Yellow Flower - Aoru - FlickR CC

There has been lots of recent thought around this area. Authors such as  Richard Barrett, who created the Values Center with it’s emphasis on vision and values I have been a fan for a longtime, have been working on this theme for a long time and it is one that more organizations need to take seriously.

In the current era of cost-cutting and expediency it is tempting to push values and vision to the backburner and simply focus on bottom line top line issues - however it is easy to see the folly of this, more difficult to drive it forward in the real day to day cut and thrust of commerce. A good intelegant approach is to push the vision up the agenda rather than slide it down - give people a “totem pole” to gather round and the tribe will be more cohesive.

On sure way to do so is to run some Appreciative Inquiry workshops. While initially these may seem fluffy they are a very resilient way to approach long-term motivation by linking real, proven past successes and those stories, the tribal myths, if you will, with the future positive hopes of the teams. This not only brings continuity, it also reinforces messages of success, and creates a success culture. A side note here would be that AI is also good for encouraging openess, transparency, and clarity when success eludes us, as it emphasizes a culture where blame is discussed without blatant blame.

As we move out of the worst of the recession, and the US showed a 5.6% growth for the latest quarterly released figures from the Treasury, we should be able to ask what can we do to accentuate the positive.

The best companies take values seriously, our core values and ethics make us feel more surety, as well as more professional and more creative: and those are not bad attributes to want in employees in tough times…

Aristotelian virtues remain one of the clearest exposition of good behaviour:

Put intelegantly: simple, serious, and sincere are better than any other traits.

Group photograph of some of the men hired to work on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway High Level Bridge. Men are sitting or standing on the scaffolding for the first span of the bridge.

(1908 - Galt Museum - FlickR Commons)

Intelligence testing tests the ability to crack “codes” and personality testing looks for “archetypes”.

We have been aware for a while that they are a so-so predictor of the effort a person will put in to prove their ability. After all, what they seem to ignore is the role of values and character in the general overall makeup of the individual.

A motivated character is an essential sine qua non of the successful organization and good talent management, where motivation is  correctly seen as effort + self-will generating a desire to reach a goal.

The goal is important and the effort is essential.

Effort is more important than smarts alone: Dr Carol Dweck of Stanford has proved that telling children they are smart was nowhere near as motivating as praising them for their effort.

Or put intelegantly: telling a person you admire their effort and ability to get the job done, rather than simply saying “you’re great” will be a greater motivator - and we all get that!

However, motivation theories are all too frequently tied to intelligence and personality testing. Especially when they are applied to organizations and work. In employee testing this is often used to see if it is possible to spot the best candidate, or even the high-flier.

A motivated and intelligent person with a given Myers-Briggs or Big 5 personality describes both a demonic psychopath as well as a morally centered and excellent worker. Both on paper would look precisely the same.

I would argue the case that one of the missing components is character.

There is currently the 16PF (Sixteen personality factor questionnaire). This is based on the enormous lexigraphic work of finding 17,953 trait names and by factor analysis reducing those to  4,505, of Allport and Odbert, and then formed into the 16PF questionnaire by Raymond B. Catell in 1956.

Catell’s work still holds good, but it is dated. Think how the world has changed - even if the traits that make a person resilient, friendly, likable, and successful haven’t. Note these have nothing to do with talk or charm or other deceptions. We are talking result-based interviewing for experienced workers and checkable certification and highly checkable letters of recommendation for both them and college leavers. (I always ring and talk to the professor and the college warden - with signed permission for the candidate, of course.)

There is a great story told in Sweden about an engineer who was impossible to work with. So they only way they could get rid of them was to leave superb job offers where the person would see them and then give them glowing, superlative, references. SOEP. Someone else’s problem! (So how would YOU check uncover that one?!)

So, what is character? One definition, albeit a deliberately loose one, might be  as follows: personality is inherited, character is what we show when times get tough.

This development is both intrinsic and extrinsic. It is both our internal interpretation (a cognitive process) and the environmental effect (behavioral). These are categorically not mutually exclusive, but rather blend and meld to temper and forge the personality.

However, how can we test for character?

What is character?

Is it a list of adjectives, synonyms?
Are they qualities that are universally recognizable?

If they are instinctively understood and recognized how can we test to see if a person possesses genuine character?  Will they keep going when the going gets tough?

