Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Introduction for the Workplace

We don’t need to feel better to do better

Most approaches to workplace mental health are built on a seductive but fundamentally flawed premise: We need to think more positive thoughts and feel more positive feelings in order to behave in ways that lead to the best outcomes.

• Feel less stressed.
• Think more positively.
• Replace your unhelpful thoughts with helpful ones.
• Manage your emotions.

The entire apparatus of workplace wellbeing, from resilience workshops to mindfulness apps to cognitive reframing exercises, tends to operate on the assumption that psychological health means having the right thoughts and the right feelings at the right time. And if you don’t, something needs fixing.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy asks a rather different question. Not “how do I get rid of this difficult thought or feeling?” but “given that this thought or feeling is here, what do I want to do next?”

It is a deceptively simple shift in orientation, and it has profound implications for how we think about mental health, performance, and human flourishing in the workplace.

A growing evidence base supports ACT’s application in workplace settings for stress reduction, burnout prevention, resilience, and leadership development, and it is increasingly delivered not as clinical therapy but as organisational training and coaching, where it may be called “Acceptance and Commitment Training”.

What ACT Is, and Where It Came From

ACT is pronounced as a single word, not as initials. Those who practice it will remind you of this with varying degrees of patience! It was developed by the American psychologist Steven C. Hayes in the 1980s, though it did not gain widespread recognition until the publication of his foundational work with Kirk Strosahl and Kelly Wilson.

It belongs to what is often called the “third wave” of cognitive and behavioural therapies, a grouping that also includes Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). Where the first wave was classical behaviourism and the second wave was cognitive therapy (most notably Beck’s CBT), the third wave is characterised by a shift in emphasis from the content of thoughts to the function of thoughts and the context in which they occur (Hayes, 2004).

This is not merely an academic distinction. Traditional CBT, in its standard form, works by helping people identify distorted or unhelpful thoughts (cognitive distortions) and then challenge, restructure, or replace them with more rational alternatives. It is effective for many conditions and has an enormous evidence base.

But ACT’s founders observed something that anyone who has tried to think their way out of anxiety already knows: sometimes the very act of trying to control or change a thought gives it more power, not less. Telling yourself “don’t think about failure” is, as a strategy, roughly equivalent to telling yourself not to think about a white bear (Wegner’s famous ironic process theory applies here with uncomfortable precision).

The Six Core Processes: Understanding the Hexaflex

ACT is organised around six interrelated psychological processes, typically represented in a hexagonal diagram known as the “hexaflex.” These six processes work together to produce what ACT considers the central goal of therapeutic and developmental work: psychological flexibility.

1 – Acceptance is the willingness to experience thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories as they are, without trying to avoid, suppress, or change them. This is not resignation or passive tolerance. It is an active choice to make room for difficult internal experiences rather than engaging in futile (and often costly) attempts to eliminate them.

In a workplace context, acceptance might mean acknowledging that you feel anxious before a presentation rather than desperately trying to “calm down,” which frequently has the paradoxical effect of increasing the anxiety.

2 – Cognitive defusion involves changing one’s relationship to thoughts rather than changing the thoughts themselves. When we are “fused” with a thought, we treat it as literal truth, as a direct representation of reality. Defusion techniques help people step back and see thoughts for what they are: mental events, not facts. A thought like “I’m going to fail at this” can shift from being a prediction about reality to being recognised as a string of words produced by a pattern-matching brain doing what it does. The thought doesn’t go away (ACT is refreshingly honest about this), but its grip loosens.

3 – Being present is the capacity to attend to the here and now with openness, curiosity, and receptiveness. This is ACT’s contact with the mindfulness tradition, though ACT treats present-moment awareness as a means to an end (living a valued life) rather than an end in itself.

In practice, being present means noticing what is actually happening, internally and externally, rather than being lost in mental narratives about the past or future.

For knowledge workers who spend much of their day operating on autopilot while their minds rehearse conversations that haven’t happened yet, this is both simple to understand and remarkably difficult to do.

4 – Self-as-context (sometimes called the “observing self”) refers to the perspective from which one observes one’s own experience. ACT distinguishes between the “conceptualised self,” the story we tell about who we are, built from memories, labels, and social roles, and the self as an ongoing locus of awareness that is distinct from any particular thought, feeling, or narrative.

This is perhaps the most philosophically challenging of the six processes, but its practical implication is straightforward: you are not your thoughts. You are the consciousness in which thoughts arise. If that sounds vaguely Buddhist, it is; ACT draws freely on contemplative traditions while grounding itself in behavioural science.

