Radical Reflection Challenge - Day Two - Success

It is day two of the radical reflection challenge. Yesterday we explored our values and the need to reassess our lives against these values from time to time. Today we are focused on success.

Success is a tricky topic to cover for a range of reasons. Success is different for different people. Society tends to portray certain things in the context of success - whether that be wealth, fame, beauty or anything else. There is a risk of chasing others’ definitions of success. It is all too easy to adopt someone else’s view of what success should be, rather than having our own definition of success.

Here are a few key thoughts about success:

1. You can and should define what success means for you. If you don’t define success, then someone else will. It is all too easy to climb a ladder only to discover it is leaning against the wrong wall - don’t let that happen to you. You define success for you.

2. It’s okay for your definition of success to change over time. It is sometimes easier to think of success relating to seasons of your life. For example, your idea of success might be different when you’re studying, early in your career, in the middle of your career, later in your career, and in your retirement. Sure, your values may be consistent, but it is fine to change your definition of success to reflect the season you are in.

3. Success is accomplishment. It is completing or achieving something. It is a point in time - a moment when you know you’re successful. So if you want to be successful, you need to set goals. And once you have been successful, you need to set some new goals.

4. Success can feel pretty pointless by yourself. We are created as social beings. Are there people you can team up with in pursuit of success? Are there people you can cheer on? Then why not partner up with them.

You will find some questions to help you reflect about success in your workbook. Make sure you note down some thoughts.

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Radical Reflection Challenge - Day One - Values

Welcome to day one of the radical reflection challenge. I am looking forward to working with you across the next five days. Each day starts with a brief introduction just like this one, followed by an activity in your workbook which you can complete at any point during the day. If you haven’t downloaded the workbook as yet, you will find it at leadership.today/radical or follow the link in the show notes.

We are starting our challenge by examining our values. Perhaps you already know what you value and hold to be most important in life. Maybe you haven’t given your values much thought, or perhaps it has been a while since you reflected on your values.

Values are central to who we are. They influence what we do, how we do it and, most importantly, why we do it. However it’s easy to lose sight of our values. Often times we find ourselves balancing competing priorities. For example, you might really value time with your family and friends, while also valuing financial security. Your quest for financial security may lead you to work longer and longer hours, reducing the time you have available to spend with family and friends. 

In this way, I don’t believe values are something we set and forget. It’s important to assess and re-assess what we value. Our values may change over time. It may be that things that used to be really important to us are now less important. I’m sure you know someone who has had a health diagnosis that caused them to question their values in fundamental ways. Maybe you have had a similar experience that caused you to reassess. 

I know for me the loss of a parent when I was in my 20s caused a radical shift in my values. Things that I had placed my hope and confidence in were revealed to be less secure than I thought. It made me reconsider what really mattered to me.

I believe reflecting on our values regularly, whether that’s once or twice per year, provides a foundation for deeper reflections on our life. It’s very easy for our life to drift off course away from the things that matter to us most. Reflecting on our values is a great check of how we are directing our focus, our time and our energies.

In your workbook you will find a simple values questionnaire. Read through the list of values, then choose the ten that appeal to you most. You can then reduce that list down to a top three. I then want you to reflect on your life at present, and the extent to which it aligns with those values. In what ways are you currently aligned? In what areas might your values be challenged currently? 

As well as completing the reflection in the workbook, I encourage you to grab a friend to complete this week’s challenge with. It’s always better to learn with others.

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Radical Reflection Challenge - Introduction

Hi everyone. The Leadership Today podcast is going to be a little different over the next week. We are going to be undertaking what I have called the Radical Reflection Five Day Challenge. I believe most leaders are suffering from what I call reflection deficit, so this challenge aims to tackle that head on. 

The challenge is running live from 22nd to 26th February 2021 at Leadership Today On-Demand, which is our video-based subscription service. You can always sign up for a 30 day trial to get involved that way. The other option is to go to leadership.today/radical to learn more and download the workbook.

So what are you signing up for here? Each morning starts with a brief introduction to the challenge for that day. The workbook then includes a range of reflection activities to support your reflections. I’ve included all of the links in the show notes. I’m confident this challenge can make a huge difference for you personally and in your leadership. I’m looking forward to working with you across the week. 

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Episode 107 - When Should I Set a Stretch Goal?

Summary

Stretch goals are incredibly popular for individuals and organisations. But are they effective? It depends. This week we explore how to know when to set a stretch goal.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 107 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how to know when to set a stretch goal.

Stretch goals are incredibly popular for individuals and organisations. But are they effective? Well, that depends.

The modern application of stretch goals can most likely be attributed Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. They coined the term Big Hairy Audacious Goal in their book Built to Last. The book encourages people to set extraordinary stretch goals. But, importantly, these goals are typically set across a long-term time frame of 10 to 25 years. By way of example, when Bill Gates and Paul Allen first started Microsoft they talked to each other about having a computer on every desk and in every home decades before that became reality. That all sounds great - I set myself or my organisation a Big Hairy Audacious Goal for 20 years into the future and chase after it. The problem is that people are applying this approach to one year goals, which was never the intent. Microsoft did not have a one or two year goal to have a computer on every desk - that would have been ridiculous. Instead they used that ambitious goal to draw them forward through years of steady progress.

Shorter-term stretch goals are not always right. The work of Sitkin, Miller and See is really helpful for us to understand when a stretch goal might make sense.

In their 2017 HBR article the authors outline two conditions that are important to consider before setting a stretch goal:

1. Recent performance. Are you coming from a recent history of success and performance, or of failure and underperformance? Recent success provides the mindset and motivation required to apply to the challenge. This is particularly important.

2. Excess resources. Do we have additional resources available that aren’t already committed? Is there some slack in the system? Stretch goals require committed resources, not just business as usual.

The perfect time to set a stretch goal is when you have recently been successful and you have available uncommitted resources. People will have the motivation, mindset and capacity to chase that stretch goal. Even if you have been successful, if you don’t have the required additional resources you are setting people up for failure.

But hang on - so if I don’t have recent success, are the authors saying I shouldn’t set a stretch goal even if I have available resources? Where there are available resources but not a recent history of success, the authors suggest running more modest experiments that you can afford to fail. Rather than setting stretch goals, it is better in these situations to work on quick fail experiments. Here you try new things that aren’t huge bets, and celebrate giving things a go. As these experiments begin to work, you will build that track record of success needed to then set stretch goals.

If you haven’t recently been successful and lack spare resources, then stretch goals are not your friend. Instead the authors suggest you should chase small wins - taking those small steps forward until you do have a track record of success. Then your people will feel more confident to reach out towards a stretch goal.

A stretch goal needs a recent track record of success and dedicated resources. Too often people set a stretch goal as a last gasp opportunity for redemption - that’s exactly the wrong time. So, yes, absolutely dream big for the 10 to 25 year future. But then consider the kind of goals you set based on your performance to date and the resources you are willing to commit.

I hope you found that helpful. As always, a link to the reference used is in the show notes.

If you want to become an even better leader, then I’m sure Leadership Today On-Demand can help. It’s where we have all of our online courses, recorded webinars, and quick hits on a broad range of topics, all available with one subscription. Go to leadership.today and follow the on-demand link to sign up for a completely free 30 day trial. 

Have a great week.

Reference

The Stretch Goal Paradox by Sim B. Sitkin, C. Chet Miller, and Kelly E. See. Harvard Business Review (January-February 2017).

https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-stretch-goal-paradox

Episode 106 - The Power of Belief in Potential

Summary

What we think about people has an impact not just on how we personally perceive them, but also on their actual behaviour. There’s power when we believe in someone’s potential.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 106 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore the power of belief in potential.

What we think about people has an impact not just on how we personally perceive them, but also on their actual behaviour. It’s an example of selective attention bias with some expectancy bias thrown in for good measure. If you think that someone is lazy, you will notice everything that they do that appears lazy. You will also ignore anything they do that is energetic and active. So, over time, we just end up thinking that they’re more and more lazy. But, on top of that, we will also modify the way we work with that person. This in turn will lead to them acting in ways that appear even more lazy. We might give them less work to complete, so they end up having more spare time. They might become less engaged, and so seem more lazy. In short, the actions we take can make the other person end up being more lazy.

A recent study demonstrated this impact in a college environment. Through some laboratory and field studies, the researchers discovered that a professor’s mindset about student learning had remarkable positive and negative impacts on those students. For example, when a professor had lower expectations that people could develop and grow, their students demonstrated lower class attendance, reduced engagement in class, less end of semester interest in the subject, they felt more like an impostor in the class, and they even delivered lower grades. So if a professor (who is effectively the leader of learning) thinks you’re not likely to learn, then you, in turn, will actually be less likely to learn. In contrast, if the leader thinks you have potential to learn and grow, you’re much more likely to learn and grow.

