What makes ill feeling between work colleagues shift faster?

An instance of personal friction with a colleague can create angry feelings that are slow to abate. Paradoxically, when the prickly day also involves a specific work-related dispute, bad moods don’t linger so long. This counter-intuitive finding may reflect our willingness to seek a benign explanation for unpleasant situations, blaming the context rather than the person.

The research, from a team led by Laurenz Meier, looked at day-to-day swings in ratings of anger. This longitudinal study asked the 131 participants to diarise their mood before work, after work, and before bed, over a period of two weeks. The participants also recorded daily incidents of task conflict - disagreements about how to solve problems – and incidents of personal frictions, or relationship conflict. Meier's team looked at how mood was altered following such conflicts, after controlling for start-of-day mood. Did conflicts lead to impaired well-being, in terms of a fouler mood, and if so, how much and for how long?

Study participants tended to feel angrier at the end of a day that involved interpersonal relationship conflict with colleagues, feelings that continued in a weaker form to bed-time and could even linger to the following morning. However, when the rough day also involved a task conflict as well as a relationship one, well-being was only worse at the end of the day, and tended to recover by bed-time.

Consistent with previous research, the unpleasant nature of interpersonal tensions awaken negative feelings that colour the working day. Meier's team believe that their paradoxical finding for work-related conflict reflects a preference to attribute such instances to a situation: 'tempers ran high because we all want the project to succeed', rather than to a person: 'she just doesn't like me'. Taking the more benign interpretation allows us to go to bed feeling less chewed up. The researchers also looked at somatic complaints such as headaches and back pain, and again found that these symptoms were highest with relationship conflict and no task conflict, but this mirroring of the angry-mood pattern did not reach overall significance.

According to this research, the more personal 'storm in a teacup' may actually be the most insidious type. With nothing wrong to fix, it's easier to paint the other person as difficult or even malevolent, and that may be a hard place to recover from. If you want to smooth ruffled feathers it may be useful to focus attention on the task components of disagreements, encouraging reappraisal of the situation, and leading people away from a less defensive mindset.

Meier LL, Gross S, Spector PE, & Semmer NK (2013). Relationship and task conflict at work: interactive short-term effects on angry mood and somatic complaints. Journal of occupational health psychology, 18 (2), 144-56 PMID: 23506551

Further Reading:
Spector, P. E., & Bruk-Lee, V. (2008). Conflict, health, and well-being. In
C. K. W. De Dreu & M. J. Gelfand (Eds.), The psychology of conflict
and conflict management in organizations (pp. 267–288). San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass.
 

Writing your way to a new career: a look at the literature on narrative career learning

Are you ever unsure about what you want from your working life? If so, you may find writing about it will help. A new paper proposes that the act of writing can help develop career narratives and make sense of ourselves. Here's the big idea, and some approaches you can take to become a ball-point explorer.

Over the last few decades some career counsellors have begun to move from what psychometrics offer - fixed snapshots of current capabilities and interests - to begin exploring the value of narrative. Patterns over time, routes begun but abandoned, as well as underlying hopes and fears: all of these are material that can help in creating meaningful paths for the future. Now researchers Reinekke Lengelle and Frans Meijers suggest that with the right techniques to hand, this kind of progress can be achieved through solo writing techniques. After all, writing also involves dialogue - with the page, rather than another person - and is known to enhance meta-cognitive and self-reflective skills. Does it work, and how can we investigate what's really going on?

The current paper showcases methods for systematically evaluating writing content, a common one being to look at patterns of word use. Existing research suggests that shifting from one pronoun to another (e.g., They to I) reflects an ability to step in and out of a situation and gain control of its narrative. The mix of emotional words are also significant, with writing that contains more positive than negative words reflecting a healthier direction for a personal journey. However, an absence of negative emotions suggests an unwillingness to see the whole situation. Looking at such measures over time makes it possible to see changes in how individuals think about the world and their future – for our purposes, their career future.

