Does the use of social media in the workplace benefit organizations and educational institutions and help productivity or hamper productivity? That's a question many leaders and educators are debating in organizations, even while students and employees immerse themselves in social media for both personal and business purposes. This article will examine both sides of the question, and show how it's clearly connected to a much bigger question of organizational change.
"How much work can 'hyper-socializing' employees really accomplish if they are holding multiple conversations with others via text-messaging or obsessively checking social networking sites?" That's a question that John Agno in his Leadership Blog, recently asked.
His reply was, "They can accomplish a great deal in today's 24/7 virtual environment. The Gen Xs and Ys have a gift for multitasking (because they have integrated technology into their lives) and now have the ability to remain connected to each other and thus serve themselves and their employers well."
Jeffrey Zaslow in the Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2009, says, "Because so many people in their teens and early 20s are in this constant whir of socializing—accessible to each other every minute of the day via cell phone, instant messaging and social-networking Web sites—there are a host of new questions that need to be addressed in schools, in the workplace and at home. Chief among them: How much work can 'hyper-socializing' students or employees really accomplish if they are holding multiple conversations with friends via text-messaging, or are obsessively checking Facebook?"
Let's take look at the arguments against the presence of social media in the workplace and our educational institutions. Critics contend that these hyper-socializers are serial time-wasters, that the bonds between them are shallow, and that their face-to-face interpersonal skills are poor. Many employers and schools have taken the step to ban social media for personal use, citing either some research showing it negatively affects productivity, or relying on the older managers' personal perspectives and preferences.
This much is known: Young workers spend more time than older workers socializing via their devices or entertaining themselves online. In a 2008 survey for Salary.com, 53% of those under age 24 said this was their primary "time wasting" activity while at work, compared to just 34% for those between ages 41 and 65. In July, 2009, Nucleus Research published a study, “Facebook: Measuring the Cost to Business of Social Notworking.” Nucleus interviewed 237 “randomly selected office workers” about their Facebook use. Among the findings: 75% had a Facebook account; 61% accessed their site during working hours for an average of 15 minutes per day; and 87% accessed their site for personal reasons. Nucleus concluded that companies who allowed employees to access their Facebook site during work hours could expect to see total office productivity decline by an average of only 1.5%.
A study this year by psychology students at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Ga., found that the more time young people spend on Facebook, the more likely they are to have lower grades and weaker study habits. Heavy Facebook users show signs of being more gregarious, but they are also more likely to be anxious, hostile or depressed. Almost a quarter of today's teens check Facebook more than 10 times a day, according to a 2009 survey by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group that monitors media's impact on families.
Part of the argument against social media in the workplace and learning place is the paradigm of what should go on in those places. We have separated social interaction from "work" interaction, seeing them as not only different but in conflict. Our society has viewed work and play as being separate and distinct. Think back. When today's older workers were in their 20s, they might have taken a break on the job to call friends and make after-work plans. In those earlier eras, companies discouraged non-business-related calls, and someone who made personal calls all day risked being fired. It was impossible to envision the constant back-and-forth texting that defines interactions among young people today.
Now for the argument for social media in the work and learning places. Zaslow argues that this generation has a gift for multitasking, and because they've integrated technology into their lives, their ability to remain connected to each other will serve them and their employers well. While their older colleagues waste time holding meetings or engaging in long phone conversations, young people have an ability to sum things up in one-sentence text messages, And given their vast network of online acquaintances, they discover people who can become true friends or valued business colleagues—people they wouldn't have been able to find in the pre-Internet era.
A new study just published by Australian scientists found that taking time to visit websites of personal interest, including news sites and YouTube, provided workers a mental break that ultimately increased their ability to concentrate and was correlated with a 9% increase in total productivity.The study was performed by researchers at Australia's University of Melbourne and coined the phrase "workplace Internet leisure browsing," or WILB. The activity helps keep the mind fresh and helps put you in a better place when you come back to working on topic, the scientists said. "People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don't," said Dr Brent Coker, from the Melbourne Department of Management and Marketing.
Patricia Khul, a University of Washington professor and co-author of a recent study on social learning argues that social media can stimulate positive brain activity and learning. The study of Japanese students taking English lessons involved the creation of a computerized social program. The researchers found the students interacted with the language tools the same way they might in a social media environment, and their learning was accelerated.
Finally, numerous brain science studies have shown that social interaction and the stimulation of emotions as at the core of effective learning, decision-making and long-term memory.
What about business use of social media? Business.com released additional results of its milestone study of social media usage across American business, this time with a focus on B2B (business to business). This research should put an end to the argument over the relevance of social media in the industrial sector. In fact, it appears that by percentage, B2B is ahead of B2C (business to customer) in some key categories. This report is full of details by industry, job type, and social media platform. It’s significant because of the scope of the study and the statistical rigor applied to the results. The study showed a statistically significant difference in social media activity with B2B’s dominating in 11 out of 14 social media categories. So obviously, organizations are seeing the value of social media, and are attempting to leverage that advantage for business purposes. If social media is beneficial to business, why would they try to restrict its use for employees?
In many ways the issue of social media is one of determining who establishes both the value and need for products and services--the business supplier, which has been the norm till now, or the consumer/client, which has become the new paradigm? The impact of social technology on business as usual is and will continue to be profound. Instead of the old model of change, from the inside out, the new model of change is from the outside in. Markets are shifting at the speed of a mouse click. These markets represent the rate of interest change (both economic interest and consumer interest) and the interest is changing based on the consumption of information and knowledge. The voice of the customer used to be analyzed based on old feedback mechanisms and survey’s which were poorly designed and time-consuming. Today the voice of the customer is instant, transparent and designed by the content and context of open and transparent conversations. The new world of instant communications controlled and influenced by the end consumer is the outside force forcing fueling organizational changes for those businesses wishing to thrive or survive. However, the pace and strength of these outside forces is changing the very change models used before by the leading management consulting firms and organizational change gurus.
McKinsey, one of the top management consulting firms in the world, is changing their approach to the creation and implementation of organizational change models. Organizations will have to learn change is now a permanent process and the only thing that should be managed is the rate in which you adjust to it. Not adjusting or accepting that change is permanent means you’ll be left by those that do.
I'm sure we'll continue to examine the issue of social media and productivity with champions lined up on either side of the issue. But a useful perspective on social media that can inform decision makers must be within the context of how to affect desired change in organizations, for the good of all.
Ray B. Williams is Co-Founder of Success IQ University, and President of Ray Williams Associates, companies located in Phoenix and Vancouver, providing leadership training, personal growth and executive coaching services. www.successiqu.com
Greed is out. Empathy is in. That's how Frans de Waal begins his book, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons For A Kinder Society. De Waal is a biologist, professor of psychology and director of the Living Link Center at Emory University. In 2007, Time magazine selected him as one of the world's most influential people.
The global financial crisis of 2008, together with the election of a new American President representing a vastly different political and social perspective, has produced a "seismic shift in society," argues de Waal.
The distinguished scientist says it is long overdue that we jettisoned our beliefs about human nature--proposed by economists and politicians--that human society is modeled on the perpetual struggle for survival that exists in nature. De Waal says this is mere projection on our part. Nature is replete with examples of cooperation and empathy.
Empathy, de Waal explains, is the social glue that holds human society together. He argues that modern psychology and neuroscience research supports the concept that "empathy is an automated response over which we have limited control." He points to the fact that many animals survive not by eliminating each other, or by keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing.
Given all we know about empathy in other animal species, why do we persist in seeing human existence, particularly in business, as a fight for survival, with winners and losers? De Waal calls this the "macho origin myth" which insists that the human species has been waging war on itself as millennia as a reflection of our true nature. What has been ignored is the fact that empathy has been evident during that entire time. De Waal points to a mass of examples of sacrifice, empathy, co-operation and fairness in humans and other animals’ species. For example, how many people know that most soldiers are unwilling to fire at the enemy, even in battle?
Unfortunately, philosophy and religion as well as science have long suggested that caring and kindness do not come from our biological nature, but are ways that humans overcome biological instincts. In contrast, aggression, dominance and violence have been attributed to our DNA. According to de Waal, for humans and other advanced animals, sharing, compromise and justice matters. He argues that feeling and acting with empathy for others is as automatic as aggression.
De Waal explains how empathy has three layers. The first layer is emotional contagion, where the flush of emotions runs through a group of people during a dramatic event. The next layer is feeling for others, our empathetic response when we see another's predicament. And the third layer is "targeted helping," the ability to feel the way another does. He suggests that the historical predominant view of humans as slaves to a "selfish gene" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have competing genes--some selfish and aggressive, an others selfless and empathetic--and they are constantly jostling for position.
People are complicated and complex, not instinctively cruel and selfish; they are capable of caring and empathy with equal passion and depth. Given the nature of business survival in a competitive world, de Waal's clarion call that greed is out and empathy is in, may be a call we should all hear.
Ray Williams is Co-Founder of Success IQ University and President of Ray Williams Associates, companies located in Phoenix and Vancouver, providing leadership training, personal growth and executive coaching services. www.successiqu.com
Since the Great Depression, a commonly held perspective on the good life is that we can all look forward to retirement, when we didn't have to work any more. We would be more relaxed and healthier away from the stresses of work.
There's a couple of flaws in that argument. For one thing, retirement, like pensions was an invention of the depression, intended to deal with the problem of unemployment. Prior to the depression, and in past ages, the concept of retirement didn't exist. AARP in the U.S. report from a survey done in 2008 that 70% of workers plan to continue working past their retirement
age.
