Being While Doing: An Inductive Model of Mindfulness at Work

Abstract

Mindfulness at work has drawn growing interest as empirical evidence increasingly supports its positive workplace impacts. Yet theory also suggests that mindfulness is a cognitive mode of “Being” that may be incompatible with the cognitive mode of “Doing” that undergirds workplace functioning. Therefore, mindfulness at work has been theorized as “being while doing,” but little is known regarding how people experience these two modes in combination, nor the influences or outcomes of this interaction. Drawing on a sample of 39 semi-structured interviews, this study explores how professionals experience being mindful at work. The relationship between Being and Doing modes demonstrated changing compatibility across individuals and experience, with two basic types of experiences and three types of transitions. We labeled experiences when informants were unable to activate Being mode while engaging Doing mode as Entanglement, and those when informants reported simultaneous co-activation of Being and Doing modes as Disentanglement. This combination was a valuable resource for offsetting important limitations of the typical reliance on the Doing cognitive mode. Overall our results have yielded an inductive model of mindfulness at work, with the core experience, outcomes, and antecedent factors unified into one system that may inform future research and practice.

Running too far ahead? Towards a broader understanding of mindfulness in organisations

“…A first issue that must be addressed includes what is meant by individual mindfulness in organizations and how (or if) this differs from non-work settings [22]. As Lyddy and Good [32] discuss for example in their inductive model, mindfulness practitioners may develop "being while doing" at work, thus applying mindfulness skills to their respective work environments.…”

Problem solving and affect as mechanisms linking daily mindfulness to task performance and job satisfaction

“…Thus, although evidence is mounting for the potential benefits of mindfulness at work, more research is needed to investigate how and when mindfulness connects to organizational outcomes, especially empirical evidence regarding the mechanisms involved (Liang et al, 2018;Lyddy & Good, 2017). Research investigating the mechanisms of mindfulness is an important next step to determine how mindfulness facilitates work-related outcomes.…”

“…Empirical data on the mechanisms of mindfulness have predominantly been collected within the field of clinical psychology, with limited exceptions in the work context (for example, Kersemaekers et al, 2018;Lyddy & Good, 2017;Zivnuska, Kacmar, & Valle, 2017). More empirical research is therefore encouraged to explore how mindfulness at work makes an impact (Lyddy & Good, 2017).…”

“…Empirical data on the mechanisms of mindfulness have predominantly been collected within the field of clinical psychology, with limited exceptions in the work context (for example, Kersemaekers et al, 2018;Lyddy & Good, 2017;Zivnuska, Kacmar, & Valle, 2017). More empirical research is therefore encouraged to explore how mindfulness at work makes an impact (Lyddy & Good, 2017). In this study, we continue to build knowledge about the ways in which mindfulness operates in the workplace by looking at affect and problem solving as potential mediating variables, linked with two important organizational criteria-job satisfaction and task performance.…”

“…In addition, when mindful, individuals are able to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information (Good et al, 2016;Karelaia & Reb, 2015) and act more congruently with goals (Glomb et al, 2011;Good et al, 2016), leading to more efficient decision-making. Finally, by drawing one's temporary focus on the current instead of on the past or future (Lyddy & Good, 2017) and reducing rumination (Glomb et al, 2011), mindfulness interventions can reduce decision biases such as the sunk-cost bias so that unrecoverable prior costs become less influential in current decisions (Hafenbrack, Kinias, & Barsade, 2014). Interestingly, neurobiological researchers found that mindfulness practices can change the brain by leading to more activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is associated with better self-regulation and optional decision-making (Congleton, Hölzel, & Lazar, 2015).…”