During the recent Mental Health Awareness Week, I looked for new tips and ideas for virtual and hybrid teams keen to embed mindfulness and meditation into their ethos.
I’ve previously shared tips, which I have updated and included again below. This year my focus has specifically been on finding resources for meditation and mindfulness.
Sometimes it can be most helpful to bring in external facilitators to lead this kind of work, and run live sessions for teams. One of the challenges however is to schedule these sessions at a time when everyone can attend and also find a format that meets the needs of diverse individuals.
So instead of looking for a specific course or facilitator, I have been looking to find approaches that are easily available and accessible in a flexible way, so that colleagues can engage as and when they wish to. There are a lot of free resources online as well as specialised apps such as Headspace, Calm Business and Insight Timer for Work.
We tried Insight Timer for Work and offered colleagues the opportunity to explore resources such as meditation recordings in a huge library of content available in 44 different languages. We are a small team, and as such as weren’t focused on creating a particular level of engagement or meeting goals. We don’t use the analytics that the platform can provide.
Instead, we started to share content we came across that was helpful to us, and we organised an informal meet up for staff to spend 15-20 min online. To make this as flexible as we can, the format we adopted brings us together in a video call at the start of the session, and we say hello and check-in with each other. It’s encouraged but not required to share what 5 or 10 min track you are planning to listen to. Then cameras and mics are switched off, and everyone engages in their meditation or mindfulness activity. At an agreed time, we return to the video call, and reflect a little on how we got on.
Scheduling the meeting provides a way to stay accountable to the intention to take a mindful break for those who want it, and is opt-in only. We decide each time if we want to meet again, and then put another date in the diary.
It’s a small step, but a welcome reminder to take a breath in what is a very busy time indeed.
More Tips for hybrid and virtual teams:
- Create time and space to talk: For many people working from home seems to be a never ending marathon of back to back meetings in Teams or Zoom. That’s a tough context in which to create time or space to talk about mental health. I’ve often blogged before about different ways of working, around a document, whilst walking, offering time to reflect and write together… and you really need to find pockets of time and space that suit your team(s) in order to get meaningful conversations.
In addition to weekly group meet ups, make time to have one to one catch ups and wherever possible don’t schedule meetings back to back for the whole day or week. Consider how you might use informal and formal spaces which are always there, such as chat channels, for meet ups, chat and conversations. - Read the signals: For some, what works for everyone else isn’t a good fit. That applies to in person management just the same, but I feel working virtually increases the danger of missing obvious signals. If you have just come from one meeting and the other person has done something different, it’s easy to talk at cross purposes. So if you are talking about personal stuff, asking about wellbeing or mental health, you need to be prepared to look out for subtle signals, including tone of voice or chat, body language and even emoji.
It’s helpful to have a communication channel in which discussing sensitive topics is safe and personal. Or rather than changing how you talk, consider what else you can modify to create a different atmosphere: go for a walk and talk; or have a phone call with cameras off. We don’t always feel the same, so our working practice shouldn’t always be the same either. - Talk about mental health: aim to normalise talking about mental health in an appropriate way and check in on how everybody is doing regularly. Clearly sign-post ways to seek expert or confidential advice such as via HR professionals, at appraisals, through organised coaching, therapy and other support.
Enjoyed this post? Then listen to my podcast episode on mindfulness and meditation: