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Make your team ~ break your team ~ it is in your gift

Published November 8, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Psychologists know that IQ matters at work

I am a work & organizational psychologist and I might even administer an intelligence test to you if you apply to one of my clients.  I can promise you one thing.

No matter who the client is, or what they do, it will matter if your IQ were 25% higher or lower.  That is an big enough change to be important.

Psychologists are also learning that rejection is devastating to our ability to think straight

Yet, the way we are managed affects our IQ by that amount – 25%.  According to Ray Baumeister, all of the following will cause your IQ to plummet by that amount.

  • If you suffer from subtle slights because you are a member of a minority.  Being called ‘girl’, being excluded from social events, not being looked at squarely in the eye – all will reduce your IQ.  You can think of others.
  • Feeling that your employment is insecure, will reduce your IQ.
  • Not being consulted on matters that affect you will reduce your IQ.

So why do managers manage this way if IQ falls so precipitously?

Most likely because bad management is like a neurosis.  If I am scared of snakes, then I won’t go near them and I will never learn how to interact with them safely.

Bad managers become anxious about performance, snarl and snap, and make their staff anxious.  And performance falls confirming their worst expectations.  Rinse and repeat and they never learn how to manage well.

But is it right that managers are allowed to assault people psychologically?

Not IMHO.  Employing people does not confer the right of psychological assault.

Reducing people’s IQ by 25% does not just affect their behavior at work either.  It affects their driving, their parenting, and their understanding of wider issues.

Big firms who use psychological tests should be asked to show that they are not assaulting their staff.  That is a regulatory burden I know, but I understand that Scandavian countries have ‘happiness’ legislation in place.

I’ve also worked in places where the ethos is that ‘if you can’t afford to employ, then don’t’.

25% reduction in IQ is a shocking number ~ but there is a plus side.

Manage well, and you have a competitive advantage of 25% of IQ!

A cheerful staff who feel they belong will turn into innovation, creativity, problem solving, fewer errors and better ideas.

That’s money in our pockets.  I hope Baumeister also experiments with the reverse proposition.  Create a sense of belonging and show higher team performance!

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Gen Y managers and leaders or leading and managing in the age of Gen Y?

Published November 7, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Gen Y may be effective workers but are they good leaders and managers?

The weakness of Gen Y managers has bothered me, and I remained bothered until I had made up my mind about the future of management.

The future of management

I think management is going to exist pretty much unchanged except for three features.

  • We will work globally with people all over the world
  • We will work through the internet and need internet-type IT skills
  • Management will no longer be hierarchical

Managers of tomorrow will be puppet masters who specialize in the

  • Design of systems
  • Management of communities
  • Identification of collective opportunities

Collective will be their thing.

Managers won’t come through the ranks

Managers won’t be promoted up the ranks simply because there will be fewer ranks. Specialists will be happy to stay in their own specialities because there will be no advantage to promotion.  Managers may have no technical skills but they will be adept at getting people to work together.  They will be no more important than any one else though.  They’ll ask for support rather than demand performance.

Managers will exist in just the same way as skilled coders exist and skilled writers exist.

Managers who don’t have people or technical skills may need to find some skills

Many of the people whose skills I found woeful wanted to be managers. They were very bad listeners though.

Such people may find themselves dislocated if they are poor with people and have no technical skills either. But presumably they can learn management skills if given opportunities early enough.

If management is a career route, then presumably we will take in people to do management work at a very young age ~ and encourage them to acquire management skills at school and in community groups.

Not everyone wants to be a manager though. I know plenty of young people who don’t.

The future of management in the age of Gen Y

Matter resolved for me ~ for you?  This is my take as of November 2009.

  • Gen Y have no particularly predisposition to manage and perhaps a slight disposition not to manage
  • Management in this day is more coordination – on a daily base, via intricate internet skills and by recognizing opportunity within a network
  • Gen Y will learn the skills of management quite young by taking on projects
  • We can improve Gen Y skills by giving them projects to design, lead and manage at a young age.

What’s your view?

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Managing in Africa: We may have wild animals but we write concisely. We have a to-the-point culture.

Published November 7, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Harare International Ariport
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Yes, there are wild animals in Africa and sometimes you meet them

A jet on a domestic commuter flight collided with a squad of warthogs that had found their way onto the runway during the night at Harare International Airport.  The jet hit the pigs just as it screaming down the runway in take off.  The undercarriage was damaged and the plane veered off the runway at speed.  The pilot brought the plane to a safe stop and all 30-40 passengers were evacuated safely though obviously startled.

