WorkPuzzle

Retaining Your Agents: Make Sure You Understand Happiness

Yesterday, I was waiting for a printing job to be quoted at Kinkos and started to browse the paperback books in the display near the counter.  I expected to see the usual self-help books regarding how to construct a resume, handle interviews, and ask intelligent questions at your next interview.  What I didn't expect to see was a nearly equal number of books about how to attain happiness.

Over the last few years, it seems the "happiness industry" has exploded.  It is tough for me to go even a couple of days without reading something about how to attain happiness--particularly in the realm of business and work.  Maybe this is a sign that we're all miserable and having a hard time coping! 

Whatever the reason, you can bet that those whom you manage are reading some (or a lot) of this material as well.  If you're responsible for retaining and coaching a team, you may want to spend some time becoming proficient on this topic.  

If someone on your team asks you the question..."How do you find happiness and fulfillment in your work?"  How would you answer that question?

I know that if I was one of your competitors and I was "having coffee" with one of your agents, it would be one of the first questions I would ask.  Why?  Because I would try to tap into the negative emotion the person is potentially feeling.  Giving someone hope they will be happier somewhere else is a powerful motivator and can help open an individual's mind to considering change.    

So, do you have an answer to this question that you can proactively offer to your agents?  If not, I'd like to share some commentary that I recently read in the Wall Street Journal on the topic.  The article highlights research conducted by the iOpener Institute for People and Performance on how people find happiness and engagement at work. 

Jessica Pryce-Jones oversaw the research that began in 2006 and had more than 9,000 participants from around the world.  The data suggests that most people feel less confidence, motivation, loyalty, resilience, commitment and engagement in their jobs in recent years.

But, there is a smaller group of people who counteract this trend and report feeling a sense of well-being and "happiness."  If an individual happens to be in this group, he/she will display behaviors that employers find very beneficial, such as:

• Staying twice as long in their jobs as their least happy colleagues
• Spending double the time at work focused on what they are paid to do
• Taking ten times less sick leave
• Believing, at twice the rate of their peers, that they are achieving their potential

Jones also notes that the science of happiness at work has big benefits for individuals too.  If you’re really happy at work, you’ll solve problems faster, be more creative, adapt fastest to change, receive better feedback, get promoted quicker, and earn more over the long-term.

The research goes on to suggest that there is a strong correlation between a person's happiness at work and the characteristics of the work environment.

This is where things get interesting... The research unveils clear characteristics (what Jones calls the underlying drivers) that need to be present in your organization if those on your team are going to feel engaged and happy at work.  So, according to Jones, here are the "underlying drivers" that you should strive towards in your organization: (Editorial Note: These are written in the first person, as if Jones is giving advice on what type of organization to pursue as an individual, in order to find happiness at work.)

1. A Sense of Contribution.  This is about what you do, so it’s made up of some of the core activities which happen at work...like having clear goals, moving positively towards them, talking about issues that might prevent you from meeting your objectives and feeling heard when you do so.  You’ll do all this best when you feel appreciated and valued by your boss and your colleagues.  So it’s not just about delivering; it’s about doing so within collaborative working relationships too.
2. A Sense of Culture.  Performance and happiness at work are really high when employees feel they fit within their organizational culture.  Not fitting in a job is like wearing the wrong clothes to a party—all the time.  It’s hugely draining and de-energizing.  If you’re in the wrong job, you’ll find that the values mean little to you, the ethos feels unfair or political, and you don’t have much in common with your colleagues. 
3. A Sense of Commitment.  Commitment matters because it taps into the macro reasons of why you do the work you do.  Some of the underlying elements of commitment are perceiving you’re doing something worthwhile, having strong intrinsic interest in your job, and feeling that the vision of your organization resonates with your purpose.  We’ve seen commitment decline for the majority of employees, post-recession, as leaders and organizations think that tuning into this soft stuff is a waste of time.  It isn’t.  It’s how you enable your employees to understand why they should make a greater discretionary effort for you. 
4. A Sense of Confidence.  Confidence is the gateway to the other three drivers.  Too little confidence and nothing happens; too much leads to arrogance and particularly poor decisions.  Without greater levels of self-belief, the backbone of confidence, there will be few people who’ll take a risk or try anything new.  And you can’t have confident organizations without confident individuals inside them.