There is a caution here: this should not mean foolhardiness.

The number one indicator is an emotional intelligence test coupled with solid testable work sills and results.

In a previous post I suggested ways to stop office politics; the same applies here: the Golden Rule is look at results not at talk.

All modern human life is predicated on two notions. We are only called to make these two decisions in our lives: who will you live or not live with, and what you do or don’t work with…..

John Montgomery Rouse, The Way of Intelegance

I will posting a lot over the coming months on ergosophy.

The word itself: ergo = work sophos = wisdom.

Definition: n. a branch of philosophy concerning life as work.

Frederick Soddy has used the word but not in this definition. (I believe I am the first to do so.)

There are big questions: What is work? Why do we work?

The only field that has been applied is ethics and evidence shows that this has lacked a modicum of essential rigour.

Ergosophy is a not a branch of sociology, economics or ethnology. Ergosophy is pure and applied philosophy in relation to work.

This is not a trivial pursuit: as human beings we work more any other activity. That includes reproduction, raising offspring, sleeping, eating, play etc; we are considered eligible for work, on average, for 45 years. When we are 45 years old we are only just over half-way through work, with another 20 years ahead of us…

Taking Hegelian, Kantian, Aristotelian, Platonic, even Cartesian models and applying them to the notion and meaning of work is a good beginning, but we live in post-modern times so can we even talk about work as the means of production, as our raison d’être? Or is there a lot more to this?

What are the qualia of work? The ontological definitions of work? How are Ayn Rand’s objectivism, or Karl Popper’s critical rationalism a part of the puzzle. Do aristotlean categories and the platonic ideal, or liebnizian monads or spinozian euadaimonia even augustian theology help us see work afresh?

It is hardly a new idea to suggest that work defines us, but it may be new to ask how can we grabble, overpower, and define work as a philosophical puzzle rather by defining work as systems.

Particularly as both politics and economics are failing us in getting us all to enjoy work when compared to how we may enjoy our free time.

Sure, some of us love work and here the notion of satisfaction may be coupled to reward rather than to the act per se; but maybe a philosophical approach will move on from the stagnant pool we are in now.

If you interested in contributing to the upcoming ISSN registered journal then please contact me for guidelines for submission etc;

[Source: Frankfurt Airport, Photographer: Sugu, FlickR cc]

When times are good as they were for the ten years before November 2008 switching jobs or even careers was possible and even fun. Now, as we go through more bad news for the markets and the constant distancing of the light at the end of the tunnel changing careers is becoming the first sign of foolhardiness.

So what to do?

Well, Rouse Circles, suggests first and foremost improve your core work skills. What courses are you signed up for this Autumn? Can you read more, do more, focus more, get a qualification; anything, that will improve your core job skills? Secondly, how you get fitter both mentally, physically, and emotionally? The old adage about when the going gets tough, the tough get going is a pretty good one here. Are you fearful of the future , or are you saying no fear, and just getting on with the job.

From the people I talk to the number one recommendation is the most intelegant: get the job done!

Less fluff, more action. As we all get back into the rhythm of work after summer breaks I think their advice is good: make the extra calls, go the extra mile, and wear an extra smile…

I am keeping my eyes open for more on this subject and will post more.

Enough already! Since November 16th we have been hearing nothing but doom and gloom. While this is right on the button in one respect it is forgetting something fundamental: now we have a chance to really ask what is our mettle, what values do we truly value, and how can we grow. Perhaps this is a chance to truly develop a vision - one where each worker has a stronger sense of self than their job title. A little more work on integrity, honesty, and core decency would be a paid profit from hard times, right?

[Source: FlickR CC Photographer: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino]

ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2009) — The International Research Institute of Stavanger (IRIS), which is based in Norway, have studied which leadership qualities could help employees return from sick leave early. Being considerate, understanding and able to maintain contact with the sick-listed are the most important leadership qualities, according to the study.

“The manager has a key role when it comes to sick leave. He or she is often the best available measure for promoting health in these cases. A manager with good qualities can have a great impact on how long the employee is off sick”, says senior researcher Randi Wågø Aas, at IRIS, which is owned by the University of Stavanger and Rogalandsforskning.

