Resolutions 2012: Working together

In our final set of resolutions for 2012, we look at the foundation of any organisation, the need to work together.  The workplace has always lived or died by the ability of its members to  communicate, collaborate, and navigate tensions. Even oft-maligned areas like middle management make contributions by helping different parts of the organisation make sense of others, translating grand concepts to the practicalities of the shop floor and vice versa.


Get smarter about being creative together.

1. Encourage helping on creative tasks, but avoid that responsibility falling to the same people. Evidence suggests that soliciting and obtaining help can lead individuals to more creative outcomes. The catch is that help-givers show reduced creativity, perhaps because helping behaviours eat into their own time for exploring possibilities, or they become increasingly sure of their own perspective, narrowing their horizons.

2. Bring ideas up-front to a collective brainstorm. This isn't a new idea: there is substantial evidence that ideas can get lost in the mix of a freewheeling conversation driven by social factors. Recent research suggests another issue: early suggestions in the brainstorm can activate related concepts, leading to a domination of one class of suggestion at the expense of others. Ensuring you have surveyed your own mental landscape before exploring those of others' makes it more likely you can cover all the bases.

Responsibility and collaboration

3. Avoid diluting responsibility when setting goals. Research suggests we put in less effort to plan and monitor progress towards goals when we contemplate how others will step in if we fail. In this sense, strong support networks can have counterproductive effects: they let us off the hook. It's a good idea to make it clear that sources of support shouldn't be burdened with keeping things rolling, but are there to provide help with problems or when things are truly stuck.

4. Address lack of trust and bad feelings in teams to prevent things turning toxic. Evidence suggests that a key precursor to teams fracturing into subgroups is a low level of liking or trust. A group in this situation could continue to function as long as members nonetheless understood each other's perspectives; however, the factionalism would still persist, as this comes down to how people feel, rather than think, about each other.

5. Prevent teams going rotten by pairing members with non-team buddies. The dark side of trust: too much within a morally flexible team gives them the freedom to embark on dodgy behaviour. If trust isn't absolute - the team isn't fully "psychologically safe" - then such suggestions are more likely to be suppressed. One way to produce this might be to ensure team members have regular individuals outside the team that they are encouraged to speak to and confide in; peer mentoring or buddy systems would mean that unscrupulous ideas are never safe from some sort of exposure.

Ethics and power

6. Role model better moral perspectives to followers. When your team chuckles over that customer who couldn't get the hire car out of the garage you could join in, or stand apart and draw attention to the responsibility they should be feeling. Standing apart can be risky; being typical of the group helps leaders retain sympathy, especially after failures (external link, abstract only). But it's only by doing so that you are able apply influence to shift people to a new perspective. And the evidence shows that leaders who take this different perspective are accepted as more ethical by their teams.

7. Call out abuses of power to prevent bad seeds rising. It seems that casually breaking rules makes you appear more powerful to others, probably because the converse is true - powerful people can afford to break rules. As positions of power are apt to be given to those who appear ready for them, this attitude can help the wrong people to the top. If organisations encourage employees to challenge personal rudeness, skipping lunch queues, and the like, we can put the bad behaviour back in its box.

Leader support

If you're towards the top of your organisation, there's good you can do within and beyond it.

8. Commit to longer mentoring relationships to give the most to mentees. It can take time for mentoring relationships to yield value to those involved, especially when there are impediments to the relationship quickly forming, such as coming from different backgrounds or being a different gender. A few months isn't enough to get over that hump, so put yourself in the picture for longer.

9. Offer support to other leaders. According to one study, a CEO receives twice as much work-related support from having access to a CEO network as they do from their friends and families. Offering this support, through one to one conversations or informal groups, enables other leaders to engage in more critical leadership behaviours, such as mentoring their own subordinates; the help gets paid forward, so to speak.

2012 Resolutions: manage perceptions, focus attention

We know that subtle cues can influence how we behave in the world and in the workplace. For example, women give different ratings of work gender discrimination depending on whether they saw a phrase on a poster moments before. And perception can have a more overt influence, such as the way that external scrutiny encourages boards to dump compromised directors. What we notice and who notices us matters: it's the attention, stupid.

So here are some ways to orient attention and create more helpful perceptions within your organisations.

1. Dig into the impact of your incentive programs. Individual incentives encourage productivity, whereas group incentives tend to lead to better quality. But trying to simply layer individual targets over group ones can end up smothering them, especially in work teams with very fixed capacities. And theorists warn that employee of the month programs might have perverse effects. Why not find out the situation at your organisation? Try speaking to staff, and if you have the resources, do some research.