Here's your homework:  Develop an elevator speech on why agents would have the highest chance of being happy and finding engagement in your organization.  Your speech should contain all the components listed above.

Next, work the thoughts from this speech into both your coaching sessions and your interviews.  By doing so, you'll tap the emotion that not only has the power to retain, but also has the power to attract competitive agents to your team.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

The Progress Principle: How Small Successes Can Make a Big Difference

I’m picking up a new book this week—it is called The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.  I learned about the book from an interview I read recently by Daniel Pink.  In the book, Pink interviews the book’s authors, Harvard Business School Professor, Teresa Amabile, and Developmental Psychologist, Steven Kramer.

You may recall that Daniel Pink is the author of Drive, a best-selling book that I reviewed last year in WorkPuzzle, and he is an expert on the topic of motivation.  He called The Progress Principle the best business book he has read in many years.  Because there are more than 11,000 business books published each year, that got my attention!

The basic premise of the book explores the questions:  

How and when are people most engaged and motivated at work?

To research this important topic, the authors recruited 238 people across seven companies and had each of them complete questionnaires and diary entries over a period of time.  In total, they amassed over 12,000 days worth of data.  In addition, they connected with more than 700 business managers to get their perspectives as well.

What were their findings?  

What motivates people the most, day-to-day, is making progress on meaningful work. 

I’ll share parts of the interview below.  Hopefully, it will spur you on to learn more about this important topic as well.

1.  Focus on small wins and incremental steps.  

Q:  Lots of business books talk about the need for bold, audacious goals — and deride those who “think small.”  But your book, which is based on research far more rigorous than its counterparts, takes a different stance.  You emphasize the power of “small wins.”  Why are those so important in the performance of individuals and organizations?

A:  Try to remember the last time you – or anyone you know – had a truly enormous breakthrough in solving a problem or achieving one of those audacious goals.  It’s pretty hard, because breakthroughs are very rare events. 

On the other hand, small wins can happen all the time.  Those are the incremental steps toward meaningful (even big) goals.  Our research showed that, of all the events that have the power to excite people and engage them in their work, the single most important is making progress – even if that progress is a small win.  That’s the progress principle.  And, because people are more creatively productive when they are excited and engaged, small wins are a very big deal for organizations.

2.  95% of managers igore the most potent motivators. 

Q: In addition to examining 12,000 daily diary entries from workers, you also surveyed a few hundred leaders — from CEOs to project managers — about what they think really motivates employees.  What did you find out?

A: Our survey showed that most leaders don’t understand the power of progress.  When we asked nearly 700 managers from companies around the world to rank five employee motivators (incentives, recognition, clear goals, interpersonal support, and support for making progress in the work), progress came in at the very bottom. 

In fact, only 5% of these leaders ranked progress first – a much lower percent than if they had been choosing randomly!  Don’t get me wrong; those other four motivators do drive people.  But we found that they aren’t nearly as potent as making meaningful progress.

3.  Negative events significantly outweigh positive events. 

Q: Negative events have a more powerful impact than positive ones.  Why?

A:  We were pretty shocked to discover the dominant effect of negative events on inner work life – people’s mostly-hidden emotions, perceptions, and motivations at work.  Setbacks have a negative effect on inner work life that’s 2-3 times stronger than the positive effect of progress. 

When we checked into whether other researchers had found something similar, we learned that it’s a general psychological effect; “bad is stronger than good.”  The reason could be evolutionary.  Maybe we pay more attention to negatives, and are more affected by them, out of self-preservation.  So – because positive inner work life is so important for top performance, leaders should do whatever they can to root out negative forces.

4.  Time pressure only helps those who are working on legitimate, mission-critical deadlines.

Q:  I was especially intrigued by your findings about time pressure.  Sometimes it helps; other times it hurts.  Tell us what you found.

A:  The typical form of time pressure in organizations today is what we call “being on a treadmill” – running all day to keep up with many different (often unrelated) demands, but getting nowhere on your most important work.  That’s an absolute killer for creativity.  Generally, low-to-moderate time pressure is optimal for creativity.

But we did find some instances in which people were terrifically creative under high time pressure.  Almost invariably, it was quite different from being on a treadmill.  Rather, people felt like they were “on a mission”— working hard to meet a truly urgent deadline on an important project, and protected from all other demands.

