Management Education and Transformational Learning: The Integration of Mindfulness in an MBA Course

Traditional Versus Transformational Learning

“Learning theories” are conceptual frameworks describing how learning occurs. Traditional models of instruction place the student in a submissive/receptive role rather than an active learning position and expect the student’s unquestioning compliance to the teacher’s directions (Tomei, 2010).

Most management classes at both undergraduate and graduate levels are taught by modified traditional techniques in which the acquisition of facts and skills is primary (Bazerman & Moore, 2009; Benjamin & O’Reilly, 2011; Datar et al., 2010; Ghoshal, 2005; Mintzberg & Gosling, 2002; Pfeffer & Fong, 2002; Waddock & Lozano, 2013). Role playing, discussion, and simulation are frequently added to traditional lecture classes; however, the focus of most MBA courses, as demonstrated by their learning assessments, remains the acquisition of facts and rote skills. These modified traditional techniques work reasonably well for many analytic subjects such as accounting, microeconomics, or logistics (e.g., analyze a balance sheet or compute an optimum reorder quantity for inventory).

However, traditional pedagogies fall short when the desired result is not inculcating knowledge about a subject, but rather constructively altering worldviews and behaviors (Petriglieri et al., 2011; Portnow et al., 1998). Leadership, ethics, strategic management, and communications are some of the subjects for which openness to worldview change is imperative and traditional, knowledge-inculcating pedagogies are inadequate (Kayes, 2002; Raelin, 2007).

Experiential learning theory (Kolb & Kolb, 2005) posits that engaging the student in real-world experiences in a controlled manner increases self-efficacy (Bandura, 1991) and thus increases the likelihood of use, outside the educational setting, of behavioral possibilities to which students have been exposed in controlled settings (Raelin, 2016). However, despite the inclusion of experiential learning components, business courses focused on the development of “soft skills” have not been effective.

TL theory is a nontraditional theory focused on the individual learner and represents learning that results in a completely changed world view. For TL to occur, Mezirow’s (2000) proposes a metaprocess that consists of four activities: ¹

A concise definition of transformational learning is as follows: A learning experience that induces more far-reaching change in the learner than traditional content-based education and especially those learning experiences which reshape the learner, provide a paradigm shift, and affect the learner’s subsequent experiences (M. Clark, 1993). In TL, the learner’s existing mental models are challenged, shifted, and, thereby, expose experiences to new interpretations which, in turn, leads to changed behaviors (Johnson, 2008).

The value of TL in management education has only begun to be realized and the literature is sparse. However, studies have started to appear in areas where deep learning and perspective change is vital. Debebe (2011) used the creation of a safe learning space to induce TL in a women-only training program. The qualitative study that followed her program strongly suggested that TL of leadership concepts from a women’s perspective had occurred. Specifically, the safe learning space provided the protective environment which supports self-reflection and willingness to be open to novel ideas, necessary for TL to occur.

Closs and Antonello (2011) propose that TL, with its emphasis on critical reflection, could effectively supply the socially grounded perspectives missing in traditional (instrumental) management education. They further suggest that this approach to management education would allow for the adoption of more collaborative, responsible, and ethical ways to manage organizations. Following similar reasoning, another recent study suggests TL as a component of ethics education for business schools (Tello, Swanson, Floyd, & Caldwell, 2013). Critical reflection included in the ethics education is a core component of TL and affects ethical judgment in a number of ways. Most important, awareness and openness to alternative solutions and the ability and desire to look at the “big picture” are facilitated by critical reflection and are important to ethical decision making.

While the examples provided above show its value, there is no standard procedure for inducing TL. In fact, the literature is divided on the relative importance of rational analysis of beliefs (Mezirow, 2000) and intuition and emotion (Baumgartner, 2001) in the transformation process (Kitchenham, 2008). What the literature does agree on is that TL is difficult to induce with existing pedagogies. A review of the steps in the TL metaprocess reveals why: TL requires change in beliefs and possibly deeply rooted values.