Now recent research questions the assumption not working anymore will improve your health. Researchers, led by Mo Wang, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, studied the health of 12,000 men and women between the ages of 51 and 61, using data from the U.S. national Health and Retirement Study. The research study was published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.
Among the conclusions of the study were: Compared to those who quit working altogether, those people who described themselves as officially retired but who continued to work part-time or in temp jobs were less likely to be diagnosed with either diseases--high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, lung disease, hart disease, stroke, psychiatric problems and arthritis. Those who worked at least part-time were also less likely to show signs of functional decline, or inability to perform the activities of daily living. The findings were true for all categories of age, sex, financial statutes, education and physical and mental health before retirement.
This study supported much earlier studies, such as a study at a major hospital in 1920 that showed that people who worked after retirement lived longer and a Yale University study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, that showed being laid off or fired close to retirement or old age had a devastating effect on an individual's health, with particular reference to stroke. The American Geriatrics society reported that people over age 65 who worked as volunteers
had half the death risk of those who did not.
The benefits of continuing to work, other than financial resources are social interaction, and opportunities to use your brain, the University of Maryland researchers reported. And perhaps most important of all, people who continue to work past retirement age have a sense of purpose, which
has a positive impact on their health.
A final argument for continuing to work is the cost of health services for aging Baby Boomers, the bulk of the population. It may be more economical for them to keep working, and stay healthier, than to have millions of them retire and be less healthy.
The current recession has produced a flood of management "experts" and many leaders of organizations whose only strategy for dealing with the downturn in the economy is cutting costs, layoffs and more efficiency based strategies. The mantra for business for much of the last century has been operational efficiency. So leaders look for ways to cut costs and make the operations lean and mean. Yet much of the rationale for and evidence supporting efficiency as a key management strategy is questionable.
In a great article by Adam Hartung in Forbes, titled The Myth of Efficiency, he outlines how leaders have mistakenly used efficiency to drive business results, often with disastrous results. Hartung cites W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, of INSEAD International Business School, and the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy, who advanced the argument that businesses should create new market space or "Blue Ocean" rather than competing in an existing industry. Kim and Mauborgne say that only 14% of innovations are radical, and that those few radical innovations produce 61% of company profits. Hartung cites a report by the Doblin Group, a U.S. consultancy company, specializing in innovation research and implementation, that claims 9% of innovation resources are focused on incremental improvements.
The core of the problem of the poor showing for innovation producing business success is that innovation has been constantly battling efficiency as a management strategy. Jill Lepore, wrote a recent article in The New Yorker, titled, Not So Fast: Scientific Management Started as a Way To Work: How Did It Become a Way of Life? She recounts the story of how renowned Supreme Court Judge, Louis Brandeis was mesmerized by an industrial engineer from Philadelphia, Frederick Winslow Taylor. Management theory came to life in 1899 with a simple question: “How many tons of pig iron bars can a worker load onto a rail car in the course of a working day?” The man behind this question was Frederick Winslow Taylor, the author of The Principles of Scientific Management and, by most accounts, the founding father of the whole management business. Lillian Gilbreth, often called the mother of modern management, had serious doubts about the industrial management movement that she initially helped to promote. Yet, Taylor's scientific management principles became the Bible upon which management practices have been used to dominate Western business for the past century. The problem is, that Taylor was a better salesman than a scientist.
Matthew Stewart, the author of The Management Myth: Why The Experts Keep Getting It Wrong, describes how Taylor manufactured his data, lied to his clients and inflated his results. He argues that since Taylor, business programs in universities continue to model much of their education, with particular emphasis on technical knowledge and the scientific management approach. Stewart, who was for many years a management consultant, argues that the study of philosophy and ethics would serve society better as a basis for educating business leaders.
This theme is echoed by Tom Demarco in his book, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork And The Myth Of Total Efficiency, in which he details American business leaders' obsession with planning and cost saving efficiency based on a mistaken belief that human beings are efficient in the same way that machines are. In a similar vein, a ground-breaking book by Dan Coffey, titled The Myth of Japanese Efficiency, challenges the commonly held view based on an earlier MIT study that Japanese car manufacturers pioneered a "lean and flexible" production model, which has helped to reinforce the cultish devotion to efficiency. 3M's CEO, George Buckley in BusinessWeek, argues that creative blue ocean strategy produces better business results than the traditional focus on operational efficiency, and he argues further, that excessive focus on efficiency stifles innovation.
The economic recession, with the dominant leadership strategies emphasizing cost cutting and technical analysis has shown that Taylor's scientific management approach has not left us, despite decades of attempts to move to a management approach that is humanistic rather than mechanistic.
Ray B. Williams is Co-Founder of Success IQ University and President of Ray Williams Associates, companies located in Phoenix and Vancouver, providing leadership training, personal growth and executive coaching services.