2. Scrub stereotype threats from your customer-facing environments. Certain services and products can produce associations with maths (eg finance) or engineering (car garages) or other areas that women are stereotypically depicted as weaker. Cues that draw attention to gender or the technical nature of the area can turn women away, sensitive that a male who sells to them may attempt to exploit them.

3. Ensure your invitations for employees to voice opinion are authentic and not seen as lip service. When people believe that their suggestions or survey responses are not going to be listened to, they can see it as deceitful, lose their faith in the organisation's legitimacy, and can end up mired in conflict within teams (link). So if you're going to ask for opinions, make sure you will be able to read them, and at least in principle have the power to act on them.

4. Get more conservative estimates by framing your requests correctly. People seem to see a chunk of work differently depending on how long they think it will take, versus how much of it they can get done in a fixed amount of time. Bias can creep in both ways, so make sure you know what you are asking for.

And finally... improving your own circumstances

5. Get good at self-promoting - but hold back in high-modesty cultures. Particularly in job application contexts, candidates who can advocate for what they bring to an organisation are more likely to be successful. However, there is a sting in the tail: in some cultures, this kind of behaviour is frowned upon and can hurt your chances. Meanwhile, highball your salary requests to reach higher settlements (6). Thanks to the anchoring effect, introducing large numbers into conversations can frame the negotiations at a higher level, leading to better outcomes. These numbers can even be ridiculous, as long as they are delivered with a sense of humour.

2012 Resolution: attract and keep the right people for your workplace

Getting people in

It's all very well having the best methods of selection, but you need to get motivated, capable and well-fitted people interested in working with you.




1. Cultivate a good word-of-mouth reputation to attract highly educated graduates. So treat existing employees well and avoid allegations of hypocrisy by ensuring your internal culture fits with your external brand.  The received wisdom of 'campus presence' turns out to be on rather flimsier ground  (it may even be counterproductive for world-wise candidates), but the evidence is that people trust word-of-mouth.

2. Ensure online recruitment materials reveal the diversity within the office. There's evidence that both black and white applicants are more likely to peruse sites that present images of diversity, treating it as a marker of merit. Of course, this doesn't mean misleading applicants as to the true nature of your workplace!

3. Treat your intake of young  workers as you do graduates: as an investment in the future. Many industries rely heavily on young workers, and experts argue we should take this work more seriously, offering better working conditions, access to training and recognising good performance. That way, those who thrive will recommend their workplace to their social circles, reducing churn costs, and may themselves stay with the company into adulthood, or return after studies.

Keeping people sweet

We're living in an era of unprecedented attention to the notion of wellbeing, satisfaction and happiness. Even if we believe that material conditions are primary – for instance, that money buys you happiness – there are undoubtedly other measure we can take to better conditions in the workplace, and here the psychological literature can really help.

4. Explore whether your older employees are hankering after managerial responsibilities. Employees older than 45 have a stronger preference to supervise others than their younger colleagues. Of course, "want to" does not equate to "should", but such preferences are likely to drive engagement, so it's unwise to ignore them, especially in a workforce, which, at least in the first world, is ageing at an unprecedented rate.

5. Take up volunteering. An unexpected resolution? People who volunteer time out of work gain benefits they carry into the following working day. Actually, it shouldn't surprise: volunteering epitomises many of the evidence-based five ways to wellbeing, including giving, connecting to others, and (often) a degree of physical activity.

6. Experiment with focused breaks to enhance health and energy at work. Maintaining our health at work allows us to function better and avoid illness, stress and burnout. So you may want to explore the idea of packaging activities such as mindfulness meditation, breathing exercises or physical activity into bite-size packages during the working day.

However....

There is a potential dark side to a focus on enjoyment on the workplace. As outlined in this article, emphasis on "fun" can end up being inauthentic, pressurise everyone into the same mould, and draw young workers into unhealthy dependency on their employer as the source of their social support as well as income. So stand up to cynical uses of fun and socialising in the workplace (7).

2012 resolutions: people differ (so now what?)

This year, time to pay more attention to the fact that our people are different. Sometimes the best resolution is to not act on this - for instance, the fact that people's earnings relate to their weight almost certainly reflects a degree of bias that we would be better to shake off. And some research is currently too provisional to figure out what to do with: if a leader's facial width really is related to company success, the implications for what to do about that are far from clear.

Yet some people may suit some work better, or approach things in very different ways. Here are some thoughts on how to approach this with the evidence in mind.

1. Challenge black-and-white notions of "what good looks like" at work. For instance, two voguish notions are that emotional intelligence is a desirable trait, and impulsivity a problem one. Yet recent research shows that for some behaviours the exact opposite is true. If there is one resolution I would put above all others, it's to take recognise that a person's profile is multivalent, containing good and bad. Overall, the uniqueness of each employee is an asset if deployed correctly; a cookie cutter workplace would be a disaster.