In a work context, we often inherit a perspective about a person we lead. “This person is a trouble maker” or “this person doesn’t deliver”. The risk is that we perpetuate and multiply this perspective through our behaviour towards that person. 

Here are five ways to challenge our thinking and demonstrate belief in others’ potential:

1. Reset your expectations. Think about how you see others and give them another chance. Let’s expect that people can improve, grow and develop.

2. State your positive expectations. It’s what you say that matters. If you think someone is fantastic but never say it, they may completely miss it.

3. Challenge negative appraisals you might make. Is it more about you than them? What evidence might you have to the contrary?

4. Challenge negative appraisals others make about people. If you hear others perpetuating negative beliefs about people, appropriately challenge them.

5. Challenge negative appraisals others make about themselves. Sometimes people perpetuate their own limiting beliefs. Why wouldn’t others believe the person? Use the opportunity to challenge people who consistently run themselves down.

As leaders, what we think about others matters. It shapes not only our perceptions, but also their behaviour. Think about ways you can demonstrate a greater belief in others’ potential. 

Well that’s the end of this week’s episode. As always, the reference used is in the show notes.

A quick reminder that our brand new Leading Through Change and Uncertainty online course is now available at Leadership Today On-Demand. It’s video based so you can go at your own pace and work through the content in any order. Just go to Leadership.Today website and follow the On-Demand link to find out more and to sign up for a free 30 day trial. We also offer a 25% discount for groups, so it’s a great option for your team and organisation. Take a look at Leadership Today On-Demand - it’s just like online fitness training for your leadership.

Have a great week, and I look forward to speaking with you again next week.

Reference

Muenks, K., Canning, E. A., LaCosse, J., Green, D. J., Zirkel, S., Garcia, J. A., & Murphy, M. C. (2020). Does my professor think my ability can change? Students’ perceptions of their STEM professors’ mindset beliefs predict their psychological vulnerability, engagement, and performance in class. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(11), 2119–2144. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000763

Episode 105 - Strategic Foresight

Summary

How do you plan when the future is uncertain? Strategic foresight is a great approach to figuring out how to think about the future.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 105 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore strategic foresight and how to think about the future when things are uncertain.

It’s a classic challenge - how do we lead others through times of uncertainty when we’re not clear ourselves? Perhaps our industry is going through significant change. Or perhaps you report into a leadership team that haven’t provided a clear strategy and direction. We can’t just make things up - that’s not fair on our team - so what do we do?

What we need is strategic foresight, which is outlined in a great Harvard Business Review article with the intriguing title - Learning from the Future.

The author of the article, J Peter Scoblic, says of strategic foresight that the “aim is not to predict the future but rather to make it possible to imagine multiple futures in creative ways that heighten our ability to sense, shape, and adapt to what happens in the years ahead. Strategic foresight doesn’t help us figure out what to think about the future. It helps us figure out how to think about it.”

He outlined the following six stage process for Strategic Foresight - invite, identify, imagine, inhabit, isolate and implement:

• The first stage is INVITE - we need to invite the right people to participate. Senior leaders don’t have exclusive rights to think about the future. Rather than just involving those with the greatest responsibility, it is often better to involve those with the greatest vision. That might include some people closest to your customers, or people who have joined from other industries. We really want to bring together a group of people that are diverse in their thinking and experience, and open to new possibilities.

• The second stage is IDENTIFY - here we think about assumptions that we might be making as an organisation. We also explore the key drivers for our organisation and any uncertainties in the market.

• The third stage is called IMAGINE. This involves imagining what Scoblic describes as plausible, but dramatically different, futures. So let’s take my business as an example. We’re focus on helping people to become even better leaders. I could imagine a few different futures - where leadership development was only face-to-face, only online, some mix of the two, only live, only on-demand. From that diverse range of potential futures, I could then take the three that were most plausible.

• The fourth stage is to INHABIT each of those futures. Here we want to really experience what each future could be like, and what that might mean for us. You could encourage your team to describe what each future looks like, how people might respond, and what might or might not be possible.

• The fifth stage is to ISOLATE strategies that will be useful across multiple possible futures. Again, with my business, running through a range of options back at the end 2018 showed me that online delivery and content development was something I should focus on. It was a strategy that would work across a range of likely futures.

• The final stage is IMPLEMENT. This is where we take those strategies and put them in place.

Why not undertake a strategic foresight activity with your team. Here are some questions to help:

• What trends do you see in your market? What are the emerging opportunities and threats?

• What are some likely futures for your organisation and team? What are the three most likely futures?

• What does each future look like? What are the implications for you and your team?

• What might be common in those different futures for you and your team? How might you prepare for each of those futures?

• Is there one future that you want to actively pursue? Why? What might you do now to prepare for that?

It is great to be back for 2021 with a brand new episode, and I hope you found it helpful. I must say that 2021 feels a little bit like 2020 part 2, so I do hope you’re keeping safe and well.

I have two exciting new things to tell you about. Our Leading Through Change and Uncertainty online course is now available. If you enjoyed today’s episode then you will love this course. It’s video based so you can go at your own pace and work through the content in any order. It’s all part of Leadership Today On-Demand, so current subscribers will see it there. If you haven’t subscribed as yet, why not take our completely free 30 day trial. Just go to Leadership Today and follow the On-Demand link to find out more - or you can follow the link in the show notes. We also offer a 25% discount for groups, so it’s a great option for your team and organisation.

I see Leadership Today On-Demand as just like online fitness training for your leadership. So I’m really excited to let you know about our very first multi-day challenge. It runs from 22nd to 26th of February and the focus is on Reflection.  I believe most leaders are suffering from what I call reflection deficit, so this challenge aims to tackle that head on. Each morning starts with a brief video introducing the challenge for that day. These are backed up by a workbook that includes a range of reflection activities. It’s just like bootcamp, but with far less active wear. Check out the Radical Reflection Challenge at Leadership Today On-Demand for more details.

Have a great week, and I look forward to speaking with you again next week.

Episode 104 - The Five Most Popular Episodes of 2020

Summary

As we draw the year to a close for the Leadership Today podcast, we pause and take a look back over the five most popular episodes based on downloads.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 104 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership.  What a year, hey? A one-in-a-hundred year pandemic sent us all scrambling to figure out how to lead effectively through a truly global crisis. Nearly every organisation around the world ended up with the majority of their people working from home. We grappled with Zoom meetings, lockdowns, uncertainty and confusion. And as we draw the 2020 to a close for the Leadership Today podcast, we pause and take a look back over the five most popular episodes based on downloads. I think they provide an insight into what leaders have been focusing on, and what has been the most helpful.

Number 5. Way back in mid-February in episode 66, we explored A Leader’s Role in Removing Frustrations. We learnt that frustrations aren’t just bad for the individual, but can increase negative workplace behaviours. A key role for leaders is to help people to remove frustrations. We do that by accepting frustrations are normal, and recognising that they can always be reduced either at the cause or point of impact. While our impulse might be to avoid talking about frustrations, we are far better off encouraging people to raise them, provided we take a continuous improvement focus.

Number 4. At the start of March we discussed Five Key Leadership Challenges for 2020 and Beyond. I highlighted a reflection deficit, flatlining trust, internal competition, reluctant leaders and transactional engagement as emerging issues. It is also when I introduced the six daily practices leaders can undertake to engage and get the best out of their people. That turned into our most popular online workshop for the year - The Six Daily Practices of Remote Leadership. Check out episode 69 for more details, or you can even complete our Six Daily Practices of Remote Leadership course as part of a free 30-day trial for Leadership Today On-Demand. Links are in the show notes.

Number 3. While I may not have seen the pandemic coming in early 2020, I did have a great episode back at the start of February on The Four Core Skills for Leading in a Crisis. Episode 65 drew on research around crisis management to show the importance of identifying, acting, communicating and reviewing when it comes to a crisis. The research reminded me of the importance of identifying what we have learned once the crisis subsides. Perhaps that’s a good thing to keep in mind as we progress into 2021.

Number 2. In July we explored Ten Great Questions Leaders Ask. Being a great leader isn’t about having all the answers - it’s often about asking the right questions. And research shows that asking questions helps build both liking and learning through connections and trust. Take a look at episode 84 for a list of questions you will find helpful in your leadership.