A leader's "mindset" may determine success. Mindsets that are characterized by a commitment to growth, flexibility and adaptability continue to develop the leader's brain and develop reservoirs of untapped potential.
The notion of mindset and how it can affect performance is outlined by Stanford University psychology professor Carol Dweck, in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
Dweck argues that everyone has one of two basic mindsets. If you have the "fixed' mindset, you believe that your talents and abilities are fixed or set in stone--either you have the or you don't. This kind of person is driven to prove themselves repeatedly, trying to look successful at all costs. However, this mindset actually leads to stagnation and declining performance. If you have the second mindset, or "growth" mindset, you know that your talents and abilities are built over time, so you seize every opportunity for growth--and success.
Dweck shows how the growth mindset develops in childhood and early adulthood and drives every aspect of our lives, from work to relationships to parenting. Much of her work is based on brain science which shows that we have "plastic" brains, capable of learning until we die. She describes how creative geniuses in all fields of endeavor, apply their growth mindset to achieve results. Dweck also shows us how we can change our mindset at any age.
In an article in the June 19, 2009, BusinessWeek, John R. Ryan, the President of the Center for Creative Leadership, discusses how we might apply Dueck's ideas to leadership in organizations. He suggests that first, a growth mindset must drive leaders' management of organization's human talent, focusing on the long-term development of people. Second, Ryan argues that leader's must create an organizational culture that permits risk taking and allows for mistakes, citing Dweck's research that shows that people's fixed mindsets come from early childhood experiences of being judged and criticized for making mistakes. Finally, Ryan argues that leaders all too often rest on their laurels and accomplishments of the past, basing their performance on their ego rather than an attitude of continual learning.
Professor Dweck's mindset research challenges leaders to develop their growth mindset regardless of age and experience, and challenges educators and parents to examine how their are developing growth mindsets in our children.
Ray B. Williams is Co-Founder of Success IQ University and President of Ray Williams Associates, companies located in Phoenix and Vancouver, providing leadership training, personal growth and executive coaching services. www.successiqu.com
Positive affirmations can be a benefit to personal growth, if done in the right context, thus avoiding the damaging consequences of the wrong approach, as shown in recent research.
In my article in the National Post/Financial Post, Why Don't I Feel Better? The Truth About Positive Affirmations and Self Help Books, I cited research that showed that people engaging in simple positive affirmations can actually do more damage than good, particularly for people with self-esteem problems. This conclusion came as a result of Canadian researcher, Dr. Joanne Wood at the University of Waterloo and her colleagues at the University of New Brunswick who have recently published their research in the Journal of Psychological Science, concluded that "repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, such as individuals with high self-esteem, but backfire for the very people who need them the most."
The researchers suggest that, like overly positive praise, unreasonably positive self-statements, such as "I accept myself completely" can provoke contradictory thoughts in individuals in individuals with low self-esteem. When positive self-statements strongly conflict with self-perception, the researchers argue, there is not mere resistance but a reinforcing of self-perception. People who view themselves as unlovable, for example, find that saying that are so unbelievable that it strengthens their own negative view rather than reversing it. These findings were supported by previous research published in 1994 in the Journal of Social Psychology, showing that when people get feedback that they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better.
So, can positive affirmations ever be beneficial? I put this question to Stephanie Frank, President of Success IQ University. She has worked with thousands of people in all walks of life and work over the past two decades, helping them achieve success and happiness.
Frank said positive affirmations can be beneficial if used in the right way and in the right context. "The heart of the problem," she said, "is that people often see the picture of what is instead of what they want, regardless of their affirmations." So they say to themselves 'I am a millionaire,' or 'I am beautiful and worthy of loving,' rather than saying 'I am working toward being a millionaire,' or 'I am becoming beautiful and worthy of loving,' so that the affirmation is not in contradiction to how they see themselves in the present."
Frank goes on to say that these people need to change the representation of themselves in time, and focus on what they want to become which is a "moving toward" process rather than an avoidance or "moving away from" the past.
Part of the difficulty of change, says Frank, "is there is so much inherent resistance to change, and it is very difficult to do on your own." She advocates working with a professional or coach to provide the right guidance down that path. One of the first steps in this process, says Frank, "is an examination of the person's values, and seeing whether their day to day behaviors reflect those values." Then a plan of action can be put in place to create alignment. In that context, positive affirmations have a better chance for success.
In creating that plan of action, Frank says, many people and the those assisting them "make the mistake of focusing on the necessary changes from a logical, thinking or concrete perspective, ignoring the need to deal with the emotions and feelings that are holding them back."
Positive affirmations do have a place in making positive personal and professional changes, but only within the context of a process designed to align the person's present self-image with a desired new outcome.