The article describes a study using these techniques to explore texts produced at various stages of a writing course taken by students preparing for a work placement. The study used a very small sample that allows only a quasi-quantitative approach to the data, with no statistical analysis, and appropriately the article notes that the outcomes – that a writing course may help some people develop clearer career direction – should be considered highly tentative. My interest in this study is that it lays the groundwork for longitudinal research: I would want to see work exploring whether writing training leads to exploration of narratives, and whether that leads to better long-term career satisfaction.

It may be early days for the research on writing for career guidance, but that doesn't prevent you from exploring these techniques yourself, or even putting them to the test systematically. So here are some links which could help you get started, using the evidence base that currently exists. It should be emphasised that the techniques may well be more useful when delivered in a structured course such as the one described in the, especially for those fairly new to writing.

Creative writing

”Our fictional narratives offer important information about what is salient for us.” One approach is to write a piece that involves careers – perhaps imagining someone starting an exciting job - and then step back to reflect upon the themes that emerge. Alternatively, poetry and the construction of metaphor can also expose surprising truths as the limitations demands new ways of expression.

The authors reference Gillie Bolton as well as the collection The self on the page, and another online resource is here.

Reflective writing

To see experiences from a range of viewpoints. Lengelle's students were asked to respond to a series of prompts such as “Write a sentence about yourself and then write it again saying the opposite. Write each so that they both feel true” or “The one fear I have around writing (e.g. poetry/story) or the creative process is . . . ” followed by “I sense that an uplifting response to that fear might be . . .” Another method is to write out a dialogue between two perspectives that relate to work, such as the concept of the“Labour market” having a conversation with the archetype of an“Employed” person: “You need me”; "I don’t pay you a thought unless I’m disattisfied".

The canon suggested includes Stories at work also by Bolton, as well as this article in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Online resources include Monash University's page on the topic

Expressive writing

Try writing about personal topics , doing justice to their emotional dimension, and exploring how events make you feel. This emotional element permeates and overlaps with the others, but a clear example is perhaps the use of Byron Katie's “The Work”, involves a technique where a stressful thought is investigated through responding to four questions - eg “How do you react when you believe the thought?” to deepen and tease out the depth of the possible feelings.

Texts that explore the value of expressive writing include James Pennebaker's corpus of work, most recently The Secret Life of Pronouns, and Karen Baikie and Kay Wilhelm's paper on emotional and physical health benefits. Online resources at the national writing project.

 

Reinekke Lengelle, Frans Meijers, Rob Poell, & Mijke Post (2013). The effects of creative, expressive, and reflective writing on career learning: An explorative study Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 83, 419-427 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2013.06.014

Do conscientious people speak out to improve the workplace?

Conscientiousness – describing those who strive, invest effort, and are reliable – is the personality trait most associated with positive work outcomes, from punctuality to the quality of work. Conscientious people also tend to exceed the core demands of the job, and are likely to engage in citizenship behaviours such as helping others and advocacy for the organisation. Another citizenship behaviour is expressing challenging but constructive opinions, often termed ‘voice’. Voice is good for organisations, but it's risky and potentially disruptive to the smooth running of things, so is this something the conscientious do?

Subrahmaniam Tangirala and colleagues felt this is a question without an obvious answer because conscientiousness involves two components that point in opposite ways. One component is all about duty: following principles, looking after the interests of the group, and generally 'doing the right thing' - such as speaking out when something is wrong. Its counterpart, achievement orientation, is about investment in personal success and career aspirations, which can potentially be put at risk by being the first to comment on the emperor's new clothes. Following the lead of 'role theory', the researchers investigated whether these different orientations influence how individuals see their role, and specifically whether they think expressing voice is part of their job.

Tangirala's team asked 262 employees at a Singaporean mail and financial services company to rate themselves on various measures including how much they judged different aspects of voice to be part of their job. Their managers contributed ratings of how much they actually exhibited these behaviours, as well as information on their status and how much visibility they had of each employee, as these could easily influence the results if not controlled for.

