Mindful Communication At Work
A friend of mine was called into a wellbeing check-in with her supervisor recently. It was like a parody on a sitcom. The supervisor sat with a clipboard, only half-facing my friend, asking questions off a sheet and ticking them off. The supervisor looked as, or even more, uncomfortable with the situation as my friend did.
Clearly this conversation arose out of a directive from above. Somehow this was supposed to elicit the kind of psychological safety and genuine responses needed to manage team wellbeing. As you can imagine, it completely backfired. Let’s hope that, with practice, the supervisor can iron those kinks out. But then again, sometimes some explicit training is what’s really needed.
What Mindful Communication Really Asks of Us
There's a scene in Good Will Hunting that’s iconic. Sean, played by Robin Williams, says to Matt Damon’s character, Will, ‘It’s not your fault’ when talking about Will childhood traumas. In their previous sessions, Will had used his intellect, jokes, and tactics as self-protection, not allowing Sean, or anyone else, to break through. Sean doesn't offer Will a five-point plan, come up with a solution to his problems. He just stays completely grounded and present, and repeats, ‘It’s not your fault’ over and over until he breaks through to Will.
Admittedly, this scene is completely different to a work conversation, and is obviously showing the relationship between a therapist and patient. However, there are some key qualities that can be applied in a workplace wellbeing check-in that are worth highlighting:
being present
staying grounded
not trying to jump in to fix someone’s problem
looking beneath the actions of someone else
listening with empathy
And, of course I’ll take any excuse to drop a scene from Good Will Hunting into my writing.
At work, no-one should be looking to provide diagnosis or therapy for anyone else. But the qualities of a good listener can help to foster trust, build empathy and create the conditions for a trusting conversation.
Wise speech, wise listening
Buddhist teaching offers a useful frame here: right speech, sometimes translated as wise speech, asks whether what you're about to say is true, kind, necessary, and well-timed. Its philosophical partner, wise listening, asks the same of your attention, are you actually receiving what's being said, or just waiting for your turn to speak? Much of the time, when we are listening to someone else, we’re also busy thinking of how it applies to us, or what we want to say next. Wise listening means fully, actively listening to the other, without agenda or judgment. Wise speech means choosing your words carefully, using only the fairest and kindest words.
The inner work first
Listening well can’t work without self-awareness, i.e. noticing your own response (thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations) to a situation. Psychiatrist Dan Siegel describes the mind's capacity to observe itself, "mindsight", as the foundation of both self-regulation and empathy. You have to become aware first, before you can regulate yourself. And you can't attune to someone else while you're still processing your reaction to what they just said.
Self-regulation is the pause between stimulus and response. The pause is the space where you can decide what kind of response you wish to have and how you will speak next. Attunement is when your presence is connected to and completely aware of the other person's emotional state rather than your own agenda. To attune to others, you must first attune to yourself. So, those who take the time to breathe and become present with themselves first, will then be able to attune to the other person.
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Unconscious Bias
Mindful communication also asks us to notice the assumptions sitting underneath our reactions. Unconscious bias is usually undetectable on the surface, but it can show up as a snap judgment about someone's appearance, or in a story you've already created in your mind about what someone is thinking. To counter unconscious bias, we again have to grow self-awareness and notice our reactions without immediately trusting them as factual.
When having a wellbeing conversation, we need to remember the dual continua model of mental health. This model, developed in the early 90s, shows 4 quadrants of wellbeing running along two intersecting continua. One axis gives the spectrum of good mental health through to mental distress, and the other axis shows good mental wellbeing (flourishing) through to poor mental wellbeing (languishing)
A person with a diagnosed mental illness can be flourishing. A person who is mentally well can be languising, and so on. This shows how mental health is not as straight-forward as it seems.
We can’t assume someone is ok because they look good on the outside. We can’t assume that someone with a clinical mental health disorder is not coping. We also can’t assume that someone without a disorder is completely fine. It’s really important to be aware of how unconscious bias shows up in your conversations, and any judgments or assumptions you might make.
Does it work through a screen?
It’s commonly believed that mindful communication can’t occur online. There’s a belief that full presence means you need to be face-to-face in the same room. However, studies on video-mediated communication have found that people can still register warmth, attentiveness, and emotional attunement through a screen, particularly when eye contact and vocal tone are intact.
The real risk in removing physical check-ins is that listening and understanding becomes more challenging for the receiver. If you want to avoid any specific methods, text-based check-ins, stripped of tone and face, carry more risk of misread intent.
Regardless of the medium, if you’re going to have a check-in with someone, make sure you remove any distractions that might reduce your capacity to connect and listen. I asked a group of leaders how many tabs are currently open on their computer screens. The minimum in the group was 8, and the maximum was so many they lost count.
If you need to move away from the computer to have the conversation, please make the time to do so. If you’re at your computer, turn off notifications for 5 minutes, put your out-of-office sign on, open up a completely different screen for a video call, and make sure that you’re in a private comfortable space. And before the call, take a breath! Get present with yourself first.
Repetition and Connection
In the Good Will Hunting scene, Will had probably heard that sentence, ‘It’s not your fault’ in the past. But this time, Sean stays regulated, attuned, and non-judgmental, and his presence and connection is what helps him to read Will so well, and go beneath the surface. Sean stays steady so the words can get through.
Mindful communication is about building enough self-awareness so you can choose, deliberately, what to do with the next ten seconds in your conversation. It’s about stepping back from a clipboard of questions, taking a breath, getting completely present with yourself, and then turning towards the other person without judgment or agenda.
Wise speech and wise listening come from a mind that has done enough self-regulation to actually be there for someone else, without needing to fix, win, or perform anything at all.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like, ‘Beyond ‘R U OK?: The question is the beginning, not the finish line’.
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