That’s my summation.  I am following this story because I want to know what happened to the pigs.  It’s called the zeigarnik effect. We always want to know the ending!  No one says what happened to the pigs (or whether anyone has mended the airport fence).  So I keep reading the stories to find out!

Manage for animals and be to-the-point ~ very to-the-point when you work in Africa

While I’ve watched the story I read an extract from a statement from the airlines chief executive.

In exactly five sentences, the CEO summarizes the situation and he does so in logical order.

A template for perfect business writing

I’ve copied the statement below and added a heading before each line.  It’s a case study of a perfect business memo.

Situation : something has happened and we must pay attention

“An Air Zimbabwe MA60 aircraft impacted with warthogs during the take-off roll on November 3, 2009 at approximately 19:36.

Mission : this is why we must pay attention

This resulted in a rejected take-off.

Execution: Specific events in logical order

The aircraft was on the take-off roll and was about to lift off the ground when it hit the five warthogs.

The nose and left main landing gears collapsed after the impact.

The aircraft veered off to the left side of the runway and stopped off the runway with damage on the engine propeller and on the wing tip.”

Missing:

What will happen next and who to contact?

NB:  There is no mention that the passengers got off unharmed because no one is hurt.  We take it for granted that if casualties were not reported, that there is NTR – nothing to report.

I still want to know what happened to the pigs.  I know it is not particularly relevant. It is just the zegarnik effect, I know.

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More bad news coming. The internet will expose more institutional spin

Published November 7, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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I know my institutions and can read their behavior

Many years ago, I friend of mine was negotiating his salary with his employer.  To aid his efforts, he paid a friend who was an employment agent to advertise a job just like his and to offer a wonderful package.

My students at the time were all excited.  The advertisement vindicated their choice of major.  Yes,  if they worked hard, they could follow an institutional path and be rich!!

Not even knowing my friend’s devious scheme (I found out later), I dismissed the advertisement with a contemptuous, “It’s a scam”.

See, I knew three things that my students didn’t know:

  • The prevailing salary rates, not just in my profession, but in sister professions of accounting, marketing, etc.  I knew what the market thought was reasonable.
  • Business conditions and the amount of gross profit available for institutional careers (you know the one’s guaranteed by the taxpayer no matter how much you mess up)
  • That people run institutions lie.

Before I worked as a work & organizational psychologist, I too thought institutions were honorable

I remember the first time I fell for an institutional scam.  It was a painful experience and it took me years to get over it.

We trust institutions

When we are young, we believe that institutional leaders are honorable.  Institutional leaders go to great lengths to make us believe that because that is their job.  After all an institution is only an institution if it is stable and trusted.  So they will tell you anything to have you believe they have done their job.

But we should remember that to check whether they are trustworthy

And that is why we must not trust them.  We must ask for evidence.  Hard, cold evidence.  What are the career paths in the organization?  Where are the statistics?  What are the future scenarios for the organization?  Can you look at them?

An institutional leader cannot use his own spin as evidence

Lord Mandelson is doing the right thing by making universities show students the destinations of graduates An institutional leader cannot hold up his own spin as evidence that he has succeeded in making order and stability for us.  He was to show us the evidence.

In the days of the internet, data on the institution’s performance should be freely available

And I am afraid that if that in the days of the internet that if that evidence is not freely available on the internet in slurpable form – meaning that you can download the  input data, not the processed data – then they obviously have something to hide.

Harsh words, I know

But remember my friend, and remember how my students were taken in.

Ask questions and the first question is ~ what happens when I ask?

First sign of scoundrels running the organization

If they don’t want to answer, or if they set up a meeting where we are doing all the answering and our questions come after they have made up their minds, then they are frauds.  Then they are frauds and and we have found them out.

Disappointing, of course.  Doubly disappointing.  Trebly disappointing.

  • We don’t get what we want.
  • Institutions by definition should be honorable.  So we don’t get what we want AND we know we have frauds in our midst.
  • Institutions are usually paid for by the taxpayer.  We don’t get what we want, we know you are trying to cheat us AND we are paying for you.

My priorities when you use public money to cheat me

Hmmph.  Well for now, my priority must be to get what I need and want.  Then I will participate to clear out the rotten institutions.  Then I will think about recovering my money from you.