These are all important topics that I can apply to my personal performance as well as working with those on my team.  I’ll provide an update to what I’ve learned...after I finish the book.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Curiosity: Three Ways to Refresh Your Outlook as a Leader

While reviewing a recent blog entry by Daniel Pink, I stumbled across the work of Dr. Todd Kashdan, a professor at George Mason University.  Dr. Kashdan is the Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Social Anxiety, Character Strengths, and Related Phenomena.

I know that’s kind of a mouthful (how would you like to introduce yourself at a party with this as your job title?), so here is some more detail on what his group actually does:

"The Laboratory for the Study of Social Anxiety, Character Strengths, and Related Phenomena is committed to conducting basic research to better understand the nature of social anxiety and positive psychological processes (e.g., curiosity, gratitude, mindfulness, savoring, purposeful living) and applying this knowledge to better people's lives….  We are focused on discovering, applying, and sharing psychological knowledge to better understand components of human functioning, improve the treatment of psychological problems, enhance well-being and character strengths, and promote this work at the individual and societal level."

Isn’t this a great purpose statement for Dr. Kashdan’s work?  He seems to be working (from a research perspective) on the issues that many of us would consider critical for developing thriving relationships and experiencing a consistent sense of well-being.

I look forward to exploring more of his published work, but I thought I’d give you a little taste of what I’ve already discovered.  One of the topics he tends to focus on is the “positive psychological process” of curiosity. Here is a summary of Daniel Pink's recent interview with Dr. Kashdan regarding the topic of curiosity:

1. Thrive on uncertainty.  We rarely look forward to the tension that accompanies uncertainty, but research shows that these feelings lead to the most intense and longest-lasting positive experiences.  New and uncertain activities make people happier and create more meaning than familiar routines.  Re-train your brain to benefit from the pleasures of surprise and uncertainty.  And do the same for people around you.  For instance, every week, give a free lunch away to someone who best embodies a strength valued by the business (Compassion?  Leadership?  Gratitude?  Humor?).  Let the person who wins pick a lunchmate whom they don’t know as well as they should.  Use the pleasures of uncertainty to build satisfaction and commitment inside your organization.

2. Find the unfamiliar in the familiar.  As soon as we think we’re experts, we stop paying attention and start falling back on scripts, labels, and categories.  That’s especially true in the workplace.  Yet scientists have discovered the value of attending to what we don’t know about people and how they differ from us — instead of relying on what we already know and how they are similar to us.  Encourage your team to make this mindset switch.  You’ll develop stronger bonds, squelch prejudice, and help your star players avoid being blinded by their expertise.  For instance, when you go out to lunch with colleagues, ask them about something that interests you but that you never talk about. What are their top 5 places to travel to in the world, and why?  What movies do they like but are often embarrassed to share?  And don’t always spend your time with people you know.  Seek out strangers at work who intrigue you, who are different from you, and who expand your horizons.

3. Be a safe haven for the risks and joys of others.  To take risks and experiment with new ways of thinking and acting, we need to feel secure. If you want workers to be creative, be responsive when they share past explorations or future plans.  If they feel uncomfortable, let them know that anxiety is natural when trying new things.  Share a story about the last time you felt anxiety and self-doubt.  You might be surprised how comfortable it will make them to take on tough challenges.  And respond genuinely when they share what is intriguing and going right in their lives. Don’t just ask, “How was your weekend?”  Ask them what their peak moments were on Saturday and Sunday.  And when they share, follow-up with questions, ask for details.  You might become genuinely interested in their interests and create a safe haven for the sorts of breakthrough thinking that changes companies — and sometimes the world.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic (or, maybe now you’re just curious...), you may want to pick up Dr. Kashdan’s book:  Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Generosity: How to Persevere a Long Recruiting Cycle

I had the pleasure of spending some time in the San Francisco Bay area last week with one of our clients.  I enjoy this particular company because their energy toward recruiting is among the best I've ever observed.  Their executive team and hiring managers are truly passionate about hiring.  And their passion is not just raw exuberance, but rather an excitement towards becoming more effective in their methodologies and working smarter than their competitors.

