The following article (published in its original form at ConstructionExec.com) was written by Nick Maletta, an account executive and shareholder at Holmes Murphy and Associates in Des Moines, Iowa, working exclusively with design professionals and the AEC community. His co-author, Elyssa Dixon, PE, is a mindfulness and meditation coach and founder of fleeceandforests LLC in Seattle, Washington.
"Mindfulness" may conjure the image of a yogic guru sitting cross-legged on a mountain, or maybe it just seems like the latest buzzword. But mindfulness is a concept first established in the 1970s as a way of translating components of meditation practices into modern life. Because we often hear phrases that include “mindful” associated with our actions—“Be mindful of the curb” or “Be mindful when you speak with them"—we associate mindfulness with observation and awareness in a particular moment.
Mindfulness practices ultimately teach people to slow down, listen, and accept, allowing them to rewire and change thinking processes and thought patterns over time. Technical professionals can benefit from growing mindfulness practices throughout their career, whether in design, project management, business development, or senior leadership. Successful leaders and teams use mindfulness practices to develop and expand their interpersonal skills to embody respect, active communication, and unbiased decision making. Individuals can take advantage of mindfulness by inviting meditation, gratitude, mindful eating, or mindful awareness into their daily personal and professional routines. It takes time, space, discipline, patience, and repetition to practice mindfulness, just as it does when learning any new skill.
Mindfulness can be broken into three basic tenets:
- Be present
- Practice self-awareness
- Suspend judgment
Beyond the well-known mental health benefits of mindfulness, these practices also:
- Improve memory and spatial orientation
- Increase empathy and patience
- Reduce bias
- Increase flexibility and resilience
Mindfulness, together with the benefits noted above, can have a drastic impact on a company’s culture and, thus, its risk profile. A company’s core cultural values, a concept that has been highlighted during the past two difficult and fragmented years, truly drive a company’s risk. The ability of the entire team to communicate effectively and “row” in the same direction, all while performing their daily tasks and innovating to generate additional revenue, directly impacts the importance of safety and risk management for a firm.
For example, AXA XL’s Design Professional group’s Risk Drivers report is based on ongoing research into the non-technical root causes of professional liability claims against design professionals. When viewing these claims, two main categories have shown alarming increases over the prior 10 years:
- Communications: These issues rank the highest in frequency of claims examined in this study. Over the last decade, there was a 9-percent increase in claims relating to communications.
- Project Team Capabilities: These issues drastically increased in frequency from 2009 to 2016, but more concerning is the severity of these claims, as they boast the second-highest mean cost per claim at $110,000.
The ability of mindfulness practices to further develop interpersonal skills… will only help to reduce claims driven by these communication errors.
Expanding technical training has long been used to mitigate these claim trends. But why not also consider introducing individual and team mindfulness practices to reverse these trends and improve the mental health and well-being of technical professionals? Mindfulness practices can have a profound effect on a staff’s communication skills by helping them slow down, listen, and delay judgment. Such an application of mindfulness can positively impact a company’s culture and help reduce risk.
For example, as the frequency and speed of email continue to increase, mindfulness provides a solution that may help eliminate the errors we make in our email communication. By slowing down and being intentionally and consciously aware while reading and responding to email, as opposed to the quick skim and instant reply, we can improve our communication skills. The ability of mindfulness practices to further develop interpersonal skills at all levels of an organization will only help to reduce claims driven by these communication errors.
As another example, project team capabilities problems can be summarized using a couple of words: “inexperience” and “deficient.” Working as a team to complete projects is the fabric of the design and construction industry. From generational shifts to ongoing recruiting and retention challenges, there has been a drastic increase in claims driven by deficient or inexperienced project teams. The practice of mindfulness can have an immediate impact in navigating the complexities of teamwork.
By leveraging one of the three basic tenets of mindfulness, “self-awareness,” team members can step back, take a refreshed look at themselves and their roles, and learn everyone’s strengths and the team’s collective weaknesses. This heightened self-awareness will positively impact the outcome of projects, knowing that all team members played to their strengths and leaned on others in areas of weakness. Therefore, mindfulness and risk management go hand in hand.
Mindfulness is about being present, increasing self-awareness, and suspending judgment, whereas risk management is the practice of managing the future and the unknown. When intentionally paired, these two disciplines can create an everchanging dialogue as risk is constantly evolving. Using mindfulness training and techniques to step back, slow down, and view risks objectively allows for clarity. Leaders practicing and teaching mindfulness methods are modeling prudent decision-making, the essence of solid and effective risk management.
Reprinted from ConstructionExec.com, July 6, 2021, a publication of Associated Builders and Contractors. Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.
