How to Creatively Get Your Team Members To Practice Mindfulness Without Them Even Knowing It And Ultimately Increase Their Productivity And Efficiency

In the previous post, we talked about how to integrate mindfulness into your routine and incredibly hectic work schedule. If you have been practicing those exercises regularly, you should master them in no time.

You can turn your attention to instilling this ability in your team members as well. After all, you are a team leader.

Being in that position means its incumbent upon you to improve your team’s wellbeing. Also their efficiency and productivity. Doing that can be a little tricky to execute mainly because many of us are often unwilling to change our routines and find it hard to focus consciously on something for long enough.

To make the process easier, you need to adopt a creative, casual, and indirect approach so that your team doesn’t know what you are doing, but one that also ensures that they learn how to become more mindful at the same time.

Here are the different strategies and exercises you can employ to accomplish this goal.

#: Have a quick sensory activity in every meeting

You probably have at least one team meeting daily or a few times a week. In every team meeting, ask your team members to pay attention to their senses and name anything that they can see, touch, hear, smell, or taste. A team member may mention the chirping of the birds while another may talk about the aroma of freshly brewed coffee that his/her nose can detect from the hallway.

This super easy and fun activity quickly engages all team members, makes them aware of their different senses, and trains them to use their senses to become grounded in the present. If you don’t want to have another meeting and mess up with your team’s productivity, you can also engage team members in this exercise through email.

#: Ask about the present moment from your team through email

Two to three times a day, using email or group chat, ask your team members how they feel at that very moment. Schedule two breaks for them during the work hours —besides lunch and tea breaks— when everyone just detaches from their tasks and talks about how they feel.

Routinizing this practice will slowly train your team members to pay more attention to their thoughts, observe themselves, and become more involved in the moment.

#: Relate an account of your most challenging task

At the end of every day, ask all the team members to describe their most challenging task during the day in great detail. Ask them to pay attention to the sights, textures, sounds, tastes, smells, colors, and feelings involved in the experience and explain it thoroughly.

This interesting exercise enables them to become more engaged in that task and do it with greater mindfulness. As your team member immerses themselves in that task, they’ll enjoy it more and shall do it consciously, which shall improve their efficiency.

Make sure to ask for their account at the end of the day’s meeting or ask everyone to share their experiences via email. As they learn to pay more attention to their difficult tasks and do it with increased focus with each passing day, they will become more mindful. This shall also increase their productivity in the process. You can even set rewards for the team members who pay attention to detail and share those details honestly with you.

#: Body scan break

Gather all the team members in the main conference room or wherever you meet once every 2 to 3 days and ask them to take off their shoes, stretch their legs while sitting on the chairs, and relax. Ask them to close their eyes and pay attention to any sort of stress lodged in their bodies.

Ask each team member to describe where he or she feels the most stress. After everyone has had a chance to speak, engage them in a simple mindful breathing exercise by instructing them to close their eyes, and take deep breaths.

Instruct them to take deep breaths and imagine the stress slowly exiting their body and mind with each passing breath. Conduct this exercise for 5-15 minutes and ask individual team members to describe how they feel after the experience.

Called ‘body scan meditation,’ this practice will help your team feel relaxed, energized, and more focused. You should then ask each team member to engage in an important task right after. You’re likely to realize that they do it with more focus on involvement.

#: Gratitude board

Create a ‘gratitude board’ and put it up in the lunchroom or any prominent office area where your team members spend time.

Ask all the team members to write one thing they feel thankful for about their job/work, and one thing they are grateful for in their general life. Statements such as “having a co-operate team,” “getting decent incentives,” “having food to eat,” and “having clean clothes to wear” can go up on the board. Make this a daily ritual and appoint a gratitude board moderator who makes sure that all the team members carry out the practice.

This beautiful exercise instantly makes your team aware of their blessings, both in their personal and professional life. When they feel thankful for the things they have, especially related to their work, they like their role better and tend to it with greater zeal and zest.

Additionally, when the members pass by the ‘gratitude board’ and go through the different blessings on it, they will remember how blessed they are and become grounded in the present. You should also participate in this activity not only for the example it sets but also because it makes you more mindful, improves your involvement with your team members, and allows you to inspire your team better.

#: Ask your team members of how they feel

When you ask a team member to report to you on a matter, or call him/her to your office, always ask him/her of how he/she feels. Talk to him/her about any emotion he/she experiences or how routine work feels.

Doing this seems like a very ordinary thing to do, but the truth is that in the hustle and bustle of work, you rarely ever connect with your team on a personal level.

This simple practice helps you build rapport with your team members. It also gives you a chance to casually direct their focus to the present moment and pay attention to their feelings, thoughts, and emotions, which consequently makes them more mindful.

Try out these practices one after the other —not on the same day— and observe your team’s mood, wellbeing, and performance after each practice. Without a doubt, you will notice some degree of improvement in their focus and productivity.  

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