And at Number 1 it’s probably not a surprise that our most popular episode was Ten Tips for Leading Others through the Coronavirus Pandemic. Episode 70 came on on 14th March, just as the virus was really taking hold globally. My tips were to keep informed and prepared, turn up each day, provide as much clarity as you can, remain calm, demonstrate genuine interest in others, provide meaningful work, check in regularly via video, invite others to connect, don’t miss the opportunities and don’t do it alone. It was pretty good advice, and worth reviewing. The only other thing I would add with the benefit of hindsight is to remember to check that you’re not on mute.

So that was our five most popular episodes of 2020. I will be hosting some episode replays through the remainder for December and into January 2021. It has been a privilege to share over 40 new episodes with you this year. When I started this podcast back in July 2018 I had no idea just how helpful it would be in formulating my thinking around leadership by incorporating the latest research. A big thanks to our researcher Lauren Staveley who has really helped lift the level of the podcast and the rest of the work that we do here at Leadership Today. We now have a truly global audience with just 31% of you being from my home country of Australia, and it’s a delight to see which random country the podcast might be charting in each week.

If you have found the podcast helpful this year, you know what to do - leave a rating or review and tell a friend. I look forward to sharing brand new episodes with you in February 2021 - who knows what the world will look like then! Until then, keep working on your leadership through Leadership Today On-Demand. Just go to the Leadership.Today website and follow the On-Demand link. There is hours of video-based content. If you like the podcast, you’re going to love it. I will be back to host a replay next week.

Episode 103 - Empathy in Leadership - Underrated? Overrated?

Summary

Empathy seems to be essential for effective leadership, but can it be overdone? This week we explore empathy in leadership, and whether it’s underrated or overrated.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 103 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore empathy in leadership, and whether it’s underrated or overrated.

The topic of empathy in leadership can lead to some really interesting conversations. Many leaders will talk about empathy being absolutely essential to leading others effectively - and they’re right. Others will talk about the risk of empathy leading to burnout as we take on the concerns of others - and they’re right too. So is it just a trade off? Is being empathetic to others and the impact on my own well-being just something I need to accept? Or might there be a different way of thinking about empathy altogether.

Dr Paul Ekman was the co-discoverer of micro-expressions and inspiration for the TV series Lie to Me. He describes three types of empathy - cognitive empathy, emotional empathy and compassionate empathy. 

Cognitive empathy is being able to see someone else’s perspective and understand what they might be thinking. So when a new person starts with your organisation, cognitive empathy might help you appreciate that they’re unlikely to know their way around the office. You might offer to show them around or leave them hanging. Cognitive empathy is just about perspective taking - putting yourself in their shoes to see the situation from their perspective.

Emotional empathy involves feeling what someone else is feeling. For example, if a colleague’s computer crashes and they lose a document they have been working on for an hour, emotional empathy allows me to understand that they might be frustrated and upset. After all, if I was in the same situation, that is what I would be feeling. Again, I might offer to help or try to console them, or I might just leave them to have their moment.

Compassionate empathy involves having a genuine concern for the other individual. If I’m demonstrating compassionate empathy, I don’t just understand how the other person is thinking and feeling, but I also want to help.

It’s more than likely you’ve heard someone describe the neurological basis for empathy - that we have mirror neurons that fire up when we see another person experiencing an event, and they’re the same neurons as the other person. There’s pretty good evidence for mirror neurons amongst primates. If I pick up a piece of fruit, a nearby primate might have neurons in regions associated with that movement also activate. However, the jury is still out on whether this extends to humans at an emotional level. That could well be the case but, beyond the initial excitement in the press, the jury is still out.

What is more certain is our brain’s ability to empathise with someone else’s emotions being separate from our ability to see a situation from another person’s perspective. It appears that cognitive empathy and emotional empathy have differing underlying neurological bases. Cognitive empathy appears to involve areas of the brain associated with remembering the past or fantasising about the future. Emotional empathy involves processing of things like facial expressions and speech patterns. As a result, it is entirely possible for me to demonstrate one kind of empathy without the other. For example, I could see you trying to restore that lost document and intellectually get what you are doing, but not be able to appreciate just how much that frustration is impacting your emotional state.

A great leader is able to appreciate both thoughts and feelings - to use both cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. To sustain that, the leader needs to be selective in compassionate empathy. There are times where it makes sense to get in and help - where you can see a team member is upset and needs comforting and assistance. However, in my experience, the leaders that struggle with the burden of being too empathetic over apply compassionate empathy. They’re too quick to try to solve others’ problems. They take on the fear, anxiety or sadness of others as their own. That can become crippling. It can get in the way of us making good decisions. It may even make things worse for the person we’re trying to help. As leaders, I believe we need to primarily focus on cognitive empathy and emotional empathy - to figure out how the person is thinking and feeling. Then we can determine what, if any, help we want to provide - we can choose to use compassionate empathy.

So, empathy - it’s difficult to overrate its importance to our leadership. But I think compassionate empathy can become overrated for some leaders, particularly if it means they can’t continue to be there for their people.

As always, there are links to the references that Ive used in the podcast in the show notes. A big thanks to both the British Psychological Society for their excellent research digest, and also to the team at Science Daily. I use both of those to keep across the latest research. Have a great week and I look forward to speaking with you next week.

References 

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/03/25/there-is-only-weak-evidence-that-mirror-neurons-underlie-human-empathy-new-review-and-meta-analysis/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201110090427.htm

Episode 102 - Cooperation Works Best When People Need Each Other

Summary

Collaboration and cooperation have never been more important. However, people can naturally tend towards self-interest at the expense of the greater good, particularly when they believe they personally have the resources they need. This week we explore how people cooperate more effectively when they can’t solve something on their own. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 102 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how people cooperate more effectively when they don’t have the resources to solve something on their own.

Imagine you’re living in a small community located beside a river. Everything has been great so far, however there has been recent heavy rain, and now flood waters predicted to arrive the next day. Without action, everyone in the community will lose their home to the rising flood waters. People in this small community have sand bags to help either shore up their own house, or contribute to saving the entire community by building a larger wall of sandbags to protect everyone. The catch being that everyone needs to cooperate to have enough sand bags to save the community. How do people respond to this threat to their town and household?

Recent research demonstrates that the response largely depends on the resources the individuals have at their disposal. Jorg Gross and colleagues setup a range of conditions for participants to respond to, all reflecting a similar scenario to the community at risk from a flood. Each person had some resources, equivalent to the sand bags, that they could either contribute to the community in an attempt to protect everyone, or keep in an effort to protect themselves.

The research found that when people didn’t have enough resources to save themselves individually, they were most willing to contribute to the collective effort. There was still some risk here as people could act in a self-interested way, and therefore the overall community may fail. But in most cases, where everyone had the same level of resource and not enough to save themselves, they successfully cooperated to help the broader community.

As the researchers varied the resources available to individuals, behaviour changed dramatically. Those who had enough resources to save themselves started to withhold resources from the community effort, even when that led to others failing. Similarly, those who didn’t have enough resources and could only rely on community cooperation tended to lose out as the inequities in the community increased over time. Inequality increased as the rounds continued. People began to stock pile resources at the expense of others’ immediate needs.

What’s the lesson here? If people feel they can do something on their own and don’t need others in order to succeed, they are likely to act from a position of self-interest, and are also unlikely to help others out. This continues even when others are at risk of failing or missing out. This finding has obvious implications for public policy, but also applies within our organisations. 

Most organisations survive through cooperation. Despite the silos that so often emerge, every organisation needs good will and cooperation to succeed. In most instances if my team “wins” and your team “loses”, then the overall organisation loses. Cooperation acts like conduits between the silos, helping to share around resources and knowledge. As I’ve presented before, the challenge here is the increasing identification of people with their immediate team rather than the organisation as a whole. That creates conditions where people are less likely to collaborate and cooperate across teams. When we’re focused on our own team, other teams become either a threat or a distraction. 

As leaders, it is more important than ever to help people to see the broader role they play within the organisation, not just within the team. We need to put additional effort into communicating the purpose of the organisation in a way that demonstrates the need for cooperation in order to succeed. It’s really helpful to develop a narrative about how different parts of the organisation work together to achieve the broader purpose. Individual leaders can then share that with their teams. If purpose is defined as individual teams winning, then be prepared for more competition than cooperation. 

Thanks for joining me today, and remember to check out Leadership Today On-Demand. That’s how you can access all of our recorded webinars and online courses, along with weekly quick hits on a range of topics. You can sign up for a free 30 day trial by going to our website, leadership.today, and follow the on-demand link. Have a great week.  

