Year in Review: Finding the Balance

Our final roundup focuses on making tangible changes to find a better balance for your working life.

How is your office arranged? Research suggests that open-plan offices aren't delivering the expected benefits to productivity. In particular, workers feel even less able to freely communicate, thanks to noise and lack of privacy making the exchange of sensitive information more difficult. How might we better organise the workplace? A recent review recommends that we align how we work with fundamentals of human nature. An active species with most of its evolutionary history spent firmly in natural surroundings, we thrive in sunlit, plant-filled environments, and operate better when not forced to spend the day in a sedentary seated position - hence the advent of standing desks. Moreover, our bodies are built for napping, and for non-human companionships, so workplaces with a crash-out room or a canine team member may be ahead of the curve.

For the self-employed, you might imagine that the work environment is a non-issue - after all, home should already be a nice and comfortable place! In fact, it's even more important for home-workers to find a way to shape their environment and ensure that its separate functions - work and home – are given appropriate forms. Often, blurring between the two seems to lead to frustration and makes it harder to maintain productivity. Research shared in a 2013 symposium suggests that many academics may also need to improve their ‘boundary management’ and find ways to switch off, such as avoiding work emails in evening times. However, the symposium also presented a model of work-life balance with a range of functional strategies. Whereas many people seek separation, others can find flow in an 'always-on' state where home and work life are integrated together.

Then come the times when you’re not at work, but you certainly aren’t off-duty. Business trips bring their own stresses, and we now understand more about what is likely to heighten them, such as travel that involves a destination very different from your home culture. This is because culturally unfamiliar contexts rob you of many of the tools and tricks you normally use to navigate setbacks, obstacles and crises. This will resonate if you've ever stood in line at passport control, or sat in a lounge surrounded by furious delayed passengers, and realised that you have no inkling of the etiquette for queuing, complaining, or simply asking for help.

What happens when you're looking for a broader change, one not covered by reshaping your office or an evening email curfew? At such a point we often turn to others for help. Looking at the evidence base for coaching, we see that although it is substantial in some ways, it still lacks a body of systematic science demonstrating comparative benefit compared to other methods of development. Researchers are busy trying to change this situation - see our upcoming post on strengths-based coaching.

Meanwhile there are other more self-directed approaches for clarifying your wants, needs and priorities. Within your job, try reviewing your current situation and then redesigning it to look more like a job you'd jump at if you saw it advertised. Evidence suggests that you may find it easier to introduce more of what you like in the job than to get rid of what you don't, but keep an open mind and be inventive. And if you're not comfortable with where you are, researchers are currently exploring the power of narrative and creative writing as a method of self-career counselling.

In sum, to balance your working life, don't neglect the importance of place. Recognise your own ways of juggling work and home demands and see what's working and what isn't. And use coaching or self-counselling to empower yourself to make the changes that will benefit your career.

Year in Review: Attraction and assessment

Last year as ever we covered research on how we get people into jobs, and how they perform in them. To kick us off, here's a few fascinating findings unearthed by our colleague Christian Jarrett from the Research Digest.

Firstly, it's hard to spot liars. In a study asking participants to watch videos of genuine and bogus accounts of previous jobs, their ability to tell one from the other was barely better than by guessing. But the headline was that many participants were hardened interviewers, yet their performance was no better than those who had never conducted an interview before. Interview experience may still help with validation: in a dynamic interview, techniques are available to probe and explore, which may provide more critical perspectives. But in terms of 'reading the signs', veterans don't do better.

How do we recruit high performers in a competitive field? Increasingly, it seems, organisations are going to greater lengths to stand out from the crowd - see this media account of the Cicada 3301 mystery if you want an extreme example to occupy your afternoon. And research suggests the basic concept is solid: holding everything constant, a less typical method of reaching out to your applicant base, such as a postcard rather than an email, may produce better results: in a recent experiment, providing Google with a response rate of 5% rather than 1%.

Before you get around to assessing your applicants, it’s important to ensure you get suitable people to apply in the first place. A big part of this is candidate quality, but recent research argues that quantity may be more important than we think, especially if we are worried about cheating. Mathematical models suggest that even if cheating is profligate, were you to test enough people – and so free to be more selective, taking the top 20% rather than top 50% - you could end up selecting higher-calibre candidates than if you stuck with a cheat-proof but low-volume process.

