Emotion and Mindfulness: Using Emotion as Information to Raise Collective Performance

Abstract

Mindfulness helps improve effectiveness by facilitating the use of emotion as information, which improves learning, adaptation, and performance. When mindful we observe emotions and are curious about them rather than controlled by them, freeing us to explore what the emotion is telling us.

I discuss three forms of mindfulness that combine to create a pattern of behavior called mindful organizing. Mindful organizing has numerous benefits but there are also costs that must be balanced against the benefits. Bringing mindfulness into organizations must be done in a way that reduces costs and increases benefits; practical mindfulness is introduced as a means to do this.

Practical mindfulness begins with what is achievable at the present time and reduces the social and emotional barriers to behaving mindfully through the use of tools. Practical mindfulness recognizes the importance of interaction to task accomplishment by focusing attention on all three phases of interaction: before, during, and after.

Citation

Wolff, S.B. (2014), "Emotion and Mindfulness: Using Emotion as Information to Raise Collective Performance", Emotions and the Organizational Fabric (Research on Emotion in Organizations, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 367-395. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1746-979120140000010022