Being Present During Feedback

During my career in the HR and L&D space, I could not put a figure on how many times I have given 360 degree feedback to managers, often as part of a leadership development programme. The 360 degree process is certainly not a new one. We know the demand for 360 degree surveys is growing and that this process is increasingly a part of our roles as HR and L&D professionals and leaders in business.

Despite my experience to date though, I am always amazed how much I continually learn about myself in these feedback situations. I know I am an extravert and I operate very intuitively. Whilst these are my strengths in giving feedback, they can also be my downfall. I need to always be mindful of how I am in a 360 degree feedback scenario, and adjust my style for the person receiving the feedback.

The top ten golden rules of feedback are always in our minds. Use specific examples, do not judge, choose the environment etc. However it is useful to remind ourselves of those other rules of behaviour that are obvious, yet sometimes easy to overlook. We must not forget that how you say things and how you phrase your message carries more weight than you think. You cannot escape your personality—but you can temper it.

I recently read some ideas around how to ‘BE’ in a debrief:

• Be present and maintain self-awareness
• Avoid value laden language, tone, body language and facial expressions
• Avoid making interpretations
• Avoid the use of closed and leading questions
• Use open and probing questions to facilitate discussion of the results
• Draw on the individuals context
• Offer suggestions for improvement when invited to do so and you have them to offer
• Call any mistakes you make and apologise

(Ref: Dr Ben Palmer, Director, Genos International)

These behaviours sound straightforward right? Yet it is not easy to always be this way when immersed in a feedback relationship with an individual. Our role, the purpose of the 360 degree feedback, the emotional response from the individual can all pull and lean us in directions we should not really go. The first point is the key: Be present. If we stick to that then the rest should fall into place.

Healthy Thinking

According to Wikipedia, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a psychotherapeutic approach that addresses dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behaviours and cognitive processes. CBT achieves these outcomes through a number of goal-oriented, explicit systematic procedures. Cognitive behavioural therapy is one of the most widely used clinical interventions. It is thought to be effective for the treatment of a variety of conditions related to mood, anxiety, and personality. Given the success and widespread application of CBT it is surprising that it is rarely referred to as the basis or a component of work-place training or intervention. This is even more so surprising given that so many aspects of various training courses have elements of CBT and in particular the key premise that changing maladaptive thinking leads to change in affect and behaviour.

Many practitioners steer clear of using psychological terms to describe their interventions. This is somewhat of a shame as it leads to a situation where watered-down interventions result. The reality is that there are a range of quality techniques that have their genesis in the CBT movement and have huge application to improving workplace relations and work place productivity.

One workplace intervention that is explicit about links to CBT is Healthy Thinking, as developed by Dr. Tom Mulholland. Healthy thinking, or HT as it is commonly known, is at its core a reframing technique. The programme teaches participants how to become more aware of the impact of their thinking on their emotional state and how this leads to behaviour.  The programme also has a range of simple to remember and simple to use cognitive cues that people can use to evaluate their thinking process and whether it is indeed a help or hindrance.

As with all the products and training that OPRA promote we tend to adopt an approach of trialling internally first. Our motto is that unless we are convinced of a solution’s merits it is unlikely to have value to our clients.

While I had many insights that I could share from my experience with HT the one that I found most salient is that for psychology to have an impact it must be useable. HT works not only because it is in part based on aspects of CBT but that Dr. Tom has packaged it in such an easy to remember framework.  Being able to identify what type of unhealthy thinking I often resort to, and have an antidote at the ready has been invaluable for being able to have a positive impact on my thinking. Being able to TWIG (an mnemonic for processing a thought before allowing it to drive emotion and behaviour) ensures that I now have a process by which to evaluate whether a thought is useful or needs to be replaced. The removal of ‘Moan-Zones’  (places to have a whinge!) in our office has resulted in a much more positive working environment.

While the concepts of CBT may be perceived as the domain of psych professionals I strongly encourage all our clients to take a look Healthy Thinking and identify applications to improving workplace performance. Whether it is a training course, the e-learning or just a book on how to be a healthier thinker I’m confident that there are lessons that all our clients will find enhancing. Click here for more information on Healthy Thinking.

How Does Emotional Intelligence Relate to Teams?

How does emotional intelligence relate to teams?

