How Managers Can Achieve A Sense Of Calm

Managers are starting to embrace meditation to reduce stress and boost productivity
Managers are starting to embrace meditation to reduce stress and boost productivity
Image Credit: Best Picko

Let’s face it: being a manager can be a very stressful job. People are always asking us for things and we are trying to do our best to use our manager skills to manage our team. If we are not careful, the stress associated with the job can become so much that it starts to affect our relationships and potentially even our health. Managers need a way to deal with all of this stress and our manager training does not tell us what we need to do. In the past, managers have tried various activities such as skydiving, mountain climbing, and going to the gym. However, lately a new approach has shown up that can be done in the office: meditation.

The Power Of Meditation

So why bother with meditation? Simple, it has been shown to help managers to lower stress while at the same time helping them to boost their personal productivity. What makes mediation such a powerful tool is that it can be done in the office – no trip to the gym is required. Meditation is not seen by all as a magic cure. Some people believe that managers who meditate in the office can cause problems. This activity can be seen as being self-indulgent and off-putting. The other problem comes down to time: many managers just don’t think that they have the time required to meditate.

What is making it easier for managers to start to engage in meditation at the office is that many companies are now starting to be supportive of this practice. The thinking on the part of these companies is that if they can get their managers to meditate, then they will become more productive. These firms are starting to provide “mindfulness zones” in their offices. Managers can use these spaces to take a pause from their hectic day and find the calmness and balance that they will need to make it through the rest of the day. These spaces are considered to be gadget free spaces – no cell phones allowed!

Meditation is something that will make managers more effective. This is important because managers are the ones who set the standard for their entire team. One of the advantages of taking time each day to meditate is that often a manager’s most creative ideas will occur during their meditation time. Meditating while at work can be very challenging. Once a manager arrives at work, the day starts and they will be constantly facing people who need things from them all day. Finding the time to meditate is a good idea for managers because it can help us to avoid making bad decisions.

The Benefits Of Meditation

Mediating is not something that a manager has to do by themselves. The power of meditation is something that can be shared with your team as a type of team building. If you decide that this is something that would be good for your team, you are going to have to be careful about how you go about sharing it with them. Instead of just springing it on them, it is recommend that you first have a discussion with your team. The purpose of the discussion should be to find out how much stress your team is experiencing. What you will probably discover is that they are under a lot of stress.

Once your team has identified that stress is a part of their lives, the next part of the discussion should be about what they can do to lower or eliminate the stress in their lives. This will generate a number of different suggestions and most of them will probably be outlandish or difficult to implement. This is the time that you can bring up the idea of having the team discover mediation. One of the advantages of having multiple people on your team engage in mediation in the office is that when people mediate together there can be a real sense of connection that is formed.

When you are presenting the idea of mediation to your team, it is going to be important that you present it to them as an option. You need to let them know that there is no obligation for them to participate. The last thing that you want during a mediation session is a group of people who don’t want to be there. As a manager you are going to have to understand that for some of the members of your team participating in mediation for the first time may come across as being a strange experience. You will know that you have been successful with your team if after a period of time members of your team start to mediate by themselves.

What All Of This Means For You

Unfortunately, stress is a part of all of our lives. There is nothing that we can do about it and it will never go away. However, with that being said, it turns out that we do have the ability to manage the amount of stress that we are feeling in our lives at any given point in time. There are a number of different activities that we can engage in that will help us to reduce our stress levels. If we’d like to reduce our stress while staying in the office, then one thing that we can do is to learn how to meditate.

Meditation can help managers to lower their stress and boost their productivity. Meditation unlike other stress relievers can be done in the office if so desired. Managers must realize that others in the office may see performing mediation as being off putting. Many companies are seeing the value of mediation at work and are creating spaces in their offices to allow this to happen. Managers can choose to share the power of mediation with their teams. Have your team identify that they have stress in their lives and then recommend mediation as a way to manage this stress. Make sure that mediation is an option for people on your team and if they start to mediate by themselves, then you’ll know that you were successful.

As managers we need to be careful to avoid weight gain, heart problems, and high blood pressure all of which can be caused by stress. There are many different ways to deal with stress, but learning how to mediate is something that can be done in the office. Finding a way to deal with stress that you can do every day is the kind of solution that will allow you to become a more effective and productive manager.

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: If you decided to mediate in the office, how long do you think that this should take each day?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

What’s your plan for getting promoted from the manager position that you currently have? You’d like to get kicked upstairs, but just exactly how are you going to go about making that happen? A lot of us hope that the quality of the work that we do will speak for us and our bosses will notice us and our manager skills and will then promote us. Good idea; however, all too often it does not work out this way. We need to learn how to “manage up”. This one skill is the one that will shape your career. Do you know how to do it?