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THE FORGOTTEN AUDIENCE ABSTRACT Content creation is great and marketing funnels can be downright fun to build And there are plenty of reasons why they say content is king MINDFULNESS CAN LEAD TO A 20 INCREASE IN WORKER PRODUCTIVITY AND A 13 6 DECREASE IN TURN OVER Source The impact of mindfulness on well being and performance in the workplace an inclusive systematic review of the empirical literature published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology But what about that forgotten audience needing your organization s most crucial content your employees Ask yourself How do you properly engage staff with the internal content you provide And how does that internal content help you build the company culture you need in order to reach your objectives and mission The answers to all these questions are in deliberately crafted internal content that acts as the guide and force for all internal stakeholders Knowing what kinds of internal content are needed and how it should be written will empower you to demonstrate the most mindful leadership for your organization

MINDFULNESS WHAT IS IT AND WHY DOES IT MATTER When we talk about mindfulness in internal content we re talking about how you put a concept on paper in a way that catalyzes its adoption among staff Understanding mindfulness is one thing but practicing it is another And then instilling it as part of your company culture by way of internal content is an even bigger task INTRODUCTION It s an easy sell to convince a business owner of the value of most internal facing content For any organization particularly those growing from small to medium with the need to quickly scale their processes the timely compilation of procedures and policies to support employees and streamline work is a game changer Whole consulting firms are devoted to this acting as extractors of knowledge taking the processes you just do and getting them clearly organized on paper However policies and procedures are far from the only internal content that an organization needs There are also documents like mission statements core values onboarding and training packets vision statements and company objectives that support the company culture you re really after The concept of mindfulness has been around for millennia and has roots in Eastern spirituality Through forms of Buddhism it traveled progressively further west and by the late 1960s it piqued the interest of several thought leaders in the United States Mindfulness is the practice of focusing our attention on the present in a non judgmental way Just like the content used in marketing is designed to be evocative and impactful the content shared with your staff can have an extraordinary impact on how employees feel about the work they do and to what extent they understand the potential power of their role Internal content is optimized when its purpose is supported by its design We ll get into how to do that in this ebook And to be truly impactful internal content must also act as a catalyst of growth in how each employee sees his or her role To do this an organization s internal content leverages mindfulness Mindfulness one word from you we write the rest lifesjourneyblog com coinmo co

THE THEORY OF MINDFULNESS AREN T WE ALWAYS FOCUSED ON THE PRESENT IT S WHERE WE ARE AFTER ALL WELL YES AND YET NOT QUITE If the COVID 19 pandemic has taught us anything it s how challenging life becomes when we aren t able to plan decisively for the short mid and long term future and fashion all our activities around those plans In fact a whopping 47 of the time we re either thinking about the past or the future leaving just over half of our time to live in the moment most of which is done through pleasure triggers such as eating exercise and sexual activity As for the here and now of work that s the last thing many people want to be in the moment for The theory of mindfulness is that only in the present moment can we actually do something about our lives whatever our plans whatever we re responding to When we reflect on the past the only thing we can do is acknowledge and learn from it When we look to the future the number of unknowns make any plan we have a fickle thing And yet by focusing so much on these things that we can t change or control we needlessly create stress and anxiety This is the last thing you want your employees to feel at work By creating the crucial internal content that supports mindfulness you can raise awareness of the present moment and empower internal stakeholders to see what paths of action have the greatest impact on their end goals The second part of the theory of mindfulness is that it is non judgmental This means that while we do focus on the here and now we don t put a value judgment on it We don t even put a value judgment on how we re feeling at a given time Feelings themselves are neither good or bad they just are We focus on what we re doing and we give ourselves space to be WHY MINDFULNESS IS IMPORTANT FOR THE C SUITE Mindful leaders encourage mindful stakeholders And of all your stakeholders those you have the biggest power to influence are your employees You see them for 40 hours a week far more than we see our families And the work your employees do is fundamental to each of their lives if for no other reason than their livelihood Mindfulness therefore has implications on the health of your organization as well as the individual health of those who form it To build a mindful organization the theory has to be baked in at every level Start by understanding why mindfulness is important for you as a leader It s about your wellbeing as much as it is about your fulfillment That said leaders are the most prone to fall into the trap that mindfulness is about focusing on the positive But this couldn t be further from the truth By acknowledging the moment and focusing on what you re doing to respond and position yourself for whatever comes next you instead face challenges head on when they do arise Furthermore mindfulness divorces itself from identifying the positive or negative Instead it supports leadership of sound action instead of buzz words and responsive hype

CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE WHEN A TEAM IS WORKING WITH INNER PEACE LOOKING AT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INNER PEACE AND HAPPINESS Mindfulness supports inner peace which is another concept commonly confused with positive thinking To be at peace with both the easy and the hard the pleasant and the unpleasant is one of the most enabling skills for a team that works well together When you look at happiness remember that all emotions are fleeting They re signals firing in your brain whose chemical residue can be flushed away like a piece of tissue paper You can even have multiple emotions concurrently like being simultaneously angry and excited or inspired and sad A team working with inner peace moves like a well trained runner on a hilly course Picture it on the downhill slopes your team s efficiencies are maximized and communication flies freely And on the uphill slogs the proverbial breathing remains steady as each step is calculated in pace and stride to make it sustainably over the crest Will employees be happy all the time No Will one mile take longer than the rest Yes It does no good to focus on anything other than the metrics of the moment however no matter where the team is on the course Inner peace is the understanding and acceptance of these emotional responses in your day to day By accepting your responses you can anchor a sense of contentment that doesn t come and go That anchor is your inner peace and it can support you concurrently as other emotions come and go Mindfulness on the other hand is the practice of living in the moment and focusing on what you can do now Combined mindfulness and inner peace are the bedrock of a productive and fulfilling life

KEY TYPES OF INTERNAL CONTENT SO HOW EXACTLY ARE WE DEFINING CONTENT AND HOW ARE WE DEFINING IT IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNAL CONTENT Content is a contained topic presented in a consumable way Whether that consumption happens through reading watching a video viewing an organizational chart or touching the texture of a braille sign it communicates something to the people consuming it Internal content thus is any presentation of contained topics that you have to share with your staff vendors contractors or other stakeholders This can include but is by no means limited to Policies and procedures Mission and vision statements Training and onboarding documents Safety information posters safety data sheets etc Task templates and scripts i e support documents for work done Specifications documents Reference guides Office news These buckets do have inherent differences in their consumption however Specifications documents and support documents for tasks for example will be used in the day to day But mission and vision statements are often consumed only once during training Do you feel your whole staff understands your mission Could any of them repeat it back to you What does that mission mean to each of them personally News flash The way internal content is crafted and delivered matter a lot more than the intention behind that content Next we ll dig into the mission statement in particular and talk about how it can support mindfulness among your staff and bring your mission that much more within reach

THE MISSION STATEMENT You might already have a mission statement for your organization But whether you do or not it s always worth taking a step back to remember why we craft them and what exactly constitutes one A mission statement is a short and simple declaration often a one or two clause phrase that explains an organization s purpose for being This might include an explanation of culture or values and always points to the ultimate aims of that organization We could say it s self evident why a mission statement is important But instead we ll take a harder look at why with a simple exercise Let s start from the bottom up starting with the client facing customer service rep Follow us through this thread of questions and answers 1 Why does a customer service representative answer customer calls Because those customers have needs that the company has made itself available to address and has the responsibility to answer 2 Why is it the company s responsibility to address those needs Because the company made a commitment to deliver specific products or services 3 And why does the company deliver those specific products or services To answer this insert your mission statement here All actions within your organization funnel up to the mission statement The reason why you re doing any of it has to be clear and that clarity is garnered through a mission statement that all your stakeholders are fully invested in and can repeat back to you Mindfulness is particularly handy for a team living out its company s mission statement because the why behind each employee action comes back to the mission instead of the perceived emotions of the moment or the presumed value of every accountability If what employees are doing is helping everyone move toward the mission that s why those acts are important Leveraging your mission statement with the most powerful language and the most impactful delivery can lead to greater mindfulness among staff This supports the feeling of wanting to work instead of having to work When it comes to impactful delivery the same content marketing principles applied to website funnels social media strategies and client facing content can be applied to employee facing content too Your employees make up a key audience to market to in the strictest sense of communicating your message of how you either resolve their pain points or give them something they want

MINDFUL CONTENT AND HOW IT RELATES TO THE BOTTOM LINE The delivery of internal content is important but before we get there how it s crafted has to support what we want it to do For example if you want your mission statement or any other internal facing content to be mindful and support mindfulness there are some key things to think about as you craft it 1 Focus your mission statement on how we build off the present moment 2 Speak of the future as a direct result of what we do now 3 Speak to your values without descriptions or right or wrong good or bad Supporting mindfulness among your staff is a direct path to shifting the focus to what they can do in the here and now And that will impact your bottom line because employees distracted by who did what yesterday or focusing too much on tomorrow s plans cost your organization What s worse those same employees go home with more anxiety and less satisfaction from work thanks to devoting energy to what they can t control VOICE AND TONE IN EMPLOYEE FACING CONTENT We ve heard business leaders say often that this level of attention to internal content is either a luxury or totally unnecessary I m not going to coddle my staff I hired them to do a job and it s their responsibility to do it And sure you hired each employee to do a specific job But you already knew you would have to train them right And you knew you would have to offer them additional opportunities for growth plus raises plus promotions in order to retain them In other words you knew you would have to work to indoctrinate them into your organization Going to work just to do the work is one thing but going to work excited to act out a bigger mission is something else altogether And so the final note we have to offer is about the overall voice and tone of your internal facing content It s tempting to craft content that reads as the most exciting or positive possible but that s also easy to overdo We repeat mindfulness is NOT about focusing on the positive In fact focusing only on the positive is as much a contradiction of mindfulness as focusing on only the negative Instead focus on bringing your staff to the present moment then ask them what they can do now commit to focus on or improve to move everyone closer to your bigger mission Questions Comments Get in touch Alexandra is a specialist in all things content and Chris is the guru on mindfulness one word from you we write the rest coinmo co lifesjourneyblog com