Participants who rated their duty orientation more highly were more likely to see voice as part of their role, whereas more achievement oriented participants tended to see voice as out of scope. This sense of responsibility translated to more voice behaviours, as observed by managers. The boost that duty gave to speaking out was greater for participants who had also rated themselves high in voice efficacy, the belief that their use of voice could bring about change. Meanwhile, the suppressing effect of achievement orientation was heightened for participants who had rated their team low in psychological safety, meaning that they suspected any risky behaviours may be judged, evaluated or even reported by their colleagues.

Speaking out can invite ridicule or even hostility, despite the fact that voice behaviours are associated with organisational benefits like preventing errors or readying the organisation for unexpected situations. This means that people focused on getting ahead are liable to keep their head down, but we can reduce that risk by cultivating psychological safety in teams. Conversely the duty-minded are ready to act, especially if they believe they can make a difference, so enhancing those skills can also help getting voice into your workplace.

Tangirala S, Kamdar D, Venkataramani V, & Parke MR (2013). Doing Right Versus Getting Ahead: The Effects of Duty and Achievement Orientations on Employees' Voice. The Journal of applied psychology PMID: 23915430

Further reading:
Morrison, E.W. (2011). Employee voice behavior: Integration and directions for future research. Academy of Management Annals, 5373-412.

When do negative emotions give you an edge in negotiations?

I’m sat in negotiations for a coveted deal. As time goes on, the person across the table looks pained, shifts in their seat, and tells me how disappointed they feel about my approach to the negotiation. How am I likely to adjust my style - would I go easy on them, or go in for the kill? New research by Gert-Jan Lelieveld and colleagues suggests it depends on whether I feel guilty about it - and that’s a question of social context.

In a first experiment, students were requested to engage in a computer-based ultimatum negotiation, where they get to slice up a resource between themselves and a counterpart, who then gets to decide whether the deal is on; if not, both sides receive nothing. Before negotiations, participants completed a survey on their general attitude to negotiation, rating items such as ‘During negotiations, my own outcomes are important’. In a series of deceptive turns, participants were told that their survey responses were shared with the counterpart who had found them upsetting; participants were then given access to a (private) typed reaction from the counterpart that contained either anger words or disappointment words. In truth, there was no counterpart, with the ‘reactions’ just part of the experimental set-up. What effect would they have?

Anger and disappointment led to similar offers, except in one case: when the counterpart was presented as being from a rival university, rather than a fellow student. Here, participants in the disappointment condition were prepared to make a more aggressive bid that took more of the pie for themselves. A follow-up experiment found similar aggressive bids following disappointment when the participants were negotiating on behalf of a group, rather than for themselves.

The exceptional results were both found in conditions designed to minimise guilt. Disappointment is a ‘supplication’ emotion that indicates that something is wrong, and others need to do something about it. As an example of an other-directed emotion, its function is to elicit helping behaviour from others by triggering the negative state of guilt. But supplication also signals passivity and even helplessness, so when guilt isn’t appropriate, observers may prefer to exploit the disappointed.

This is what we see in this pattern of results. Guilt is less appropriate towards out-group members, like a member of a rival university, and is also dissipated when negotiating on behalf of an absent social group towards whom you have more explicit obligations. In both experiments participants reported the levels of guilt they felt, and these scores tracked generosity of offers in the disappointment conditions, but not in the anger ones.

In these experiments anger reactions more consistently elicited generous offers from a participant, but Lelieveld’s team have also published work showing that the effects of anger also fluctuate, dependent on how powerful the counterpart is perceived to be. The takeaway is that emotions don’t have a deterministic effect on negotiation behaviour, but generate different influences depending on the framing of a situation.

