Norwich Union is a company at the cutting edge of leadership and management techniques in the UK, for the past 18 month piloting the use of a strengths-based approach in various areas of Organisation Development and Human Resource Management, such as recruitment.
For most candidates and companies, the interview process is something to be endured rather than enjoyed , but according to KarenStefanyszyn , Head of Organisation Development, focusing on what people are good at and what makes them tick has transformed the interview process at NU and had some remarkable knock-on effects in the business.
For example: over 91% of NU staff recruited using strengths-based interview techniques said that the interview prepared them for their new roles; over 72% agreed that it was easy to settle into their new role; and over 73% said that they now use their natural talents at work every day. I find these results astonishing when I consider a typical interview outcome - that the job is not what was expected, the honeymoon period lasts a matter of weeks before reality bites, and results in lower morale and motivation.
In addition, Stefanyszyn reports that 100% of recruits scored above 90% in quality audits, and staff turnover figures in the first 6 months were halved. As a result of such positive feedback, the company is piloting the use of strengths in other areas of OD andHRM such as talent management. We look forward to hearing how this progresses.
The use of strengths in business is not entirely problem-free however. As an organisation you need to be clear which strengths model is the best fit - there are many well-known and well-validated models to choose from (such as StrengthsFinder and VIA-IS), others are being developed (for example by Dr AlexLinley , Director of the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology ), or you could always create your own.
As with any management tool, it can provide a useful common language with which to explore and resolve issues. You still need to be mindful, however, of the downside - that some people get quickly attached to labels, and forget that tools are only a means to an end.
That said, the use of strengths is gaining traction in UK businesses for one very good reason - for creating positive energy and excitement at work, nothing beats it. Imagine actually having fun during a job interview, and coming away from it feeling that you had learnt something new about yourself - now that really would be radical. I believe that using strengths in recruitment has the potential to transform the interview process in this way.
If you have had experience of using a strengths-based approach at work, we'd love to hear from you.
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
Tuesday, 10 July 2007
Visualisation and Creative Thinking in Business
100 ways to use visualisation and creative thinking to identify, explore and resolve business issues, presented in a brilliant Periodic Table format. This is a must for anyone looking for new ways to communicate visually - whether its data, concepts, strategy or metaphors that you want to illustrate.
This is a fantastic tool - if you hover your mouse over the Table, examples of each type of illustration pop up to show you how to use it in context.
You can use and/or adapt a fair number of these in Coaching too e.g the Story Template. I loved the Iceberg (so many businesses attend only to the bits they can see and hear, and ignore the more important bits which they can't...), the Feedback Diagram (simple but effective) and Zwicky's Morphological Box (brownie points for the jargon). The Failure Tree is the only one I could see that focuses exclusively on the downsides - not something we advocate if you want to win people over, although it's a useful technique for analysing complex system problems.
And what about the Hype Cycle? I was considering its application to Coaching and Positive Psychology.WRT Coaching, I think we've survived the Trough of Disillusionment, and are travelling gently onwards and upwards through the Scope of Enlightenment to our destination which is the Plateau of
Productivity.
As for Positive Psychology, well in the UK at least, we're still programming the Tom-Tom to get us to the Start of Media Infatuation. Put your seat-belts on, it's going to be a bumpy ride...
With thanks to Sarah 'Intellagirl' Robbins, on whose blog I discovered the Periodic Table, and of course to the guys who invented it, Ralph Lengler and Dr. Martin J. Eppler from visual-literacy.org.
This is a fantastic tool - if you hover your mouse over the Table, examples of each type of illustration pop up to show you how to use it in context.
You can use and/or adapt a fair number of these in Coaching too e.g the Story Template. I loved the Iceberg (so many businesses attend only to the bits they can see and hear, and ignore the more important bits which they can't...), the Feedback Diagram (simple but effective) and Zwicky's Morphological Box (brownie points for the jargon). The Failure Tree is the only one I could see that focuses exclusively on the downsides - not something we advocate if you want to win people over, although it's a useful technique for analysing complex system problems.