This type of change is difficult for most people (Meyer & Land, 2005; Schwartzman, 2007, 2010). Moreover, before students’ beliefs can be changed, they first must become aware of their beliefs. This can be achieved through self-awareness and reflection, yet these activities have been found notably lacking in management education (Benjamin & O’Reilly, 2011; Crilly, Schneider, & Zollo, 2008; Klimoski & Amos, 2012; Petriglieri et al., 2011; Waddock & Lozano, 2013) and higher education generally (Lampe, 2012; Newmark, Krahnke, & Seaton, 2013). It is precisely this understanding of the difficulty in eliciting TL, combined with a lack of agreement on how to do so, that motivates this exploratory study: the exploration of mindfulness as a repeatable, effective, generally applicable method for inducing TL.

Mindfulness and Transformational Learning

The feasibility of mindfulness in the facilitation of TL has been strongly suggested from both a theoretical perspective and by experimental evidence (Barner & Barner, 2011; Carroll, 2010; Mezirow, 2000). Citing Bennett-Goleman (2001), Mezirow (2006) suggests that mindfulness allows the separation of a specific experience from the mental and emotional reaction to it which, in turn, provides the opportunity to examine whether one holds distorted assumptions, ungrounded beliefs, or warped perceptions. This realization opens the door to new views and TL.

The role of mindfulness in TL related to supervisory skills is discussed by Carroll (2010). From a counseling perspective, Barner and Barner (2011) explain that mindfulness presents a mechanism for fostering TL by increasing an individual’s awareness of, and openness to, experience. They discuss how mindfulness assists individuals in overcoming constraints to openness to experience, such as staying engaged within challenging life experiences, reducing defensiveness to new information about the self, maintaining greater emotional regulation during stressful events, and disidentifying with negative thoughts and emotions.

Perspective transformation, a core requirement for TL, can only be achieved if the learner is open to and accepting of such change. Key phases in the process of transformation according to Boyd and Myers (1988) are receptivity and recognition that an established pattern of meaning is no longer tenable or valid for future practice. This process might be “troublesome” and can incur resistance, causing tension between the reflective component required for TL and the defensive, affective reaction of the learner.

TL has occurred when a new “meaning frame” has been reflectively considered and accepted, and by this the learner is reoriented in the world, organizing the same collection of experience along different principles. We suggest that mindfulness training increases learners’ acceptance of new ways of perceiving the world and is especially helpful when new perspectives expose counterproductive behaviors and attitudes in the learner. Furthermore, mindfulness training fosters reflectiveness and brings to conscious awareness many previously tacit beliefs and assumptions, fostering TL.

Mindfulness: Concept and Practice

The cultivation of attention commonly known as mindfulness practice has reached critical mass in industry training. Details on mindfulness programs in organizations as diverse as Google and Kellogg have been widely published (George, 2014; Tan, 2012). A commonly accepted definition of mindfulness from the psychology literature is a mental state characterized by nonjudgmental awareness of present moment experience, including one’s sensations, thoughts, bodily states, consciousness, and the environment, while encouraging openness, curiosity, and acceptance (Bishop et al., 2004; Kabat-Zinn, 2003). A concise paraphrase by business authors is moment-to-moment, nonreactive, nonjudgmental awareness (Weick & Putnam, 2006). Most discussions of mindfulness note that control of attention is considerably enhanced in a mindful state and define mindfulness to include meta-attention, that is, the awareness of having thoughts and of the origins of those thoughts (Carmody, 2009).

To make the concept of mindfulness more concrete, consider the example of a manager preparing for a budget meeting with her Board of Directors. She has the thought: Given the current economic climate, the board is especially risk averse. I need to be very careful. Any good manager might have the same thought; a mindful manager would also function at a meta-level which includes a nonjudgmental awareness of having those thoughts (I need to be very careful) and of the possible reactive biases that generated them. With that information brought to consciousness, she is in a better position to objectively optimize her budget calculations. In direct contrast, mindlessness is the mode of cognition that occurs when the resources for attention and awareness of what is happening now are squandered on rumination on past errors and defensive, reactive future planning (Langer & Moldoveanu, 2000). In the example above, a mindless manager would not be aware of the sources of her cautionary thoughts and simply react to them without understanding, most likely resulting in fear-based and defensive behavior (Langer & Weinman, 1981).

