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Thursday, May 12, 2016

Managing the Human Mind: Insights on Mindfulness from Top PGDM Colleges in Delhi NCR

Managing the human mind at work is possibly the most difficult of all tasks. Top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR reflect upon this aspect in both the academic curriculum and also in beyond the classroom learning activity. There are aspects of human behaviour and managing the self that academicians at even the best business schools in Delhi cannot teach aspiring managers. For that matter at Ishan Institute of Management & Technology we have been offering Art of Living lessons to students of all batches. Through these efforts and engagements with students we have found that while business executives and corporate leaders try their best to manage resources of all types, they lag behind in managing the self. Managing the self is perhaps the mother of all management trades. In the parlance of management psychology we refer to it as ‘mindfulness.’

What Are the Challenges in Managing the Self?

Managing the self is about managing the human mind. Let us take a look at the research reports and survey results on the importance of mindfulness. Most professionals reach their place of work every day with a trail of energy and exasperation in the rush hour. The truly hard working and sincere professionals come to the office with a work plan of their own and a to-do list that is cumbersome. They get to work with a burst of high energy and as they race against time to tick things off their to-do list it is evening even before they have realized. By the time it is evening most of these people realize that they have accomplished very little of the targets they had set for themselves early on in the day. Is not it astonishing? A work day ordinarily consists of 9-10 working hours in the corporate sector. On days of unusually hectic business activity this may go up to 12-14 hours and yet most business executives in the corporate sector do not have an idea about what went wrong with their work day. Recent research reports assert that most people spend 47% of their time thinking something else apart from what they are doing. In fact most of us operate on autopilot mode.

Business psychologists refer to this as the attention economy. In most business schools that confer PGDM and MBA degrees academicians engage in lectures, workshops and other academic activities that develop technical, analytical, interpersonal and generic skills while ignoring two really important skills that are required to manage the self: focus and awareness. These two skills define the mindful mind. Focus is defined as the ability to concentrate on the present while dealing with task at hand. Awareness is defined as the ability to realize distractions of all kinds that arise from time to time and thus threaten to disrupt the focus. Much of the threat to focus emanates from the fact that managers, corporate executives and business leaders deal with decision making and decision making requires them to deal with information. This translates into staying connected to all sorts of devices like the laptop, smart phone, IPad, fax machines and land line phones at the cost of being disconnected to the self. Constant irritants include regularly incoming emails, social media updates, phone calls and frequent requests for assistance form office colleagues. The end result is a complex of data overload on the mind and distraction from work even before one realizes that he/she is being distracted and thus losing focus. Email addiction for example releases dopamine, a pleasurable hormone that affects our focus on the completion of small and unimportant tasks that probably do not even figure on our to-do lists. The effect is that the completion of these small tasks makes us feel like the Gods of small things and by the time we come out of the momentary pleasure of having achieved something small, the work day is over and we stare back at the to-do list only to realize that we have won the battle but lost the war.


How to Practice Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a science of the highest order and calls for regular application to get the visible results. In order to practice mindfulness, one needs to get the basics right. First, start the day with mindfulness. It has been observed that people release the highest quantum of stress hormones early in the day at the time they wake up from sleep. As we wake up from sleep our mind is engrossed in thoughts on getting things done and starring at the mountain of work that we have to climb. The release of cortisol in the blood perpetuates stress levels that are tough to handle. Practice deep breathing while concentrating on one’s breathing process is one simple but effective way to practice mindfulness. As one inhales and exhales he/she should listen to his breaths and heartbeats for two minutes before getting out of bed. Second, on reaching office one should practice deep breathing while sitting at his/her desk for the first two minutes. Closing one’s eyes while sitting upright and breathing with focus is prescribed before one heads off to work and starts the one on one meeting at office. This way work delegation, coordination with colleagues and clients becomes less cumbersome because even when dealing with people who represent the other one is constantly in touch with the self. It enables one to see through the verbal, non-verbal and written forms of communication better, decode the meanings of others better while sticking to one’ own agenda. Third, as the day progresses it becomes hectic to manage communications from and with people in different directions. It is recommended that one should after lunch set a timer on the phone for it to ring once every hour. Every time the bell rings one should practice deep breathing with eyes closed for one minute and regain connect with the self. Fourth as the work day comes to a conclusion one should get back to practicing mindfulness by taking time out for two minutes at the end of the commute. Switch off the phone, the radio and all other gadgets. Focus on your breathing and feel your existence while breathing in and out. It enables one to detach from office and the motions of the day to engage productively with family at home.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, workshops on Art of Living are conducted for management graduates with an aim to enable them take charge of their lives. As one of the top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR we make concrete efforts to get students in top mental shape for their career in corporate sector.