And what about the Hype Cycle? I was considering its application to Coaching and Positive Psychology.WRT Coaching, I think we've survived the Trough of Disillusionment, and are travelling gently onwards and upwards through the Scope of Enlightenment to our destination which is the Plateau of
Productivity.
As for Positive Psychology, well in the UK at least, we're still programming the Tom-Tom to get us to the Start of Media Infatuation. Put your seat-belts on, it's going to be a bumpy ride...
With thanks to Sarah 'Intellagirl' Robbins, on whose blog I discovered the Periodic Table, and of course to the guys who invented it, Ralph Lengler and Dr. Martin J. Eppler from visual-literacy.org.
Saturday, 7 July 2007
EI - Emotional Intelligence At Work
Five key things to understand about workplace Emotional Intelligence (EI - defined by psychologist Dr Susan David of Yale and Melbourne universities as "the ability to solve problems with and about emotions effectively"):
1. Emotions are resources - so treat them as data; whether positive or negative the purpose of emotions is to tell you that action of some kind is required.
2. The 4 stage RUUM model (Recognise, Use, Understand, Manage) is an extremely useful model for applying EI at work. It is possible to have different EI scores for each stage of the model, so for example you can have a high score for recognising emotions and a low score for managing them. The model allows you to pinpoint which areas of your EI ability you can benefit from developing.
3. When it comes to managing emotions in the workplace, there are several short term and long term strategies you can use. Psychology research shows which are very effective strategies and which are not.
4. If you're considering implementing an EI measurement tool at work, choose carefully. David claims that some well-known EI measurement tools actually measure personality, not EI.
5. Emotions provide useful data for business decision-making, because they underpin cognitive processes. Therefore, accept that there will be an element of 'heart' in all business decisions. Improving your ability to interpret your and others' emotions at work can transform your decision-making ability.
I'll be returning to the subject of EI , measurement tools and strategies for improving your workplace EI in a later post. In the meantime, you can find lots of useful information here.
1. Emotions are resources - so treat them as data; whether positive or negative the purpose of emotions is to tell you that action of some kind is required.
2. The 4 stage RUUM model (Recognise, Use, Understand, Manage) is an extremely useful model for applying EI at work. It is possible to have different EI scores for each stage of the model, so for example you can have a high score for recognising emotions and a low score for managing them. The model allows you to pinpoint which areas of your EI ability you can benefit from developing.
3. When it comes to managing emotions in the workplace, there are several short term and long term strategies you can use. Psychology research shows which are very effective strategies and which are not.
4. If you're considering implementing an EI measurement tool at work, choose carefully. David claims that some well-known EI measurement tools actually measure personality, not EI.
5. Emotions provide useful data for business decision-making, because they underpin cognitive processes. Therefore, accept that there will be an element of 'heart' in all business decisions. Improving your ability to interpret your and others' emotions at work can transform your decision-making ability.
I'll be returning to the subject of EI , measurement tools and strategies for improving your workplace EI in a later post. In the meantime, you can find lots of useful information here.
Friday, 6 July 2007
Well-Being at Work
CIPD and Spirituality - not often you find those two terms in the same sentence!
At yesterday's Well-Being at Work seminar by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the UK's professional body for HR practitioners, we discussed the role of Spirituality in the workplace. Who would have thought that such a seriously business-minded association would even consider it? Thankfully the penny's dropping; connecting with your employees as whole human beings is good for them and it's good for your business. If you're not sure about this just look at Lyubomirsky et al's 2005 research.
Dr Noreen Tehrani, Occupational and Counselling Psychologist, skillfully presented an overview of the benefits of well-being to business performance. It's not a simple matter either; the CIPD's well-being model incorporates 5 of 12 possible domains - Physical, Emotional, Personal Development, Organisation and Values; all of these are interlinked. In order for the CIPD model to deliver, however, I think it has to actively develop psychological well-being by focusing on the positives, something which is only implicit in the model.
Peter Barnard, Registrar and Clerk to the Corporation for the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education, described their journey towards a well-being culture over the last 5 or so years. They don't have a specific strengths-based approach as Positive Psychologists would recognise it, but they have put a huge amount of time and effort into creating physical well-being initiatives, culminating in them receiving two prestigious Employee Benefits Awards this year.