Is that the right order?

For the young & inexperienced

And if you are young and inexperienced, stop trusting institutions who don’t trust you with hard, cold data.  Spin that they have done their job of making a safe, orderly environment for you is not evidence. Ask for the evidence.  If they don’t have it, act accordingly ~ warily ~ get what you need and in due course, expose their shenanigans.

 

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Pretentiousness: don’t spin and scam in a world governed by necessity

Published November 7, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Pretending to be what you are not

We do it a lot.   It is the hallmark of our institutionalized society.  We have these ‘roles’ which we think we are supposed to fit into.  We think other people expect us to fit into those roles too.

So we try to dress the part, look the part, say the right things.  Why?  So we will be treated as if we are the part.  We are part of a large scam – and we know it.

Economic and other shocks reveal the Emperor’s clothes

When our lives are upset in some way – when our expenses are challenged, when our business model is scuppered by the internet, when our business contracts and our spending power takes a dive through a leaner cash flow or outright redundancy – we often find ourselves unduly taken up with  “how will people treat me?”.  Will I be taken seriously without my big car?    <Panic and dismay>

But don’t make it worse by concentrating on the wrong thing

When someone has the rug pulled out from underneath them, it is sad to watch.  Not because they lose their status but because they hang on to an irrelevant formula.

Get your priorities clear

Mate, just get your priorities clear.  If a tsunami had swept over your town, you wouldn’t be stopping to blame yourself or to score points over you neighbour.  You’d get to fundamentals.

  • Where are the people I love?
  • What are the immediate threats?
  • What do we have to feed us, wash us, keep us safe?  Where is clean water?
  • Who around us needs help and can we help them?

Get real!  It is so much easier!

Stop acting.  Spin and scams looked good but it is time to get real

If you are feeling very uncomfortable in your skin or in your current circumstances, maybe stop acting.  The old model is broken.  Well, and truly bust.  Don’t spend another thought on it.  The tsunami has come . . . and gone. We are dealing with the aftermath.  We can reminisce later. We can ask the climatologists what happened later.  For NOW, we only want to know what happens NOW

Judge people by what they can deliver now.  If they want you to play a part, do you really believe they have anything substantial to offer?  Really?

Imagine arriving at a Red Cross tent after a tsunami and dealing with an official who is pretentious – who makes you fill in daft forms  and play games.  You will be quick to work out whether they have food for your children in their tent or not.  And you will do the minimum to get it.  You will get it, but you will do the minimum.  These are clearly not people to be bothered with.  You may be shocked that the aid workers are scam merchants but, really, you will be busy, so you will put aside the shock and concentrate.

If there is another tent where food is handed out briskly and you can get on with your life, you would choose that tent.   Vote with your feet.  Hanging around a badly run tent full of pompous officials who demand you look the part in some imaginary narrative will not get you anywhere.  The tent might look good, but hang around only so long as they deliver what you need NOW!

Challenge your own pretensions

It really is important to get real.  No one owes us a living, as the saying goes.  Do today what needs to be done today.

We also owe a living to no one except the young, the sick, the infirm and the aged who cannot contribute any more.  We have to learn to give unto Cesar.  Pay the tax that we have to pay. Fill in the forms that we have to fill in.  To use the contemporary expression “fake like they are human”.  But ignore them otherwise.  You are too, too busy, coping with what needs to be done today.

If they think less of you because your world has fallen apart, that is their lookout  They are just not helpful.

But don’t lose more friends because you are worried about spinning and scamming in a world governed by necessity and real challenge.  Attend to what is real.  Leave the spin merchants to their imaginary life.

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Exercise in extreme living ~ impersonate who you are not?

Published November 7, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Extreme living ~ become a banker?

A few days ago, I suggested an experiment in extreme living: deliberately take a job you hate.  Why not?  Take a job you despise.  Become a banker or a politician.

Why would we want to live extremely?

A young member of the coaching world commented irritably – why would we want to do that?

Yes, indeed, all the the advice of the world of personal leadership is the same.  Be the person you want to be.

We can do what we don’t like because we trust ourselves not to be seduced by it

But the hallmark of someone who is utterly self-confident about their ability to find their purpose and meaning in life is that they can acknowledge what they are not. And they experiment with what they are not without fear that it will take over who they are.