Emotional intelligence (EI) can be defined as the ability to recognise, understand and manage the emotions of oneself, of others and of groups. The concept of EI and its contribution to the effectiveness of organisations is now well researched and supported. However, as Druskat and Wolff (2001) point out this has generally been discussed in terms of the impact at the individual level and the reality is that most of the work we do and the decisions we make is in teams. Because overall performance relies so much on team cohesiveness and awareness, enhancing emotional intelligence across the team is crucial but what does this look like and how does it differ from strategies aimed at enhancing individual emotional intelligence?

The key differences between the concepts of individual and group emotional intelligence as defined by Daniel Goleman suggest that someone with high emotional intelligence is aware of emotions and able to regulate them both inwardly and outwardly. However, just because a team is made up of emotionally intelligent people does not make for an emotionally intelligent group. A team must not only consider the emotions of the individuals within that group, but they must also be mindful of the emotions of the group as a whole, as well as the emotions of other groups in a broader context. According to Druskat and Wolff, establishing emotionally intelligent group norms where specific attitudes and behaviours become habits that enable trust, group identity and group efficacy is the answer for creating emotionally intelligent groups and ensuring functional team performance.

There are a range of potential strategies for enabling emotionally intelligent behaviour in teams at these three levels. Interpersonal understanding and perspective taking were two strategies that Druskat and Wolff discussed as ways that people can become more aware of their team members’ perspectives and feelings at the individual level. Interpersonal understanding refers to a team’s ability to pick up certain behaviours of its members and recognise the cause of them.  Perspective taking refers to the way teams stop and take the time to consider the perspectives of everyone as opposed to simply going with the majority. An emotionally intelligent team would query if there were any perspectives they had not yet heard or thought through fully. Therefore, a group norm of interpersonal understanding and sensitivity is established and helps to nurture trust and a sense of group identity among its members.

While establishing these norms at the individual level is important, many teams can struggle to recognise emotions at the group level. In a study of effective teams, the authors found that having a group awareness of the team’s strengths and weaknesses and means of interaction were critical in facilitating group efficacy.  Group emotional intelligence is about bringing emotions to the surface and understanding how they impact the performance of the team, then facing them in an open and honest forum. The last type of emotional intelligence that any high performing team should have is the ability to understand emotions outside of their team. Sometimes a team can become so caught up in their objectives and ways of working they can struggle to understand why other groups in the organisation don’t share their viewpoint or enthusiasm. Successful teams are not only aware of others’ perspectives but are capable of influencing outsiders simply by how they frame their own needs and perspectives.

While emotional intelligence at the individual level has been well supported, emotional intelligence at the team level is critical to ensuring the success of a team. Through establishing norms for emotional awareness and understanding at all levels teams can create a culture of trust, group identity and efficacy resulting in high performance. Training courses can be hugely beneficial in increasing emotional awareness and helping people to regulate emotions. Many companies are now choosing to invest in leadership development courses and team building workshops which can inform teams of the importance of establishing emotionally intelligent norms and provide strategies in doing so. What norms exist within your team and what does your team do to encourage a supportive and trusting environment?

Druskat, V., Wolff, S. (2001). Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups. Harvard Business Review, 81-90.

What is Ethical Behaviour?

In our work and personal lives most of us make hundreds of decisions every week, many of which involve some degree of deciding the ‘right’ thing to do. As such, we are often faced with complex situations in which we have to determine the most ethical way to proceed.  But what is ethical behaviour? I think most of us would agree that in the majority of situations there is not simply one ‘right’ and one ‘wrong’ way of doing things. In fact, most situations we face are very complex and involve multiple factors we need to consider in order to decide on a course of action that we see as ‘ethical’. So how do we make these complex decisions?

Often it is simpler than you might think. While there are many models of ethical decision-making which outline a step by step process of how to make an ethical decision, the reality is most of us would struggle in many situations to find the time and resources to engage in such a process. So, how do we make these decisions? The reality is that most of us are experts in what we do. We have worked 40+ hours in our jobs for a number of years, and have generally gained some form of expertise. As a result, when we are faced with these types of complex decisions, where there is often limited information and time with which to choose a course of action, we often use a degree of expert intuition, and may not seem to engage in a rational, step by step process as to deciding the best way to behave. So does this mean we are cutting corners? Not necessarily.