Dr Paul Pritchard, environmental risk specialist for Royal & SunAlliance presented a fascinating case study demonstrating how employee engagement throughout the organisation was transformed by the introduction of a National Volunteering Week. Pritchard was refreshingly honest about the fact that he didn't specifically set out to increase employee engagement, it was a happy by-product of a Corporate Responsibility initiative. I found this such an interesting story that I'll be featuring it in more detail in a later post.
According to the next speaker, Father Dermot Tredget OSB, a member of the Benedictine community at Douai Abbey, spiritual intelligence (SQ) is at the heart of being effective at work, simply because like EQ, PQ and IQ, SQ is a core part of what it is to be human. Asking someone to leave their spirituality at home means that you're not seeing the whole person at work. Before the non-believers amongst you stop reading, spirituality is starting to appear in many MBA and leadership programmes, e.g the Praxis Centre at the Cranfield School of Management. Fr Dermot also has many years business experience, an MBA from Bath University and regularly runs retreats for business leaders. I particularly liked this model of spirituality in the workplace for its emphasis on the importance of community-building, something which is often absent from organisations where people are too busy and too focused on business objectives to make meaningful contact with each other.
Finally Barbara Wren, Occupational Health Psychologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, presented a simple systems view of well-being, which elegantly explained the conflict (and corresponding decrease in well-being) which arises when the employee, the role and the organisation are not aligned. Of course getting those three lined up is a lot more difficult in real life; it's a challenge that change managers have to contend with almost on a daily basis.
The seminar gave a valuable insight into how various organisations see the role of well-being at work, and the issues for anyone in the HR field trying to implement a balanced well-being policy. But stick with it; all the evidence shows that the benefits of getting it right, for both employees and the organisation, can be enormous.
If you have any comments on your own organisation's well-being policy, we'd love to hear from you.
At yesterday's Well-Being at Work seminar by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the UK's professional body for HR practitioners, we discussed the role of Spirituality in the workplace. Who would have thought that such a seriously business-minded association would even consider it? Thankfully the penny's dropping; connecting with your employees as whole human beings is good for them and it's good for your business. If you're not sure about this just look at Lyubomirsky et al's 2005 research.
Dr Noreen Tehrani, Occupational and Counselling Psychologist, skillfully presented an overview of the benefits of well-being to business performance. It's not a simple matter either; the CIPD's well-being model incorporates 5 of 12 possible domains - Physical, Emotional, Personal Development, Organisation and Values; all of these are interlinked. In order for the CIPD model to deliver, however, I think it has to actively develop psychological well-being by focusing on the positives, something which is only implicit in the model.
Peter Barnard, Registrar and Clerk to the Corporation for the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education, described their journey towards a well-being culture over the last 5 or so years. They don't have a specific strengths-based approach as Positive Psychologists would recognise it, but they have put a huge amount of time and effort into creating physical well-being initiatives, culminating in them receiving two prestigious Employee Benefits Awards this year.
Dr Paul Pritchard, environmental risk specialist for Royal & SunAlliance presented a fascinating case study demonstrating how employee engagement throughout the organisation was transformed by the introduction of a National Volunteering Week. Pritchard was refreshingly honest about the fact that he didn't specifically set out to increase employee engagement, it was a happy by-product of a Corporate Responsibility initiative. I found this such an interesting story that I'll be featuring it in more detail in a later post.
According to the next speaker, Father Dermot Tredget OSB, a member of the Benedictine community at Douai Abbey, spiritual intelligence (SQ) is at the heart of being effective at work, simply because like EQ, PQ and IQ, SQ is a core part of what it is to be human. Asking someone to leave their spirituality at home means that you're not seeing the whole person at work. Before the non-believers amongst you stop reading, spirituality is starting to appear in many MBA and leadership programmes, e.g the Praxis Centre at the Cranfield School of Management. Fr Dermot also has many years business experience, an MBA from Bath University and regularly runs retreats for business leaders. I particularly liked this model of spirituality in the workplace for its emphasis on the importance of community-building, something which is often absent from organisations where people are too busy and too focused on business objectives to make meaningful contact with each other.