Gert-Jan Lelieveld, Eric Van Dijk, Ilja Van Beest, & Gerben A. Van Kleef (2013). Does Communicating Disappointment in Negotiations Help or Hurt? Solving an Apparent Inconsistency in the Social-Functional Approach to Emotions Journal of Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0033345


Further reading:
Morris, M. W., & Keltner, D. (2000). How emotions work: An analysis of
the social functions of emotional expression in negotiations. Research in
Organizational Behavior, 22, 1–50. doi:10.1016/S0191-3085(00)22002-9

Subgroups in teams: when two is the worst number

Every team contains the seed of the subgroup – a group that forms within a group. Common interests, background, or habits may lead some people to interact in their own specific dynamic. There isn't yet a research consensus on the consequences of subgroups, but happily a new paper by Andrew Carton and Jonathon Cummings helps us understand the context in which there can be benefits or burdens.

One area that researchers agree on is the disruptive nature of especially strong fault lines: deep differences between team members that allow subgroups to emerge. If a minority of a group are white, young, female, and of a technical background, and the remainder share none of those attributes, the team are likely to be fragmented and performance will suffer . But before now other questions have remained unanswered: is it worse to have more or fewer subgroups? And is it better if they are balanced, of a similar size?

The study looked at 326 teams from a food service and processing company, all participants in an internal tournament to demonstrate excellence through actions like developing better customer service. Carton and Cummings developed an algorithm that examined several possible fault lines in each team to determine whether it contains subgroups, and if so, how many and on what basis. These subgroup features were then related to how the team performed in the tournament.

The researchers predicted that number and balance of subgroups have different effects depending on the fault lines that define them. Identity-based fault lines, including age and gender,  are strong lines that can encourage in-group/out-group thinking. As expected, groups that contained two, evenly matched identity-based subgroups performed worse than any other combination, as this 'us and them' situation can increase territoriality, where both sides feel threatened by the other.

Knowledge-based fault lines occur when a subgroup shares different sources of information, such as when they have a different reporting channel in the business. These lack overt in-group cues, and  so they’re less disruptive. In fact  they offer multiple perspectives – handy for solving problems. As predicted, the more of these, the better, and more so when the groups were balanced in number, as this reduces the likelihood that voices are discounted.

The categorisation of subgroups by algorithm, without any validation, seems a limitation of the study. We don't actually know if team 23 actually had two subgroups based on gender, only that the algorithm was satisfied there would be. I would like to see follow-up work that verifies the finding is genuinely due to grouping factors, not the mix of members in a more general sense. Nevertheless, it takes us a step closer to understanding team performance, and how decisions about team composition can have emergent effects upon performance.

Carton AM, & Cummings JN (2013). The impact of subgroup type and subgroup configurational properties on work team performance. The Journal of applied psychology, 98 (5), 732-58 PMID: 23915429

Further reading:
Cohen, S. G., & Bailey, D. E. (1997). What makes teams work: Group effectiveness research from the shop floor to the executive suite. Journal of Management, 23, 239 –290. DOI:10.1177/014920639702300303
 

Reshape your job to get more of what you want

It's possible to proactively shape our job to get more of what we want , but harder to shed the hassles we don't. So suggests a new study on job crafting, the process of realigning your own work duties and environment to be better for you.

The study looked at two elements of work – demands and resources – which we've discussed before . Demands are twofold: unhelpful and costly hindrances like emotionally tiring activities; and challenges such as high workload, which can be beneficial by ramping up motivation (this is the stance taken in the current study). The other type of job characteristic is the job resource: a helpful feature that can be structural, like opportunities to build skills, or social, such as receiving support from co-workers.

An Erasmus University team led by Maria Tims measured job demands and resources in a sample of 288 chemical plant workers, and all participants received feedback on their scores in every area, together with standardised advice on how one might improve in each. One month later, the researchers visited the sample again to survey any changes participants had elected to make; a month after that, demands and resources were measured again.

Participants who had elected to craft their job in ways related to resources – e.g. 'Last month, I tried to do new things at work' showed an increase in that resource by the final time point. Wellbeing measures, taken at the start and end of the study, showed that crafting of either social or structural resources led to higher work engagement and satisfaction, and lower burnout; this effect was explained by the increase in resources.