2. Avoid driving your introverts to distraction. Work environments differ in their bustle and activity, and research suggests the introverts bear the brunt of a noisy environment.

3. Leverage the broader assets your people bring to organisations. Extroverts are likely to have large social networks that may help them spread messages or identify resources to solve organisational problems. But don't neglect introverts on this matter either: while they are likely to have fewer contacts overall, their relationships overall are just as deep.

4. Consider people's different expectations for what they get out of work. Some jobs are intrinsically pretty grim - so-called dirty work, like euthanising animals.  If it has to be done, it's worth knowing that people with lower expectations are most likely to take the down and dirty in their stride.  Indeed, high expectations and optimism carry their share of risk in other professions too, with so-called positive pollyannas more likely to leave managerial career tracks if their aspirations aren't quickly met.

5. Don't get sucked in by the claims of the arrogant; it's often they who need attention. It turns out that noisy bluster about the shortcomings of others and personal superiority masks substandard performance. Perhaps this doesn't surprise you, but noting that even their own self-ratings tend to admit to lower performance, we can take this as a starting point to intervene.

And finally...

Let's not let the above suck us into too essentialist a view of who we all are. An awful lot of our performance at work depends on  learned capabilities rather than innate talent. Now, it may be unsurprising to hear that the single most direct predictor of performance for computer programmers is their level of programming knowledge. But how about the discovery that charisma can be trained through the identification of discrete behaviours? So my final resolution for you is to be imaginative about how to develop employee's capabilities.

2012 resolution: get a handle on emotion and mood in the workplace

Find ways to cope with problematic moods

You don't need to be a believer in Blue Monday (thank goodness) to feel that January isn't the happiest month in the calendar. Here are some steps to smarter mood management.

1. Take into account the emotional legacy of positive and negative events at work. This might mean rescheduling a challenging meeting that follows a day of inordinate strain. Note that people can differ in how much of an 'emotional hangover' they feel, so be especially sympathetic to those hit harder.

2. Decide on how to manage anger in the workplace. Contrary to what some may think, this doesn't necessarily mean taking a zero-tolerance approach; in fact, evidence suggests that tolerating some outbursts of anger - especially in response to perceived injustices - is a good way to allow  organisational problems to surface. However, anger imposed on others habitually is a sure way to dampen creativity. Consider what is needed in your organisation.

3. Tolerate benign envy, but combat the toxic type - a little bit of emotional response to others' successes can buck us up and push us further ourselves. But when it threatens to impede work relationships, it's time to take a deep breath and let it go.

4. Put cynicism aside in favour of a healthy, balanced caution in negotiations. There is evidence that defaulting to distrust in negotiation situations can not only result in poorer outcomes overall but also harm the cynic's self-interests. The solution isn't naivety, but rather recognising that trust can open up opportunities for clear-headed scrutiny.

Actively leverage emotion abilities

Understanding our 'Emotional Intelligence' (EI) and deploying it in the workplace is an idea that will be familiar to many. These resolutions, then, take us a bit deeper into the implications of trying to leverage our capacity to understand and manage emotions.

5. Take better EI measurements and weigh its relevance using evidence. EI is a surprisingly controversial concept in research circles, so if you're going to rely on it, review the types of measures and what they have been proven to predict. Moreover, job applicants have inflated self-ratings of EI compared to the (presumably more honest) job incumbents - so be especially cautious if comparing scores across such groups, such as when comparing internal and external candidates.

6. Get better at expressing emotions to influence others. There is increasing evidence that showing your emotions can influence others and lead to better work outcomes, so think about how effectively you do this. Note this is not a prescription to pretend to feel emotions to get things done - the research is clear that such surface acting is if anything counterproductive.

7. Review how employees or colleagues use emotions in their day-to-day activities. Some interesting light was shed by a recent study of doctor's receptionists, revealing how their job requires them to constantly manage their emotions. If you consider how this might be true also in your organisation, you can make this clear to prospective employees and have a more informed position to help people currently struggling with these demands.

2012 resolution: make better selection decisions

A simple resolution, but how to go about it?


1. Review practices to align with your organisation's unique context. As a whole, companies using 'best practice' approaches such as ability tests, structured interviews and monitoring recruitment sources do no better on aggregate than those who don't use these methods. This tells us that it isn't about slavishly following a right formula, but evaluating what's been proven to work elsewhere with your understanding of the local context of your organisation. So consider the below recommendations in this light.

