Growing a Mindfulness Program

“Kai’s leadership created a Mindfulness movement here at Genentech. And the really cool thing is, he did it by convincing scientists on the data and research.”

Sarah Robinson

Problem

Genentech is a Fortune 100 life science company with a culture of high-performing employees seeking breakthrough results. The company had an existing mindfulness program of 200 participants with a modest budget and executive support, but faced a significant up-hill battle in growing the program because of entrenched negative perceptions of mindfulness among a largely scientific and skeptical community. The true benefits of the program was obscured because existing participants tended to keep their practice to themselves for fear of ridicule. 

The program’s growth was stalled and the potential benefit to the larger organization remained elusive.  

Solution

I knew first hand the benefits of adopting a mindfulness practice in supporting my own research, focus, and performance. When I assumed leadership of the program,  I saw the true potential to embed mindfulness into the culture of the organization to enhance individual as well as team performance and improve health outcomes. To achieve this vision, however, I needed to reach and engage people who were most skeptical about mindfulness, and I needed to do so without alienating the volunteers who were responsible for creating the program in the first place. 

Methodology

From my own experience, I understood scientist’s frustrations with the way mindfulness has historically been taught. When presented as dogma that must be believed, the skepticism and rational thinking skills that scientists rely on to excel in their careers will completely derail any attempt to actually practice mindfulness. I joke that scientists are exquisitely sensitive to being told what to do, but if you can find an interesting problem for us to work on, then we’re all in. 

Therefore, when I taught, I presented mindfulness practices as something you could try for yourself. I was careful to say that no practice was right for everyone, and it was completely okay to dislike a certain technique.

In my drop-in mindfulness sessions, I encouraged Q&A so I could understand what resonated and what missed the mark. I learned that, when working with high achievers, it is crucial to normalize the fact that the mind will wander, and that this didn’t imply a bad meditation or a bad meditator. I found that the promise of happiness or personal growth didn’t particularly resonate with this audience, and sharing research that showed measurable differences in the gray matter density of the brain was a far better approach. Once the scientific validity of mindfulness practices was established, I could then discuss benefits including improved focus, performance, stress management, and emotional regulation.

Determined to reach people’s hearts by going through their heads, I conducted a thorough literature search to understand what benefits could - and could not be - claimed for mindfulness practice. Using this data, I built an internal website, a Google+ page, and designed a talk about the science of mindfulness. One of the benefits of a smart, skeptical audience is that they will let you know exactly where your arguments are lacking. I made sure to incorporate their feedback after each talk so that it got stronger over time. Soon I was receiving invitations from across the organization to share my talk at department meetings, off-sites, and team-building sessions. Another benefit of working with this audience is that once they are engaged, they are your best change agents. Employees shared their favorite resources, authors, and speakers with me, and I boosted the signal on their recommendations. The most popular speakers in our speaker series were always ones that employees had referred.

The results were conclusive. The Genentech mindfulness program grew to well over 800 active participants with many more leaders requesting team workshops. I successfully piloted the 2-day workshop “Search Inside Yourself,” which led the Learning & Development group to offer the course to all employees. Under my leadership, the total program budget increased forty-fold. 

In perhaps the greatest indication of our collective success, mindfulness became a Genentech cultural touchstone as leaders began to talk about their own mindfulness practices and actively participated in panel discussions.