Reference

Gross, J., Veistola, S., De Dreu, C.K.W. et al. Self-reliance crowds out group cooperation and increases wealth inequality. Nat Commun 11, 5161 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18896-6

Episode 101 - Five Reasons Why You Still Need an Office

Summary

With the shift to working from anywhere, many people have questioned why we still need an office. For others, getting everyone back into the office is seen as mission critical. In this episode we explore five reasons why you still need an office.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 101 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore the five reasons why you still need an office.

There has been a lot of debate and discussion about the need for offices. The global pandemic revealed just how possible it was for many people to work from anywhere. This has been combined with challenges moving people back into offices, while also maintaining a safe work environment. All of this is likely to lead to a shift in thinking about the need for, and role of, offices.

Most surveys reveal a mix of people who can’t wait to get back into the office, people who never want to go in to the office again, and a larger group in the middle who want a mix. It’s easy to foresee a challenging road ahead as organisations and individuals negotiate a seemingly endless range of options for people. Some organisations will no doubt declare it all to be too hard and push most people back into the office. Others will jump at the chance to save on prime real estate and reduce their office footprint significantly if not entirely.

But much of this debate and discussion misses the core question - what do we actually need an office for? And, to be clear, this is really about why we need to get our people together, whether that’s at an office or some other venue.

Research suggests there are five main reasons to get people together:

1. Community - As people were forced to work from home, this was one of the most cited reasons why people missed the office. We are social animals and long for connection with others. Video conferencing doesn’t match the connections people can build face-to-face.

2. Collaboration - While collaboration software and platforms can help, they fail to allow the kind of constructive conflict needed to truly collaborate and generate new ideas. To be clear, I’m not saying that all collaboration needs to happen face-to-face, but there are efficiencies provided by being in the same room at the same time when deeper collaboration is required.

3. Culture - “How we do things around here” is difficult to establish and sustain when we’re not in an office together. Communicating strategy and direction, celebrating milestones and achievements, establishing agreed ways of operating - these are all much easier when we have a group of people in a room together. Without being physically together, it becomes much harder to build trust. People then tend to create identity with their team rather than the organisation. This can lead to conflict between teams and competing interests, rather than trying to work together to better the overall organisation.

4. Climate - It’s difficult to generate a consistent experience of “how it feels to work here” when people are having such diverse experiences of the workplace. Getting people together helps to create a shared climate.

5. Capability - This, I believe, is the sleeper issue in the work from anywhere movement. Picture yourself at the start of your career. How much of your development occurred just by being around more experienced people, being invited into meetings to observe, and having that chance to be mentored? All of this is harder when people aren’t together.

Now, please don’t hear me wrong - this isn’t an anti work from anywhere statement. In fact, I’ve been a work from anywhere guy for the best part of ten years. But it’s easy to overlook all the seemingly small and incidental interactions that build community, collaboration, culture, climate and capability. These accumulate over time to play a really important part in each person’s engagement, satisfaction and contribution. If people shift to two or three days in the office, it reduces all of these incidental moments by half.

To replace that, we are going to need to be far more intentional about community, collaboration, culture, climate and capability. We can no longer leave them to chance. Instead, we will, from time to time, need to bring our people together face to face with a clear purpose and focus on each of these five areas. Trying to build these virtually is inefficient. What 5 minutes together face-to-face does for building trust might take hours over email or Slack or even video conference.

So you may not need an office anymore, but you will always need to bring people together face to face. We need to be very intentional when we have that increasingly rare opportunity to all be in the same room at the same time. Make sure it happens, and make the most of it.

Thanks for joining me today, and remember to check out Leadership Today On-Demand. We have a new quick hit video posted every week which is a similar format to our podcast. On top of that are ten recorded webinars on topics like procrastination, imposter syndrome, well-being, assertiveness and influencing, with a new webinar added each month. In addition we have our online courses which you might want to check out. You can sign up for a free 30 day trial by going to our website, leadership.today, and following the on-demand link. Have a great week.

Episode 100 - In the Mood to Procrastinate

Summary

Procrastination plagues many of us. It seems we are endlessly creative at avoiding things that we know are important. This week we explore different ways to think about and avoid procrastination.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 100 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore different ways to think about and avoid procrastination.

Procrastination plagues many of us. In fact, research suggests that around 25% of people have procrastination as a defining personality trait. But whether you procrastinate all the time or just every so often, I’m sure you would love to procrastinate a little less.

And that’s not surprising, particularly given that procrastination is associated with a range of negative outcomes including low self-esteem, high pessimism, high anxiety, boredom, fatigue and detachment.

One definition of procrastination is “voluntarily delaying an intended task despite expecting to be worse off for doing so”. This highlights a few key aspects of procrastination:

1. It’s voluntary - procrastination is something that we choose to do

2. It gets in the way of our intentions - despite wanting to do one thing, we introduce something else as a replacement, even if that replacement is just staring at the ceiling

3. We know it will make things worse - procrastination never makes things easier, and we typically know that at the point we choose to procrastinate

So given all of this, why do we procrastinate? Researchers describe procrastination as “a form of self-regulation failure involving the unnecessary and voluntary delay of important tasks for the purpose of short-term mood repair.” Put simply, procrastination is about prioritising short-term mood repair over long-term goal pursuit. We procrastinate because it makes us feel better in the short-term. In fact, research demonstrates that the more negative our mood, the more time we spend procrastinating. We use procrastination to feel better. Understanding this can help us to reduce how often we procrastinate. Once we recognise that we’re actually delaying and amplifying negative mood, we can appreciate just how self-defeating procrastination can be. In addition, we can look for ways to boost our mood prior to undertaking a task where we think there is a risk of procrastination. Schedule those tasks where procrastination is a risk at the points of your day when your mood is typically most positive.

I think it’s also important to consider how you think about procrastination. Consider someone who says “I am a procrastinator” versus another person who says “I procrastinate”. The person who describes themselves as a procrastinator sees procrastination as an ongoing trait, part of their personality, and part of who they are. For that person to overcome procrastination requires a change of identity, not just a change of thoughts, feelings and behaviour. In contrast, the person who says “I procrastinate” sees procrastination as a passing state, that it is task-specific, and that it is how they act sometimes. In that case overcoming procrastination requires a change of thoughts, feelings and behaviour, but not a change in how the person sees themselves. If you want to reduce how often you procrastinate, start by thinking about procrastination as something you choose to do, rather than something that defines who you are.

We often fail in making meaningful change because we try to stop procrastinating rather than trying to pursue the opposite of procrastination. The opposite of procrastination isn’t just getting things done on time, it’s actually a state that psychologists call flow. Flow is a positive state which feels great, where time flies, where we can focus our attention, and adapt and be flexible. How do we achieve flow? A lot of it comes down to how we are led. People are more likely to achieve flow in their work when there are clear goals, flexibility or autonomy in how we achieve those goals, and immediate feedback. But we also need to be challenged and have our abilities matched to the task. As so often is the case, flow requires an environment where we are stretched and supported.

If you struggle with procrastination, here are some things to try:

1. Choose to be stretched in an area of interest - boredom increases the risk of procrastination, so we want to focus on tasks that are interesting to us

2. Set goals and deadlines to work towards - we prioritise and work harder to achieve tasks that have a deadline, so use that to your advantage

3. Boost your mood before you begin - go for a walk around the block or some other mood-boosting activity before you tackle that activity you typically put off

4. Turn off wifi or pull out the blue cable - our computers provide a myriad of tempting distractions, so do whatever you can to reduce these

5. Involve others for encouragement, mentoring and feedback - it’s harder to procrastinate when others are checking in on you and holding you accountable

6. Work in bursts - set a timer for 15 minutes and start working, then assess how you’re going at the end of that time - you will usually find you’re happy to then invest another 15 minutes

Hopefully today’s podcast has given you some new ways to think about procrastination and some ideas about how to avoid it in the future. If you have used today’s podcast to avoid doing something else, then just go and do it now!

If you enjoyed this week’s podcast and want to go a bit deeper, I have a free webinar happening this week called “A Procrastinator’s Guide”. If you can’t make the webinar or have missed it, don’t worry. We publish recordings of all of our webinars on the Leadership Today On-Demand service. Just go to the leadership.today website and follow the on-demand link to sign up for a free 30 day trial.

As usual, you will find all of the research used for today’s episode in the show notes. Thanks again to our researcher Lauren Staveley for scouring journals to track all of that down.