Ray B. Williams is President of Ray Williams Associates, a company based in Vancouver, providing leadership training and executive coaching services. ray@raywilliamsassociates.com
Research on how the human brain can affect behaviors--called neuroscience, or the popular term, brain science--has yet to be fully appreciated by leaders of organizations. That knowledge could have a significant impact on how leaders are trained and what they do. In the past few decades, scientists have gained new and more accurate scientific views of human behavior, studying the human brain. Organizational change that takes into account the physiological nature of the brain and ways that predisposes people to resist or cooperate with leaders can be extremely useful for leaders.
Some valuable insights come from John Medina, a molecular biologist, published in the Harvard Business Review in May 2008. Medina is an author of Brain Rules: 12 Principles For Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School. Medina says "the brain is so sensitive to external experiences that you can literally rewire it through exposure to environmental influences." For example, we know that stress hurts the brain and that has a huge impact on productivity. Medina says that enduring continuing stress is like trying to fly an airplane under water.
Some people have brains that are wired in a way that can overcome huge amounts of stress, but we're not able to predict this. Slowly, brain science is beginning to inform us about the genetic components of why some people are more resilient than others. For example, a gene called 5-HTT helps regulate our moods. People with a mutation of this gene are more likely to become depressed under stress.We're also learning a lot about how our brain remembers. Medina says there is no such thing as a perfect memory because the brain's prime purpose is survival. So it will change the perception of reality to survive. The brain is not a perfect recording device. This finding supports Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which proposes that no one really knows what reality is, but only his or her perception of reality.
Brain research shows that long-term memory doesn't happen instantly, but occurs over a long time. So to develop long-term memory you have to be consistently re-exposed to certain information, a process called, "elaborative retrieval." Advertisers understand this concept, which is reflected in message repetition. Brain research has also pointed us to the knowledge that our brains are very elastic and capable of change regardless of age. The physical changes neurons undergo when learning something happens to anyone’s brain at any age. The brain remains plastic until we die, which means we can remain lifelong learners.
Business school professors at the Arizona State Univesity and Emory University are working with neuroscientists to study the brains of executives. At Emory, researchers asked a group of executives to respond to PowerPoint slides presenting moral dilemmas associated with early memories, to establish whether brain patterns that determine moral thinking are formed early in life. The results so far show that moral thinking is formed early in life which brings into question whether it could be taught later in life. The Leadership Neuroscience Project, headed by Arizona State University professors Pierre Balthazar and David Waltham initiated a study of a group of business leaders while they discussed various scenarios such as layoffs, to determine if there were any distinctive brain wave patterns.
"Neuroleadership,” is a term coined by David Rock, a leadership consultant and author of Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Leadership At Work. Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz, a research scientist at UCLA, are applying neuroscience concepts to leadership. For example, by emphasizing mindful, focused attention on new management practices, rather than fixing old habits that don't work, leaders can actually rewire their brains. McKinsey and Company is now incorporating their ideas into client workshops. An article by Rock and Schwartz published in Strategy and Business Journal, was the publication’s most downloaded article in 2006.
Improvements in brain analysis technology has allowed researchers to track the energy of a thought coursing through the brain in the same way they can track blood flowing through the circulatory system. Change lights up the prefrontalal cortex, which is fast and agile. Overloading the prefrontal cortex can generate fatigue, fearand anger, because of the cortex's connection to the emotion center of the brain, the amygdala.
Rock and Schwartz state that "the traditional command-and-control style of management doesn't lead to permanent changes in behavior. Ordering people to change and them telling them how to do it fires the prefrontal cortex’s hair trigger connection to the amygdala. The more you try to convince people that you’re right and they're wrong, the more they push back. The brain will try to defend itself from threats. Our brains are so complex that it is rare for us to be able to see any situation in exactly the same way as someone else. The way to get past the prefrontal cortex’s defenses is to help people come to their own resolution regarding the concepts causing through their prefrontal cortex to bristle."
Dr. Robert Cooper, of Stanford Business School writing in Strategy and Leadership Journal, points out that we actually have three brains--the one in our head, the one in our gut and the one in our heart, all of which have massive number of neurons. He claims that the highest reasoning involves all three brains working together.
Traditional change in management tactics in organizations are based more on animal training than on human psychology and neuroscience. Leaders promise bonuses and promotions (the carrot) for those who go along with the changes, and punish those (the stick) who don't with less important jobs or even job loss. This kind of managerial behavior flies in the face of evidence that shows that people's primary motivation in the workplace is neither money or advancement but rather a personal interest in their jobs, a good environment to work in and fulfilling relationships with their boss and colleagues.
Charles Jacobs, author of Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Supervisory Lessons From The Latest Brain Science, says the brain is wired to resist what is commonly termed constructive feedback, but is usually negative. When people encounter information that is in conflict with their self-image, their tendency is to change he information, rather than changing themselves. So when mangers give critical feedback to employees, the employees’ brain defense mechanism is activated because that information conflicts with what the brain remembers and knows.
