Mindfulness and speaking one’s truth can create a better business

16 April 2019 - 05:03Organisational culture: The conference hosted by the Institute for Mindfulness in SA heard that people speak if they are invited to and if someone is listening. Picture: MARWAAN SASMAN

Megan Reitz, professor of leadership and dialogue at Ashridge-Hult Business School in the UK, displayed the logos of organisations that have made — or are likely to make — headline news because of corporate scandals and pointed out that what they have in common is their conversational habits. Speaking up is relational: people speak if they are invited to and if someone is listening, Reitz said. Company leaders frequently ask her to encourage their staff to speak up, but the staff tell her the last time somebody spoke up they disappeared.Europe fear of speaking out is most likely because of fear of getting fired or of posing a threat to one’s leader, but in most SA cultures, you shut up and do as you are told.

“We were trained in a zoo but now operate in a jungle,” Oelofsen said, quoting Sonja Blignaut. “In this environment long-term business plans are obsolete. The business environment is fast-changing and dynamic and junior staff are often the ones in contact with reality and in the best position to give vital feedback.”

Reitz said organisations are paralysed by abdication because of reluctance to speak up and “listen up”. Nobantu Mpotulo shared a panel with mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn and Jay Naidoo, whose political history has brought him to the realisation that social transformation without personal transformation does not produce justice. Mpotulo, a leadership development practitioner in the business world, believes millennials, who are not afraid to take risks and are not short of job opportunities, offer hope of transformation. However, companies do not find it easy to accommodate them.

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