5 – Values in ACT are freely chosen, verbally constructed qualities of ongoing action. They are not goals (which can be achieved and ticked off) but directions, like heading west rather than arriving at a particular destination. Values answer the question “what kind of person do I want to be, and what kind of life do I want to build?” They are the compass by which ACT orients all other work. Without clarity about values, the other five processes are techniques in search of a purpose.

In organisational settings, values clarification can be extraordinarily powerful, not least because many people discover that they have been so busy meeting expectations and hitting targets that they have lost contact with what actually matters to them (which is, to put it mildly, not a trivial discovery – and for some people it’s perhaps better left undiscovered!).

6 – Committed action is the process of taking concrete steps in the direction of one’s values, even in the presence of difficult internal experiences. This is where ACT moves from insight to behaviour. It is not enough to know your values; the question is whether you are willing to act on them when doing so is uncomfortable, frightening, or costly.

Committed action often involves setting goals that are aligned with values and then building patterns of behaviour that move progressively toward those goals. It also involves the willingness to fail, adjust, and recommit, which is rather different from the corporate version of “commitment” that usually means doing what you’re told with enthusiasm.

How ACT Differs from Traditional CBT

The distinction between ACT and traditional CBT is not merely one of technique; it is a fundamental difference in philosophy about the nature of psychological health.

• Classical CBT operates from the premise that psychological distress is largely caused by distorted or irrational thinking, and that correcting these distortions will reduce distress. The implicit model is one of control: gain control over your thoughts, and you gain control over your emotional life.
• ACT, by contrast, holds that the attempt to control internal experience is itself a significant part of the problem.

Hayes and colleagues refer to these attempts or tendencies to try to escape, avoid, or suppress unwanted internal events as “experiential avoidance,”. ACT does not claim that cognitive restructuring never works (it would be absurd to deny the evidence base for CBT), but it does argue that for many people, and in many contexts, the control agenda is both exhausting and self-defeating. The harder you try not to feel anxious, the more anxious you become. The more you fight to suppress a thought, the more it intrudes.

ACT replaces the control agenda with a willingness agenda. The question is not “how do I get rid of this?” but “am I willing to have this experience if it means moving toward what matters to me?” This is captured in the concept of workability, which is ACT’s central pragmatic criterion. Rather than asking whether a thought is true or false, rational or irrational, ACT asks whether a particular thought, behaviour, or strategy is working for you, whether it is helping you move toward your values or pulling you away from them. A thought can be entirely accurate and still be unhelpful if it leads to paralysis, avoidance, or disconnection from what matters.

The Evidence Base in Workplace Settings

ACT’s migration from clinical therapy to organisational application has been one of the more interesting developments in workplace psychology over the past few decades. The evidence base, while still developing, is encouraging.

Bond and Bunce (2000) provided some of the earliest evidence for ACT’s effectiveness in workplace settings, demonstrating that an ACT-based intervention significantly reduced mental health difficulties and improved general functioning among media workers, with effects mediated by increased acceptance of difficult thoughts and feelings rather than by changes in the content of those thoughts. This finding was important because it directly supported ACT’s theoretical model: it was acceptance, not cognitive change, that drove the improvement.

Flaxman and Bond (2010) subsequently conducted a randomised worksite trial comparing ACT with Stress Inoculation Training (a more traditional CBT-based approach). Both interventions produced significant improvements in mental health for participants who were above the clinical threshold at baseline. However, the mechanisms differed: ACT worked through increased psychological flexibility, while Stress Inoculation Training worked through increased sense of control. This study is notable because it suggests that ACT may offer an alternative pathway to wellbeing for people who find the control-oriented approach of traditional stress management unhelpful or unsustainable.

Moran (2015) reviewed the broader literature on ACT in the workplace and identified several promising application areas: stress and burnout reduction, increased engagement, enhanced leadership effectiveness, and improved team communication. He also noted that ACT lends itself particularly well to training formats (as distinct from therapy), because its core processes can be taught, practised, and applied without requiring participants to disclose personal clinical histories or engage in therapeutic relationships. This is a significant practical advantage. In our experience, many employees are reluctant to engage with anything that feels like “therapy” at work, and rightly so; the power dynamics and confidentiality concerns are real. ACT-based training, with its emphasis on skills and experiential exercises rather than clinical disclosure, navigates this problem more gracefully than most approaches.

Why ACT Is Particularly Relevant Now

There are several reasons why ACT deserves particular attention in the current organisational climate, beyond the general trend toward taking mental health at work more seriously.