Jacobs' views are supported by management guru Aubrey C. Daniels, writing in his book, Oops! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time and Money. He cites a study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) which found that 90% of performance appraisals are both painful and don't work and further, produce an extremely low percentage of top performers. Modern brain research questions the validly of psychological testing, such as the Myers-Briggs test, used for employment decisions. These tests were developed long before we knew very much about how the brain processes anything.
So if critical feedback or so called constructive criticism is not effective, what is? Jacobs recommends that leaders engage in a Socratic dialogue with employees, asking questions so that the employees set their own goals and self-evaluate. Leaders have to understand that learning in our brains is not the same for all people. When new ideas and concepts are embraced by people, the brain changes physically. So changing the way we think can alter the brain's physical characteristics.
Brain science also tells us that people make decisions based on emotions, not logic. When someone experiences something that gets attached to an emotion, it leaves a strong record in the brain. When that person encounters a similar set of circumstances, it brings up the memory along with the associating emotions, which could be positive or negative. It is the emotional memory that will affect the decisions, not logic. We use our analytical thinking processes to validate the emotional decision we have already made. That's why people can ignore evidence to the contrary to their emotional decision.
Brain science has huge implications for the way we manage organizations, and equally significant implications for HR practices. Compensation, benefits, rewards and other current methods of employee motivation are much the same as they were three generations ago, ignoring all the research evidence from psychology and brain science. So too is the evidence about how psychological states and their brain characteristics---for example, happiness--have a direct impact on employee engagement, creativity and productivity.
In my April 26, 2009 article in Psychology Today, I said, " Leaders can change their own behavior or influence that of other people by focusing on creating new behaviors rather than trying to fix old ones. In a world with so many distractions, one of the biggest challenges is being able to focus enough attention on any one idea. Leaders can make a difference by eliciting attention on only the most important things and focusing their feedback to employees on things that work well. Focusing on solutions and not problems, and allowing employees to generate solutions and developing new positive behaviors become a critical management strategy to increase success."
With the demands of a new economy the old leadership practices just won't work. It's time we learned from brain science.
Ray B. Williams is Co-Founder of Success IQ University and President of Ray Williams Associates, companies located in Phoenix and Vancouver, providing leadership training, personal growth and executive coaching services. www.successiqu.com
Research on how the human brain can affect behaviors--called neuroscience, or the popular term, brain science--has yet to be fully appreciated by leaders of organizations. That knowledge could have a significant impact on how leaders are trained and what they do. In the past few decades, scientists have gained new and more accurate scientific views of human behavior, studying the human brain. Organizational change that takes into account the physiological nature of the brain and ways that predisposes people to resist or cooperate with leaders can be extremely useful for leaders.
Some valuable insights come from John Medina, a molecular biologist, published in the Harvard Business Review in May 2008. Medina is an author of Brain Rules: 12 Principles For Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School. Medina says "the brain is so sensitive to external experiences that you can literally rewire it through exposure to environmental influences." For example, we know that stress hurts the brain and that has a huge impact on productivity. Medina says that enduring continuing stress is like trying to fly an airplane under water.
Some people have brains that are wired in a way that can overcome huge amounts of stress, but we're not able to predict this. Slowly, brain science is beginning to inform us about the genetic components of why some people are more resilient than others. For example, a gene called 5-HTT helps regulate our moods. People with a mutation of this gene are more likely to become depressed under stress.We're also learning a lot about how our brain remembers. Medina says there is no such thing as a perfect memory because the brain's prime purpose is survival. So it will change the perception of reality to survive. The brain is not a perfect recording device. This finding supports Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which proposes that no one really knows what reality is, but only his or her perception of reality.
Brain research shows that long-term memory doesn't happen instantly, but occurs over a long time. So to develop long-term memory you have to be consistently re-exposed to certain information, a process called, "elaborative retrieval." Advertisers understand this concept, which is reflected in message repetition. Brain research has also pointed us to the knowledge that our brains are very elastic and capable of change regardless of age. The physical changes neurons undergo when learning something happens to anyone’s brain at any age. The brain remains plastic until we die, which means we can remain lifelong learners.
Business school professors at the Arizona State Univesity and Emory University are working with neuroscientists to study the brains of executives. At Emory, researchers asked a group of executives to respond to PowerPoint slides presenting moral dilemmas associated with early memories, to establish whether brain patterns that determine moral thinking are formed early in life. The results so far show that moral thinking is formed early in life which brings into question whether it could be taught later in life. The Leadership Neuroscience Project, headed by Arizona State University professors Pierre Balthazar and David Waltham initiated a study of a group of business leaders while they discussed various scenarios such as layoffs, to determine if there were any distinctive brain wave patterns.