Finally Barbara Wren, Occupational Health Psychologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, presented a simple systems view of well-being, which elegantly explained the conflict (and corresponding decrease in well-being) which arises when the employee, the role and the organisation are not aligned. Of course getting those three lined up is a lot more difficult in real life; it's a challenge that change managers have to contend with almost on a daily basis.
The seminar gave a valuable insight into how various organisations see the role of well-being at work, and the issues for anyone in the HR field trying to implement a balanced well-being policy. But stick with it; all the evidence shows that the benefits of getting it right, for both employees and the organisation, can be enormous.
If you have any comments on your own organisation's well-being policy, we'd love to hear from you.
Positive Interventions
One of the ways Positive Intervention can be defined is an activity which is intended to create well-being "by cultivating pleasant emotions, strengths and/or meaning" (JPawelski 2006). Here's a short video of an inspirational positive intervention, devised by Juan Mann in Sydney, Australia.
I suspect that people watching it may think it's completely irrelevant to organisational well-being. The point, however, is not the intervention per se - I've used it as an illustration of the impact of reconnecting on a very basic level with other people. Watching the clip you get a sense of how, day-to-day, people often don't really connect with each other, and that when they make the effort to do so, they are completely transformed - they laugh, smile, dance and skip and are brimming over with energy.
You might be interested to know Mann's Free Hugs Campaign has since become a global phenomenon, with its own website.
I'll be looking at other examples of Positive Interventions in later posts.
My thanks to Marie-Josee Salvas, MAPP Pennsylvania student, for the link.
Thursday, 5 July 2007
Employee Well-Being
How does your business define employee well-being? Perhaps you think of it in terms of physical health, providing healthy menus in your staff restaurant, health screening or private health insurance. Or maybe you help employees manage stress or give up smoking? These types of support are common in many larger organisations, and for many HR and OD managers, this is what employee well-being is all about.
But what about the importance of psychological well-being or mental health in the work-place? In their recently published Change Agenda - What's happening with well-being at work?, the CIPD's examples of mental health at work are: work-life balance targets, conflict resolution training and relaxation techniques (p7). I think this is really missing the point.
The CIPD's definition of well-being is 'creating an environment to promote a state of contentment which allows an employee to flourish and achieve their full potential for the benefit of themselves and their organisation'. The question we need to answer is whether work-life balance targets, conflict resolution training or relaxation techniques really achieve this.
I would suggest that they are only half the story. Research shows that psychological well-being can be enabled through developing traits like resilience, optimism and self-awareness in employees, focussing on strengths and through fostering meaning at work, for example by building new organisational communities through volunteering programmes. What is essential for employees to flourish is an organisational culture which actively and positively promotes it.
I think it would be beneficial for organisations to view employee well-being in terms of an integrated model, which not only takes into account physical, psychological and spiritual well-being, but which places specific emphasis on developing the positives. I'll be returning to this integrated model and the importance of a positive focus in later posts.
But what about the importance of psychological well-being or mental health in the work-place? In their recently published Change Agenda - What's happening with well-being at work?, the CIPD's examples of mental health at work are: work-life balance targets, conflict resolution training and relaxation techniques (p7). I think this is really missing the point.
The CIPD's definition of well-being is 'creating an environment to promote a state of contentment which allows an employee to flourish and achieve their full potential for the benefit of themselves and their organisation'. The question we need to answer is whether work-life balance targets, conflict resolution training or relaxation techniques really achieve this.
I would suggest that they are only half the story. Research shows that psychological well-being can be enabled through developing traits like resilience, optimism and self-awareness in employees, focussing on strengths and through fostering meaning at work, for example by building new organisational communities through volunteering programmes. What is essential for employees to flourish is an organisational culture which actively and positively promotes it.