Try this as a weekend exercise in extreme living

First do the simple personality test based on Paulo Coelho’s Virgin, Martyr, Saint or Witch?

Before you click to the other post, here are the three steps.

  1. Which are you: Virgin, Martyr, Saint or Witch?
  2. Which are you definitely not?
  3. Be what you are not for 1 hour this weekend – just one hour.

And if you can’t do one hour, try what you can.  5 minutes?

Grow your ability to live extremely weekend to weekend

Over time, the time that you can be what you are not, should grow longer.   And your assurance about who you are (with all the ridiculousness and humor of who you are will grow).

Once a week ~ impersonate who you are not?

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The hidden strength of a good friend in today’s shocking world

Published November 7, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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We live in times when there is plenty to shock us

I have an old-fashioned habit of switching on the radio to catch the news.  It really is a habit I must break because the quality gets more variable by the day.

Today, a little tired from a full Friday night’s work, I feel particularly jaundiced by gibberish that is put out by the (frankly) pale, male and stale – with a few opinionated women thrown in.  The ranting is pretty bad today because some people in the establishment have taken abrupt status drops and are feeling pretty sorry for themselves.  Some have been around bad things that would shock anyone.

And we find out who our friends are

It is in times like this though, that we really find out who our friends are.  Our friends don’t egg us on. Our friends don’t invite us into the public domain to rant and rave and say the incoherent and often unpleasant things we feel in the midst of grief and in the grip of chagrin.

We need our friends to lead us quietly away to grieve in private

Our friends lead us quietly away until we’ve had the chance to grieve with the people who are part of the same tragedy.  Our friends help us sort out what happened. Our friends help us to think out the consequences.  Our friends help us to work out what is dark, what is untimely, what is embarrassing, what is unfair, and what just is.  We don’t want to do that on the radio.

We can be sure that we adding negative consequences to negative consequences when we rant incoherently in public in our immediate shock.  Our friends should not let us.

Can I COUNT ON you?

In times like these, I hope I can COUNT ON YOU to lead me quietly away.  I hope I can COUNT ON YOU to put an arm around my shoulder.   I hope you can COUNT ON YOU  to make me a cup of tea and something easy to eat.  I hope I can COUNT ON YOU to listen but not remind me later of things I said but made no sense.

I will calm down but I hope I can COUNT ON YOU to give me time to make sense of outrage and not attack me while I am in that state nor make me into a public spectacle.

And if you were not to be COUNTED ON

And if it turns out that I COULD NOT count on you, and that you did not protect me when I could not protect myself, then I know you are not a friend.

I will not blame you for the outrage that led to my grief but I will know that you are not to be COUNTED UPON.

In times of shock, please

Lead me quietly away to deal with my outrage.  People who were not there and who were not part of the outrage will only see the jumble in my mind as incoherence.  Talking about my confusion in public doesn’t explain anything to them or give dignity to my predicament.

Lead me quietly away, put an arm around my shoulder and make me a cup of tea.

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Expand your life: one frontier at a time

Published November 6, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Where is your frontier?

Where are the places in your life where you are trying something new and where you know neither the rules and the outcome?

Why those places?  And where are the places that you don’t want to try?

One frontier at a time

I think that like good Generals we can only have one frontier at once.  By their nature, frontiers are scary and ask for all our attention.  Maybe we can have one-and-a-half frontiers – one serious one and one hobby.

Which frontiers are become possible?

More interesting are the frontiers that terrify us.  Aren’t those worth looking at again?  Maybe we can edge towards what we couldn’t contemplate last year.

What terrifies you?  Of this list, which might be quite long, which might you actually want to make your frontier for 2010?  Your frontier where you know neither the rules nor the outcome?  (Breath and breath out slowly!)

I think I will go to bed thinking about the frontiers that frighten me!

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If you care enough, you can build it, and they will come

Published November 6, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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I am amazed by what I wrote months and months ago.  You really should keep a blog and write and write.  At the time, your posts may be rough, but they will clarify and when you reread them months late, you will be surprised by your insights.

It seems that some months ago, I jotted down some of my thoughts on using Twitter in classrooms.  In the course of the post, I jotted down three critical features of developing flourishing communities like thriving classrooms.

#1 Conversations

Talk to someone.  Work with someone.  If there is no one else, feel the ground under your feet.  Listen to the birds.  Pay attention!  As we pay attention to the world, we ourselves come alive and the world pays attention to us.

