A Season For Meaning: More on Happiness…

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Do you know anyone who has to numb themselves with excessive television, alcohol or other self-medicating vices when they return from work? Chances are, the person is neglecting to build meaning into their work or into their life in general.

We’ve spent a great deal of time discussing the research around “happiness,” and if you’ve been following along, you’re aware that happiness and work are intimately tied in several ways.

Some recent research by Marshall Goldsmith‘s group sheds even more light on this fascinating topic. His group surveyed over 3,000 well-educated (more than 60% have graduate degrees) managers, entrepreneurs, and professionals (split almost evenly between the sexes). Their findings are worth a look, and offer insight into whether you will likely experience happiness or languish in your future.

“There is an incredibly high correlation between people’s happiness and meaning at work and at home. In other words, those who experience happiness and meaning at work tend also to experience them outside of work. Those who are miserable on the job are usually miserable at home.

The implication is unmistakable. Since work and home are very different environments, our experience of happiness and meaning in life appears to have more to do with who we are than where we are. Rather than blaming our jobs, our managers, and our customers—or our friends, family members, and communities—for our negative worklife experience, we might be better served by looking in the mirror.

One commonly expressed excuse for not getting more happiness and meaning out of life is: ‘I’m working too many hours.’ But our results show that the number of hours worked had no significant correlation with happiness or meaning experienced at work or at home. So much for that excuse.”

I am especially impressed with what the researchers found regarding people who seek short-term pleasure outside of work:

“We had (mistakenly) guessed that those who spent more time outside of work in activities that produced more short-term satisfaction might score higher on overall satisfaction. After all, we assumed, people don’t go home to find meaning; they want to relax. We were wrong. The correlations between happiness, meaning, and overall satisfaction at work and home were very similar. Those who were more satisfied with life outside of work were the respondents who reported spending more time on activities that produced both happiness and meaning.”

I’m not sure if Marshall is familiar with Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who has found all of the above and below to be true, but their findings clearly mesh. The below advice from Goldsmith can help you set some sound New Years resolutions:

“These links between how we spend our time and how we feel may seem confusing, but specific patterns arose—some commonsensical, some not. Here are a few quick takeaways from our initial research:

Reduce TV watching. It’s stimulating but doesn’t increase overall satisfaction with life—at work or home.
Cut back on surfing the Web for non-professional reasons. It’s negatively correlated with the experience of both happiness and meaning.
Spend time exercising and with people you love (respondents who did this had more satisfaction with life at work and at home).
Feeling challenged is linked to greater satisfaction, so challenge yourself.

What can companies do differently? They might stop asking, ‘What can the company do to increase employees’ experience of happiness and meaning at work?’ which encourages dependency. Instead, managers can encourage employees to ask themselves, ‘What can I do to increase my experience of happiness and meaning at work?’ This strategy may produce a higher return in employee commitment—and do so at a lower cost.”

It’s quite satisfying to see so much attention directed toward this misunderstood subject of happiness. Especially when we learn that those who are focused on building meaning at home and at work will not only achieve it, but as I’ve mentioned in past articles…can “infect” others. ‘Tis the Season!

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.

What You’re Saying and What Your Candidates Are Hearing May Be Two Different Things.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

How can a group of companies spend $5 billion each year on advertisements that focus on one message, but be remembered for something totally different? A recent marketing study has pharmaceutical companies wondering the same thing. The lessons being learned through this research go beyond pharmaceutical sales, and can be applied to your communication efforts with candidates.

The study was highlighted in Business Week and conducted by a company called Verilogue. The researchers set out to learn if consumers were able to remember the marketing messages of various drug companies who were advertising on television.

“Does it seem like you hear the phrase ‘ask your doctor’ every time you turn on the TV? There’s a reason. Drug companies spend about $5 billion a year in the U.S. on ads imploring people to talk to their physicians if they think a pill they’ve read about or seen on TV might help them. Such ads are so pervasive one might assume viewers are heading to the doctor knowing which drugs they want. But new research based on recordings of conversations in physicians’ offices suggests most patients aren’t asking for drugs by name. Or they’re only asking about scary side effects, which drugmakers have to include in ads, often in stomach-turning detail.

