UTS21440 Chap.8 Mindfulness and Workplace Performance
Mindfulness and Workplace Performance
The second half of Week 6 in 21440 Management Skills at University of Technology Sydney teaches mindfulness from two research traditions that do not quite agree. One defines it as the awareness produced by attending deliberately, to what is here now, without passing judgement; the other defines it as an openness to the new in which a person is actively building fresh categories and distinctions.
The chapter reconciles them through a two part model, sets out what the practice consists of and how it is measured, establishes the dose behind the evidence base, and closes on the critique that the practice has been stripped of its ethical context and used to help people adjust to the conditions that caused the problem.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Two definitions, and the different interventions each licenses
- 02
The two part model: present moment attention, and non judgmental acceptance
- 03
Why acceptance is not resignation
- 04
A four stage micro practice, and four named exercises
- 05
The attention scale, its length and its reported findings
- 06
The eight week programme behind most of the evidence
- 07
Derivative programmes, and the dosing spectrum from retreats to applications
- 08
Two ledgers of claims: wellness and performance
- 09
The proposed mechanism, and the stress buffering account
- 10
Mindfulness based against mindfulness related interventions
- 11
The critique that the practice has been privatised
Evaluating a wellbeing decision against Weeks 4 and 6
- +1Name the substitution. A secondary, worker directed intervention has replaced a primary, work directed one, and the integrated model reports that the most effective approaches combine the two rather than trade them.
- +1Check the dose against the evidence. Most of the evidence rests on an eight week programme with weekly classes of two to two and a half hours, around forty five minutes of daily practice and a day long retreat, while brief inductions are reported as producing small and transient effects.
- +1Apply the critique. This is the configuration the objection names, in which stress is treated as an illness and as a private matter, the work of managing it is pushed onto individuals, and the conditions producing it are left unexamined.
- +1Give the defensible version. Keep the risk review and add the application as one component of a broader approach, which is the difference between a mindfulness related intervention and a mindfulness shaped substitute for one.
Key terms
- Mindfulness
- Defined in one research tradition as the awareness produced by attending in a particular way, deliberately, to what is happening now, and without judging it; and in another as an openness to the new in which a person is actively building fresh categories and distinctions.
- Two part model
- The reconciliation of the two traditions: being present to your own experience through self regulation of attention held on present moment experience, together with non judgmental curiosity, openness and acceptance.
- Acceptance
- In this literature, inviting in experiences including difficult ones, explicitly contrasted with passive resignation and with suppression of unwanted experience.
- Mind wandering
- One of three states the working definition contrasts mindfulness with, alongside running on automatic pilot and suppressing unwanted experiences.
- Attention scale
- The instrument used in class to assess dispositional mindfulness, consisting of fifteen items scored from almost always to almost never and taking ten minutes or less, reported to predict self regulated behaviour and positive emotional states.
- Stress reduction programme
- The eight week programme most of the research is built on, combining weekly group classes of two to two and a half hours led by a trained teacher, home practice every day guided by audio, and one full day retreat in the sixth week.
- Stress buffering account
- The proposal that stress reduction and resilience pathways explain intervention effects across physical health outcomes, because learning to observe what is happening without fighting it is a way of regulating emotion, and that in turn builds resilience under stress.
- Mindfulness based intervention
- A programme whose primary goal is fostering mindfulness, distinguished from a mindfulness related intervention, which builds such exercises into a wider treatment as only one of its parts.
- Mindlessness
- The state contrasted with active noticing, in which a task is performed on automatic pilot. The engagement tradition treats the instruction to learn something until it is second nature as an instruction toward it.
Mindfulness and Workplace Performance FAQ
Why are there two different definitions?
Because two research traditions arrived at the idea from different directions, and they license different interventions. If mindfulness is a trained quality of attention, the intervention is a course with homework. If it is active noticing, the intervention is a change in how work is organised, since you cannot notice new things in a process designed to require none.
The two part model is the formulation with the most support in the subject's own materials.
Is acceptance the same as putting up with things?
No, and the review says so directly. Acceptance is described as inviting in experiences, including difficult ones, rather than passively resigning yourself to changing nothing. The practice is contrasted with mind wandering, automatic pilot and suppression, and the last of those makes the distinction sharp, because suppression and acceptance are opposites rather than variants.
How much practice does the research actually involve?
Far more than most workplace offerings. The programme behind most of the evidence runs eight weeks, with a weekly class of two to two and a half hours, a day long retreat and around forty five minutes of daily home practice.
The field also uses residential retreats, brief programmes, laboratory interventions, short experimental inductions and applications, and the short inductions are reported as producing small and transient effects.
Why did someone build a health education programme to compare against it?
To answer the obvious objection. If any structured eight week group programme with a teacher and homework might produce benefits, then a comparison group needs to match on all of that and differ only in content. Noting the existence of a well matched comparison programme is a cheap way to show you read the review rather than the summary.
What is the criticism the subject wants me to engage with?
That the practice was derived from a tradition and then stripped of its accompanying teaching on ethics, leaving an instrument of self discipline dressed up as self help, one that helps people fit themselves to the conditions that caused the problem in the first place.
The sharpest formulation is that stress has been recast as an illness and as a private matter, with the labour of managing it handed to individuals, which is the same objection made against resilience training.
Assessment move
Hold the two definitions apart rather than merging them, because the difference is what lets you say something specific about an intervention. Learn the dose figures, since the third reading question is explicitly about how much intervention is needed and it is the question most answers handle worst.
Keep the two ledgers as lists you can cite rather than claims you assert, and pair them with the stress buffering account, which is a mechanism and therefore worth more than nineteen separate benefits. Finally, prepare the critique: it is supplied by the subject itself and it is the fastest route to the critical reflection criterion.
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