As we talked through their recruiting challenges, it became apparent that passion and energy is something they'll need a lot of if they hope to be successful.  Why?  Because the real estate recruiting environment is going to continue to be challenging for some time.

One of these challenges is the length of the recruiting cycle (i.e. the time it takes to recruit an agent).  Whether a company’s recruiting focus is "new to real estate" candidates or experienced agents who are currently working for a competitor, the recruiting cycle is much longer, on average, than it has been in the past. 

Why?  Uncertainty in the economy and difficult conditions in the real estate market tend to make people more risk averse.  While candidates will still change companies if they experience a crisis with their current employer/broker, most people in today’s environment prefer to hang onto what they have unless the perfect opportunity comes along.

With a lengthy recruiting cycle becoming the norm, the hiring managers who can persevere and stay engaged with a candidate over a long period of time are the ones who are going to be successful.

How do you accomplish this?  One place to start is generosity.  In a recent article in Fast Company, Anya Kamenetz makes the point that the internet has a way of empowering this type of engagement through generosity:

"… what fascinates me is the way in which the Internet can unleash acts of generosity and true connection.

Truth is, anyone who goes online takes advantage of the kindness of strangers.  Wikipedia is the most famous example.  Still, sites like Amazon, eBay, Yelp, and TripAdvisor are also valuable because of the feedback provided gratis by millions of people.

When it comes to sites such as PatientsLikeMe, or any of the thousands of message boards dedicated to infertility, cancer, and various other ailments, people get informed about life-and-death decisions based on volunteered information, while also deriving much-needed emotional support from strangers.

Sociologists attribute the desire to contribute to such communities to a “reputation economy,” in which people gain self-esteem and standing by giving away their time and opinion.  Information is the thing people will share most readily, followed by time, followed by goods."

Notice what she says in the last paragraph:  “…people gain self-esteem and standing by giving away their time and opinion.”  If this is true, then hiring managers should be among the most generous people around!  In essence, recruiting boils down to continually raising your “standing” in the eyes of your candidates (over a sustained period of time) until the candidate feels compelled to join your team.

What can you be giving away to your candidates?  

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Five Ways To Become A Positive Leader

In a recent opening address, as keynote speaker, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson (whom I have referred to before), explored the idea of positivity in leadership, and its direct and powerful impact upon creativity and performance.  The teachers I remember, the bosses who had the most influence, and the leaders I respected and wanted to follow, were never, ever perfect people.  But, they were generally positive people.

Here is Dr. Fredrickson's researched list of ways to create a positive, creative, productive environment:   

1. Be Open

2. Be Appreciative

3. Be Curious

4. Be Kind

5. Be Real – no false pretenses of positivity

The above isn't rocket science.  Pick the one that is your weakest and spend one week working to develop its expression.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.  

Drive: New Thoughts and Theories on Motivation

So, we’ve learned (1,2) that the “carrot and stick” motivation techniques often fall short at producing desired results.  Worse yet, deploying such techniques sometimes worsens the status quo to the point where offering no incentives at all produces a better end result.

Of course, this begs the question—if the “carrot and stick” does not work, what does?  Daniel Pink, best-selling author of Drive, spends the majority of his book answering this question.  As you might imagine, the answer is not very simple and concise, but I’ll try to summarize a few of the high points in the next couple of articles.

Motivation techniques take on new and vibrant life when you can get an individual to switch from being extrinsically motivated to being intrinsically motivated.  To address this desired migration, a few prominent researchers are starting to focus on “self-determination theory” (SDT) as the best vehicle to get us there.  Pink describes it this way:

“Many theories of behavior pivot around a particular human tendency:  We’re keen responders to positive and negative reinforcements, or zippy calculators of our self-interest, or lumpy duffel bags of psychological conflicts.  SDT, by contrast, begins with a notion of universal human needs.  It argues that we have three innate psychological needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness.  When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy.  When those needs are thwarted, our motivation, productivity, and happiness plummet.”

This may sound overly simplified, but this motivation theory boils down to engaging what many people are now calling a third drive—the capacity each human has for interest (the first drive is biological--eating, sleeping, sex, etc.; the second drive is responding to rewards and punishments in one's environment).  