Market researcher Verilogue recorded 12,500 patient-doctor conversations in 2008 and found only 23 requests for specific drugs. And according to the new study, … the most expensive ad campaigns did not prompt the greatest number of inquiries. Eli Lilly spent $179 million on ads promoting its depression drug Cymbalta in 2008, making it the year’s most pricey pharma campaign. But the most frequently cited drug by patients was Boniva, for osteoporosis, which GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Roche co-marketed. The Boniva campaign, starring actress Sally Field, cost half as much as the Cymbalta blitz.”

It is easy to chuckle at the drug companies for being so naive, but is it possible that you’re doing the same thing in your candidate interviews? Let’s face it—being a real estate agent can have some very scary side effects, such as working on full commission, going without a steady income, giving up the safety net of company-provided benefits, competing under difficult economic circumstances, etc. And when a hiring manager attempts to optimistically sell the benefits of working as a real estate agent, these side effects take on a life of their own and may drown out your intended message.

How can you avoid this from happening during your interviews? The Verilogue study may give some insight here as well:

“Companies can also adopt another proven strategy: promoting drugs using real patients who also happen to be famous. It worked for Boniva. According to researcher IMS Health (RX), prescriptions for the osteoporosis drug were up 11% last year, and sales of the drug grew 25%, to $675.6 million. Sally Field, who played the Flying Nun on TV, as well as Norma Rae on film, happily tells everyone Boniva halted and reversed her bone loss. ‘The term you hear across the board in advertising is authenticity,’ says Richard ‘Erik’ M. Gordon, assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. ‘People want to believe a celebrity isn’t just doing this because they were paid a pile of money.’

Now most of us can’t hire celebrities to help us during interviews, but we can use third parties to help us communicate the benefits of a career change. As a hiring manager, think of a person on your team who is similar to the candidate you’re interviewing. Have that person share their story….and become your Sally Field. What did Sally do to overcome the fear of making a change? What unexpected obstacles did Sally face in the first year of her new position? What are the benefits and side effects that Sally can articulate regarding her experience?

As the article mentions, the key to this dialog is authenticity. The more a person can connect their experience with a real life example, the more authentic the process will feel. This minimizes the risks of the forementioned “side effects,” and helps the candidate see the benefits with more hope and excitement.

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.

New Research On Multi-Tasking

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

I recently came across some new research out of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, assessing the best conditions for successful multi-tasking.

We all have multiple tasks to execute daily in order to be successful. Whether you’re an owner, C-level executive, realtor or manager of realtors, without a good strategy for multi-tasking, you’re performance will suffer.

The results of this research will not surprise the best performers, as they have probably been utilizing the following strategy intuitively. The findings, however, serve as a great reminder for all of us.

Two separate experiments both found the following two points to be the most critical with regard to successful multitasking:

While the best performance is found when people stop thinking about one task and fully transition their attention to the next task, it is difficult for people to transition their attention away from an unfinished task. As a result, their subsequent task performance suffers. Being able to finish one task before switching to another is, however, not enough to enable effective task transitions.
Time pressure (or a time limit) when approaching a task is needed in order to help disengage from the first task and thus move to the next task. This time-constrained approach to switching tasks contributes to higher performance on the next task.

Most of us can relate to these findings – Most successful people have done this at some point, if not currently. Personally, my best performance almost always comes when I begin the day by listing the most important tasks to be completed, estimate the time to complete each task, hold myself to it, and then move, one by one, through the list of tasks.

Ask your best performers and those who are lagging what they do to plan their day – You may find the above strategy to be the differentiating factor between them.

Inspiring Candidates to Take the Next Step in Their Careers

Monday, December 07, 2009

It has been a few months since I have shared anything from Peter Weddle with you. As you may recall, Peter is a recruiting expert I admire, and I’ve referenced his work a few times (1, 2) over the last year. Interview

Last week, Peter wrote an outstanding article that does a lot to answer a question we hear quite often from our clients:

How do you inspire someone (during an interview) to take the “leap of faith” necessary to change careers?

…Especially if that change requires them to risk the security and comforts of a stable situation for something that could potentially be more engaging and rewarding in the long run. Here’s how Peter’s article answers that question:

“Over the past decade or so, social scientists have been trying to figure out just what happiness is and where it comes from. While many of us think the answers to such questions are intuitively obvious, it turns out that we may be selling ourselves short. Humans have the capacity not only to experience happiness, but to experience joy, as well. And those two states are very different.

