Can Mindfulness be Helpful in Team Decision‐Making? A Framework for Understanding How to Mitigate False Consensus

Abstract

Mindfulness has recently attracted a great deal of interest in the field of management. However, even though mindfulness – broadly viewed as a state of active awareness – has been described mainly at the individual level, it may also have important effects at aggregated levels. In this article, we adopt a team‐based conceptualization of mindfulness, and develop a framework that represents the powerful effect of team mindfulness on facilitating effective decision‐making. We further discuss how a conceptualization of team mindfulness may mitigate the process of false consensus by interacting positively with the following five central team processes: open‐mindedness, participation, empowerment, conflict management, and value and ambiguity tolerance. A false consensus constitutes a cognitive bias, leading to the perception of a consensus that does not exist. In essence, we argue that, although a conceptualization of team mindfulness does not guarantee effective decision‐making in itself, it may successfully reduce false consensus when coupled with these five team processes. Accordingly, this article contributes to the theory and practice of team decision‐making by demonstrating how a conceptualization of team mindfulness can be helpful in the increasingly complex and ambiguous situations faced by contemporary teams.