In my accounting days, I would often have to attend meetings, mainly at other people request. Some were productive, the majority weren’t. Everybody would have so many ideas that we wanted to try and say at once, to the point where people ended up talking over the top of one another. While I don’t think people meant to be rude, some would just talk louder in order to be heard, where I would tend to draw back and just listen without contributing further.
Conflict and tension are two experiences that can easily arise in a meeting and complicate otherwise reasonable communication. It can be in many forms – I’ve observed that there may be poor meeting outcomes due to the conversation constantly swapping between focal points, beneficial agreements between two people might not be otherwise met because they both feel as if neither is respected, and dominant personalities may try to ‘guide’ the conversation while parties with less influence feel rejected and disinclined to contribute. Whatever the cause, conflict and tension builds and then flows out into the general workplace as individuals feel as though the meetings haven’t actually achieved anything.
Looking back, it’s easy to see how many of these situations could have been be remedied by keeping a few simple meditation strategies in mind and understanding how to enact those practices when these circumstances arise. Doing so could have ensured my own peace of mind, as well as everyone else’s. All that would have been required was for all attendees to simply take a few moments of silence to analyse what the objectives are for the meeting, how they are feeling, how their feelings may be influencing their mood, and what the experience of other colleagues at the meeting may be like. This way, all members would be able to reassess themselves before cultivating a professional environment, enabling everyone to be as open as possible during the meeting.
So what do I do now? Firstly I prefer to avoid meetings but if one is essential to making progress and I am leading it, I will start it with everyone taking a minute to take ten deep breaths, focusing on the act of breathing to centre everyone’s thoughts.
What I’ve found by doing this is even people who are strong personalities or those who can become aggressive when people take an opposing point of view generally take a softer and more thoughtful approach after doing this one minute exercise.
While this might seem frightening or unusual to anybody new to mindful practices, establishing a mindfulness culture in your workplace and at meetings ensures more respect, efficiency, and positive communication. Generally resulting in far better meeting outcomes.
Give it a try and feel free to share your experiences with us in the comments below.
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