And given we have hit the 100 episode mark, I would really appreciate it if you could take some time to provide a rating and review via Apple Podcasts, and also tell a friend about the podcast. That makes a huge difference. Have a great week.

References

Göncü Köse, Asli & Metin, Baran. (2018). Linking Leadership Style and Workplace Procrastination. The Role of Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Turnover Intention. Journal of Prevention & Intervention Community. 46. 10.1080/10852352.2018.1470369

Sirois, F.M. and Kitner, R. (2015) Less Adaptive or More Maladaptive? A Meta-analytic Investigation of Procrastination and Coping. European Journal of Personality, 29 (4). 433 - 444. ISSN 0890-2070

Sirois, F.M. (2014) Procrastination and Stress: Exploring the Role of Self-compassion. Self and Identity, 13 (2). 128 - 145. ISSN 1529-8868

van Eerde, W., Klingsieck, K.B., Overcoming Procrastination? A Meta-Analysis of Intervention Studies, Educational Research Review (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2018.09.002

van Eerde W., Procrastination at Work and Time Management Training. The Journal of Psychology (2003), 137 (5), 421-434

Episode 99 - How to Create Meaningful Work

Summary

Motivational speakers encourage us to find our purpose in life - our why. But leaders are better off focusing on creating meaningful work.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 99 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how to create meaningful work.

Motivational speakers often encourage us to find our purpose in life - our why. If we know why we do what we do, then the things we do become more important and meaningful. 

Thankfully, as leaders, we don’t need to help our people to uncover their purpose in life. We do, however, have a significant role to play in creating meaningful work. While meaningful work isn’t quite the same as a life purpose, it is still a significant part of a meaningful life for many.

Reseach which I’ve included in the show notes demonstrates that meaningful work links strongly to work engagement, commitment and job satisfaction. In addition there are weaker links to life satisfaction, life meaning, general health and intentions to stay at a workplace.

If I provide meaningful work, I’m providing significance. There’s an appreciation that the work really matters.

Now, clearly, there are some parts of our work that aren’t wrapped up in deeper meaning. Thankfully research shows that our sense of meaning in work is made up of the various episodes and elements of our work. As humans, we effectively weigh up the various parts to determine, on balance, whether our work has meaning. In fact, the overall sense of meaning makes the meaningless activities tolerable. I will put up with the meaningless parts of my work if the meaning bank account balance is in credit.

To build meaning we can help our people to answer these questions about their work: Why does it matter? What does it contribute to? How does it contribute? 

Five whys is great technique to use to explore meaningful work. We covered it in more detail in episode 20. It helps us to take our focus further up the meaning chain. Let me share an example.

I used to manage a team, and part of their role was packing boxes with materials that would be used on leadership programs - all the handouts, materials and everything else that would be needed on that program. They would then send the box to the venue. Now, that job sounds pretty boring and devoid of meaning. So it prompts me to ask five ‘why’ questions. Packing boxes with materials - why does that matter?

Packing the boxes allows consultants to run leadership programs. That’s okay, but why does that matter?

These leadership programs help increase leadership capability for thousands of leaders. Why does that matter?

As those thousands of leaders improve their leadership, it also improves the work lives of tens of thousands of other people. And why does that matter?

That increased satisfaction multiplies out to all of their connections, to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

Okay - now maybe that was one step too far, and perhaps we didn’t need the full five whys. But hopefully you can see how using the five whys can help us to create meaningful work for our people. Try it out this week and let me know how you go.

Thanks again to Lauren Staveley, our research assistant, who tracked down the research for today’s episode. As a reminder, we are still offering a free 30 day trial of our Leadership Today On-Demand service. It includes two online courses, together with recorded webinars, and quick hits on a range of leadership topics. Just go to the leadership.today website and follow the on-demand link.

Have a great week.

Reference

Blake A. Allan, Cassondra Batz-Barbarich, Haley M. Sterling and Louis Tay. Outcomes of Meaningful Work: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Management Studies 56:3 May 2019

Episode 98 - Making Virtual Team Feedback Real

Summary

Feedback is tricky at the best of times, but particularly challenging in virtual teams. Research demonstrates some ways to improve that situation.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 98 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore ways of improving feedback in virtual teams.

There are many challenges associated with leading and working in virtual teams. Not having everyone in the same place at the same time is tricky. Things we take for granted, like giving and receiving feedback, can fall away completely. 

We have covered feedback quite a bit on this podcast because it really matters to performance and development. We know that as we progress in an organisation, we receive less feedback. We also know that as our performance moves further away from expectations, we also receive less feedback. It seems at the moments when we really need to know how we’re doing, the feedback we need is missing.

Virtual teams provide further challenges when it comes to feedback. When we’re not working together face-to-face, we’re less likely to ‘see’ each other in action. There are likely fewer opportunities to provide feedback, and fewer things to provide feedback about. 

So what can we do about this?

Research by McLarnon and others specifically looked at Global Virtual Teams. Not only did these teams not have the opportunity to work together face-to-face, they had additional challenges of navigating multiple time zones and cultures. The research involved trials of different ways in which virtual team members could provide feedback to each other.

What they found worked best in virtual teams was structured, regular feedback. Setting up a structured way to request and distribute feedback made a big difference, as did building in opportunities for feedback on a weekly basis. This meant that feedback was given in a timely manner. It allowed people to modify their approach, and also helped the team to better coordinate their efforts.

Other research by Kingsley Westerman and colleagues found that verbal feedback works better than written. People value the effort a leader takes in making a phone or video call rather than just sending an email or text. In addition, the researchers found that leaders who provide verbal feedback are seen as more competent and trustworthy.

All of this goes to show that feedback in virtual teams is just as, if not more, important than in traditional face-to-face settings, but there are unique challenges to overcome.

Here are some thoughts you can take into your week if you are leading or working as part of a virtual team:

1. Recognise that people still need feedback - independent of the way the team works, individuals still need to receive feedback to perform and develop.

2. Identify opportunities for feedback - you may need to orchestrate opportunities to gather feedback. That might include sitting in on a video conference, or working through some written work with an individual directly.

3. It helps to structure the feedback process - explore systems where individuals are prompted to provide feedback to their colleagues during the week, rather than waiting for longer-term milestones or formal reviews.

4. Say it rather than write it - as we explored three episodes ago, just pick up the phone and provide the feedback verbally.

5. Make it real time when you can - work on your ability to provide feedback in the moment using simple methods such as Situation, Behaviour and Impact, which we covered all the way back in episode 5 of this podcast.

6. Incorporate team performance and individual contribution - whether the team is performing well or not-so-well, explore further to uncover the contribution of individuals.

A big shout out to our brilliant research assistant Lauren Staveley who tracked down the research for today’s episode, which you can find in the show notes.

Also, if virtual teams are of interest, then you are going love our brand new Six Daily Practices of Remote Leadership course - complete with a workbook and two hours worth of research-based practical advice to lead teams more effectively while also looking after yourself. You can sign up for a free 30 day trial of our Leadership Today On-Demand service, which gives you enough time to complete the course, watch a few recorded webinars, and even check out some quick hits on topics like feedback, influencing and assertiveness. Just go to the leadership.today website and follow the on-demand link.

Have a great week.

Research

Kingsley Westerman, C., Reno, K. And Heuett, K. (2018) Delivering Feedback: Supervisors’ Source Credibility and Communication Competence. International Journal of Business Communication, Vol 55(4) 526-546.

McLarnon, M., O’Neill, T., Taras, V., Law, D., Donia, M. And Steel, P. (2019) Global Virtual Team Communication, Coordination, and Performance Across Three Peer Feedback Strategies. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science. 2019, Vol. 51, No. 4, 207–218

Episode 97 - Shocking - Decisions Improve When We Consider Others

Summary

As human beings we often act out of self-interest, but is that the best way to lead others? Recent research sheds a light on whether we make better decisions when considering others.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 97 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore whether we make better decisions when considering others.

I define leadership as achieving results through people for good. The ‘for good’ element is a values statement on my part - it’s how I would hope leaders would act. I’m sure you would also hope that leaders are aiming for collective benefit more than just self-interest.

However, it seems when it comes to learning and decision making we are wired to think primarily of ourselves first. Take, for example, experiments where people are asked to learn a new game in return for a cash payout. Participants learn faster and make better decisions when earning money for themselves than when they are earning money for someone else. Self-interest leads them to put more effort and attention into the learning process.

But what about when there’s a downside? What if, instead of earning money, we are trying to avoid a penalty or harm? Are we still primarily self-interested?

