New Article: The ART of mindfulness skills in making the most of intentional silence at work

As a commentary in the journal Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Grace Lemmon PhD, Goran Kuljanin PhD, Jennifer Golden DBA, and I respond to a recent article advocating quiet environments and intentional silence at work.

The authors argue that there is value in speaking up, and having a voice in one’s organization, value both for the worker and the organization itself. But, there is a role also for quiet and establishing a practice of silence. Intentional silence, the authors argue, facilitates emotion regulation and reflection, ultimately leading to better decision making.

We agree. But we extend the argument by discussing how to be silent. There is tremendous pressure to always be “on” at work. Colleagues, customers, direct reports, can all expect high levels of interaction from us. Internally, rumination, anxiety-provoking mental time travel, and related pathological states can lead to concentration and productivity breakdowns.

We argue that introducing and using an evidence-based mindfulness framework known as S-ART (self-awareness, -regulation, and -transcendence) in the workplace can help organization members effectively use intentional quiet periods or enforced silence. Asking for silence is countercultural, but S-ART will provide the tooling necessary for success.

Our article is openly available here.

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