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Tag: what do psychologists do?

5 businesses encountered this week (and it is only Tuesday)

I love being a work psychologist

I became a work psychologist because I love learning about organizations and what people do. What makes a business tick?

It’s only Monday and here are five picks of whom I have encountered this week (and it is only Tuesday!)

Geographer who locates supermarkets (location, location, location)

Valuer of cars in Russia (great when it freezes and plenty of work until the insurance market matures)

Broker of Nepalese art (deep relationships with artists = supply chain management)

Furniture retailer in Sudan (steady as she goes – continuity and cost leadership)

Retail banker in Sri Lanka (get that customer served – be reliable and dependable)

What I do (my core competence, if you like)

HR always seems so obvious to people in the business.  If it works well, it becomes part of the “taken for granted” set of value assumptions in the underwater part of the cultural iceberg.

Non-formally trained business people take for granted what they do, twice over.  What they seems natural, it also seems childish not to know.

The fun of being a work psychologist is drawing out the assumptions business people have held for so long that they haven’t mentioned them or talked about them to anyone for a long time.

What is it like to have a conversation with a work psychologist?

I am having fun. What do business people gain from talking to me?

  • My interest is a mirror where they can see how their business runs.  They enjoy the experience and are reassured and steadied as they work in other areas that may be shaky.
  • Talking aloud to an appreciative listener allows them to put into words what they have been acting on, but not thinking or saying.  Often we don’t realize what we think until we say it aloud in the presence of someone else.
  • The principles of what they are doing are now out in the open where they can inspect them, consider them, and consider how relevant they will be in the future.  The valuer in Russia, for example, has trained valuers in distant city so he can take advantage of the current boom in valuing assets.  He also knows the boom will peak in a few years.  He is perfectly aware of both facts but may allow the situation to drift if he does not say what he knows aloud in front of someone else.

Why a psychologist and not someone else?

A business person talks to many people – their banker or their associates at the pub.  Why and how are we different?

  • We draw out the assumptions about HR.
  • We are trained to challenge gently, and reveal those long taken for granted assumptions that operate like the underwater part of an iceberg – essential to the visible business but deadly if forgotten.  A friend or banker is concentrating on what they need to hear, not on what the business person needs to hear themselves say.
  • We deliberately restate assumptions clearly so they are on the table for discussion and sharing with other people – new employees, bankers, and people we are talking to during times of change.  A business person talking to a psychologist in any setting, say a conference, a training room, an interview, should come away feeling invigorated.  They should feel clearer about what is important to them and confident that the important things are being attended to.

And it is only Tuesday!  This is a great job.  People are endlessly fascinating when they are talking about a job they love and do well.

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Group consciousness: the goal of leaders and organizational theorists

Without good governance, life is solitary poor, nasty, brutish and short

So said Hobbes of countries.  This philosophy also underlies organizational theory.  Without good structure

“.  .  .  organisations, particularly large ones, are not very conscious. There is not some malign [in]efficiency at the core of them, rather semi-conscious shuffles and bodges in various directions, which are beyond the ability of any single individual to do much about. I think that animal-herd behaviour is much the best model to describe collective humanity, however intelligent and aware the individuals within it may be.”

The goals of organizational stewards is to help us be aware at an organizational level

The goal of those of us who are organizational stewards is to create organizations that are aware at an organizational level.  How do we know what we do and the effects of our actions?  This has been the subject of organizational theory since armies began and certainly since Henri Fayol wrote down how to manage the managers in his coal mine at the turn of the century.

The “cleft stick” approach in classical organizations

Until the emergence of the internet, we concentrated on designing the communication systems within the organization on a “cleft stick” basis.  Who spoke to whom?  Who had the right to decide?  Who must be consulted?  Etc, etc.

To bring it all together, we followed the apex of the organization and indeed one of the most important rules of organizational design was showing the link between each person and the person at the “top”.

We all know how well we did on the ‘classical organization project’.  Most organizations were not stewarded well and there was little attempt to manage communication properly.  Even where communication channels were well designed, in reality, information was often not passed around as it needed to be ~ sometimes with horrendous results.

The networked organizations

The internet creates another way to provide group consciousness.  We can all talk to each other directly; and we can use search engines, such as Google to find information much more quickly than ever before.

Google is an example of a company run this way (see Gary Hamel interviewing Eric Schmidt on YouTube).  There is no need for the cumbersome organizational structures of the past precisely because there is another way of creating group consciousness.