For many people, this third drive is suppressed—especially when it comes to work and vocation.  But for a small minority, this aspect of humanity emerges and blossoms on the job.  These are the people you would probably already recognize as intrinsically motivated, and it’s the characteristic we desire to develop in those who are missing it.

While the research on this topic is still somewhat limited, it is starting to gain momentum:

“Over the last thirty years…a network of several dozen SDT scholars has been conducting research in the United States, Canada, Israel, Singapore, and throughout Western Europe.  These scientists have explored self-determination and intrinsic motivation in laboratory experiments and field studies that encompass just about every realm—business, education, medicine, sports, exercise, personal productivity, environmentalism, relationships, and physical  and mental health.  They have produced hundreds of research papers, most of which point to the same conclusion.  Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to each other.  And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.”

Take a minute to inventory your work environment.  If you’re coaching and managing a team, do the individuals on your team have the opportunity to operate under these important principles?  If you’re trying to recruit the best talent, are you able to offer an environment where talented individuals will feel engaged and experience their own intrinsic motivation?

These are important questions to consider if you want to successfully compete in the future.  Next week, we’ll cover how to start to integrate these ideas into your team. 

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Motivation: The Downside of the Carrot and Stick—Part 2

Last week, I introduced the concept that commonly held beliefs about “carrot and stick” motivation techniques may not be very effective.  I shared the results of an experiment conducted at Princeton University that illustrated how a person’s creativity is restricted when “if-then” incentives are introduced into a problem-solving scenario.

While interesting, one experiment is not sufficient to shape our concept of motivation—especially if this means giving up some closely held beliefs that we feel are effective.  In his book Drive, Daniel Pink lays out a more complete case based on research from many different sources to make his point:  There is a significant downside to using carrot and stick motivation techniques.  I’ll summarize the research below. 

The Seven Deadly Flaws of Carrot and Stick Motivation Beliefs

1.  It can extinguish intrinsic motivation.

After examining three decades of studies conducted on this topic, behavioral scientist, Edward Deci, stated, “Careful consideration of reward effects reported in 128 experiments lead to the conclusion that tangible rewards have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation.”   In essence, when you focus on short-term results, you do so at the expense of long-term motivation.

2.  It can backfire and diminish performance.

In recent years, four economists—two from MIT, one from Carnegie Mellon, and one from the University of Chicago-- were asked by the Federal Reserve to affirm the simple business principle that higher rewards lead to higher performance.  Their conclusion… "We find that financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance.”

3.  It can crush creativity.

I shared the candle experiment in my last WorkPuzzle which suggested  that time pressures hinder creativity.  Many other experiments support this finding.  Pink concludes, “For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation—the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing—is essential for high levels of creativity.  But the 'if-then' motivators that are the staple of most businesses often stifle, rather than stir, creative thinking.”

4. It can crowd out good behavior.

In a famous Swedish study, researchers tracked the percentage of people who would donate blood voluntarily.  With no incentive (other than good will), 53% of the test group chose to give blood.  When an incentive was introduced, the percentage dropped to 30%.  Why?  “It tainted an altruistic act and crowded out intrinsic desire to do something good.”

5.  It can encourage unethical behavior.

“Most of the scandals and misbehavior that have seemed endemic to modern life involve shortcuts.  Executives game their quarterly earnings so they can snag a performance bonus.  Secondary school counselors doctor student transcripts so their seniors can get into college.  Athletes inject themselves with steroids to post better numbers and trigger lucrative performance bonuses.”  Intrinsic motivation doesn’t fit with this model.  When the reward is the activity itself—deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one’s best—there are no shortcuts.

6.  It can become addictive.

Any parent who has ever thought of paying their kids to take out the garbage knows that the chances of getting them to take out the garbage for free in the future are very slim!  Rewards offered for positive behavior often have to be subsequently increased to get the same level of performance.  The reward becomes addictive.  Casinos have done research on the ability of people to make good decisions when there are rewards at stake.  Their findings?  You guessed it.  When rewards are offered (even small ones), the likelihood of people switching from risk-adverse behavior to risk-seeking behavior, increases significantly.

7.  It fosters short-term thinking.

It only makes sense that offering incentives will often produce short-term results.  Several studies show that paying people to exercise, stop smoking, or take their medicines produces terrific results at first—but the healthy behavior disappears once the incentives are removed.  Pink puts it this way, “Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible.  Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one’s sights and pushing towards the horizon.”