"Neuroleadership,” is a term coined by David Rock, a leadership consultant and author of Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Leadership At Work. Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz, a research scientist at UCLA, are applying neuroscience concepts to leadership. For example, by emphasizing mindful, focused attention on new management practices, rather than fixing old habits that don't work, leaders can actually rewire their brains. McKinsey and Company is now incorporating their ideas into client workshops. An article by Rock and Schwartz published in Strategy and Business Journal, was the publication’s most downloaded article in 2006.
Improvements in brain analysis technology has allowed researchers to track the energy of a thought coursing through the brain in the same way they can track blood flowing through the circulatory system. Change lights up the prefrontalal cortex, which is fast and agile. Overloading the prefrontal cortex can generate fatigue, fear and anger, because of the cortex's connection to the emotion center of the brain, the amygdala.
Rock and Schwartz state that "the traditional command-and-control style of management doesn't lead to permanent changes in behavior. Ordering people to change and them telling them how to do it fires the prefrontal cortex’s hair trigger connection to the amygdala. The more you try to convince people that you’re right and they're wrong, the more they push back. The brain will try to defend itself from threats. Our brains are so complex that it is rare for us to be able to see any situation in exactly the same way as someone else. The way to get past the prefrontal cortex’s defenses is to help people come to their own resolution regarding the concepts causing through their prefrontal cortex to bristle."
Dr. Robert Cooper, of Stanford Business School writing in Strategy and Leadership Journal, points out that we actually have three brains--the one in our head, the one in our gut and the one in our heart, all of which have massive number of neurons. He claims that the highest reasoning involves all three brains working together.
Traditional change in management tactics in organizations are based more on animal training than on human psychology and neuroscience. Leaders promise bonuses and promotions (the carrot) for those who go along with the changes, and punish those (the stick) who don't with less important jobs or even job loss. This kind of managerial behavior flies in the face of evidence that shows that people's primary motivation in the workplace is neither money or advancement but rather a personal interest in their jobs, a good environment to work in and fulfilling relationships with their boss and colleagues.
Charles Jacobs, author of Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Supervisory Lessons From The Latest Brain Science, says the brain is wired to resist what is commonly termed constructive feedback, but is usually negative. When people encounter information that is in conflict with their self-image, their tendency is to change he information, rather than changing themselves. So when mangers give critical feedback to employees, the employees’ brain defense mechanism is activated because that information conflicts with what the brain remembers and knows.
Jacobs' views are supported by management guru Aubrey C. Daniels, writing in his book, Oops! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time and Money. He cites a study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) which found that 90% of performance appraisals are both painful and don't work and further, produce an extremely low percentage of top performers. Modern brain research questions the validly of psychological testing, such as the Myers-Briggs test, used for employment decisions. These tests were developed long before we knew very much about how the brain processes anything.
So if critical feedback or so called constructive criticism is not effective, what is? Jacobs recommends that leaders engage in a Socratic dialogue with employees, asking questions so that the employees set their own goals and self-evaluate. Leaders have to understand that learning in our brains is not the same for all people. When new ideas and concepts are embraced by people, the brain changes physically. So changing the way we think can alter the brain's physical characteristics.
Brain science also tells us that people make decisions based on emotions, not logic. When someone experiences something that gets attached to an emotion, it leaves a strong record in the brain. When that person encounters a similar set of circumstances, it brings up the memory along with the associating emotions, which could be positive or negative. It is the emotional memory that will affect the decisions, not logic. We use our analytical thinking processes to validate the emotional decision we have already made. That's why people can ignore evidence to the contrary to their emotional decision.
Brain science has huge implications for the way we manage organizations, and equally significant implications for HR practices. Compensation, benefits, rewards and other current methods of employee motivation are much the same as they were three generations ago, ignoring all the research evidence from psychology and brain science. So too is the evidence about how psychological states and their brain characteristics---for example, happiness--have a direct impact on employee engagement, creativity and productivity.
In my April 26, 2009 article in Psychology Today, I said, " Leaders can change their own behavior or influence that of other people by focusing on creating new behaviors rather than trying to fix old ones. In a world with so many distractions, one of the biggest challenges is being able to focus enough attention on any one idea. Leaders can make a difference by eliciting attention on only the most important things and focusing their feedback to employees on things that work well. Focusing on solutions and not problems, and allowing employees to generate solutions and developing new positive behaviors become a critical management strategy to increase success."
With the demands of a new economy the old leadership practices just won't work. It's time we learned from brain science.
Ray B. Williams is Co-Founder of Success IQ University and President of Ray Williams Associates, companies located in Phoenix and Vancouver, providing leadership training, personal growth and executive coaching services. www.successiqu.com
As a result of the recession many organizations have instituted staff reductions and reorganizations at the management levels. In doing so, leaders have an opportune time to rethink management structure, leadership styles and involvement in executive education.