Joy is an emotional state. It is derived from our relationships with family and friends. When those interactions engage and satisfy us, when they enable us to be the best of ourselves with the others in our life, we experience joy–one of the human species’ greatest gifts.

Happiness, on the other hand, is a cognitive state. It occurs when we are tested by meaningful challenges that stimulate us to express and experience our fullest natural potential, our talent. These challenges can occur anywhere, but they are most prevalent in the workplace. In other words, our best shot at achieving happiness occurs when we put ourselves in a position to excel at what we love to do.

That is the essence of the American Dream. It is a personal commitment, a determination to devote our Life and exercise our Liberty to the accomplishment of two tasks:

To discovering our natural talent or what we love to do and do best.

To working only where we can use that talent to achieve satisfying goals.

The outcome of those tasks will be unique to each of us, but the tasks themselves are the same for all of us. They represent our right to the Pursuit of happiness.

Those two tasks are also the key to a successful job search and a rewarding career. Whether we’re in transition or currently employed, they enable and empower us to control our destiny, to shape it to an end that is important and fulfilling to us. It is our right, to be sure, but it is also our responsibility. For only we can take the first step, only we can decide to set off on our own personal Pursuit of happiness.

Why should we bother? Because as wonderful as the joy is in our relationships, we deserve more. We spend at least one-third of our lives at work, and that experience should offer more than frustration, anxiety and despair. It should be, it can be a source of profound fulfillment. Or what the founding fathers called Happiness.”

See if you can apply these principles in your next interview. High-quality people–especially young people–love to be engaged on this level.

If you can truly help a person discover their natural talents and then paint a picture of how those talents can be used to achieve satisfying goals on your team, you’ll not only win the “most inspiring hiring manager of the year award,” but you’ll also see better results!

Black Friday Recruiting: What Are Your Candidates Experiencing? Part 2

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

On Monday, we discussed the poor circumstances that most candidates encounter when they look for a job or investigate a career change. When simple research techniques and metrics are used to quantify a candidate’s experience, it is no wonder that job changes are constantly cited as one of the top stressors in a person’s life.

While you can’t change the employment landscape for everyone, you can make sure that the candidates who interact with your organization are experiencing something positive and out of the norm. If managed proactively, this can become a significant competitive advantage for your company. The most talented people will be naturally drawn to organizations where they feel respected and valued for the contribution they can make to a team.

Here are some ideas regarding how you can take the negatives from Monday’s discussion and turn them into positives in your company:

1. 70% dissatisfied — 70% of the candidates and 28% of hiring managers indicate they are dissatisfied with the hiring process (Source: Staffing.org):

Ask yourself this question: Why do retail companies go through the trouble of ensuring that their customers are having an enjoyable experience in their stores? It is obviously because those customers are the source of the company’s revenue. I don’t mean to sound overly harsh in this statement, but if you run a real estate company, where does your revenue come from? That’s right—your agents and (looking into the future) your perspective agents.
Maybe it’s time to change your frame of reference. Treating candidates like you’d treat a customer makes much more sense from a business perspective.

Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes—what kind of experience would you want to have if you were interviewing with your organization? Try surprising the candidate with something that would exceed their expectations. Even if a candidate does not become an agent, the person could still eventually become an actual customer that takes advantage of your company’s services.

2. 46% failure rate — 46% of U.S. new hires must be classified as failures within their first 18 months (fired, pressured to quit, required disciplinary action, etc.) (Source: Leadership IQ):

Keep in mind that these metrics represent the hiring results of companies at large—many real estate companies are even worse. What causes someone to fail in a job? There are many reasons, but one cause that researchers consistently identify as being at the top of the list is that the new hire is a poor fit for accomplishing the tasks necessary to be successful in the job. In hindsight, the mistakes made in the hiring process usually become clearer. But, how do you recognize the problems before the hire?

As earlier suggested, treating candidate like you’d treat a customer can help you avoid these missteps. Think about how real estate is sold—the essence of the agent’s role is to help the client make a connection between their personal and financial circumstances, and the house that best fits their needs.