Conclusion:  Be very careful if you are going to use carrot and stick motivation techniques to get results from yourself or those you manage and coach.  Of course, this begs the question…what does work?  We’ll cover that in our next discussion.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Resilience In Children / Coaching Agents

What's more important?  A new agent's knowledge of the business, or their confidence in their ability to be successful once they're out on their own?  Training and coaching new agents requires that you know what's going on in their heads...not just when you're training them, but after they've left the support and energy of the training room and have begun to take the steps required to earn business.

Here's what often happens:  They are excited to learn, they soak up all the great training, and then they go home and try to put into action what they've learned...they stumble, make mistakes and begin the negative internal dialogue that slowly leads to inertia.  I'm sure you've encountered an agent who is in a slump or who has just begun their career and appears to suddenly have little confidence in their abilities.  New research might be helpful in addressing this pattern before it surfaces.

Preventing these funks and building lasting confidence takes more than an optimistic pep talk.  It takes figuring out what might be going on between the ears that could undermine performance.  Most people at some point (and some more than others) have a tendency to get into ruts of negative self-talk and believe false things about themselves and their abilities.

There is a great deal of research on the impact on negative self-talk.  Negative self-talk is the barely conscious, blatantly negative explanations of who we are, how we are perceived, and how we perform.

One group particularly prone to negative self-talk is teenagers.  An estimated two million 12- to 17-year-olds experience clinical depression annually.  In light of this, there is a group of researchers from University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center, who have found that building resilience in younger children can help thwart depression before it starts.  The pair has developed school-based curricula that teach educators, parents, and ultimately kids the core skills of resilience.

Psychologists Karen Reivich and Jane Gillham have conducted 17 studies of nearly 2,500 middle-school students and have demonstrated that if resilience training is taught before kids enter this sensitive period, depressive symptoms can be reduced long after the training.

"A key resilience-building skill they teach is how to identify the link between self-talk (in essence, what's playing on kids' 'internal radios') —and kids' feelings and behaviors, says Gillham.  Negative self-talk can create self-fulfilling prophecies, leading kids to behave in ways that create new situations that only reinforce the negative thoughts they have about themselves.  Say, for example, that a child does poorly on an algebra test.  That may prompt her to think, 'I can't do math,' fueling feelings of discouragement and sadness.  Because of those thoughts, she stops studying and then bombs the next exam.  A downward spiral ensues.

'A lot of what we're trying to do is interrupt that process,' says Gillham.  Her approach to positive psychology teaches teachers and parents how to help kids challenge negative self-talk and see disappointments from other angles.  Perhaps the hypothetical girl did poorly on the algebra test because it's an area of math that she finds difficult, though she excels at fractions; perhaps she felt groggy during the exam because she didn't sleep well the night before.  Once the faulty link in those thought patterns has been identified, adults can encourage kids to come up with ways to best tackle the problem.  Positive education also encourages kids to identify and embrace their strengths."  (Lindsay Lyon - US NEWS)

The key is to predict and intercept negative thoughts before they derail teens into the downward spiral of depression.  So, what would happen if preparing new agents also included resilience training?  What if we spent more time discussing individual strengths that will help compensate for the inevitable difficulties?  We all know that what happens between the ears is half the battle - Why not anticipate the negative self-talk that is predictable in brand new agents and help inoculate against this internal disease early on?

I'll bet that the best managers and trainers do some form of this, and may not even know what they've been doing until now.  It makes sense - We're onto something when intuitive logic meets research findings.

And if you haven't thought of it yet... try using this proactive coaching strategy with anyone who is venturing out for the first time in anything.  They'll appreciated it, I'm sure.  

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Getting Ahead At Work: Three Components To Working Well

Most of you know that I carefully follow the latest research in the fairly new field of Positive Psychology.  You also know by now that Positive Psychology is based on rigorous standardized research that investigates the causes of human flourishing in various domains.  There has been a huge outpouring of research money allocated for this.  The findings are fascinating and can help you, and your organization.

Some of the questions being asked include, "How do people flourish at work"...or "What kind of behavior leads to success?"  Michael Frese, Professor of Organizational Psychology at Germany's University of Giessen, believes he has identified an answer.

