A Literature Review Exploring the Potential of Mindfulness as a Tool to Develop Skills and Qualities for Effective Consultation

Updating the Debate on Behavioral Competency Development: State of the Art and Future Challenges

“…Literature introducing and testing the effectiveness of programs for ESCs development draws on a number of different experiential and person-centered methodologies that constitute the application of different learning techniques. Based on the methodology implemented in the educational program, we group these studies as follows: programs based on the intentional change theory (ICT; Boyatzis et al, 2002;Rhee, 2008;Passarelli et al, 2018); on the social and emotional learning (SEL) approach (Cristóvão et al, 2017;Taylor et al, 2017;Filella et al, 2018;Schoeps et al, 2018Schoeps et al, , 2019Dowling et al, 2019); on mindfulnessbased programs (Meiklejohn et al, 2012;Davis, 2014;Harris et al, 2016;Jennings et al, 2019;Trautwein et al, 2020); on cultural intelligence development courses (Bücker and Korzilius, 2015;Ramsey and Lorenz, 2016;Ott and Michailova, 2018), and on other pedagogies which rely on experiential learning such as consciousness-raising experiences and the classroomas-organization approach (Mirvis, 2008;Sheehan et al, 2009). The rest of this section is devoted to describing in more detail the differences among these methodological approaches and the behavioral competencies nurtured by these programs.…”

“…Mindfulness is defined as the awareness that derives from purposefully and non-judgmentally paying attention to current experiences while maintaining "openness, curiosity, and acceptance toward [these] experiences" (Meiklejohn et al, 2012;Harris et al, 2016: 144). It has found a plethora of applications and related exercises, such as breathing meditation, body scan, loving kindness meditation, and yoga, among others, to cultivate in participants present moment attention and self-awareness, but also affective qualities of care, gratitude, and loving kindness, as well as social awareness through perspective taking (Meiklejohn et al, 2012;Davis, 2014).…”

“…The strength of mindfulness-based programs is that they create the mental conditions under which behavioral competencies can be manifested and enhanced. These programs support trainees' resilience and wellbeing, reduce stress, improve the way people relate and interact with others, and promote people's commitment to change (Meiklejohn et al, 2012;Davis, 2014). Mindfulness-based programs intervene in the brain's plasticity-specifically, in the areas of the brain devoted to emotion regulation (Meiklejohn et al, 2012)-and contribute to enhancing competencies such as empathy, creative thinking, teamworking and collaboration, social awareness, and selfawareness, to name a few (Meiklejohn et al, 2012;Davis, 2014;Jennings et al, 2019).…”

“…These programs support trainees' resilience and wellbeing, reduce stress, improve the way people relate and interact with others, and promote people's commitment to change (Meiklejohn et al, 2012;Davis, 2014). Mindfulness-based programs intervene in the brain's plasticity-specifically, in the areas of the brain devoted to emotion regulation (Meiklejohn et al, 2012)-and contribute to enhancing competencies such as empathy, creative thinking, teamworking and collaboration, social awareness, and selfawareness, to name a few (Meiklejohn et al, 2012;Davis, 2014;Jennings et al, 2019). Besides the well-known mindfulness-based stress reduction program (MBSR) (Kabat-Zinn, 1990), a number of programs are mentioned, tested, and analyzed in the literature we reviewed.…”

Introducing mindfulness and compassion‐based interventions to improve verbal creativity in students of clinical and health psychology

“…It has been seen that mindfulness practice facilitates the regulation of attention, the effective management of emotions, and an increase in sensitivity and self‐awareness (Cebolla et al, 2018; Hölzel et al, 2011). These mechanisms are closely related to a series of skills underlying psychotherapy practice (Davis & Hayes, 2011; Davis, 2014), and could positively affect verbal creativity, in which emotional and cognitive aspects interact in the generation of novel ideas (De Dreu, Baas, & Nijstad, 2008). Attitudes associated with mindfulness and self‐compassion help to establish an open and kindly relationship with experience, a basic aspect in the development of verbal creativity (Bishop et al, 2004; Langer, 2014).…”