Norway has the highest sick leave figures in Europe, and the authorities are constantly looking for new measures to get numbers down. The latest research effort from IRIS on the topic studied the relationship between the employees who are signed off sick, and their managers. Part of this work has now been published in the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation.

Previous research has revealed a strong link between management and sick leave.

The risk of long term sick leave rises proportionally to the lack of support from the manager.

“That is why we think it is interesting to look at which qualities in managers are considered important”, says Ms Wågø Aas. Researchers followed 30 people on long term sick leave over the course of eight months. Both the employees and their managers were asked which management qualities they felt were the most important in the follow-up work. Researchers got 345 descriptions of important qualities, which were naturally grouped in 78 specific management qualities. The three most often mentioned were Ability to make contact, Consideration and Understanding.

In other words, the study shows that people on sick leave first and foremost need to feel cared for.

“The employees find it important that their managers are understanding, supportive, attentive, empathetic, warm and friendly. When they are on sick leave, people are in a position of vulnerability. Many of them talk about feeling suspected, and say their problems are not taken seriously”, says Ms Aas.

The 78 manager qualities which emerged from the investigation were divided into seven categories, which each represent a given type of manager. The one mentioned the most frequently, is nicknamed The Protector, who has caring qualities. Number two is The Problem Solver, who is the best at adapting. The third most important is The Contact Maker, and then it is The Trust Creator, The Recognizer, The Encourager, and The Responsibility-maker. Each of these types contains groups of qualities which emerge in the interviews. Ideally, managers with staff responsibilities should have a bit of each of the seven in them, but what is the most important will vary.

“The perfect manager can take steps which are tailored to the individual’s needs. The survey shows that there are great differences in what the individual considers good follow-up. It is also clear that a combination of different management qualities is needed. A great many people need both a pat on the shoulder, and to be welcomed back to work”, says Ms Aas. According to her, it also seems that contact ability is a necessary quality in order to achieve the combination of protection and problem-solving.

Researchers also found age differences in the individual’s needs while on sick leave. Younger employees had the greatest need for protection and recognition, while those over 45 were more concerned with problem solving and being held responsible.

“Older people are probably more concerned with adaptation of their work environment, to make sure they can get back to work. Younger employees are possibly more vulnerable, and need more encouragement”, she says.

A third important find in the study, is the difference in what the employees and the managers thought was important. The employees emphasised recognition and encouragement more than the managers, who were more concerned with accountability, and problem solving.

“If employees have different needs from what the managers are aware of, and this is not communicated, there is a big problem. It is easy to view management as mainly about adapting all practical and formal matters for the employee. For most employees however, it is more important to be understood and included. For instance, many managers think they are protecting the employee by telling them that they do not need to work. In reality, they are simply extending the sick leave, since the employee does not feel included. After all, many are able to do things even though they are ill”, says Senior researcher Ms Wågø Aas.

IRIS will continue to study the interview material. They also wish to develop a feedback tool, which aims to improve communication between managers and employees on sick leave.

Here are the types of managers identified in the study:

1. The Protector

Protects the employee, understands the situation, helps and includes. Shows compassion, is discreet, warm and friendly.

2. The Problem Solver

Professional, solution oriented and creative. Can, among other things, change the tasks or in other ways adapt them so that the employee can continue to work. Takes responsibility, and gives individual treatment.

3. The Contact Maker

Gets in touch with the employee to inform of what is happening in the workplace. Is also interested in how the employee is doing, and proves a listening and able conversationalist.

4. The Trust Creator

Is discreet, predictable, attentive, honest and open. Creates trust and a feeling of safety.

5. The Recognizer

Behaves acknowledging, confirming and without prejudice towards the employee.

Shows respect and confidence.

6. The Encourager

Has a positive attitude, and is generous and happy. Motivates, inspires and is available. This type of manager has a sense of humour, as well as being just, patient, and encouraging.

7. The Responsibility-maker

Assertive, fearless, challenging, and direct. Is honest, to the point and not afraid to establish boundaries or confront. Gives the employee challenges and responsibility for his or her own situation.

Adapted from materials provided by The University of Stavanger.

Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think differently than the rest of us.

Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians  use a creative technique called divergent thinking more effectively, and also use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more than the average person.

The research by Crystal Gibson, Bradley Folley and Sohee Park is currently in press at the journal Brain and Cognition.

