Mindfulness as a recipe for success for innovative teams

Why mindfulness is a promising approach for teams looking for innovative solutions

For fundamentally sceptical people, trends are often a trigger to gather counter-arguments. That’s how I initially felt about the topic of mindfulness. But then a deeper examination changed my view: Mindfulness can actually make teams more successful and innovative. This article presents the arguments that finally convinced me.

A solution for many organisations: Teamwork

To avoid being left behind by the competition, organisations need to adapt more flexibly. Innovations need to be designed more quickly and the technological basis of products must meet modern requirements. To achieve this, complex issues, e.g. in product development or sales, must be handled in a networked manner. Processes and structures must enable faster and more agile utilisation of changes in the environment. Customers must be involved in order to provide constant feedback. This list could easily be extended

In practice, the focus is increasingly on groups that are characterised by diversity. It is less and less often traditional specialised departments, but rather cross-functional teams that carry out this work. Diverse team members, flat hierarchies, agile methods, short time cycles (e.g. sprints), virtual and hybrid collaboration, etc. should lead to better performance and greater innovative strength.

The key to success lies in dealing with the diversity of team members

Numerous reports from the field show that Most teams do not realise their potential! Whether it’s the call for more gender diversity in management teams, the hope for mixed-age teams in which everyone learns from each other, or that cross-departmental teams guarantee innovative results – unfortunately, it’s not as simple as often promised.

Meta-studies prove it: The bottom line is that there is hardly any positive correlation between increased diversity and results. The advantages of diversity in a team, such as more experience, broader perspectives or larger internal and external networks, are offset by disadvantages such as prejudices or communication problems. The question therefore arises: how can the undisputed advantages of a diverse team be better utilised?

Managing conflicts

Greater diversity in the team leads to more conflicting perspectives and positions. If these relate to the solution to the problem or the way in which the goal can be achieved, this is also referred to as substantive conflict. Factual conflicts can encourage team members to collect and recombine further arguments for alternative courses of action. This increases the chance of finding innovative solutions to problems.

The dilemma is that diversity increases the risk of relationship conflicts in the team from the outset. These relate to the perception of interpersonal tensions or frictions, dislikes between team members and feelings such as anger, frustration and irritation. The team members concerned often perceive these conflicts very emotionally, so that cooperation, the group climate and ultimately team performance suffer as a result.

In practice, some managers rely heavily on one-sided promotion of factual conflicts according to the motto “May the best idea prevail”. However, this often leads to a so-called aggressive style of interaction in which I use my power status to assert my opinion. The team situation is then perceived as competitive rather than co-operative – and consequently leads to the restraint of others and frustration in the process.

In my view, a passive-avoidant style of interaction can be observed even more frequently, in which conflicts are avoided from the outset so as not to jeopardise the team atmosphere. Ideas are quickly accepted and an emerging majority in the team is given in without discussion. Complementary or contrary opinions are withheld so as not to jeopardise the result and the mood in the group.

Both strategies lead to sub-optimal solutions at best, as the resources of the team members are not utilised. In addition, the fact that the decisions are not supported internally by everyone leads to significantly less commitment during implementation.

Finding the right balance with active-open interaction

In research and practice, an active-open style of interaction has proven to be promising. The team members discuss their technical information for problem solving openly and also heatedly, scrutinise each other, develop alternatives and combine perspectives. The above-mentioned factual conflicts are thus actively exposed. At the same time, the manager must ensure that everyone is appropriately involved and that a respectful attitude prevails. People have the confidence to express their doubts without having to fear sanctions from others or the team leader. This reduces the relationship conflicts described above. Various studies have shown that the solutions found in this way significantly better utilise the team’s potential.¹

How mindfulness contributes to balance in a team

Establishing this balance and constantly rebalancing it takes a lot of energy. That’s why it’s good news that mindfulness significantly supports this balance! Team mindfulness is the “shared conviction of team members that team interactions are characterised by awareness and attention to what is happening and by an experience-oriented, unbiased processing of experiences within the team.”²

Diverse teams benefit on four different levels, as various studies show:

• Team mindfulness strengthens the acceptance of people’s differences as an important resource. This results in fewer relationship conflicts from the outset.
• Team mindfulness contributes to members discussing more actively and being less under the illusion that they have already reached a consensus.
• The escalation of necessary factual conflicts into undesirable relationship conflicts is mitigated, as people deal with each other more impartially.
• In addition, virtual and hybrid collaboration is improved by mindfulness techniques.

The fact that these effects occur in parallel has a very positive impact on the utilisation of the diverse resources in the team. That really convinced me. In this respect, it is a highly recommended strategy for managers in practice to focus on mindfulness, especially in teams that are characterised by a high diversity of members!

Notes:

[1] The Team Psychological Safety approach described by Amy Edmondson goes in a similar direction
[2] Lingtao Yu und Mary E. Zellmer-Bruhn, Introducing Team Mindfulness and Considering its Safeguard Role Against Conflict Transformation and Social Undermining, 2017, p. 326

How you as a team leader can achieve this balance is described in the German-language book “Erfolgsformel Achtsamkeit. Gewusst führen, nachhaltig gewinnen“. 18 authors from academia and industry describe how individuals, employees and managers can benefit from mindfulness. It also explains what mindfulness means in the context of new and hybrid working and what conscious leadership can look like.

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