Ronald Hefetz, Alexander Grashow and Martin Linsky, in their article Leadership in Permanent Crisis in the July-August Harvard Business Review argue that when the economy recovers, things won't return to "normal," which will require a different kind of leadership, one that requires leaders to be far more adaptive; to embrace disequilibrium (ie., orchestrating conflict, chaos and confusion); and to promote leadership throughout the organization. Further, they argue that this requires leaders who place self-care (physical and emotional) high on the priority list.
The recession has raised questions about the predominant business model and the leaders implementing that model--one that focuses primarily on shareholder profit and short term financial results. Many recent public surveys have shown that consumers, employees and investors question the ethics and morality underlying the current business paradigm, and no longer trust business leaders. Add to this the impending influx of young Generation Y workers into the workforce--who place high value on the bottom lines of social responsibility, sustainability and how employees are treated--and it brings into clear focus the need for not just a new style of leadership, but the executive programs that train those leaders.
In my article in the National Post, Time To Scrap The MBA To Prepare Leaders? I said " the problem with many business school leadership programs is that they teach ideas, not real life behaviors, and business school professors are chosen by virtue of their ability to publish detailed research, not having had leadership experience themselves. Understanding something intellectually often has little to do with being able to do it. Adult learners need experiences and coaching to turn concepts into leadership capabilities."
It seems like business schools are aware of the credibility gap and some are responding. In the recent Harvard Business Review, Professor Thomas Malone of the MIT Sloan School of Management is quoted as saying that executives "need to start reviewing the purpose of a business as maximizing the contribution of society subject to the constraints of producing a reasonable profit--not the other way around." And Harvard Business School Professor Rakesh Khurana was quoted as saying that a "management version of the Hippocratic Oath would fundamentally change the way business decisions are made." Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, offered in collaboration with Spain's ESADE Business School, now uses leadership skills and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices as levers of internal change, responding to the interests of customers, employees, shareholders,communities, and the environment without losing competitive advantage. The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is redesigning business education for the 21st century with a curriculum based on integrative thinking, for business solutions.
In a sense the recession has done us a favor, forcing us to take a deep hard look at the way we do business. As Henry Mintzberg, Professor of Management Studies at McGill University argues in his article, Rebuilding Companies as Communities, in the Harvard Business Review, "companies must remake themselves into places of engagement, where people are committed to one another and their enterprise." Mintzberg says that the recession produced a far greater crisis than an economic one--the crisis of "people's sense of belonging to and caring for something larger than themselves."
The rebuilding of companies as comunities will require a rethinking and renewal of executive education programs so that people once again have a sense of belonging and trust for leaders--an urgent but much needed task.
Ray Williams is President of Ray Williams Associates, a company providing leadership training and executive coaching services in Vancouver.
In times of crisis, people's behaviors and perspectives--both in their personal and work lives--change irrevocably. Those that adapt to the changes have the best chance for success. As a result of the current economic crisis, our economic system will fundamentally change and will not return to the "way it was." Our organizations will need leaders who understand that and provide the kind of leadership necessary for the new era.
The August issue of the Harvard Business Review provides an insightful look at managing in the new world. From the financial perspective, Niall Ferguson, a Harvard Professor outlines two distinct scenarios for the U.S., which could take it into fundamentally different conservative or liberal directions, depending on the success of the current economic initiatives. Eric Beinhocker, a senior fellow at McKinsey, observes that the public has lost trust in business, noting that a low trust environment makes everything more difficult about doing business--from higher transaction costs, lower brand value, and more difficulty in talent management. Regaining trust will be a prime imperative the leaders in the new era.
Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow and Marty Linsky in their article in the special HBR issue argue that when the economy recovers, a different mode of leadership will be required. They propose that the new managers must be much more adaptive, encouraging adaptation in their organizations, embracing "disequilibrium"--a balance of comfort and change for people--and distributing leadership throughout the organizations.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford University, writes in the HBR issue that shareholder's interests as a business priority is not longer acceptable to the public, customers and investors, and needs to be replaced with a consideration for all stakeholders, including employees. This will assuredly require a new leadership style.
Steven Bornstein, President and CEO of ESPN and Anthony Smith, director of Keilty, Goldsmith and Company, an international consulting firm, wrote in the book edited by Peter Drucker, The Leader of the Future, that the leader of the new era needs to have two prime ingredients--honesty and empowerment of others. This will certainly put the focus clearly on leaders' ethical behavior.
These issues and many others emanating from the recession will now require a much different kind of leader than those that led us into the recession and the difficult choices that are coming out of it
Ray B. Williams is Co-Founder of Success IQ University and President of Ray Williams Associates, companies located in Vancouver and Phoenix, providing leadership training, personal growth and executive coaching services. Ray can be reached at :rwilliams@successiqu.com