“We were interested in how individuals who are naturally creative look at problems that are best solved by thinking ‘out of the box’,” Folley said. “We studied musicians because creative thinking is part of their daily experience, and we found that there were qualitative differences in the types of answers they gave to problems and in their associated brain activity.”

One possible explanation is that many musicians must be able to use both hands independently to play their instruments.

“Musicians may be particularly good at efficiently accessing and integrating competing information from both hemispheres,” Folley said. “Instrumental musicians often integrate different melodic lines with both hands into a single musical piece, and they have to be very good at simultaneously reading the musical symbols, which are like left-hemisphere-based language, and integrating the written music with their own interpretation, which has been linked to the right hemisphere.”

Previous studies of creativity have focused on divergent thinking, which is the ability to come up with new solutions to open-ended, multifaceted problems. Highly creative individuals often display more divergent thinking than their less creative counterparts.

To conduct the study, the researchers recruited 20 classical music students from the Vanderbilt Blair School of Music and 20 non-musicians from a Vanderbilt introductory psychology course. The musicians each had at least eight years of training. The instruments they played included the piano, woodwind, string and percussion instruments. The groups were matched based on age, gender, education, sex, high school grades and SAT scores.

The researchers conducted two experiments to compare the creative thinking processes of the musicians and the control subjects. In the first experiment, the researchers showed the research subjects a variety of household objects and asked them to make up new functions for them, and also gave them a written word association test. The musicians gave more correct responses than non-musicians on the word association test, which the researchers believe may be attributed to enhanced verbal ability among musicians. The musicians also suggested more novel uses for the household objects than their non-musical counterparts.

In the second experiment, the two groups again were asked to identify new uses for everyday objects as well as to perform a basic control task while the activity in their prefrontal lobes was monitored using a brain scanning technique called near-infrared spectroscopy, or NIRS. NIRS measures changes in blood oxygenation in the cortex while an individual is performing a cognitive task.

“When we measured subjects’ prefrontal cortical activity while completing the alternate uses task, we found that trained musicians had greater activity in both sides of their frontal lobes. Because we equated musicians and non-musicians in terms of their performance, this finding was not simply due to the musicians inventing more uses; there seems to be a qualitative difference in how they think about this information,” Folley said.

The researchers also found that, overall, the musicians had higher IQ scores than the non-musicians, supporting recent studies that intensive musical training is associated with an elevated IQ score.

—————————-
Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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The research was partially supported by a Vanderbilt University Discovery Grant.

Folley is a postdoctoral fellow. Park is a professor of psychology and psychiatry and a member of the Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience. Gibson was an undergraduate student and research assistant in the psychology department at Vanderbilt when this work was conducted and is now a Peace Corps volunteer based in Namibia. Park and Folley are Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development investigators.

Source: Melanie Moran
Vanderbilt University

Source FlickR: Peter McDonald

How we use Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Quotient in teams and organizations matters.

While we will be dealing with metrics, alignment, and implementation, initially we need to consider the fundamental purpose of emotions and how they work when at work.

Let’s see how EI can improve sales teams for a starter. And an environmental approach to keep talent.

Rather than look at Goleman’s or Bar-On’s overwhelming contributions to EI initially, I would like to start on another more empirical track, and hopefully we’ll converge along the way and see how these threads tie together.

As stated in the introductory post, Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Emotional Intelligence (EI) has little to do with “being emotional”. Again, emotional intelligence is not how emotional a person is. It is a set of skills that enable me to be emotionally stable and mature: clever, if you will, at handling emotions.

It took several of the most brilliant medical minds of the pre-War period to understand the simple formula:

See Bear -> Feel Fear -> Run or Freeze

Through a set of extremely precise experiments psychologists, all previously medical doctors, sought the answer as to how and why we react the way we do. Especially to fear.

It led to some fundamental discoveries in the neurobiology as to how the brain and body create, react, and learn of and from emotional responses.

Bear -> Fear -> Run is otherwise known, in Walter B Cannon’s own words, as the flight or fight response. Cannon with Philip Bard proposed what has become the best known theory of emotional response. Some 50 years earlier, William James, the father of modern rigorous psychology in America and Carl Lange in Denmark both separately proposed what has come down to us as the James-Lange theory.