2. Consider introducing well-designed, low effort assessments. There is research to suggest that automated assessments such as tests of knowledge or situational judgement, when well-designed, can do the job virtually as well as more intensive face-to-face assessment. Again, this will depend on your organisation and industry, but it may bear exploring for you.

3. Develop a policy on checking out job applicants online. Recruiters can find it tempting to google applicants or peruse them on social networking sites, getting free, quickly accessible, and otherwise hidden information about them. But there are questions about its fairness, risk of generating feelings of invasiveness, and possibility that it leads to decisions being made that aren't defensible. It's probably already going on in your organisation, so establish some ground rules for how you approach it.

4. Provide focused training to people who play roles in assessment simulations. In particular, evidence suggests focused training helps role players to introduce pre-determined prompts to nudge candidates into showing (or failing to show) critical behaviours; it appears that this may lead to more accurate ratings in some areas.

5. Be realistic about what you are actually measuring. Interview overall scores are strongly influenced by the picture gained from the early minutes where rapport is built. Happily, it seems that this isn't simply bias, but reflects some good information picked up - for instance, verbal ability, and some personality factors. Why not recognise this, perhaps by assigning quick ratings after that initial period.

Meanwhile, and more alarmingly, some researchers suggest that assessments scores of all kinds are heavily influenced by a personal attribute called 'ability to identify criteria'. Again, ATIC does seem to be a good predictor of workplace success in itself, but in both these examples the point is the risks when we assume we are measuring one thing - e.g., the competency "Leading for Success" when in fact we are measuring another.

And finally....

When I decided to exit research and enter bleary-eyed into the Real World(TM) I was concerned that having a PhD might be a disadvantage. Things turned out ok to me, but it turns out my feelings are well-founded: recruiters do see overqualification as a potential reason not to employ someone. Yet there are a host of reasons why overqualified applicants may be a great add to your organisation. So reconsider how you approach overqualified candidates.

Resolutions to take the harder edges off work

Work can be engaging, social, and fun. It can also be draining, lonely, and stressful. So let's kick off with resolutions that can reduce these hassles.

Actually, let's be specific: our debut post examined how some work hassles are hindrances of no benefit. But others - often more initially intimidating - are actually challenges that can transform and educate. So our byword should always be avoid hindrances, or eliminate them once and for all - but arm yourself to take on challenges.

Reducing work-life conflict

Work-life conflict dampens engagement and increases burnout, leading to illness and days lost at work - and it can spread to affect your co-workers too. Any steps that can be taken to manage these hindrances benefit the person and the organisation. Here are some steps you might take:

1. Introduce a leisure hours switch-off policy for work technology. It's harder to mentally disconnect from work, especially when technology keeps you plugged in, so introducing a formal policy, or simply taking personal initiative to power down your Blackberry at 6pm (as I decided to do), can pay dividends. The call for more offline time is likely to increase this year, both for leisure and working periods, but why wait to put a good thing in place?

2. Give shift employees more say in when they work. Or if you're that employee, start to demand it. After all, such autonomy - allowing people to coordinate work and home activities - makes more of a difference than the financial incentives that tend to accompany awkward shift patterns such as Sunday working.

3. Lobby for family-friendly policies in science, engineering and technology organisations. In all organisations, really; but women in SET careers, in academia and the private sector alike, experience a leaky pipeline that winnows out many before reaching seniority. If you're serious about this, men could cultivate more welcoming atmospheres whereas women might offer mentoring and support to more junior colleagues.

Role-specific issues

Particular responsibilities come with particular problems.

4. Reduce bureaucracy and other demands on time for academics. For example, burnout is now comparable in higher education to that in other sectors, and particularly high in younger staff. This is an institutional problem, so those with influence might want to think about how to help them keep their head above water.

5. Offer support to those who work at the edge and defend them from internal critics. It's often an unpopular duty to work at the interface between two functions, or between one organisations and another: you end up distrusted by both home and away sides. Try and break that habit, and offer some solidarity.

Meanwhile, newly minted MBAs can struggle in the transition from conceptual classroom to hands-on management. Perhaps you know one?
6a. Apply a little patience with new managers, and offer feedback on their blind spots where possible.
If the new manager is you, remember that the climate and attitudes of your MBA class is no model for the wider world:
6b. Get to understand how your team operates and what motivates them.

And finally...

Coming out of this holiday period, I'm taking a month off from overindulging. If you're a musician, you could choose to act as a drink-free buddy for your musician peers (7). Evidence suggests the muso boozing lifestyle isn't always one of choice but due to peer pressure, boredom, and habit. Be a haven for others who might want to shift down to soft drinks and save some cash - and their liver - for a while.