I think it would be beneficial for organisations to view employee well-being in terms of an integrated model, which not only takes into account physical, psychological and spiritual well-being, but which places specific emphasis on developing the positives. I'll be returning to this integrated model and the importance of a positive focus in later posts.
Wednesday, 4 July 2007
Oliver James and the Affluenza Bug
Earlier this year, clinical psychologist and well-known media figure, Dr Oliver James, published his new book 'Affluenza - How to be successful and stay sane'. The book caused a furore in some circles; James is no stranger to media controversy, however; it could be said that he actively courts it in order to focus attention on some very pressing social issues.
James presented at the recent the Open University Psychological Society's Psychology of Well-being Conference and despite (or because of?) getting the Saturday night slot,he didn't mince his words - his theory, stated simply, is that putting a high value on possessions, money, appearances (physical and social) and fame is at the heart of the rise in depression, anxiety and substance abuse in the English-speaking western countries. Not surprisingly, this seems to have upset quite a lot of people in the UK. We live in a democracy after all, and we're mature enough to make our own choices, aren't we? Who wants to be accused of "Selfish Capitalism"?
It's difficult to argue against the figures - World Health Organization studies of mental illness across both English speaking western countries and non-English speaking ones reveal a substantial and statistically significant rise in mental illness (as define above) in the former (average 23%) compared to the latter (11.5%). According toJames's theory, this rise is due to our increasing love of all things material.
Has materialism risen in English-speaking western countries - undoubtedly yes, just look around you. Does that prove, however, that materialism of the type James describes, even if it is rampant, causes mental illness?
Research (e.g. Tim Kasser ) suggests that there are 4 basic needs which must be met in order for psychological well-being to exist:
1) emotional security
2) feeling effective
3) community (friends, social groups etc)
4) autonomy
The question which needs to be answered is "does a focus on materialism prevent these needs being met, and if so how?". Common sense would say yes - a simple example is that materialists get their gratification externally - but is there scientific research that incontrovertibly shows this? James's money is obviously on the answer being affirmative; Affluenza was markedly short on academic references, so he's writing a new book which aims to lay out all the research evidence to support his Selfish Capitalism theory.
When I asked him after the lecture when this book would be published, however, he replied not as quickly as he'd hoped - so perhaps the research isn't as clear-cut as Positive Psychologists think.
If you want to see and hear James in action, register and watch this RSA lecture.
James presented at the recent the Open University Psychological Society's Psychology of Well-being Conference and despite (or because of?) getting the Saturday night slot,he didn't mince his words - his theory, stated simply, is that putting a high value on possessions, money, appearances (physical and social) and fame is at the heart of the rise in depression, anxiety and substance abuse in the English-speaking western countries. Not surprisingly, this seems to have upset quite a lot of people in the UK. We live in a democracy after all, and we're mature enough to make our own choices, aren't we? Who wants to be accused of "Selfish Capitalism"?
It's difficult to argue against the figures - World Health Organization studies of mental illness across both English speaking western countries and non-English speaking ones reveal a substantial and statistically significant rise in mental illness (as define above) in the former (average 23%) compared to the latter (11.5%). According toJames's theory, this rise is due to our increasing love of all things material.
Has materialism risen in English-speaking western countries - undoubtedly yes, just look around you. Does that prove, however, that materialism of the type James describes, even if it is rampant, causes mental illness?
Research (e.g. Tim Kasser ) suggests that there are 4 basic needs which must be met in order for psychological well-being to exist:
1) emotional security
2) feeling effective
3) community (friends, social groups etc)
4) autonomy
The question which needs to be answered is "does a focus on materialism prevent these needs being met, and if so how?". Common sense would say yes - a simple example is that materialists get their gratification externally - but is there scientific research that incontrovertibly shows this? James's money is obviously on the answer being affirmative; Affluenza was markedly short on academic references, so he's writing a new book which aims to lay out all the research evidence to support his Selfish Capitalism theory.
When I asked him after the lecture when this book would be published, however, he replied not as quickly as he'd hoped - so perhaps the research isn't as clear-cut as Positive Psychologists think.
If you want to see and hear James in action, register and watch this RSA lecture.
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