First, there is a growing recognition that “positive thinking” approaches have significant limitations. The organisational wellbeing industry has spent years promoting the idea that if you can just think more positively, reframe your challenges as opportunities, and maintain an optimistic outlook, you will thrive. For some people, in some circumstances, this works. But for many others, particularly those dealing with genuinely difficult conditions, chronic overwork, moral injury, structural inequity, or serious mental health challenges, being told to think positively feels dismissive at best and gaslighting at worst. ACT offers a fundamentally different stance: you don’t have to think positively. You don’t have to feel calm or confident or grateful. You just need to be willing to show up and act on what matters, even when your mind is screaming at you not to.

Second, the concept of psychological flexibility maps remarkably well onto the demands of modern working life. In environments characterised by constant change, ambiguity, and competing demands, the ability to adapt one’s behaviour to the demands of the present moment, rather than being governed by rigid rules, habitual reactions, or avoidance of discomfort, is arguably the most valuable psychological capacity a person can possess. We’ve seen this repeatedly in leadership contexts: the leaders who navigate uncertainty most effectively are not the ones who feel most confident or least anxious, but the ones who can act purposefully in the presence of uncertainty and discomfort.

Third, ACT addresses the phenomenon of burnout in a way that goes beyond symptom management. Most burnout interventions focus on reducing demands or increasing coping resources, both valuable but incomplete. ACT asks a more fundamental question: are you living and working in alignment with your values? When the answer is no, when someone has drifted so far from what matters to them that their daily actions feel meaningless or contrary to their deepest commitments, no amount of resilience training or mindfulness practice will resolve the underlying disconnection. Values clarification, in our experience, is often the point at which the conversation shifts from “how do I cope with this?” to “why am I doing this, and is it the right thing to do?”. As we mentioned earlier, this isn’t always a good thing to look too deeply into as it can be quite disruptive.

Practical Exercises and Techniques

One of ACT’s strengths is the richness of its practical toolkit. While these exercises are best learned in the context of facilitated training or coaching, several can be explored individually.

The “Passengers on the Bus” metaphor:

Imagine you are driving a bus. The passengers are your thoughts, feelings, memories, and urges. Some of them are loud, critical, and frightening. They shout at you to turn around, slow down, or take a different route.

In traditional thought management, you would try to argue with the passengers, eject them, or convince them to be quiet.

In ACT, you notice the passengers, acknowledge they’re there, and keep driving in the direction of your values. The passengers don’t leave (they rarely do), but they don’t get to steer.

To get through life well we just need to “Keep on bussing”, as a friend of mine would say.

Defusion techniques:

When a difficult thought has you in its grip, try repeating it in a silly voice, singing it to a nursery rhyme tune, or prefacing it with “I notice I’m having the thought that…”

These techniques sound frivolous (and they are, deliberately), but they work by disrupting the automatic process of treating thoughts as literal truths.

A thought experienced as “I’m going to fail” carries very different weight than “I notice I’m having the thought that I’m going to fail.” Same words, radically different relationship.

Values card sort:

A classic ACT exercise involves sorting a set of values cards (common domains include family, career, health, community, learning, creativity, spirituality, and others) into categories of high, medium, and low importance.

The exercise then asks people to rate how consistently their current behaviour aligns with each valued domain. The gaps between importance and alignment are where the work begins.

We’ve used this exercise with leadership teams who discovered, often with visible discomfort, that the values they claimed to hold most dear were the ones receiving the least attention in their daily lives.

You can see an online free version of a values sort activity here.

The “Workability” question:

When you notice a recurring thought, behaviour, or coping strategy, ask yourself: “Is this working for me? Is it helping me move toward what matters, or is it keeping me stuck?”

This is not about whether the thought is true or the behaviour is comfortable. A strategy can be comforting in the short term and deeply counterproductive in the long term (avoidance, for instance, provides immediate relief but narrows one’s life progressively).

Workability is a pragmatic, values-based criterion, and it is often more useful than the question “is this thought rational?”

Mindful moments at work:

Rather than aspiring to a daily meditation practice (which many people will commit to and promptly abandon), ACT encourages brief, deliberate moments of present-moment contact throughout the day.

Before a meeting, take three conscious breaths and notice what you’re feeling. During a conversation, bring your full attention to the other person for sixty seconds. When you notice your mind spiralling into worry, gently return to what is in front of you.

These are not relaxation techniques; they are exercises in noticing what is actually happening rather than being absorbed in mental content.

ACT as Organisational Training, Not Just Therapy

A crucial development in ACT’s trajectory has been its adaptation from a clinical therapeutic modality to a framework for organisational training, coaching, and leadership development. Moran (2015) coined the term “Acceptance and Commitment Training” (maintaining the ACT acronym) to describe workplace applications that deliver ACT principles in non-clinical formats.