What are modern recruitment methods actually assessing? Industry best practice involves identifying criteria that matter to the job, and then trying to obtain a distinct measure of each. But a body of research suggests candidates who do well are often coasting on a meta-ability, the 'ability to identify criteria', meaning how well you can figure out what is expected of you in a situation. Research this year suggests that we may need to accept that this ability, ATIC, is useful for performing the job, just as it is in getting the job, by allowing you to discern the course of action that is likely to satisfy others or fulfil unspoken expectations of managers, customers or stakeholders.. This asks hard questions about how we should design selection processes: high-ATIC candidates can’t show their stuff when assessment criteria are transparent and obvious to all, so might ambiguous jobs be better assessed for using ambiguous processes? A provocative idea to chew on.

We assume extraverts sell more and that cognitive ability is always an asset in jobs. Yet both these taken-for-granted facts were held up for scrutiny this year. Evidence suggested that 'ambiverts' who sit between the extravert and introvert extremes tend to do better in sales roles: in the study in question, earning $151 revenue every hour vs. $115 for the highly extraverted. Meanwhile, a body of research argues that high cognitive ability can actually be a liability for certain types of work [such as?], but a critical review disputes this, claiming that all else being equal, "the smarter you are, the better you will perform on just about any complex task."

Not every candidate can be successful, so it's useful to know who feels hard done by; after all, these people are your customers, partners, or prospective applicants of the future. Research suggests that candidates are likely to believe they were given a fair shake if their personality resembles one of two constellations: Resilient types or 'going with the flow' Bohemians. Those of an Overcontrolling disposition are more liable to feel victimised by unwelcome results.

Sometimes candidates are genuinely victimised. Evidence suggests that candidates with a non-native accent are less likely to be hired, on the pretext that the candidate doesn't appear politically savvy - a nebulous judgment hard to prove or disprove. Employers should ensure that checks and balances are in place to avoid such systematic prejudice squeezing talented individuals from the system.

So what to do, hirers of the world? Be realistic: it may be harder to eliminate cheating than to soften its effects. And your processes may not be purely measuring what you want, but still capturing candidates with the capability to do their job. And, rather than relying on interviewer superpowers, use checks and balances and appropriate weighting to make sure a bogus interview doesn't blow you away. Don't abide by stereotypes: look harder at that quietly confident salesperson, or that impassioned presentation from that entrepreneur with an accent. Cognitive ability remains important for job performance. Ultimately, to catch the best and brightest, it could be down to you to be creative in your recruitment methods.

Year in Review: Ill feelings and Worn-down Workers

How are you feeling? Workplace research is paying more and more attention to this question.

Last year we covered a number of papers on surface acting – effortfully managing your emotions and manufacturing the expression deemed ‘correct’ for the situation. This is common in interactions with customers, but recent research identifies this behaviour as a factor in internal meetings and shows long-term ill effects from continual cover-ups.

We discovered individual differences in how much we can weather surface acting: individuals with high levels of 'affect spin' - meaning higher peaks and lower troughs of their emotional world - find it more fatiguing. But day-to-day, we can employ techniques that defuse the emotions that we otherwise struggle to tame. One of these is mindfulness, which helps us by depersonalising the experience and interrupting thought processes that lead us into frustration.

Surface acting is best used rarely, but what other patterns habits? should we be shedding? Research uncovered a range of factors that transform work problems into vicious circles.

How are you avoiding your problems? If you’re engaging in escapist thoughts about how outside forces will fix everything, you may be letting things pile up. But if you are mentally detaching yourself from them during downtime, the psychological distance this creates is going to help you cope and solve those problems. When we don’t detach, we ruminate - and we know that keeping problems ever-present wears us down.

A recent study suggests that it’s easier to escape rumination over a conflict with a colleague if we’re able to identify a clear source of the disagreement. When we can’t, we end up worrying about whether the spat was motivated by personal dislike, and the consequences this has for the working environment. This is a perfect example of the new concept of Toxic Emotional Experiences, which argues that most negative encounters aren’t damaging to our psychological health unless they are identified as part of a pattern of toxic experience that won't go away - the persistently sarcastic boss or perennially failing database.

A further vicious cycle, and a profound one for society: a personal tendency to be hostile makes you more likely to be unemployed. And being unemployed increases your tendency to act in hostile ways.

In all this evaluation of negative feeling it’s important to remember that it can serve important functions – here are two that were identified this year.

Negative emotional displays may help you do better in negotiations. In a recent study, disappointment could signal to a counterpart that an offer is woefully insufficient and lead them to greater generosity. (But avoid insincere displays - remember the perils of surface acting!)