Overwhelming evidence exists for the effectiveness of a simple, repeatable method, meditation practice, for achieving mindfulness and its associated behaviors and attributes (Davidson et al., 2003; Gunaratana, 2011; Siegel, 2010). A common meditation exercise, as used in our classes, is simple breath-focused attention. Details of the exercise are provided below.

Course Background

We viewed an MBA course on leadership that included a mindfulness practice component as an appropriate setting to explore the influence of mindfulness practice on TL.

The course was administered as a graded elective in the curriculum of a part-time MBA program at a 19,000-student Western university in the United States. The course took place during a regular fall semester, in the same classrooms in which the students attended their other MBA classes.

The class contained 34 students, 14 female and 20 male. Ages ranged from 24 to 42 years; the median age was 33 years. All were enrolled in the part-time MBA program and all but one was working full-time. Students had an average of 12 years of work experience. Approximately 30% of the students listed some exposure to meditation and/or mindfulness prior to taking this course, but none was engaged in a formal regular practice at the time of enrolling into the class.

Key Pedagogical Principles for the Course

The increases in self-awareness and social awareness that result from increased mindfulness have been well documented (Sedlmeier et al., 2012; Vago & David, 2012). Hence, mindfulness increases acceptance and encourages reflection, even of problematic aspects of self and environment, two integral aspects of TL.

The model guiding our course design integrates mindfulness and TL and derives immediately from the definitions of mindfulness and TL. Figure 1 illustrates the model and the relationships between concepts are based on prior empirical research, as described below. It shows theoretical relationships between mindfulness practice, mindfulness, the learner’s level of acceptance of both novel perspectives and of problematic experience, increased self-awareness and other awareness, and TL.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The influence of mindfulness practice on transformational learning.

Mindfulness practice explicitly attempts to inculcate openness to new concepts and the patience and trust necessary for an individual to objectively assess current behaviors, even when these are problematic, and consider more productive alternatives (Meyer, Land, & Baillie, 2010). Barner and Barner (2013, p. 192) contend that “mindfulness practice supports TL not through a direct attack on our personal assumptions, but by helping individuals understand the manner in which their assumptions are personally and culturally constructed.” This enables practitioners to be more accepting of others’ perspectives and of changing their own perspectives and experimenting in the workplace with changed attitudes and behaviors.

In summary, two core requirements for TL are (a) the learner must note (become aware of) shortcomings in attitudes and behaviors and (b) the learner must reflect on these shortcomings, questioning their perspectives and the origins of those perspectives (Mezirow, 1981). However, both self-awareness of and reflection on problematic behaviors and perspectives is difficult for many people (Barner & Barner, 2013; Bochman & Kroth, 2010; Young, Mountford, & Skrla, 2006). Learners will often “cling stubbornly to their opinions, values and beliefs” (Mezirow, 2000; Poutiatine, 2009). Thus, as shown in our model (Figure 1), a mechanism (mindfulness) for raising self-awareness and for lowering resistance to the restructuring of perspectives (via reflection) will enhance the likelihood of TL.

Course Design to Incorporate Mindfulness

The course was designed to give students a firm experiential understanding of the benefits of mindfulness practice as it enhances leadership skills by altering old perspectives and enabling new ones, thus positioning the class as TL. We stressed to the students that the skills learned in this class were immediately applicable.

The course took place on six Saturdays throughout the semester, approximately one every other week, for 8 hours a session (from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with an hour for lunch). The course was team taught by two professors, one of whom was intimately familiar with the relevant management literature and a recent but enthusiastic meditator and mindfulness practitioner and a second business school professor who was a 25-year meditator with prior experience teaching mindfulness classes. For reasons of both pedagogy and stamina both professors taught portions of all classes.

We employed a large variety of teaching methods including traditional lecture, readings (see Appendix), in-class discussion and presentations, videos, cases, experiential exercises, projects, meditation practice, and journaling.

Evaluation and Impact on Student Learning

Our primary course objective was the induction of TL of leadership through the introduction of mindfulness practices. We chose to assess achievement of the goal by seeking answers to three progressively more complex questions: (a) Had mindfulness increased during the class? (b) Had TL occurred during the class? (c) Had mindfulness practice facilitated TL? We chose a mixed-methods approach to answering those questions.

