Collective Mindfulness with Dr Jutta Tobias Mortlock
A very warm welcome to Season 5 Episode 2 of People Soup.
In this episode I continue my chat with Dr Jutta Tobias Mortlock, a social psychologist from City, University of London who is the co-director of the Centre for Excellence in Mindfulness Research.
Together we explore the concept of collection or team mindfulness and Jutta shares how she has approached the development of the skill in her work with Naval cadets. We also consider how team mindfulness contributes to psychological safety.
Psychological safety in virtual teams was a topic we explored in Season 4 in an interview with one of Jutta's research students, Alexandra Lechner. You can find a link to that episode below.
People Soup is an award winning podcast where we share evidence based behavioural science, in a way that’s practical, accessible and fun to help you glow to work a bit more often.
Another first for Season 5 is that I'm adding a transcript, wherever possible. There is a caveat - this transcript is largely generated by Artificial Intelligence, I have corrected many errors but I won't have captured them all!
- It Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That Cha Do It) - by Oliver and Young - sung by Jimmie Lunceford | Spotify
- You can hear me discuss psychological safety in virtual teams with Alexandra Lechner, one of Jutta's research students, via this link from Season 4.
- Find out more about Karl Weick here.
- Ravi S Kudesia is an inspirational mindfulness scholar - you can find his website here.
- You can find Jutta on Twitter here.
- Here's a link to the Centre for Excellence in Mindfulness Research
- Dr Jutta Tobias Mortlock • City, University of London
Read about our Chisi Awards from #365daysofcompassion for Best Podcast
Leave a review as a WhatsApp voicenote on +0034696636487
Ross' new website
Our Podcast Website on CAPTIVATE
Ross on Twitter
People Soup on Instagram which also features plenty of Ross' photos of the Andalusian life
People Soup Page on Facebook
And you can connect with Ross on LinkedIn
Transcript
TWO Jutta Tobias Mortlock
[:[00:00:00]
[:[00:00:11] Jutta: The first antidote to that is to develop high quality relationships so that the, urge to, dehumanize the other becomes a bit more difficult. We all know what it's like to have good old friends that we know really well who we give the benefit of the doubt in good functioning families. We give family members the benefit of the doubt.
[:[00:01:14] Ross: We also consider how team mindfulness contributes to psychological safety and psychological safety in virtual teams was a topic we explored in season four in an interview with one of U Utah's research students, Alexandra Lechner. You can find a link to that episode in the show notes.
[:[00:01:42] Ross: People. Super is an award-winning podcast where we share evidence-based behavioral science in a way that's [00:02:00] practical, accessible, and fun to help you Glo to work a bit more.
[:[00:02:30] Ross: And on Facebook, Chris, our friend, from 365 Days of Compassion. , hugely interesting episode, Ross. I wasn't initially sure where Utu was leading to with her view on collective mindfulness, but as the episode ended, that became clearer and left me intrigued for the next episode to hear more, almost a cliff hangout of an ending.
[:[00:03:17] Jutta: So the big thing that we need to focus on is why are we all so interested in mindfulness, we're interested in because, you know, because stress is such a big topic for everybody, both individually, as well as for team leaders, as well as for leaders in organizations, as well as for teachers or managers in the NHS or political leaders.
[:[00:03:59] Jutta: [00:04:00] Thank God. We are openly talking about racism and discrimination, and we've been doing this for 50 years, but we are doing this because we are, we've turned the debate on about just as our injustice, prejudice, and discrimination against people of different colors of skin. The, the injustice that people get judged differently based on the shade of their skin.
[:[00:04:47] Ross: it's tremendous. The clarity that you bring to this compelling message about how can we address this for groups? Cause it makes sense. We, we evolved in groups. We didn't evolve as individuals. We evolved by turning towards each other. We got in terms of compassion focused therapy.
[:[00:05:11] Ross: more in today's society. And that's why these movements really matter
[:[00:05:38] Jutta: And this goes back to what I saw when I worked as a business consultant. The problem when work becomes stressful is that people start to fragment when the going gets tough and people start to, turn work conflicts or like conflicts of interest, whenever work gets stressful. It's because there's a conflict of interest.
[:[00:06:17] Jutta: Cuz that is what happens when we don't have the most solid of relationships. So task problems become personal problems and people start to fragment. And that's what the scientific term is for what happens when people in, in organizations mindlessly let work stress become personal stress. And what is the antidote to that?
[:[00:06:40] Jutta: And at Dartmouth, What we did was we used, literally just two steps of training, young officer cadets, to become capable of managing stress collectively firstly by rapidly developing more high quality relationship than the relationship quality that they had. And that we did that very, very strategically because we know that when stress happens in workplaces or in schools or in any other social context, right.
[:[00:07:37] Developing High Quality Relationships / Benefit of the doubt
[:[00:07:58] Jutta: Why do we do this? Because we know [00:08:00] them. We know that they are complex and they are more multifaceted. And when they once trip up, it's not because they're bad people, but it's because the situation has made them trip up. That's what giving somebody the benefit of the doubt is all about. And that is the building block of a high quality relationship in workplaces nowadays, especially in the virtual era.