This distinction matters for several reasons. Clinical therapy implies pathology: something is wrong, and a qualified professional will help you fix it. Organisational training implies development: there are skills that will help you perform better and live more effectively, and we’re going to practise them together. The content is largely the same, but the framing is entirely different, and in workplace contexts, framing is everything.

ACT-based training programmes typically include experiential exercises, metaphors, values clarification activities, and committed action planning. They can be delivered in group formats, integrated into leadership programmes, or woven into coaching conversations. The evidence suggests that relatively brief interventions (even a few hours) can produce meaningful improvements in psychological flexibility, stress, and wellbeing (Flaxman & Bond, 2010), though, as with any developmental intervention, sustained change requires ongoing practice and supportive conditions.

In our experience, ACT translates particularly well into coaching contexts. The six hexaflex processes provide a coherent framework for exploring what is getting in the way of effective action, without reducing the conversation to simplistic formulas or requiring the coach to play therapist. When a leader is avoiding a difficult conversation because they’re fused with the thought “it will go badly,” or when a team member is disengaged because they’ve lost contact with their values, ACT offers both a way to understand what is happening and a set of practical moves to shift it.

Like so many tools, ACT is helpful not just in work but in our wider lives too.

Criticisms and Limitations

No framework warrants adoption without an honest examination of its weaknesses, and ACT has attracted legitimate criticism that practitioners and organisations should take seriously.

The most common objection is that ACT’s theoretical underpinnings, particularly Relational Frame Theory, are dauntingly complex and not always well understood by those delivering ACT-based interventions. RFT is a dense, technical theory of language and cognition, and there is a real risk that ACT practitioners (especially in organisational settings) are teaching techniques without fully understanding the theoretical model that explains why they work. This does not necessarily undermine the techniques’ effectiveness, but it does raise questions about quality assurance and the risk of shallow application.

Second, while the evidence base for ACT is growing, it is not yet as large or as consistent as the evidence base for traditional CBT, particularly in workplace settings. Some meta-analyses have found that ACT performs comparably to CBT for conditions like anxiety and depression, but questions remain about whether it is genuinely superior for specific populations or contexts, or whether its advantages are more about providing an alternative for people who do not respond well to traditional approaches. The workplace-specific evidence, while promising, is still relatively modest in volume.

There is also a tension inherent in applying a therapy developed for individual psychological suffering to organisational problems that may have structural causes. If employees are burned out because they are chronically overworked and undervalued, teaching them psychological flexibility, however skilfully, does not address the root cause.

Like any psychological intervention applied in organisational contexts, ACT risks becoming a mechanism for shifting responsibility from systems to individuals if deployed carelessly (which, let us be frank, is precisely how many organisations will be tempted to use it).

Just to hammer this home, ACT is not a substitute for decent management, fair workloads, or adequate resourcing. In our view, organisations have a responsibility to create good, sustainable work.

Learning More

To go deeper, explore these resources on people-shift.com:

• Resilience in the World of Work
• Self Awareness and Developing Self Awareness
• Wellbeing: What It Is and How to Improve It
• Negative Thinking Patterns: Unhelpful Distortions in Our Thinking
• Coaching: An Overview

The People Shift View

We’re big fans. We find ACT one of the most intellectually honest frameworks available for thinking about psychological health at work. We say this not because it is perfect or complete, but because it starts from a premise that respects reality: that difficult thoughts and feelings are a normal, unavoidable part of being human, and that the goal is not to eliminate them but to live well alongside them. In a world awash with workplace wellbeing programmes that implicitly promise happiness if you just think the right thoughts, ACT’s refusal to play that game feels like a breath of fresh air.

We’ve used ACT principles in coaching, leadership development, and team workshops, and the response is consistently striking. People recognise themselves in the model. They recognise the exhausting, futile struggle to control their internal world that most approaches implicitly encourage. And they find genuine relief in the idea that they don’t have to win that struggle in order to act effectively. The shift from “I need to feel confident before I can do this” to “I can do this while feeling uncertain” is, in our experience, one of the most liberating realisations available in professional development.

What we would add, as always, is the systemic caveat. ACT is a powerful set of tools for individuals. But if you teach people to accept their thoughts and commit to their values, and then send them back into an organisation that is structurally hostile to those values, you have not solved the problem. You have, at best, given people a more sophisticated way to endure it.

The real work, the work that ACT at its best invites, is not just psychological flexibility for individuals but institutional honesty about whether the conditions people are working in deserve acceptance, or demand change.

In our experience, individuals who do the hard work associated with ACT are likely to leave their organisations if they decide they are providing unacceptable conditions.