In the James-Lange theory the suggestions is: see bear, your body reacts before your cognitive mind does, your mind recognizes these reactions of the nervous system, and calls it fear (Or love, or whatever emotion you feel). Cannon-Bard on the other hand states that the emotions come first, i.e. your brain reacts and then your body does it’s flight or fight stuff.

Chicken or egg? A little.

And we still don’t really know the answer. What is accepted is that see bear have a physical reaction is normative. It would seem more holistic to suggest that the two are working in unison, that the amygdala (the reptile base of the human brain responsible for among other things the survival instinct) is programed to kick in both a cognitive response and a physical simultaneously as we need to survive.

What is certain is that I need my senses to recognize danger - however, just to muddy the waters, it appears, from recent experiments that the brain works faster than the physical nervous system. We seem to literally know fear before our body does - giving weight to the Cannon-Bard theory. What we can be absolutely certain of is that we do call that normative reaction an emotional reaction.

And, what has this got to do with Emotional Quotient and Emotional Intelligence?  As we will see EQ and EI are our not only about our emotional reactions, it is rather about our emotional awareness. It is from the combined efforts of Drs William James, Carl Lange, Walter B Cannon and Philip Bard that we developed a working understanding of emotion and the part of the brain that deals with and generates the neurochemical responses to environmental change: the limbic pathway.

The limbic pathway is the part of your brain that deals with emotions. Not just crying, fear, love, happiness, but rather the much more subtle and important stuff: our daily interaction and reactions with people and objects and out thoughts etc; these happen all the time, when we sleep, when we’re awake, and so on. The limbic pathway keeps on working out our emotional, cognitive state.

It is linked to both the hindbrain (the reptilian brain in humans controlling your most basic physical needs) and the higher brain functions (thought, memory, imagination) and releases dopamine (which makes you calm) and serotonin (which makes you happy).

What we are looking for at first is the correct mix of both of those neurotransmitters, if they are in balance we have emotional homeostasis.

This is a fancy way of saying we are able to be at our most optimal performance wise and keep our stronger emotions in check.

We exhibit one of the key indicators of Emotional Intelligence: self-control. We are calm. Even when driven to distraction, we are calm, self-controlled, and in check. All the time. We use our limbic pathway to keep calm, to assert ourselves without raising our voices, and we are still genuinely in relation to others - we are not artificially calm or stiff, or withdrawn, but neither are we shouting, stamping, and frothing at the mouth.

Such a person is not given to outbursts, or to total withdrawal. They have a mature developed sense of self. Their interaction with others is not based on subversive or agenda-based behaviors like narcissism, self-interest, psychotic manipulation, and so on. Emotional intelligent people are composed, detailed, focused and on point, they are calm, deliberate, but emotionally engaged. They do not sound or act like an automaton, but neither are they manic. Again, it is what we would all instinctively recognize as balanced behaviour.

In a 360° survey we might want to ask:
Does the person control themselves?
When stressed what is their reaction?
To fight? Or withdraw? Or to assert?

Assertive behaviour is more than don’t mess with me you’ll come off worse than me. Assertiveness is the ability to influence and engender respect in the other party. And here, high EI and EQ pay massive dividends. This is more than appearance and body language, it is a fundamental brain set, from the limbic pathway, that will not be rattled, that holds its position, that listens, and states clearly and precisely their position in a calm, measured, and considered way while still using emotions.

This is exceptionally useful for sales personnel who need to exude more than confidence. They need to exude professionalism, knowledge, and a keen self-awareness.

This has top line and bottom line effects.

In Strategic HR we might define this as a good indicator of maturity in young talent. They need to also show real engagement, drive, and results as well.

If the companies goal is to keep talent, and it should be a central HR goal of companies to retain the talented, the best, then helping them achieve early maturity in an excellent idea. This must be aligned with other factors such as motivation, rewards, respect, and inclusion otherwise it will be ineffective.

In the next post, we will look at other components of Emotional Intelligence and how scaling them up in an organization drives business results.

It’s always great to have clients who really appreciate you.I am very proud top be asked back to do a three day kick-off for the Procivitas schools for the sixth year in a row. The Procivitas organization is run by Helena and Peter Connée, who are both excellent and passionate people, and are Sweden’s only private business high schools.I look forward to seeing a new bunch of students from Malmö, Helsingborg, and Växjö, and talking about talent, leadership, and, the Intelegant kicker: how to never, ever run of money…