[:[00:08:38] Jutta: And so concretely for anybody who listens, who wants to bring mindfulness into a social group. It is about how do you develop a good high quality relationship. You get to know people as human beings, not just as task completers, and especially in the virtual era task completion. we're rushing to being transactional, to treating people like, you know, we have a meeting here, 30 minutes, we have our job to do the tendency to dehumanize and aversion? Harm is even bigger.
[:[00:09:27] FOUNDATION FOR PEOPLE TO BECOME MORE CAREFUL IN HOW THEY TALK WITH EACH OTHER
[:[00:09:50] What is collective mindfuless?
[:[00:10:18] Jutta: And heedful basically means they are. relating to each other in a way that builds collective capacity to manage stress collectively. So they're careful, they're anticipating problems. It's like a mother that is holding a baby. She's careful she's watching out for what could go wrong. She's heedful.
[:[00:11:04] Jutta: And so the, the second part of what does mindfulness look like when we move it into like a social space is we, we help people. Share what they do and what they need when things get stressful. How can we not just complete the tasks that we have to complete when they're difficult and when they're stressful, but how can we relate to, we relate to each other when things get stressful.
[:[00:12:01] Ross: If I had. A cheap microphone. I would drop it now, but I don't have a cheap microphone. I have an expensive one, so I'm not, I'm not gonna drop it, but I love what you're saying because they think hundreds of times in a day in a team we'll face a tension between acting for the good of ourselves and acting for the team for which we belong in, though.
[:[00:12:47] Ross: Is, is that not what we're looking to? Cultivate that sort of pause and. using our mindfulness as a, as a collective to think. How could I show up now for the, for the good of this team or for in the service of this team? Is that, is that what we're
[:[00:13:32] Jutta: on what is going on. and this is what mind organizations do. So practicing mindfulness together in an organization to manage stress more effectively, cuz that's the goal of mindfulness for organizations at individual levels, as well as collective levels is to reflect what is going on to notice what the choices are that we have before making one of them and then choose the most strategic choice or the one that's that is best for us in the long run.
[:[00:14:21] Jutta: That's helpful. If I don't meditate by learning a new perspective by sitting in silence for hours, days, weeks, months, or years, if there's garbage in garbage comes out. And so that the act of silent meditation alone does not lead necessarily lead to new insights, but you and me meditating together means nothing more than me sharing my perspective of what's going on.
[:[00:15:14] Jutta: But what we are finding in the, in the training programs that I've trialed so far is, is actually, if you have high quality teams, remember that was the first task of bringing mindfulness into teams. And if you have psychologically safe teams, psychological safety is not for people to feel nice, to feel comfortable, but psychological safety training is designed for people to become critical, to speak up, speak truth, to power and say, boy, I actually notice that the way you are running this podcast could be optimized.
[:[00:16:07] Jutta: I am seeing something about the way you do things, cuz I see you much more clearly than I see myself and I might offer a different perspective on it and you reciprocate and you then say to me, yep. I also think there's something that you might not see here Jutta. And this is why, the act of helping somebody else see something and receiving information about yourself, that you, as the actor, don't see yourself, but people who know you well know quite often more about your state and your way of being and your choices.
[:[00:17:03] Jutta: What I see and you are mirroring back to me what you see. And so it creates a whole of mirror and that then creates a whole new set of choices and perspectives that are really useful for us to then choose the choice, make the choice that is most productive. So mindfulness in teams or meditating in teams is again, I'm repeating myself.
[:[00:18:04] Ross: because I think psychological safety is really it's the latest trend
[:[00:18:25] Ross: And next generation mindfulness is to say, okay, now's the kind of difficult
[:[00:19:00] Jutta: They are. And when they're not, that's when performance goes down, that's when the quality of decision making goes down. And that's when stress goes through the roof, when people don't have each other's back. And when people don't, don't see challenges as a challenge that we are facing together. And none of us is to be left behind.
[:[00:19:19] Jutta: We're all facing it as one unified unit. And there's. Brilliant mindfulness scholar, Ravi Kudesia, based outta the us he says mindfulness in organizations is a metacognitive practice. So mindfulness in organizations, is not, not just here to relax us and the, the dichotomy between, you know, the, the school of mindfulness that says mindfulness is, you know, meditation and silence and mindfulness in, uh, some other schools of mindfulness said, mindfulness is about noticing new aspects of a situation, processing information in different ways.
[:[00:20:20] Jutta: And that is really useful in organizations and most relevantly to our conversations that we are having right now, Ravi Kudesia is arguing in this big paper where he said mindful as an organization's needs to be meta cognitive practice, that this act of reciprocating and of sharing our different perspectives of what is real of opening up and talking about what our options are in organizations that is not just good for, at an interpersonal level, that doesn't just teach you something, teach me something, but it also increases my internal capacity for reflection.
