Yes! 🙂
Hi Hitomi,
Very interesting intervention and a take I hadn’t heard yet on how mindfulness can help more compassionate responses when unexpected mistakes occur. Could you tell me more about the difference between breath meditation and love and kindness meditation?
Hi Jessica,
Thank you very much for watching the video and sharing your comments! I hope to share more about this mindfulness intervention in a way that organizations from across the world can implement to foster positive work environment.
Thank you also for the question! The breath meditation (BM) is a method where you focus your attention on your breathing (noticing the inhale/exhale, the sensations you feel, the speed, etc.) to become aware of the present. When thoughts, emotions, or feelings arise while doing this exercise, you can practice being nonjudgmental by acknowledging those things being there (ex. identifying what they are by labeling them) but not attaching any positive or negative value to them — and then returning your attention to the breathing. With your breathing as the anchor for attention, you can experience how to be mindful in the moment.
The loving kindness meditation (LKM) is a method where you bring someone (or a group) to your awareness and focus your attention on sending kind thoughts or positive mantras to them — then, you shift your attention to focus on yourself and repeat those positive thoughts and kindness toward yourself. Your focus in this case would be the receiver(s) of your positive thoughts and kindness.
Both meditations let us become aware of the present moment in a nonjudgmental way, and have various benefits — cultivating compassion and being able to see things from different perspectives are some of them. The how and what you meditate on are different, but they are both easy to start incorporating into our daily lives. I’ve also heard of variations to the methods mentioned above, so if you have any questions let me know on this page. Thank you!
Good day from México Hitomi!
Thank you for the clearness, creativity and focus of your presentation. I have been practicing loving kindness meditation with my students. It has been working well, they are adolescents, creative and vulnerable actors and actresses. I would love to hear and learn more about your practice at the Congress.
Greetings Alejandra! It’s so exciting to hear from people all over the world. Thank you for watching the video and sharing your teaching experience with your students using loving kindness meditation — it sounds like you are doing very meaningful work! I work on college campus, so I hope to be able to offer mindfulness courses to students some day. I hope we can connect at the Congress as well!
Thank you Hitomi for putting together such a strong and well designed intervention. Helping organizations to train leaders and workers to use mistakes as an opportunity to foster more mindful and positive relationships would certainly make a big difference to the culture of an organization. The use of meditation and simulation training may help people to be less reactive in dealing with mistakes. Your use of scribe in the presentation helped you to show the flow of ideas in an easy to follow manner. The suggestions for evaluating the effect of your intervention are strong. I wondered how you assess whether reactions and actions actually change? Your current outcome measures that seem to be more to do with the internal state of people who go through the intervention rather than whether we see behavioral change between co-workers. Well done
Thank you Professor Waters for your wonderful comments! I am so grateful for your thoughtful feedback for this intervention. For assessing the change in participants’ reactions and actions, we would be utilizing the follow-up survey that was mentioned in the slide with the tree-shape diagram for the intervention steps. Currently it is proposed to take place 3 months after the conclusion of the intervention in order to 1) give participants enough time and occasions to practice what they learned about communicating mindfully and 2) measure the long-term effect of the intervention. In addition to the self-evaluation portion where participants reflect on how mindful they are in the moment (using scales such as Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire by Baer et al. (2006) which was also used by Krasner et al. (2009) to assess their education program’s effect on primary care physicians’ mindful communication level), this follow-up would also include a set of evaluations of the participants’ behavior changes reported by their co-workers, similar to the format of the Reflected Best Self Exercise (RBSE) from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and the Center for Positive Organizations. Thank you very much for your question, as the follow-up survey was only mentioned briefly (and not verbally) in the video!
Hitomi, you chose a very simple, yet important problem: reduce impulsive response to inevitable mistakes at work and corresponding emotional contagion – to create more positive (mindful and compassionate) relationships. You suggested a lofty, well-considered, 4-stage intervention to use mindfulness meditation and simulation training to help reduce impulsiveness (in response to mistakes) and LIB (linguistic intergroup bias). How do you think that individual empathy, perspective-taking or forgiveness, and other workplace factors like stress might play a role in this scenario? How would you suggest assessing the workplace impact of this intervention (as individual impact and well-being are targeted)? Hopefully we can continue this discussion within the WOD
Hi Jenny! I am really excited that you mentioned several concepts deeply connected to this mindfulness intervention on fostering positive relationships when encountering unexpected mistakes. Empathy, perspective-taking, forgiveness, and stress all certainly play a role and mindfulness positively impacts all of them by enhancing the first three and reducing stress. Being mindful means having a nonjudgmental awareness of the present, and it allows us to look at things from many more angles and lens than before (thus increasing perspective-taking). It also lets us realize how others’ perspectives and feelings are equally important as we think of our own, and that enables us to take time to look at situations as if we were looking through others’ lens (increasing empathy). By decentering from ourselves, when mindful people have easier time reflecting and coming to term with their experiences (increasing forgiveness). Finally, by taking a mindful approach, it allows people to see stress differently (ex. distress to eustress), realize their emotions and thoughts towards work (ex. what is really stressful?) and are able to find actionable solutions to work on which therefore reduces stress. Hülsheger et al. (2013) refers to how mindfulness reduces stress and increases job satisfaction at the workplace, and Schultz et al. (2015) share how mindfulness serves as a protective factor even in less autonomy-supportive managerial environment. Overall, when practiced, mindfulness lets us acknowledge life situations not as good or bad, but equally valuable and meaningful. As for how to assess workplace impact, one way to do that is to facilitate a follow-up climate survey, and another would be to quantitatively measure job satisfactions in terms of employee relationships! 🙂 Thank you for such a thought-provoking question, Jenny. I hope to answer more on this and other questions people may have at Montreal and later in the webinars!
Hi Hitomi. I really like the look of your intervention, and thought you may be interested in the “discipline” of dramatic / comic improvisation. It’s very different from the approach you’re looking at, but embedded in improv are ways to embrace whatever is happening – including mistakes – spontaneously. There’s very little academic literature about it, but I know plenty of people who find some interesting insights from improv approaches to more general social interactions. A quick web search came up with this: http://sostark.net/post/4965998605/tina-feys-rules-of-improvisation-that-will-change
Comic improvisors step on stage and make everything up in response to audience suggestions. They simply can’t afford to let mistakes feel like mistakes, or camaraderie and energy are lost. Spontaneous acceptance is crucial to success. I hope you find it interesting.