Team Mindfulness: What is it and why is it important?

As the renowned management guru Peter Drucker might have said: ‘culture eats mindfulness interventions for breakfast’.

In other words, training an individual to be mindful cannot make up for a toxic work environment.

We often set out to address issues of stress, anxiety, burnout and disengagement in our workplaces without recognising the effect that overall team and organisational culture play in creating stressors in the first place.

Team Mindfulness is all about teams (and ultimately organisations) becoming aware of themseves as teams (and organisations). Mindful Teams turn their attention from time to time not only to their collective goals and targets, but also to their inner culture. They’re able to ask “How are we doing – together?” or “What’s it like to work here?”

Team Mindfulness can be usefully understood using the ‘AIM’ model that Michael and Megan have written about in their book, Mind Time, and in their Harvard Business Review article ‘Why your team should practice collective mindfulness’.

Teams, they say, need to allow, inquire and be meta-aware in order to open up spaces for thoughtful responses to our uncertain and volatile world. That opens a space that disrupts unhelpful habits; it enables team members to speak up effectively, to challenge the status quo and to see different perspectives.

Join Megan, Chris, and host Michael, to explore how a team can learn to AIM and the part this plays in innovative, ethical, inclusive organisations.