Question 1: Did Mindfulness Increase During the Class?

Both the KIMS total score and three of its factor scores had increased significantly by the end of the course (p < .005). Even the factors that were not significant at the .01 level increased in the expected direction. The effect size of the change in the KIMS total score is .7 (Cohen’s d) which compares favorably with the effect sizes of roughly comparable studies: .56 to .94 (Bergen-Cico, Possemato, & Cheon, 2013; Motz et al., 2012).

These quantitative results are corroborated by evidence from the content analysis of textual material indicating that 97% of the students in the class actively explored mindful performance of work and life tasks at multiple times during the class. An example of a text segment that was included in mindfulness incident counts are as follows:

At work I have been noticing my kneejerk reactions during staff meetings, and my rush to judgment without even contemplating what is being said. Sometimes, I do not even stop to consider suggestions or ideas if it is from a person I do not like.

Question 2: Did Transformational Learning Occur During the Course?

Evidence for TL in the course comes from our qualitative analysis of student journals and other student-generated course text. Over 82% of students produced text coded for evidence of TL. Examples of text coded as TL support are shown below. As indicated by a code of either 2 or 3, these examples are evidence in support of Question 2 and/or Question 3.

Midway through a meeting where I had been making some particularly negative comments my behavior and outlook became starkly apparent to me—much like becoming aware of my posture during practice. (Questions 2 & 3)

Furthermore my behavior with my subordinates is looking a lot more like how I perceive my boss behaves with me. With the realization that my leadership style is a mirror reflection of how I am treated by my boss. I am going out of my way to change that. (Questions 2 & 3)

I am starting to feel improvement on the interpersonal side of my leadership qualities such as controlling my emotions, listening to others’ comments with an open mind rather than judging and stressing out with extremely repetitive and unnecessary thoughts. (Question 3)

Question 3: Did Mindfulness Practice Facilitate TL?

The same text segments that show support for TL (samples are shown above) were also coded for mindfulness-based influences, as suggested by Figure 1. Over 70% of the students gave evidence of mindfulness-enabled TL via mindful awareness of their own and other’s leadership practices. Examples of the text so coded is labeled (3) above.

Opportunities and Challenges for Management Education

The authors have taught traditional leadership courses using the same factual material and texts as were used in the course described in the study. Based on student papers and test results, factual learning in the modified class was entirely comparable to traditional classes, however, the modified class offered, in addition, substantially increased reflection on and workplace experimentation with the theoretical material. Thus, we see significant benefit to the mindfulness-practice-enhanced class without a downside. In business schools, where some of the faculty are mindfulness practitioners, mindfulness-practice-enhanced classes for human-relations-based topics could be profitably explored.

In addition to leadership, communications and strategic management are topics that lend themselves naturally to reflection and active reassessment of past experiences. Courses in these areas could add mindfulness exercises in a manner almost identical to that described in an earlier section of this article.

We must point out that many studies and the authors’ personal experiences suggest that mindfulness cannot be taught effectively by persons who do not themselves have a regular mindfulness practice (Epstein, 1999; Kabat-Zinn, 2003), since without well-grounded answers to their questions, students quickly lose interest in practice.

Mindfulness is still relatively new to colleges of business however, and some management educators may see a value in mindfulness-practice-enhanced courses, yet have limited mindfulness practice experience. In this case, we suggest an alliance might be formed between the educator and a community mindfulness instruction professional. Most campuses and/or college communities will have one or more experienced mindfulness instructors, and these individuals are frequently sympathetic to introducing business school students to formal practice.

The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical School offers specifically secular practice; however, many mindfulness instructors from other traditions may be willing to provide simple, breath-focused meditation instruction identical to that offered in our course. Additionally, mindfulness initiatives can be found on many campuses, in student counseling services, psychology departments, or medical schools, for example, with opportunities for liaisons. If a management educator previously without a mindfulness practice follows the same instruction given their students during the course, the experience should be sufficient to enable knowledgeable grading of the class reflection assignments.

The time taken for the mindfulness component of a course such as ours must be subtracted from time traditionally spent on other course topic material. If future research shows that benefit can be obtained with (e.g.,) only several class sessions of time in total devoted to mindfulness, then a very reasonable case can be made to trade the instrumental learning time for greatly increased behavior transformation. Otherwise, the trade-off of traditional instruction time must be made at the discretion of the individual instructor, and will depend on how much the instructor values the transformation that mindfulness enables.

Resistance to a mindfulness-based course could also arise from both students and faculty if the course were required rather than an elective. From conversations with faculty, we understand that some believe the mindfulness component of our course to be “soft” and without value for business persons. While those who vocally oppose our course (and usually, other forms of experiential learning as well) are a minority, their opinions and their political power need to be respected.

From student journals, we understand that even those students who have enrolled in our elective course with some knowledge of what to expect are sometimes unprepared for and initially discommoded by the nontraditional content and methods we use. We speculate that were the course to be a required component of the MBA curriculum, strident, organized resistance similar to that detailed by Sinclair (2007) would likely arise in a clique of students. This resistance can be mitigated by front-loading the course with scientific demonstrations of the neurological validity of mindfulness, as we do in our course, but is unlikely to be eliminated given the prevailing attitude of the broader society toward meditation and mindfulness.

More serious than potential resistance to a required course using unfamiliar learning techniques is the possibility of resistance by students in the course to new information brought to awareness during the course. In a well-known set of experiments, Nyhan and Reifler (2010) describe what they term a “backfire effect” in which highly partisan subjects were presented with factual disconfirmation of politically charged misconceptions. In many cases, the disconfirming evidence was disregarded and in some cases, the belief in the misconception actually increased. Since TL challenges beliefs in a topic area, might not it too be subject to the “backfire effect?” In answer to that question, we first present observations from our class, propose an explanation for the observations, and then attempt to generalize our explanation to classes with different focal topics that adopt the approach to mindfulness we suggest.

Our course has a leadership content focus and in that context we would expect a “backfire effect” to manifest as a strong reaction against new information on leadership presented to the class that ran counter to student beliefs on leadership. On review of the qualitative database used to validate our course (student journals, surveys, and evaluations; see evaluation section above), we find no evidence of a “backfire effect.” We propose three primary factors contribute to the lack of resistance to new information:

First, the course survey of leadership theories was presented as a historical advancement of the field leading to expanded understanding. None of the theories was declared wrong or obsolete, but rather incomplete; they were not presented as in opposition to each other but rather as building on each other. Second, the majority of our students were early-30-somethings actively seeking new information on how to lead rather than grizzled business veterans who were heavily invested in a particular leadership style that they had used for a lifetime, and were thus psychologically compelled to defend. The student’s self-selection to the course was accompanied by openness to new information. Third, for most students, the information with the greatest potential to alter previously held perspectives was the insight that they obtained for themselves through the technique of mindful observation of their work environments. In this situation of nondirective experiential learning, there is no fundamentally opposing position or worldview as is the case in all of the research we have surveyed that has found a “backfire effect.” All we asked was that students take a look at the world using their newfound mindful observational stance and record what they saw.

We propose the lack of resistance to disconfirming information, the lack of a “backfire effect” that we found for our course, will generalize in part to courses with different topics areas providing they implement the core pedagogy described in this article. Research suggests (Lewandowsky, Ecker, Seifert, Schwarz, & Cook, 2013) that more emotionally charged topics—ethics or ecological studies, for example—will lead to more deeply held beliefs and an increased “backfire effect.” The same may be true for different audiences: an executive seminar versus an MBA class versus an undergraduate class, for the same reason. Different groups hold differing beliefs and hold them more or less strongly.

Finally, we suggest the mindful pedagogy presented in this article can substantially moderate the “backfire effect.” The research on this behavior also suggests (Lewandowsky et al., 2013) that belief disconfirming information is rejected because it threatens an individual’s worldview. The key word is threatens. The pedagogy we present in this article mitigates threat-to-self in multiple ways:

While not a panacea for countering the “backfire effect,” we believe the mindful pedagogy outlined herein can significantly moderate resistance to TL in a higher education environment and look forward to experimenting with the technique when presenting different topic areas.