Managers & designers:  Start the conversation. Provide tools and opportunities for people to talk to each other. Watch the range of conversations and help people join in.  Also watch the content of conversations and help people extend their conversations – to more people in and outside the organization.

#2 Community

Be positive. I don’t mean gushy and airy-fairy.  I mean talk to the facts, including your own negative emotions, but don’t exclude other stories.  We should own our negative experience but not think they are the whole story.  Keep a gratitude diary because if you don’t, with the best will in the world, when shit-happens, and it does, you might find you cannot see the good with the bad.

Managers & designers: Set up “positive” procedures – which are procedures that allow us to recognize negative events, which ensure that we never disrespect anyone by ignoring how events impact on them, yet which acknowledge what is good and true and that we want to do more of.  Abandoning the negative art of “gap management” takes thought and disciplined work.  Falling out of love with our own tempers takes practice and like-minded friends.  But unless and until we can achieve positivity : negativity ratios of 5:1 when things are going badly, we will not predictably sustain communities where we will flourish.  The key to flourishing communities begins with us and our loyalty to our members.

#3  Meta-cognition (talking about)

As people settle in, watch out for discussion of the “rules of engagement” and the purpose of our existence.  Everyone will have an idea and they need to be heard. We need to listen to others to allow them to hear themselves and to help them relax sufficiently to hear others.  We need to be patient because this takes time and some people aren’t good at it.  Once advocacy is balanced with curiosity, the group might begin to thrive as a group.  Blogging, of course, as a form of talking-about – of putting our experiences into words and making sense of them.

Managers & designers: Help the group move through the five stages of group formation (forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning) and move as fast or as slow as they do extending the conversations appropriately but listening to the relevant concerns that people have at each stage though, quite rightly, these concerns are very different from yours.  People move on faster when they are allowed to complete each stage to their satisfaction.

Leading takes work. No doubt about that!  It is not as glamorous as it looks.

If you have read this far, you’ll have noticed that I am making little distinction between classrooms, businesses and for that matter, my own life.  I don’t.  I think the three points

  • talk to others
  • keep faith with others (even when it taxes your patience)
  • and put into words what we are thinking and experience

these three simple points are guides to building any community that you care enough to build.


 

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Will you look back in wonder? Or are you sleepwalking through an institutionalized life?

Published November 6, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Is your life institutionalized?

Some many of us are institutionalized.  We live our lives as if we are on a long distance flight.  I am travelling from Heathrow to Auckland via LA.  My, doesn’t that feel good.  I am going somewhere you want to go, on a route you would like to follow.

But that isn’t life.  That is sitting in a sardine can for awfully long time doing what we are told.

In real life, we set out, much like Dick Whittington and his cat.  We are going to London.  We don’t have a map.  In truth, we aren’t really sure that London exists.  But we know we are going.

How do you cope with the muddled narrative of an open ended adventure?

Because we are going, but are quite sure where and how, when people ask us what we are doing, we sound muddled.   During the journey, we know what we have just left and what we have just seen.  We know the obstacles that face us right now and that might bring our entire project to an end.  People expect to hear our destination and our route.  Without an institutionalized storyline, we sound disjointed!

If our story is clear, it is yesterday’s action!

It is only at the end of the journey that we can tell the whole tale and give it a beginning, middle and an end.

I am still tidying this blog and re-sorting posts I wrote as much as two yeas’ ago.  Each post has been about something I did during that day, or read, or thought.

As a I look back, I am amazed.  Did I really get involved in that and did we think that clearly?   It seems so.

And example of looking back in wonder

Here is a post from over 18 months ago in the aftermath of the March 2008 election when Zimbabweans around the world were in a hiatus without widely accepted election results.   We were writing to the late President Mwanawasa of our neighbours, Zambia, who was chairman of SADC at the time.  SADC is the southern African equivalent of the G20.

  • We were involved.
  • We were imaginative.
  • We were positive.

Beat that can you?  I am impressed with us. This is a fantastic case study of positive psychology of collection action in dire times.

But note at the time, this post got hardly any attention.  Yet, what we were doing was quite revolutionary at so many levels.  Real life is muddled.  Real life is unpracticed.

When it is smooth, when it is definite, it is not real life.  It is just the unthinking sleepwalking of institutional existence.

 

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