Mark Higbie shares how Ford fosters mindfulness at work and how this has been greatly beneficial to its employees. They encourage mindfulness in workplace.
Mark Higbie, senior advisor to Ford Motor Company, explains how the auto company began introducing mindfulness in the workplace.
Ford Motor Company: Mindfulness At Work
Do you currently maintain a mindfulness practice? If so, how did you get started with it? Maybe you read a book, watched an inspiring lecture, or listened to a podcast that prompted you to begin meditating. Or, perhaps your practice doesn’t involve meditation per se. Some people opt to build mindfulness into their daily lives by choosing to slow down, be more present and acknowledge the present moment rather than focusing on the past and future.
Either way, it’s easy to develop a tendency to think of mindfulness as a thing that we go and do somewhere else. If you’re at a busy grocery store, you might tell yourself that you’ll work on your mindfulness later, when you’re at home and with fewer distractions. Even more commonly, people often convince themselves that they don’t have much of a place for mindfulness at work. After all, there are high expectations being placed upon them by their boss and co-workers, and they have to keep up. Where is there room for mindfulness in such a scenario?
Encouraging Mindfulness In the Workplace
In fact, the workplace is one of the environments that stands the benefit the most from mindfulness training and practice. There are a lot of things that are stressful about the average work environment almost by definition. You have deadlines to stick to, key performance indicators to evaluate, and numbers that you have to hit on a quarterly, monthly, or even weekly basis. That’s a lot of pressure, and it’s easy to get caught up in regretting past mistakes and worrying about the future.
In this video, Mark Higbie discusses the ways in which Ford Motor Company actively works to foster mindfulness in the workplace. Introducing such practices can be beneficial for employees at all levels of just about any company.