There is a time and a place for both a logical, step-by-step process of making ethical decisions, as well as a more intuitive, “what do I think is right”, process. Sometimes making ethical decisions will involve a step-by-step process, by which you consider each possible course of action and their potential consequences, weighing up the best way forward. These occasions tend to be when both time and resources are sufficient, when you need to justify your decision to someone of higher status such as a professional board, or when you are new to an area of work and have not yet developed expertise. On the other hand, when you are an expert, you do not have all of the information available, time is limited, and there are a number of factors to be considered, relying on our intuition is more likely to occur.

Whichever process you engage in, there are a range of factors that may impact on the course of action you choose. Are there things about yourself (e.g. age, gender, educational background) that might impact on what you define as ethical behaviour? Are there situational factors such as the organisation you work for that could play a part? All of us could view the same situation, engage in a rational decision-making process, and still come to a different conclusion about what is the most ethical way to behave. So, the key is knowing yourself, understanding your situation, and taking a moment to consider how these factors might impact on the course of action you take when deciding the ‘right’ thing to do. Why not take that moment now?

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail

In a recent book Nate Silver[1] illustrates the limitations of people to think in probabilistic terms and build models that incorporate uncertainty. This is not a trivial matter, and is a major contributing factor to the financial crash that started in late 2007, the effects of which are still resonating around the world. Mr Silver notes that while financial advisers have widely proclaimed the GFC as an unpredictable ‘black swan’ event that no one saw coming, he notes that there were plenty of observers, including the newspapers of the day, that were warning of problems brewing. However, those that were close to the action missed the signs as they were primed to avoid seeing disaster and arrogantly had full confidence in their powers of prediction, due to their position.

For I/O psychologists. the level of over-confidence people have in their predictions is a well-known fact.  We have long known, for example, that the predictive power of cognitive ability tests exceeds that of interviews while the latter are still more commonly used as the stalwart of the selection process.  It is ironic that those tasked with the specific purpose of prediction (selection professionals) are often not skilled in prediction and choose imprecise methodologies. This phenomena of ‘I must be right as I’m the professional’ is common with so many professionals from doctors to lawyers, accountants to bankers. However, when their errors are pointed out to them they take umbrage and get defensive.

Another issue identified by Mr Silver is the idea that data alone can solve problems. This is the “psychometrician fallacy” that somehow the numbers alone will both identify and solve problems. On the contrary, numbers alone without good logic are akin to having the materials of a house and no plan to build it.

 Prediction, for I/O psychologists is a craft. We use tools such as the data provided by psychometric tools, to carefully construct causal models that we then tried to find evidence to refute or support our theory. We must avoid any form of over-confidence, however attractive the commercial benefits are, and always recognise the inherent difficulties in the prediction of human outcomes.  We provide benefit to our clients not by being over-confident and assured, but by being honest and providing sound, well supported advice.

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[1] The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t. By Nate Silver. Penguin Press

Why Bother with Employment Branding?

If you were to ask a child which organisation they would most like to work for when they “grow-up” chances are you would get an answer along the lines of “Coke” or “McDonald’s”. However, it’s unlikely that they are cognisant of what has influenced their choice.  As we go through our working lives, it’s not surprising that when we are looking at a potential employer or ask someone what their ideal organisation is, they may still not be fully aware about what has influenced their choice. We will often make a decision based upon an organisation’s reputation, a role/organisation which matches our personal characteristics and organisational values. Ever-increasingly decisions are influenced by an organisation’s employment brand.

Recently I read an article that proposed when an organisation incorporates Sustainable Human Resource Management (Sustainable HRM) with their employment brand, they can differentiate themselves from their competitors and enhance their attractiveness to employees.

Sustainable HRM is described as “the pattern of planned or emerging human resource strategies and practices intended to enable organisational goal achievement while simultaneously reproducing the HR base over a long-lasting calendar time”.   

Now admittedly research around employment branding and Sustainable HRM is relatively new, and at this stage fairly limited.  Nevertheless it made for interesting reading and had some points which resonated with me.

Traditionally an organisation’s employment brand has been a combination of their corporate brand (based upon values and culture) and corporate social responsibility policies.  Many organisations have an employment brand to attract potential employees and then assist the organisation in remaining attractive to, and thereby retaining, current employees.