Participants were much less active in trying to craft job demands, and the efforts they made didn't shift the amount of demand experienced at the final time point. The only effect found was that crafting challenging demands led to lower burnout; the authors explanation for this is that the mere fact of engaging in job crafting might affect wellbeing even before any concrete improvements are seen.

Job redesign is a fascinating area, and this paper represents a current of growing interest in the bottom-up crafting actions that employees can take to improve their own conditions. The findings suggest that for those in a role, it's an easier task to develop your resources than to reduce the demands placed upon you. As a consequence, Tims's team conclude that 'management interventions should focus more on the effects of job demands on employee well-being', to deal with the factors that are more difficult to budge from the bottom.

Tims M, Bakker AB, & Derks D (2013). The impact of job crafting on job demands, job resources, and well-being. Journal of occupational health psychology, 18 (2), 230-40 PMID: 23506549

Further reading:
Crawford, E. R., LePine, J. A., & Rich, B. L. (2010). Linking job demands and resources to employee engagement and burnout: A theoretical extension and meta-analytic test. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 834 – 848. doi:10.1037/a0019364

A non-native accent makes it harder to get hired or funded

One in 33 people work in a country other than their birth country. In most cases, these people's communications carry a mark of their foreignness, in the form of a non-native accent. In a new  study, Laura Huang, Marcia Frideger and Jone Pearce investigate how accent amounts to a glass ceiling for high performing non-natives that prevents them from obtaining elite positions.

In a first experiment , 179 principally White and Asian students were asked to listen to audio recordings of a candidate interviewed for a middle management role, where the script was always the same. However, the photo on the candidate CV showed the candidate to be either White or Asian in appearance, and the accent of the actor playing the candidate on the audio was either native US, or non-native: Japanese-sounding for the Asian photo, Russian-sounding for the White photo. Afterwards participants rated the candidate on a number of measures, including their recommendation of whether to hire.

Participants gave stronger hiring endorsements to candidates with native accents, regardless of race. This alone could reflect a perception that the speakers were hard to understand (although their words were identical), or a gut animosity toward an outgroup member. But Huang’s team believed that people make a specific attribution about non-native accents – that the person lacks political skill. After all, past evidence suggests people associate these accents with lower social awareness and levels of persuasion, both necessary for politicking. And prejudices are safer expressed by criticising something as nebulous and subjective as political skill. As predicted, native-accent candidates were ranked as having more political skill, and this mediated the hiring recommendations. No such effect was found for ratings of communication, nor of collaboration, which one would expect to be affected if participants were generally denigrating outgroup members.

In a second experiment, the authors showed the effect to extend to investment decisions. Participants coded 90 videos of genuine pitches made by entrepreneurs at a funding event, only 30 of which led to offers of funding. Entrepreneurs with non-native accents were less likely to receive funding, with race again having no bearing. True to form, political skill as judged by the coders tracked the success of the pitches, whereas communication and collaborative skill did not. This study is especially important considering that ambitious non-natives anticipating glass ceilings in organisations may decide to start their own; this result suggests they may still face similar impediments.

The researchers conclude that  'the ambiguity and importance of political skill make it an attractive ostensibly meritocratic reason to block non-native speakers from executive positions'. They suggest that those faced with these impediments could anticipate, name, and allay these concerns, highlighting their political skills to decision-makers. And those decision-makers should themselves become conscious of this bias to prevent hasty attributions.

Huang L, Frideger M, & Pearce JL (2013). Political Skill: Explaining the Effects of Nonnative Accent on Managerial Hiring and Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions. The Journal of Applied Psychology PMID: 23937299

Further reading:
Gluszek, A. & Dovidio, J. F. (2010). The way they speak: A social psychological perspective on the stigma on nonnative accents in communication. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14: 214-237.