What you're about to read may seem obvious, but much of science is studying the obvious and distilling it down to its most intricate core elements, so we can then say, "Of course!"

Frese claims there are certain "active behaviors," that he defines as responsible for the majority of flourishing on the job.  These active behaviors are comprised of three components:

"The first is self-starting behavior; self-starters do things not just because a boss demands it, but because they see those things as being important.

The second component is proactive behavior, or actions that people take when they think of future opportunities and prepare for them now.

The third is persistence in the face of professional obstacles."

Frese says that each of these three things must be consistently in play to lead to positive results and impact.  He goes on to say that, "Every job you can imagine—from blue-collar to starchy white—can be discussed and described in this way."

We often use the term "personal initiative," but now we know just what this means.  We can operationally define it and ask people to take it (initiative that is), not just because it will help the company, but because it will help them.

In a recent article in The US News and World Report, writer Lindsay Lyon reports:

"His studies of employees suggest that people who engage in a high degree of active behavior at work are more successful on the job—they gain more empowerment, meaning they have greater control over their work and their work is more complex; they gain even more personal initiative; and they find new jobs more easily if they become unemployed.  Those findings hold true across many different workplaces and countries, he says.  And active behavior not only pays off for the individual, he's found, but can change the workplace environment for the better, even boosting a firm's income."

This evidence is robust enough to warrant some consideration into ways you can more effectively observe and encourage more "active behaviors" as you coach, critique, and reward your employees.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Job Satisfaction Is Down: What This Means For You

We all remember the Rolling Stones song Satisfaction, which is about getting NO satisfaction.  Well it appears that U.S. workers are getting "no satisfaction" from their jobs, and at the highest rate ever recorded. 

According to a new survey recently released by The Conference Board, only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their work.

In a follow-up article titled, Americans' Job Satisfaction Falls To Record Low, Economics Writer, Jeannine Aversa, of the Seattle Times reports:

"That was the lowest level ever recorded by the Conference Board research group in more than 22 years of studying the issue.  In 2008, 49 percent of those surveyed reported satisfaction with their jobs," and goes on to add: "Worker dissatisfaction has been on the rise for more than two decades."

Linda Barrington, Managing Director of Human Capital at the Conference Board, who helped write the report states:

"It says something troubling about work in America."

Lynn Franco, another author of the report and Director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center elaborates:

"What's really disturbing about growing job dissatisfaction is the way it can play into the competitive nature of the U.S. workforce down the road and on the growth of the U.S. economy - all in a negative way."

What's frightening is that if this downward trend in poor job satisfaction isn't reversed, many economists say it could "stifle innovation and hurt America's competitiveness and productivity." (Jeannine Aversa)

Several theories have surfaced regarding why this trend exists.  Aversa theorizes:

"The drop in workers' happiness can be partly blamed on the worst recession since the 1930s, which made it difficult for some people to find challenging and suitable jobs." 

Some blame it on the availability of interesting jobs:

"Workers who find their jobs interesting are more likely to be innovative and to take the calculated risks and the initiative that drive productivity and contribute to economic growth." (Barrington)

Based on my own professional experience, and far more consistent with the research in Positive Psychology, these theories are completely backwards. The research shows that the inverse of that statement is more likely the case:  That workers who are more likely to take calculated risks and initiative are more likely to find an interesting job, and subsequently drive productivity and economic growth.  To say it more bluntly:  More workers now have that "sense of entitlement" attitude, demanding that others make their jobs more interesting, rather than feeling any responsibility to do so themselves.

As we've shared with you in WorkPuzzle, there is a growing movement away from teamwork, hard work, and delayed gratification-- and toward the belief that happiness comes through increasing one's frequency and duration of pleasure.  This way of thinking has been at work since the 60's, and that first generation of the self-obsessed, have now raised their children under the flag of "individual freedom and self-gratification."

As long as our culture promotes this type of thinking and neglects finding our way back to teaching a set of standards that begin with contributing to the group and earning respect through hard work and good character, job dissatisfaction numbers will continue to escalate.

All is not hopeless however.  Over the next two blogs I'll let you know how you and your company can help reverse this trend and attract those who will be the hardest workers and the next generation of innovators.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.