Recent research using an electric shock game provides an insight into these questions. Now, let’s be honest here - psychologists have had a long and occasionally dodgy love affair with passing electricity through people in the name of science. Remember the time we found out that most people would electrocute others to the point of them pleading for help and becoming unconscious rather than disobey someone wearing a lab coat? Thankfully, we do have some ethics and no one in that famous Milgram experiment was actually delivered an electrical shock - it was all actors. In the case of this recent research, the shocks were very much real, but weren’t harmful. The experiment involved two versions of a task where participants would choose between two abstract symbols, one of which would lead to a lower chance of delivering an electrical shock. In one version of the experiment the shock would be delivered to the participant making the decisions. In a second version, the shock would be delivered to someone else. Participants performed better on the task when their choices would result in a shock for someone else, than they did if they were the ones receiving the shock. A level of empathy meant that people worked harder to optimise their decisions to reduce harm to others.

fMRI scans during the experiment revealed different brain regions being activated in the two different versions of the electric shock game. If the shock is being delivered to the participant making the choices, regions associated with evaluating decisions light up. If the shock is going to be delivered to someone else, areas associated with evaluating the emotional state of others also light up. 

So that’s great news - when we are aware of a downside for others, we tend to demonstrate greater care in our decision making. What’s really interesting it that greater care leads to more effective decisions being made. Our decisions improve when we consider others.

So what does this mean for the way we lead? Hopefully you’re not in a workplace that has a penchant for delivering electrical shocks. But, as leaders, our decisions often have potential upside benefits and downside impacts on others. The standard business mantra is that decisions should be focused on data - just stick to the facts. While there’s some truth to that, we need to broaden what we include as data. We need to extend our definition of ‘data’ to include the potential impact on others. The research suggests that isn’t just good for others, but ultimately leads us to make better decisions.

I trust you found the podcast helpful. And remember to check out Leadership Today On-Demand. It includes all of our video content, including our brand new Six Daily Practices of Remote Leadership course - complete with a workbook and two hours worth of research-based practical advice to lead teams more effectively while also looking after yourself. You can sign up for a free 30 day trial, which gives you enough time to complete the course, watch a few recorded webinars, and even check out some quick hits on topics like feedback, influencing and assertiveness. Cancel your subscription at any point during the first 30 days and you won’t pay a cent. Just go to the leadership.today website and follow the on-demand link.

Reference

Lukas L. Lengersdorff, Isabella C. Wagner, Patricia L. Lockwood, Claus Lamm. When implicit prosociality trumps selfishness: the neural valuation system underpins more optimal choices when learning to avoid harm to others than to oneself. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2020; JN-RM-0842-20 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0842-20.2020

As reported in Science Daily - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200824131811.htm

Episode 96 - Does Being a Jerk Get You Ahead at Work?

Summary

There’s a popular mythology in business that being self-centred and cold towards others helps you to get ahead. But does being a jerk get you ahead at work? Research released this month addresses this question. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 96 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore whether being a selfish jerk helps you to get ahead at work.

There’s a popular mythology in business that being self-centred and cold towards others can help you to get ahead. That if I act like an intimidating jerk, it will help me to get ahead at work. The thinking being that operating in this way will help me to amass power and influence. 

American baseball player, coach and manager Leo Durocher exemplified this approach well, perhaps not surprisingly given his nickname of Leo the Lip. Some of his more entertaining quotes include “nice guys finish last” and “show me a good loser and I’ll show you an idiot”. His winning ratio was 54%, so I guess he was a self-proclaimed idiot 46% of the time.

In the business world, people like Steve Jobs are held up as examples of how being aggressive and intimidating helps you to get things done. That being a jerk helps you to push through the constraints that hold others back. In fact, his close friend and former Apple designer Jony Ive described it like this: “I think honestly, when he's very frustrated, … his way to achieve catharsis is to hurt somebody. And I think he feels he has a liberty and licence to do that. The normal rules of social engagement, he feels, don't apply to him. Because of how very sensitive he is, he knows exactly how to efficiently and effectively hurt someone. And he does do that.”

Disagreeable people are driven by self-interest and a lack of consideration for others. So how would this help them to progress more quickly up the corporate ladder? The popular thinking is that the time nice people spend looking out for others might hold them back, giving disagreeable people an advantage. Their intimidation then allows the disagreeable person to amass power and influence.

But are disagreeable people actually more likely to get ahead? Research by Anderson, Sharps, Soto and John published just this month explored precisely this question. They identified disagreeable people and then tracked their careers over the next 14 years.

Now, I know the question you’re asking - How do you identify a disagreeable person? The researchers used personality patterns associated with the likelihood to be hostile towards others, deceive and manipulate for their own gain, and ignore others’ welfare as indicators for disagreeableness. 

So what did they find? Their key finding is that disagreeableness does not predict attainment of power. Disagreeable people are not more likely, but just as likely, to reach positions of power and influence. It didn’t help their career, but it didn’t get in the way either.

The researchers described four main ways people can attain power:

1. Dominant-aggressive behaviour - fear and intimidation

2. Political behaviour - building alliances with influential people

3. Communal behaviour - helping others

4. Competent behaviour - being good at your job

The key to understanding why jerks don’t get ahead is in the trade-off the disagreeable person makes. The researchers suggested that any assistance being intimidating gave in seeking out power was counteracted by poor relationships with others. Their results suggest that a lack of communal behaviour counteracts any benefits of dominant-aggressive behaviour and self-interest.

So being disagreeable doesn’t work. But can the opposite also be true? Can we be overly agreeable? While the researchers didn’t explore this, it’s easy to see how being overly nice might also get in the way - that always focusing on helping others without placing any emphasis on our own needs and interests could also be a problem. 

I think the key to striking the right balance is through true assertiveness - having a genuine interest in others’ needs and interests, while also confidently presenting our own needs and interests. If you want to explore that further, then check out episode 6 from way back in August 2018 where we pick apart what true assertiveness looks like.

And if you want to go even deeper, check out our Boost Your Assertiveness course at Leadership Today On-Demand. Our On-Demand service is an annual subscription that brings together all of our video content, including online courses, recorded webinars, and quick hits on a broad range of leadership topics. You can sign up today for a free 30 day trial which gives you plenty of time to complete the course and take a look around. Just go to the Leadership.Today website and follow the On-Demand link. Have a great week.

Reference

Cameron Anderson, Daron L. Sharps, Christopher J. Soto, and Oliver P. John People with disagreeable personalities (selfish, combative, and manipulative) do not have an advantage in pursuing power at work. PNAS, 2020 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2005088117

Episode 95 - Just Pick Up The Phone

Summary

Picture this scenario. You need to make contact with someone that you haven’t spoken to in quite a while. Do you call or just send them a text or email instead? It turns out that our chosen communication method is often driven more by fear than effectiveness.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 95 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. Picture this scenario. You need to make contact with someone that you haven’t spoken to in quite a while. Do you call or just send them a text or email instead? It turns out that our chosen communication method is often driven more by fear than effectiveness.

To explore this, researchers asked 200 people what they thought it would be like to reconnect with an old friend via email and phone. 

Even though people thought a phone call would lead to great connection, they feared a call would be more awkward. People were far more inclined to use email than pick up the phone. In that moment they performed a quick cost-benefit equation. Is the better connection worth the awkwardness? Apparently not.

They then divided the group randomly into an email group and a phone call group and had them actually contact that old friend using that method.

So was the preferred choice of email the right one? Those who were forced to use the phone found their calls actually went far better than they predicted. The phone call led to an even deeper connection, and was far less awkward than anticipated. So using the phone is the better option.

“But wait a second” I hear you say - “Doesn’t a phone call take longer?” That’s a fair question to ask. If a phone call takes longer than an email, then maybe the email is better after all.

Indeed, researchers found that participants also thought an email would be faster than a phone call. However, it turns out that the phone calls took around the same amount of time as reading and responding to email.

Does this actually happen at work? Absolutely. It’s likely that people are choosing communication methods that don’t maximise connection because they think the alternative will be awkward and inefficient.

We communicate a lot through our voice, and not just through the words that we say. Our tone, pace, pitch and volume all come together to communicate a richer message. The research is pretty clear - if the goal is to build trust and connection, look for opportunities to be face-to-face and, if that’s not possible, then pick up the phone and give the person a call. It’s likely to be far less awkward and far more effective than you expect.

As I encouraged a few episodes ago, it may even be worth replacing a video conference using Zoom or similar with a phone call. You can find out more about that in episode 92. All our past episodes are available via the Leadership.Today website or wherever you get your podcasts. And, while you’re thinking about what to listen to next, why not provide a quick rating or review? It really makes a difference.