Contrary to general understanding, unending positivity may not be a panacea for creative tasks. Research suggests that starting negative may be beneficial, for two reasons: negativity may help you detect things that need to change, and give you an impetus to do it. In addition, the evidence suggests that the process of switching from a negative to a positive mood widens the associations available in your memory network, providing more of the connections that feed creativity.

The message from all these findings? Look after yourself! Don't rely on surface acting to get you through - use mindfulness techniques to process emotions in a more healthy way, or better yet, address the reasons why the workplace is putting you at odds with yourself. Avoid rumination, and look for the benign explanation for a spat - maybe Ted really does need the photocopier in the North-East corner. If you identify that your life has one or more toxic emotional experiences that keep rearing up, tackle them directly. But don't see negative emotions as an enemy: in context, they can even be useful. We want to be accessible to our range of feelings, but not let them, or worrying thoughts, become our masters.

Year in Review: Bad Behaviour, Bullies, and Borderline Bosses

Continuing our review of work psychology in 2013, one trend concerned the shadow side of the workplace. Psychopaths, it seemed, were looming around every corner, ruining organisations left, right and centre. The truth? Well it so happened that we covered the biggest review to date of workplace psychopathy research. It tentatively suggests relatively higher incidence of psychopathic traits in senior positions. Psychopathy is associated with more passive leadership styles, more unethical decision-making in business contexts and prioritisation of innovation over nurturing of team members. The overall consequences of this on organisational performance are hard to detect, although the effect is likely to be detrimental rather than beneficial (see link for all these findings).

More recent data suggests that, despite the impressions that you might get from watching too many reality shows, entrepreneurialism isn't boosted by psychopathy - although some elements may overlap. And an overview on bad leadership suggests that, never mind psychopathy, there are all manner of personality disorders that may afflict those at the top and may explain those occasional, but spectacular, high level flame-outs.

Moving away from darkness in leadership, we covered some other areas of antagonism. Qualitative research points to some of the holes we need to plug to make sure anti-bullying policies work. We discovered that in environments where racial slurs are thrown about, those who maintain the culture through their silence tend to be not just avoidant but tacit supporters: they tend to be those members of the majority race who report more investment in their racial identity and in the domination of out-groups.

We discovered how an advisor who declares a conflict of interest may be benefiting from a kind of sneaky psychological trick. Instead of making it easier for the customer to judge the true worth of the options, declaring an interest reveals to the customer that the advisor would lose out if they don't take the recommendation, adding a subtle pressure, especially in a face-to-face discussion with a trusted advisor.

We also found how skewed perceptions lead to premature evaluations of women as combative, when similar conflicts between two men are considered as just part of normal work interaction. This may be the origin of those 'Queen Bee' articles that circulate from time to time, and the lack of corresponding male stereotypes (King Kongs?).  Speaking of perceptions, we were also introduced to the idea of the 'sexual performance' at work – the flirt-for favour, for example - and how common it’s likely to be. Those who are marked out as 'sexual operators' may simply have fallen foul of the organisation's unspoken limits.

How can we challenge these things? The research suggests that a single voice can make a change: for instance, if the seller in a negotiation is aiming for win-win outcomes, both sides will end up better off, even if the buyer is only in it for themselves. And some people are more naturally inclined to make such a difference, such as the subset of conscientious people who put duty, rather than personal achievement, as the priority for how they operate. These people are more likely to speak out to achieve genuine organisational change.

One change that might be fruitful is to reduce the control that controlling people have. Evidence suggests that more autocratic people can dampen down collaboration, but only if their injunctions carry formal weight. Otherwise, people are able to muddle forward.

Regardless of the specifics around psychopathy, organisations should continue to take care with their leadership, mindful of the wealth of derailing qualities that can lead to disaster. Meanwhile, dysfunction in employees can be in the eye of the beholder. And speaking out is key for organisational improvement - on specific, charged issues such as racism, as well as broader concerns.

Year in Review: Meshing with the rest

Reviewing the research we featured in 2013, one theme that jumped out to me was the search for that elusive formula that helps people align and click with each other. We talked about managers last post, but as important as they are, most of us spend as much or more time interacting with peers. How do we make that work?

First impressions matter. Putting yourself in a positive and empowered mindset before meeting a new team leads to people giving you a higher status during the meeting - and that tends to get fixed long-term. However, we also learned that initial status can shift in unexpected ways: extraversion is a good short-term tool for getting people to pay attention to you, but after a couple of months the novelty wears off (or becomes actively overbearing). By this point, quieter and less positive neurotics have busied away with getting stuff done, to acquire social approval and appear competent. As a consequence, their value rises in team-mates’ eyes. The lesson from is that it's good to take a positive, empowered and more extraverted stance early in team relationships, but not hang on too hard to extravert behaviours. A less extraverted, more neurotic individual who takes a moment to get into a good mental state before their first team meeting may be on to a winner.