In order to tie in an organisation’s current employment brand to Sustainable HRM the authors have looked back at existing theory:

• Signalling theory suggests all communications with an organisation during the recruitment process send out signals, by which a candidate uses to form their opinions of an organisation.  They have suggested that by incorporating Sustainable HRM within the employment brand this sends a positive signal of preparedness to invest in the candidate/employee and an understanding of the employment relationship.
• Social identity theory suggests that an individual’s self-concept depends on their membership in different social organisations and that an individual’s self-concept is strongly influenced by the reputation of an organisation.  They have proposed that by integrating Sustainable HRM within the employment brand this enhances the self-concept of current employees and candidates.
• Person-organisation fit suggests that job seekers match their personal characteristics and values with the organisation’s culture and identity. The article has suggested that the perceived fit between employee’s and candidate’s values and Sustainable HRM moderates the relationship between Sustainable HRM and organisation attractiveness i.e. higher fit may mean a stronger positive impact of the Sustainable HRM.

From here they have suggested that integrating Sustainable HRM practices into the employee value proposition enables an organisation to address employees and candidates in different life and career stages.  Additionally the different needs and expectations of its workforce are addressed without compromising its consistent employment brand.

 An organisation’s employment brand and how it’s created varies vastly from organisation to organisation. What is your organisation’s employment brand?

App, S., Merk, J., Büttgen, M. (2012) Employer Branding: Sustainable HRM as a Competitive Advantage in the Market for High-Quality.  Management Revue, 23(3), 262-278

Misguided Intuitions: A Failure of Selection Experience

An article I have recently finished suggests that the best technological achievement of organisational psychology over the past 100 years is the creation of structured interviews, psychometric testing, and the mechanical combination of predictors to improve prediction of employee performance.  The next sentence is the one that strikes a chord with me: “arguably the greatest failure of organisational psychology is the inability to convince employers to use them”.  When the research shows that even one good cognitive ability assessment significantly out-performs unstructured interviews alone I find it vexing as to why so many still use only “gut-feelings” to make important employment decisions.

Why do even skilled HR practitioners fly in the face of science in the favour of intuition?  What has recently become apparent  to me is that it isn’t a lack of knowledge that is being reflected, nor a concern for pricing, but almost an seemingly-inexorable, unconscious assertion that experience knows best—the hiring manager knows “how to read between the lines”, there is a persistent belief that one can “just know”.  While this confidence in intuition is all very natural, the popularity of some recent ‘self-help’ work, such as Malcom Gladwell’s book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005) or Gerd Gigerenzer’s Gut Feelings (2007) seems to be wrongly reinforcing this belief.  It remains though, that performance prediction based only on gut feeling is relying on blind faith in a zero-validity environment. For selection to move out of a zero-validity environment it must be viewed in probabilistic terms.  We must view selection in terms of likelihood.  Ask yourself the question now, how can we improve the likelihood of a good hire?  Remember, a good hire is never guaranteed, it is only the likelihood that can be improved through smart use of validated tools and procedures, and peer-reviewed knowledge.

There is another causal factor at play—the pervasive myth of expertise.  A recent study demonstrated the confidence in one’s intuition increases significantly with experience.  Does accuracy in intuition also increase?  No.  Expertise will not necessarily significantly increase one’s ability to effectively predict candidate job performance.  The power of illusory superiority is powerful.  Many of you reading this will have already had the thought: “yeah that may apply for most, just not me”.  I’m not denying this is possible, but please do consider that we all fall victim to a bias in how we perceive our abilities. A recent study demonstrated that these misguided intuitions show a similar pattern:

• They rely on far too few pieces of information.
• They cannot be backed up with rationale—“don’t ask me to explain, it just feels right”.
• They show poor interjudge (expert) agreement.  One expert isn’t agreeing with the other.
• The belief in these intuitions will grow when irrelevant information is presented.  “Oh, you like golf as well?”

Finally, one more very interesting concern is the perception of psychometrics and the like, as a crutch to assist those “not-so-skilled” and experienced with selection.  Research supports this.  It is likely that you will be perceived as less confident in your selection decisions if you use these tools.  Relying on intuition is more socially acceptable than relying on test scores and formulas, and it’s also less fun.  So why would HR practitioners actively undermine their status by advocating the worth of objective measurement over the fragility of intuitive judgment?  I will leave that for you to answer yourself.

Highhouse, S. (2008).  Stubborn Reliance on Intuition and Subjectivity in Employee Selection. Industrial and Organisational Psychology, 1, 333-342.