Helping someone make a career change is very similar. People need assistance and coaching as they try to figure out how a job change could work in their life. What they don’t need is a judgmental attitude, trait responses, or indifference. If you’re willing to take on a positive career counseling approach with high-quality candidates, I think you will find you’ll become better at making the right selections.

3. Only 30% of organizations measure quality of hire, and only a handful specifically define and measure recruiting process failure:

If you’re a regular WorkPuzzle reader, you’ve often heard that it’s difficult to improve what you can’t measure. Don’t assume you know what the candidate is experiencing. Instead, collect data and act on that data. To measure the candidate’s experience, have a third party call the candidate after the interview and collect some anonymous feedback. You’ll be surprised what you learn.

I’ve given you a way to address three of the twelve metrics that Dr. Sullivan documents in his original article. Hopefully, you are getting the idea of how these issues can be addressed and turned into positive differentiators for your company. One thing we know for sure, if your recruiting process and results systematically improve, your company’s financial results will improve as well.

Black Friday Recruiting: What are Your Candidates Experiencing?

Monday, November 30, 2009

We’re just coming off “Black Friday”—one of the busiest shopping days of the year. It marks the start of the season where most retailers must be firing on all cylinders if they hope to finish up the year with a profit.

Let’s imagine for a minute that you are a retailer and you received the following feedback from exit polling done with your customers over the Thanksgiving weekend…

70% of your customers were dissatisfied with their shopping experience.
50% of your customers regretted at least one of their buying decisions.
46% of first time customers said they would probably not return to your store.
46% of your customers were not satisfied with your store’s ability to “deliver on your promises.”
Only 19% of your customers classified their shopping experience as an “unequivocal success.”

If your office is above the 3^rd floor, you might consider jumping out the window at this point! Everyone knows that it is impossible to run a successful retail business when your customers are having such a terrible experience in your store.

But this is exactly what most organizations do with regard to their recruiting efforts.

This analogy is based upon a recent article written by Dr. John Sullivan. The stats above actually relate to the real-life experiences of those interacting with the recruiting functions of various companies.

“Unfortunately, the above metrics represent failure in the recruiting and retention elements of the talent management function. I have encountered no other business function that more completely avoids defining and measuring process failure than talent management.

Here are more details on the five statistics provided above:

70% dissatisfied — 70% of the external customers (applicants) and 28% of the internal customers (hiring managers) indicate they are dissatisfied with the hiring process (Source: Staffing.org).
50% customer regret — 50% of the process users (both managers and new hires) later regret their “buying” decision (Source: The Recruiting Roundtable). In addition, 25% of new hires later regret taking their new job within one year (Source: Challenger, Gray)
46% turnover — 46% of new hires leave their jobs within the first year (Source: eBullpen, LLC) and 50% of current employees are actively seeking or are planning to seek a new job (Source: Deloitte).
46% failure rate — 46% of U.S. new hires must be classified as failures within their first 18 months (fired, pressured to quit, required disciplinary action, etc.) (Source: Leadership IQ). In addition, 58% of the highest-priority hires, new executives hired from the outside, fail in their new position within 18 months (Source: Michael Watkins).
Only a 19% success rate — Only one out of five of the process output can be classified as unequivocal successes (Source: Leadership IQ).”

Here are some additional metrics that Dr. Sullivan sites from the management (i.e. organization) perspective:

66% regret hiring decisions — Nearly two-thirds of hiring managers come to regret their interview-based hiring decisions (Source: DDI).
Bottom performers produce less — Hiring and retaining below average, or even average performers, have real opportunity costs because top performers can increase productivity, revenue, and profit by between 40% and 67% over average performers (Source: McKinsey & Co.).
Only 30% of organizations measure quality of hire, and only a handful specifically define and measure recruiting process failure.

To say the least, this is a dismal report card for those who depend upon recruiting for their livelihood (this would include nearly every real estate company in business today). But, it is also an opportunity to exceed the performance of your competitors.

Anything this poorly managed can produce significant returns when improvements are made—especially if your competitors continue to lag behind. In our next article we’ll discuss some of the things you can be doing to improve some of these metrics and create a positive impact in your company. Until then, enjoy Cyber Monday!