What about team diversity? The research here is getting more nuanced, and we now have evidence that teams that split into two effective identities - old-schoolers versus overseas MBAs, for instance - tend to perform worse due to tribalism and lack of communication. More than two is actually a better situation for assimilation. And teams that have a clear emphasis on learning as an outcome benefit more from diversity, as taking the time to better understand the different points of view offered by a diverse team is seen as sensible, rather than a distraction from getting-it-done. So to make more of diverse members, prize learning and avoid forming binary factions.

Sometimes, helping out is just a matter of recognising that you need to pull your weight. When slackers find out that they are spoiling the system for others, they get more proactive and helpful in all sorts of ways. And some people just tend to help out - including people who have ADHD, who may prioritise assistance of others over their own tasks and deadlines. Overall, we're getting a better picture of what 21st century helping behaviours look like, as part of the broader 21st century organisational citizenship behaviours that differentiate a great place to work.

Offer advice when it's likely to be heard - such as when people are in the right emotional states. It's not simply about good and bad moods, however. When we're feeling good about other people, we're generally open to input. But when we feel good about ourselves, we  inflate our sense of competence and are less interested in other perspectives. Negative emotions show a flip-flop effect. So if you think someone needs to hear some advice, pay attention to the state that they are in and time your contribution accordingly.

• If you are shaping a team, you should design for best use of diversity: promoting learning outcomes and balancing membership to avoid us-versus-them situations.
• If you are joining a team, start with a positive attitude but be aware of what the team really needs long-term.
• If you want to make your team run better, you should communicate what acceptable behaviour looks like, what poor behaviour costs us all, and what standout behaviours help the organisation go beyond expectations.

Year in Review: Lead Well, Follow Fairly

We've had another rich year at the Occupational Digest, so before it fades, we're taking the time to review some of the themes and common findings that could be helpful in 2014. This first post looks at leader-follower relations.

There was plenty of research on the give and take between leader and follower, and the ways this can fall out of balance. This can be due to a clash of expectations: for instance, managers are likely to see emotional support of those they manage as something over-and-above their normal duties. They expect their employees to reciprocate in kind, but employees just don't see it that way. In their eyes, managers are paid to support them. Not addressing or recognising this mismatch can demoralise managers expecting appreciation for being a 'toxin handler' of other people's negative emotions.

Manager expectations in themselves can be a powerful alignment tool, drawing more performance out of those judged to 'have the stuff' by inspiring them and painting a picture of what is possible. But a theoretical paper explains that the reason why this so-called Pygmalion effect doesn't always hold may be because some leaders aren't trusted enough for their followers to take a risk and make big changes.

Newcomers into an organisation gather their sense of how much the organisation is willing to support them in their early days on the job. If that support starts to tail off, employees become less committed to the organisation and make fewer proactive efforts to fit in themselves, presumably because they feel that their newly-formed expectations have been dashed. So abandoning newcomers after a big hands-on induction week could have real problems down the line.

Leaders may have expectations about us, but we also have expectations about them. Demanding our leaders act accountably appears to be particularly important when the leader is an outsider - a business pro heading up a research institute, for instance. Data suggests that the necessity of justifying their actions leads them to make decisions that are more favourable to their team members. Meanwhile, we're relatively tolerant of tentative behaviour from leaders, willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that the situation merited careful behaviour. Unless they are a woman, in which case we judge them for it.

Meanwhile, when it comes to leadership style, we've reported on data that suggests both directive (perform work as I have told you to) and empowering (find your own routes to delivering outcomes) leadership styles can have performance benefits, in the appropriate contexts. Empowerment, it appears, can reap long-term rewards relative to direction, but often at the cost of immediate performance. And transformational leadership, sometimes considered a 'holy grail', appears to matter more when followers are low in energy, less curious and fairly pessimistic. Employees with naturally positive mindsets don't benefit so much from the transformational leader's inspiration and motivational effect - because they are in a good place to begin with.

There is no single optimal way to lead: a team's aims and general attitude matters, as does each individual follower, in terms of how much they trust you and where they are in their organisational journey. And employees should be fair to leaders: avoiding discriminatory judgments, obviously, but also by recognising the emotional investments that good managers are making in them. And of course, when managers don't offer top-notch support, it's all the more important to pick up the mantle and proactively engage with the best of what the organisation has to offer.