Mindfulness: Buzzword or Business Advantage?

Everybody Learns. Everybody Teaches is WCWI’s Learning Circle Series mantra.  On Tuesday, March 28th we completed the first session in our Learning Circle Series. This session was titled, Mindfulness: Buzzword or Business Advantage, and presented by Michelle Spehr, MA, M.Ed., MCHES, CWWPC, CWF, Health and Wellness Consultant, The Benefit Services Group, Inc.

Michelle shared the work of two leaders who have established the effectiveness of mindfulness strategies:  Marc Brackett, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and Janice Marturano, Institute for Mindful Leadership. Michelle began by acknowledging that many times mindfulness can be viewed as a fluffy, esoteric and spiritual touchy-feely fad. However, we explored mindfulness, emotional intelligence, mindful leadership and built a business case that supported each as a predictor of individual, team, leadership and organizational performance.  Attendees further discovered how injecting a corporate culture of mindfulness can improve how employees work together and nurture a workforce to feel engaged, inspired and thrive professionally.  

The last interactive task challenged attendees to create an elevator speech conveying key points leveraging the power of mindfulness (moment to moment awareness) within their organization. Here is one of our attendees key points:

•    Take time to explore options -business and personal relationships
•    Allow ideas to be expressed -So you can take the best parts
•    Focusing on task so they get full attention and better results

It’s hard to argue that these mindful strategies wouldn’t be a business advantage!