Have a great week.

Research

Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2020). It’s surprisingly nice to hear you: Misunderstanding the impact of communication media can lead to suboptimal choices of how to connect with others. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000962

Episode 94 - Addicted to Insights?

Summary

Have you had an ‘aha’ moment lately? New research provides clues into why some of us find insights so addictive.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 94 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore the power of insights, including what’s going on in our brain when we have them, and some practical ways to have even more insights.

There are few things in life better than an ‘aha’ moment - that point where you’ve been grappling with a problem and the solution just suddenly pops into your head. It can feel quite different to solving something by working away at it methodically. Ideas can come as a slow steady slog, but sometimes there are leaps. 

Researches earlier this year discovered that these sudden insights can, for some people, trigger the brain’s reward system. That an insight can activate the same areas that highly pleasurable activities and even addictive drugs work on.

To explore this, the researchers presented each person with a series of anagrams while using a high resolution EEG to monitor brain activity. Let’s say, for example, that you were presented with the letters ABSIS. Those letters could also make up the word BASIS. But how did you solve that? The participant would press a button to confirm whether it was an insight or more of an analytical process. So the word BASIS might just pop into your head, or you might mentally start shifting the letters around in a more analytical way.

Researchers can actually see the moment when the insight occurs as it is accompanied by a burst of gamma-band brainwaves right before the person indicates that they have had an insight solution. So what did they discover? Not surprisingly, they found that insight solutions were faster than analytical solutions. Insights pop into our head much faster than our ability to consciously think through potential solutions. What is really interesting is that many people also showed a second burst in the orbitofrontal cortex - a region of the brain just above the orbits of your eyes, thus the name, which is associated with reward and pleasure. This reward burst occurs just a tenth of a second after the insight, so it is too quick to be the result of conscious thought. It turns out that for many people the insight itself is inherently pleasurable, rather than something that we decide should be pleasurable.

The researchers wanted to understand who is more likely to have this reward response, given that not everyone experiences it. To do this they had participants complete a questionnaire on reward sensitivity - the extent to which people were driven more by gaining rewards than the fear of loss. They found that those more focused on gain rather than loss were also more likely to experience a natural reward response when they had an insight. It’s easy to see how that might lead people to spend more time chasing that reward, therefore investing more effort into creativity and insight generation.

So what does this mean for me as a leader? Well, let’s assume you don’t have a high resolution EEG lying around the house. Although I will point out that EEG units that hook up to your phone are becoming far more accurate and affordable if you did want to strap one onto the old melon to take a look under the hood. If that’s not an option, here are some other suggestions:

1. Pose yourself problems to solve. This sounds kind of obvious, but if you don’t present your brain with a problem to solve in the first place, you’re not going to have an insight.

2. Keep positive. Researchers found those in a positive mood solved more problems via insight than those with lower mood. There are lots of benefits to having a positive mood.

3. Focus on what you have to gain rather than lose. That will encourage a more insight-based approach to problem solving.

4. Aim for low attention moments. As we have discussed before, people never come up with their best ideas while sitting at their desk. Make the most of those low stress, relaxed moments. Sometimes I pose myself a problem before I go to bed or just before I go for a run. I then don’t try to actively solve the problem - I just let it sit. It’s amazing how many times I have an insight when I wake up, or when I’m cooling down after that run.

5. Celebrate solving something hard. Even if it doesn’t get your reward circuit going in the moment, maybe that piece of chocolate a little later will.

If you did want to delve into the research further, I’ve provided a link in the episode notes although, full disclosure, it is a pretty dense bit of reading.

And let me know your insight stories - what works for you? You can make contact via the leadership.today website. Have a great week.

Reference

Yongtaek Oh, Christine Chesebrough, Brian Erickson, Fengqing Zhang, John Kounios. An insight-related neural reward signal. NeuroImage, 2020; 214: 116757 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116757

Episode 93 - Is the Problem Worth Tackling?

Summary

People will bring complaints about colleagues to you as their leader. How do you figure out if an issue is worth tackling? There is a simple question that can help. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 93 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore how to figure out if a potential issue between staff is worth tackling. This week’s podcast is going to be even shorter than usual, but I can assure you it will save you countless hours.

I’m sure you’ve had this experience as a leader before - if you haven’t, it’s only a matter of time before you do. Someone in your team, let’s call them Jan, comes to you to discuss an “issue” they’re having with a colleague - let’s call the colleague Steve. Jan wants you to do something about this problem with Steve. Maybe Jan thinks Steve is talking too loudly on the phone, or heating something obnoxious in the microwave for lunch, or there’s some kind of vague personality clash about Steve smiling too much, or Jan just thinks Steve isn’t pulling his weight. You ask Jan whether she has discussed the issue with Steve directly. “No”. You then ask Jan whether she would be comfortable to have that conversation with Steve directly. “No”. And now we’re stuck.

What is our role as leader at this point? The general principle is simple - we should encourage the person with the issue to talk directly to the person they are having an issue with. But what if they don’t feel comfortable doing that, and still want you to do something about the perceived problem. And what if the perceived problem sits right on the fence. It can be challenging to know when to intervene and when to just let things slide. 

There is a question to ask at this point that can save everyone a lot of time and confusion. It’s simply this - “What’s the business issue?”

Steve’s loud talking on the phone might be distracting and frustrating other people. The business issue is lost productivity and engagement. That’s worth tackling directly.

Steve’s smelly microwaved lunch is wafting into the reception area, and several clients have complained about the smell. The business issue is the impact on our reputation with clients. That’s worth tackling.

Steve is smiling too much. Well, I’m struggling to find the business issue there. It’s not worth tackling.

Jan thinks Steve isn’t pulling his weight, but you have the results to suggest that he is. Again, there’s no business issue there.

Using the business issue test with the individual raising the complaint can be really helpful. That will help Jan to work out what things are worth her worrying about versus those things worth letting slide.

I’ve found the business issue test really helpful in highlighting what are real problems worth tackling, and what are interpersonal issues that might need to be navigated in a different way.

Well I hope you found that helpful. I received a couple of really encouraging emails from listeners to the podcast this week. You can always get in contact via the Leadership.Today website (he says, clearly fishing for a few more). And, if you do have time, a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening to this makes a huge difference. 

Just a quick reminder about our online workshops and webinars. Go to the Live page on our website to find out more about the seven different workshops we offer, and also to register for an upcoming free monthly webinar. I would love to have you along.

Have a great week.

Episode 92 - Five Ways to Stop Zoom Killing Your Focus

Summary

Video conferencing has rapidly increased in popularity, but the cognitive and attentional load can make it exhausting. In this week’s Leadership Today podcast we look at five ways to stop Zoom killing your focus. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 92 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at five ways to stop Zoom killing your focus. 

Zoom and other video conferencing services have seen a rapid rise in popularity. People have flocked to video conferencing as the next best thing to a face-to-face meeting, particularly when trying to build social connection. During a global pandemic, video conferencing has proven to be a lifesaver for many people forced to work from home. It’s a testament to the quality of Zoom that the brand name is now synonymous with web-based video conferencing. We are becoming increasingly dependent on access to Zoom, as evidenced by a recent outage that disrupted millions of people including online schooling and businesses. 

And Zoom isn’t just a back up for when we can’t be face-to-face. Research conducted last year showed Zoom was rated positively for qualitative data collection in health care interviews, coming in ahead of face-to-face, phone and other video conferencing options when they factored efficiency into the equation.

Amidst all of that success and celebration there are recurring and largely anecdotal concerns emerging about the impact of video conferencing on our attention and energy levels. People report feeling drained and exhausted at the end of a full day of Zoom calls. It’s too early for there to be specific research about why this might be the case, but the field of attention research gives us some clues to why Zoom is killing our ability to focus.

Let’s face it, weird things happen on Zoom calls that would never happen in a ‘real’ meeting. We see people fixing their hair as they stare at themselves. People keep looking away from the camera to a second screen so you end up having a conversation with their ear. People eating anything looks disgusting - seriously, stop eating while using Zoom. We see people talking but no words are coming out - you’re on mute! Surprise people and their pets appear out of nowhere. People keep trying to talk at the same time which leads to a flurry of “no, no, you go first”. As we look behind people it feels like we are in a dozen different rooms at once. And, while we’re talking backgrounds, why not include an even more distracting virtual background? Sure, you’re on a beach, or drifting through space. In a sign of just how confused we are, we even feel the need to wave goodbye at the end of a Zoom call. It’s exhausting.

