Like many people, I have considered stress to be an inevitable part of the workplace.
Yet a recent paper by researchers from Stanford and Harvard suggests we better stop taking workplace stress for granted and address it head on. The researchers posit that health issues arising from job stress—like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and poor mental health—can lead to conditions that kill more than 120,000 people per year. This would make work-related stress one of the top-five causes of death in the United States, akin to accidents, more lethal than diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or influenza.
But don’t despair! A new wave of research suggests that organizations have a stress antidote at their disposal: meditation. According to this research, organizations that institute a mindfulness meditation program might dramatically reduce employee stress while simultaneously improving productivity. Such programs are truly beginning to catch on, with free (for employees) programs launching at prominent Fortune 500 companies like Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Comcast, and Google.
However, employees and business leaders interested in establishing such programs often don’t know how to design and execute a program that will be sustainable and integrate well within their organizational culture.
For advice on dealing with these practical challenges, I turned to Golbie Kamarei, who, against long odds, has helped meditation infiltrate and flourish within the conservative halls of the financial services industry.
In my discussion with Kamarei, she highlighted five broad principles based on her experience that serve as a useful framework for bringing a guided meditation practice—or really any cultural initiative—to life within an organization.
1. Start with the why and the how will come.
Kamarei was introduced to meditation in December 2011 when she attended a yoga ashram. Her education and experience until that point had led Kamarei to understand the mind and human behavior through a Western lens. The ashram visit was her first introduction to Eastern psychology and philosophy, and the experience was life-changing.
“It felt like it completed so much of what I was looking to find,” Kamarei explained. “And I really dug into it. For three years since then, I’ve spent nearly every vacation or long weekend at an ashram or taking a workshop.”
Upon returning to work after each workshop or retreat, colleagues would pull her aside to inquire about what she was learning and how she was applying it to her life. “All my friends and colleagues at work would ask, what did you learn this time? And I would start to translate it into a language that worked for them. That was really the beginning of what became the BlackRock Meditation Program.”
In these conversations, Kamarei recognized a common need from her colleagues that she thought meditation could help address. “My goal and aspiration at the beginning was just to help one person,” explained Kamarei. “The practice changed my life and if I could help create the conditions by which it could change another person’s life, that would be enough.”
The program launched in April 2013 with an email invitation to the entire New York office. Three-dozen employees attended the first guided meditation the following week. As sessions continued, word quickly spread throughout the organization and Kamarei looked for ways to scale the program to other offices. Kamarei explains it philosophically with some advice: “I believe mission-driven work will figure out a way. If you know why something is important to you, you’ll do whatever it takes. You don’t always need to know the next step; if you’re doing it with an authentic desire to have impact, the next step will reveal itself.”
2. Align with your organization’s priorities, values, and principles
Although tapping into a personal mission was important to Kamarei, she also believes that understanding the particular organizational context is equally crucial.
“In order to make it relevant or get support,” says Kamarei, “you have to know what’s important to your company. What are the needs of your company? What are the values, what are the priorities, what are the principles? If you can understand those and speak that language then you can translate any idea you might have into becoming relevant.”
For Kamarei, translation literally meant adapting the language of her sessions to BlackRock’s business culture.
I don’t ‘om’ in meditation, I don’t use the language that I might hear at a meditation workshop or a yoga class even. I use the language of a high performance work environment. And that’s how people who might say, ‘that’s just hippy stuff,’ say ‘Oh I get that! My mind wanders 47 percent of the time? Ok! I’m more productive if I can regulate my body systems and manage my stress response? Got it!’”
A large part of Kamarei’s language shift has to do with infusing her practice with scientific justification. She draws on Matthew Killingsworth’s studies on mind wandering, Richard Davidson’s findings on neuroscience and meditation, and Robert Sapolsky’s work on stress.
“I work in a rationally-oriented, linear-thinking industry,” says Kamarei, “so science is deeply valued.”
Since getting buy-in it starts with a deep understanding of the organizational culture, it was essential that Kamarei had worked on different teams and global initiatives around the firm since 2007. She had a strong sense of BlackRock’s cultural DNA, which allowed her to successfully link the program to BlackRock’s organizational values in her discussion both with employees and firm executives. Because “innovation” is a core BlackRock principle, Kamarei cites the connection between the authenticity her program promotes and the creativity and collaboration that gets unleashed when stress is reduced.
On a day-to-day level, Kamarei focuses on embodying the culture herself. “If you hire someone externally, without an active internal champion, y