[:[00:21:20] Jutta: The more we build psychological safety and, and a team that can go through hell together and, and come out of it. But also the higher, my, own internal meta cognitive practice increases. And this is why, again, I'm a broken record. I say, don't practice mindfulness by yourself, cuz it's not a guarantee that you learn something new unless you have input from the outside.
[:[00:22:15] Jutta: And this is why now we have more and more studies that come out say that mindfulness meditation, especially in workplaces, doesn't tend to have the effect that it claims to have, especially in terms of creativity, when getting to actually make better choices or more pro-social or more strategic choices, because practicing meditation by yourself as a silo is a closed system. Unless you're a really smart person who learns through time, but that's a monastic model, the monastic model of mindfulness meditation, the medieval model, presupposes that you have hours and hours of time to get so bored with your thoughts that are better. Quality thought comes up over time. We don't have the time for that.
[:[00:23:04] Ross: Sure. Wow. And we're gonna come back to the, the military research in, in just a moment. I'd like to dive in much more and talk more about this next
[:[00:23:26] Ross: Could I just delve into when you discovered ACT Jutta.
[:[00:23:53] Jutta: And I think many people, many people's lives who did MBSR and B, C T their lives changed. Ruby wax says [00:24:00] famously that, mindfulness helped her Andy Puddicombe. the founder of Headspace said it mindfulness saved his life. And so I think that's wonderful. And this is a yes, and this is not a yes, but. and I read more widely on which scientific approaches use mindfulness. And then I, I stumbled upon act because act of course is half of mindfulness practice and half of value space living. and I started to read up on Steven Hayes's work. And the joke about this is that I read, Of course, I've got it here.
[:[00:24:55] Jutta: Which is mindfulness plus value based living, being applied to workplaces, which is where you sell it to fit in because you've become a leading figure with Paul Flaman in developing the act for workplaces curriculum further. And I, I started teaching an introduction to act at city university for dear former colleague of mine, uh, Ruth Sealy while she was at city university.
[:[00:25:52] Jutta: scholarship. Yeah.
[:[00:26:02] Ross: um, looking forward to that and also talking out the evolution of the, the protocol. And it's so exciting that, that you're both now at city and.
[:[00:26:17] Song Choice
[:[00:26:37] Ross: Any, any thoughts on
[:[00:27:02] Jutta: And so I think do you know anything about Lindi hop dancing?
[:[00:27:06] Ross: No,
[:[00:27:24] Jutta: And the swing dance movement is, is, is based on an improvisation. was influenced by jazz and around 1920, uh, Lindberg hopped across the Atlantic and these incredibly talented dancers created the Lindy hop because if Lindberg could hop across the Atlantic, a servant working in a big manor house by. Pale skinned, owners who owned all the wealth and who made all the decisions and who gave very little choices to the people who worked for them. But if in the dance they could hop across the difficulties and they could [00:28:00] overcome the confinements or the, constraints of their existence. And so the Lin hub movement is a movement of improvisation, creativity change.
[:[00:28:26] Jutta: So you, you walk together and you start to say, it's a, what you do, It's the way that you do So what do you
[:[00:28:34] Jutta: the way
[:[00:28:34] Ross: It's the way that you do
[:[00:28:48] Ross: Oh my gosh. I think we might have that as your theme tune until you decide to change it. Not just for the
[:[00:28:56] Jutta: Uh,
[:[00:28:57] Jutta: yeah. Yeah. But Lindy helped swing Down's music gets you to, to not sit still
[:[00:29:03] Jutta: move ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it is a big metaphor as well, right. For life.
[:[00:29:15] Jutta: I didn't know that.
[:[00:29:22] Ross: impact. And it still sticks with me today, if I'm going on to do a big thing or a big training, and it's the first time maybe I, I always take sort of comfort in that, that the way I do it and the style I bring to it and the energy I bring to it can be also transformative as well as the content.
[:[00:29:41] Ross: it, it really just sticks in my mind and I'm thinking, well, actually, if I'm really focusing on getting the content, right, I'm kind of draining my own energy. Whereas if I can think about bringing the energy and that me-ness to it, I think that really helps with the, the learning of the content and the curiosity about the content
[:[00:30:19] Jutta: And that's really helpful. I find, and that's really hopeful that she said, people get a sense of how you make them feel and that's powerful. And we have that power and maybe we should focus more on that then on getting the PowerPoints. Right. See what I did there with power and the PowerPoints, the PowerPoints are not the real thing.
[:[00:30:45] Ross: Amen to that
[:[00:31:13] Ross: Firstly, share it with one other person. Second, subscribe and give us a five star review. Whatever platform you. A third, share the heck out of it on the social media. This will all help us reach more people with stuff that could be.
[:[00:31:54] Jutta: that remind me of this other incredibly useful [00:32:00] saying that, um, hold on, hold on, hold on caller. Stand by collar, um, hold on. Where are you? You you're back here.
[:
