Mindfulness and Interpersonal Communication

Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 2000 by Judee K. Burgoon, Charles R. Berger, Vincent R. Waldron

On the encoding (sending) side, as with planning in general, results are mixed as to the advantages of mindfulness because too much forethought can lead to nonfluencies and overcontrolled presentations (Berger, 1997; Berger et al., 1989; Berger et al., 1996; Knowlton & Berger, 1997). However, it can also result in more rapid responses and more believable verbal messages (Buller et al., in press; DePaulo & Kirkendol, 1989; Greene, O'Hair, Cody, & Yen, 1985). Mindfulness in the form of rehearsal and planning can thus facilitate deceit at the verbal level but undermine it at the nonverbal level.

Overall, a more mindful stance should benefit both sender and receiver during deceptive transactions as long it is not accompanied in the latter case by undue skepticism; in other words, maintaining tentativeness is preferable.

Training Employees and Solving Workplace Communication Programs

How to move uneducated, untrained, or unmotivated people into the workforce and retain them has been a perennial issue for government officials and employers. Mindful communication may garner benefits at several stages of the process.

First is the job interview itself. Applicants are often expected to "think on their feet" in response to challenging questions, to construct answers in response to hypothetical scenarios, and to provide concrete rather than abstract descriptions of their qualifications (Ugbah & Majors, 1992). Waldron, Lavitt, and McConnaughy (1998) conducted an evaluation of a job training program serving largely indigent clients in which they compared those who were successful to those who were unsuccessful in obtaining employment after training. Their analysis revealed that although socioeconomic, education, and family background were also important correlates of success, successful program participants were able to articulate more complex, flexible, and sophisticated plans for job interviews. In mock interviews conducted immediately prior to leaving the training program, successful candidates were better able to adapt the descriptions of their qualifications to the job they were seeking. When the interviewer expressed res ervations, successful participants offered responses that were more creative and convincing than those of the unsuccessful students. The latter offered only abstract descriptions of their qualifications ("I like to work with people") and were stymied when the interviewer expressed reservations, typically offering only a repetition of earlier arguments with little elaboration.

Importantly, the study demonstrated that mindful approaches to interviewing can be acquired through training. Part of a training regimen included lectures, role-playing exercises, and case studies designed to help participants develop more detailed, flexible, and convincing interview strategies. Significant improvements from pre- to posttest were found on measures of communication competence, confidence, and quality of interview plans, and those who improved the most were most successful in obtaining jobs. These findings demonstrate that teaching clients to be mindful while developing and implementing their message plans is a potentially important part of job training and "welfare-to-work" programs.