Your Presence Is Requested: Mindfulness Infusion in Workplace Interactions and Relationships

Abstract

In an increasingly fast-paced work environment filled with distractions, an overabundance of information, and complex decision making, scholars and practitioners alike have begun to recognize the need to slow down and direct attention to the present moment. As such, the study and implementation of mindfulness in the workplace has received growing attention in recent years. This body of work, however, is preoccupied with the outcomes of individual- and collective-level mindfulness, largely ignoring mindfulness as brought into workplace interactions and relationships. In this study, we take a qualitative, grounded theory approach wherein we put forth and unpack a model of interpersonal mindfulness infusion: the process whereby individuals instill their mindfulness into their workplace interactions and relationships. We further distinguish between formal and informal and self- and other-focused mindfulness practices. We show how these practices underlie the mindfulness infusion process and can enhance workplace interactions and relationships. In doing so, we contribute to the organizational literature on mindfulness and positive relationships at work.

Mindfulness and emotion: a five-level analysis

“…At level 3 in the FLMEW, Ashkanasy (2003a) analyzes the way employees communicate emotions to others inside and outside their organization. At this level, interpersonal mindfulness – broadly defined as how mindful people are in their interactions with others – comes to bear (see Arendt, Pircher Verdorfer, & Kugler, 2019; Pratscher, Wood, King, & Bettencourt, 2019; Reina, Kreiner, Rheinhardt, & Mihelcic, 2022). Nonetheless, both state and trait mindfulness also have implications for interpersonal relationships, and a small but rapidly growing strand of the mindfulness literature (e.g., see Eby, Robertson, & Facteau, 2020) investigates the effects of mindfulness on affective communication with others.…”

A mindful relating framework for understanding the trajectory of work relationships

“…Our first contribution is that we explain how an individual's mindful relating approach will influence the quality of a workplace interaction, through a dual-component conceptualization of mindfulness comprised of both attention and stepping back, shifting one's perspective to view moment-by-moment experience from a wider, more objective, less self-centered lens. In theorizing that the two aspects of mindfulness-attention and decentering-can together inform the quality of interactions and the resulting relationship that emerges between relationship partners, we integrate mindfulness research to date across psychological (e.g., Brown et al, 2012;Fox et al, 2014), health (e.g., Creswell & Lindsay, 2014;Hülsheger et al, 2014;Shapiro et al, 2006) and management literatures (e.g., Glomb et al, 2011;Good et al, 2016;Kudesia, 2019;Reina et al, 2022;Song et al, 2017;Yu & Zellmer-Bruhn, 2018), which complements and extends extant work addressing mindfulness at team (Yu & Zellmer-Bruhn, 2018) and organizational (Vogus & Sutcliffe, 2012) levels. By using mindful relating as a framework to better understand interpersonal interactions among coworkers, we explicate how individuals can enhance their relationship quality.…”

“…Previous mindfulness at work theorizing has suggested these represent proximal outcomes of mindfulness, as they are self‐regulatory in nature and serve vital roles in transforming social relationships (Glomb et al., 2011; Reina, 2020; Shapiro et al., 2006). Further, these mechanisms are especially vital in the role they play in explaining how intraindividual mindfulness emerges interpersonally to affect interpersonal outcomes (Reina et al., 2022).…”

Mindfulness and creative process engagement: the mediating role of workplace relational systems

“…Despite robust evidence related to psychological outcomes of mindfulness, such as improvement in emotional regulation and metacognitive awareness (Reina et al, 2022), a deeper understanding is warranted on whether and how mindfulness motivates CPE at the individual level (Carmeli et al, 2015;Shahbaz and Parker, 2021). This lack of research is of great concern because mindful individuals integrate and process motivational cues-such as attention, goal activation and evaluation-toward CPEs (Reina et al, 2022). Moreover, many organizations (e.g.…”