What are the challenges of Zoom calls, or indeed most other video conferencing tools? There are three main issues:

1. Visual distractions. We are not used to seeing ourselves in action, and it’s easy to become fixated, or at least distracted, by how we look. It’s easy for the meeting to then feel like a performance. Simultaneously seeing multiple faces is also strange. We wouldn’t normally have people lined up in a grid like the start of the Brady Bunch, but rather be attending to one or two faces at any point in time. Reseach has repeatedly demonstrated that visual distractions significantly decrease our ability to focus and increase stress.

2. Auditory distractions. The inability for everyone to speak at once is a real issue. The small delays and “loudest person wins” nature of Zoom make auditory processing a challenge. The audio itself is of a higher quality than a typical phone call, but it still feels more draining than a landline phone call due to these artefacts. 

3. You can’t look into someone’s eyes. I might try to fake eye contact by staring at the camera, but then I can’t see you. Thankfully, research demonstrates that people are lousy at figuring out if we’re making eye contact in real life anyway. In fact researchers found that we can’t pick the difference between someone looking into our eyes versus looking predominantly at our mouth. But on Zoom, the distance between the camera and the person’s face is larger than a real human face - the effect of not making eye contact is more pronounced.

All of this leads to an increased cognitive and attentional load. We end up suffering from what researchers call continuous partial attention.

So Zoom - is it worth it? That largely depends on the work and what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re after interaction, trust and engagement, it’s hard to beat face-to-face. If face-to-face is not possible, Zoom is a great backup. We just need to recognise and manage the risks.

In particularly we need to minimise visual distractions - research has show that this leads to a 16% boost in performance for time-sensitive, high focus work, while also reducing stress by 18%. Reducing auditory distractions will also help. 

So how do we reduce distractions and the cognitive and attentional load of Zoom calls and meetings. Here are five suggestions:

1. Hide the self view. Check that your video feed looks okay at the start of the call, then use the menu on your own image so you can no longer see yourself. Just keep in mind that others can still see you - there’s a reason webcams have little lights on them to show when you’re on. Search Zoom call fails on YouTube for some great examples.

2. Use the speaker view. Rather than having everyone on screen at once in equal size boxes, shift to just being able to see the speaker. I’ve found this really helps me to focus on one person at a time, rather than trying to attend to a sea of faces.

3. Mute when not speaking. Muting yourself reduces the audio distractions for others. We need to treat a Zoom call like it’s not fully duplex, particularly as group sizes increase. Despite any claims to the contrary, the experience of multiple people trying to speak at once is far more painful on Zoom than in real life. 

4. Make it interactive. In the field of online learning there’s a popular myth that people can’t attend to any video that’s longer than 6 minutes. There doesn’t seem to be much concrete evidence to back that up and, in fact, research shows that you can increase beyond that easily by making the video more interactive. The same principle applies to Zoom calls. Use polls, chat, breakout rooms, annotations, reactions - anything to spice things up and make it less of a presentation.

5. Reduce the length of your meetings. Recognise the cognitive and attentional load by making meetings shorter. As a rule of thumb I reduce the length of Zoom calls by a third to what I would expect people to engage in face-to-face.

And if none of that works, hey, here’s a crazy idea - why not try a phone conference call instead? Use a bit of variety and gain ideas and input from your team about how to improve things.

Now I’m sure a lot of these technical issues will become smoothed out over time. Someone will figure out how to mount a camera behind a screen to mimic face-to-face, and I’m sure the audio challenges will reduced. Perhaps people will listen back at this episode in 5 years and think - well, how quaint! However, keep in mind the broader principle that focus and distractions are enemies. Anything we can do to reduce visual and auditory distractions at work are going to make a difference, whether it’s online or in an office.

What have been your Zoom experiences? Make contact via the Leadership.Today website and let me know. I love a good story. Have a great week.

References

Archibald, M. M., Ambagtsheer, R. C., Casey, M. G., & Lawless, M. (2019). Using Zoom Videoconferencing for Qualitative Data Collection: Perceptions and Experiences of Researchers and Participants. International Journal of Qualitative Methods.

Haworth Human Performance Lab. Visual Distraction Effects on Deliberate Focus Work.  2017 http://media.haworth.com/asset/96533/VisualDistractions.ResearchReport.201708.Johnson.pdf

Kathy Roper and Parminder Juneja Distractions in the workplace revisited. May 2008 Journal of Facilities Management 6(2):91-109

Nitza Geri, Amir Winer, Beni Zaks. Challenging the six-minute myth of online video lectures: Can interactivity expand the attention span of learners? Online Journal of Applied Knowledge Management Volume 5, Issue 1, 2017

Shane L. Rogers, Oliver Guidetti, Craig P. Speelman, Melissa Longmuir, Ruben Phillips. Contact Is in the Eye of the Beholder: The Eye Contact Illusion. Perception, 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/24/zoom-apologises-after-being-hit-by-partial-global-outage

Episode 91 - Team Meetings That Bring Out The Best In People

Summary

In this week’s Leadership Today podcast we look at a structure for team meetings to bring out the best in your people.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 91 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at how to structure team meetings to bring out the best in your people.

A study released in July 2020 looked at the impact of pandemic-related lockdowns on over three million people across North America, Europe and the Middle East. Scouring through de-identified data from a technology firm, they found the number of meetings per person increased 13%, as did the number of attendees per meetings (14%). However the average length of meetings decreased by 20%, with an overall impact of people spending 12% less time per day in meetings. So more, shorter meetings with more people, but less time per day in meetings overall. But how effective are all those meetings?

In episode 89 we looked at ways to make meetings better. Last week in episode 90 I shared a monthly one-on-one meeting structure. This week we round out our focus on meetings by walking through a team meeting structure I have been using for years.

You will find the structure in the show notes. It includes:

Positives

What’s going well?

Negatives

What’s not going well? What's getting in the way at work?

Priorities

What are the current priorities as a team?

Support

How can we best support each other?

Interesting

What is on the horizon that we are noticing?

Anything else to discuss?

Action Items

Review action items from previous month

Add any new action items

It’s important to start off with the positives and a reflection on what is going well. Depending on the size of the team this might involve some time for people to share the positives in twos and threes before summarising them back to the broader team. It’s really easy to skate right past the positives. We have a tendency to underplay our successes as we shift our focus to the next big thing. However celebrations are important. Use the positives part of the meeting to recognise these accomplishments.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the discussion of positives is followed by negatives. We can sometimes be scared of talking about the negatives and what’s getting in the way at work. As I’ve shared before, frustrations have a disastrous impact on well-being and productivity. We need to air the negatives, but also bring a focus on improvement and action.

Next we cover priorities. To be clear, this isn’t about having each individual share their own priorities, but rather looking at priorities at a team-level. This discussion helps everyone to have a shared understanding of what really matters.

That leads naturally to a discussion around support. Given the priorities and challenges we have discussed, how can we best support each other? That includes supporting each other by sharing around the work load, but could also include other ways of offering support.

I always include a section in team meetings focused on interesting things. This could include things that people are noticing in the organisation, observations about clients, customers or competitors - really anything that might be of interest that doesn’t neatly fit into the positive or negative categories.

The final section of the meeting is focused on action items. We take this time to review any action items from the previous month, and add any new action items.

As per the monthly one-on-one meetings I discussed last week, I share this agenda with the team, and then circulate a bullet point summary of what we discussed afterwards, just in a Word document, with the most recent meeting at the top of the document. That document helps new team members to quickly come up to speed by reviewing the main points from the last few team meetings.

If you are running your team meetings exclusively online, I would add some time at the start of the meeting as a quick check in to see how people are doing. This is particularly important for new team members who may not have met others face-to-face. You might also profile a different team member each month, having them share something about themselves like a favourite holiday destination including a photo. Building trust and connection is very difficult online, so it’s worth building that into your meetings if they are exclusively online.

And you may be wondering about the monthly timing for these meetings. By all means you can meet with your team more often than monthly, however I believe it makes a big difference to have a more formal meeting once a month.

As always I love receiving feedback on episodes. You can make contact via the website at Leadership.Today. That’s where you’ll find today’s show notes, complete with the meeting structure that you’re welcome to adapt for your team. Have a great week.

Reference

Collaborating During Coronavirus: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Nature of Work

Evan DeFilippis, Stephen Michael Impink, Madison Singell, Jeffrey T. Polzer, Raffaella Sadun

NBER Working Paper No. 27612 Issued in July 2020

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27612