New skills for organizational stewards in the networked world

It takes new skills, of course, to develop this raised consciousness.  We are very likely to be savvy as internet users and creators.

  • We also have to understand how to read the results of the internet – judging provenance and the reliability of information.
  • We have to read the mood.
  • We have to learn to influence through this medium.
  • And we have to show that we can deliver results in the ‘real world’ through this new organizational ether.

It is time to develop the curriculum!

Who is in?  These are the questions that spring to my mind.  Who is working in this field?  What are the classical case studies?  What are the central ideas?  What are the best ways of exploring the ideas?

What is the best way of generating consciousness in the field itself?

UPDATE: For an HR Managers perspective on the Recession, I have written a summary on a new post.

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What is your Vision of the Future?

Street fortune teller consults with client in Taichung, Taiwan

Image via Wikipedia

What do you expect from a futurologist?

I was disappointed by the Microsoft Visions of the Future event in London, though to be honest, we left before it was finished. We had heard, or partially heard three long rambling speeches. The visuals were on domestic-sized screens that only a handful of people could see, and the audience had started talking amongst themselves.

What I heard wasn’t very new either. I have been treated to at talk by a futurologist elsewhere and I was stunned then that there was little, if anything, new in the speech. Puzzled by this happening again, I shot off a question on LinkedIn: what do you expect from a talk by a futurologist?

The first few replies thought I meant “fortune teller” and some others thought “a waste of my time”. James Stuart replied more seriously. He suggested two features:

a) pointing to inter-relationships between events that aren’t immediately obvious

and

b) helping the audience understand that the future is made through their choices.

What do psychologists and futurologists have in common?

I thought that what James suggested resonated with a brilliant description of the practice of psychology that I found years ago. I am sorry I don’t have the reference still. If you recognize it, please do let me know.

All psychologists, whether we are clinical, educational or work/occupational, do three things:

a) We have models and ideas that we can put at our clients’ disposal.

b) We have experience of other people solving similar problems.

c) We stick with our client while they think through their predicament and experiment with a solution.

First, on the basis of published ideas, we know what questions to ask. Then we have some idea, from observing other people, what it is like to be faced with the dilemma facing our client. And importantly, we are loyal to our client while they are struggling with a problem that is intimidating.

  • It is important that we can observe patterns that are not obvious to other people.
  • And we understand the object of the exercise is action.

When I listen to a futurologist, I want to hear them point to interactions between emerging events that require data and models far deeper than I have available from public media.  And the information must help me see what action I must take. I must experience an “aha!’ and intense relief that I now know what to do. I still have to do it, but I need some clarity about what I want to do next.

Of course futurologists are probably talking about the macro-environment: politics, economics, social change and technological change.  Models of psychology are usually about ways individuals make sense of the world: hope, intimacy, vocation, & schooling.

My understanding of the future

In psychology, I find the 21st century so exciting that I find it hard to think ahead.

As a vision of the future, it is worth flicking through Jane McGonigle’s presentation at SXSW 2008.  Jane believes that eventually we will all be in the business of happiness.  And she can outline the psychological principles to engineer happiness.

Curriculum Illusione is a Dutch site that gives you an interactive time line to map the future, and, how you intend to interact with it.  It is quite challenging.
I would be interested in your opinion of both.

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The essence of leadership is follow me

Even if it is only out of curiosity

Now who said that? Colin Powell, I believe, speaking to HR managers in the UK.

Culture, attitudes, behavior

My friend Steve Roesler at AllThingsWorkplace posted today on workplace culture, and how hard it is to change behavior. This is a central topic in social and organizational psychology. Can we change an attitude without changing behavior? Can we change behavior without changing culture? What sustains culture?

Earlier today I read a similar article in TimesOnLine on whether politicians can change British drinking culture by decree.

David Aaronvitch used a neat phrase:

“Fashion, popular culture, whatever you call it, found a way round authority, because it didn’t depend upon authority, or even upon establishment approval.”

This is the same phenomenon that Steve is talking about: informal culture and power. Should we despair as the TimesOnLine suggests? Brits are drunks – live with it and laugh at politicians nannying us again? Can cultures be modified?

How do we change patterns?

My social media friends will phrase this differently: can we organize viral campaigns?

I think we often put the cart before the horse.

Change effects tend to be spiral, or recursive. In other words, the change creates the change. And a forward change can cause a backward effect, necessary for the forward change.

So why the cart before the horse? We want the cart to be moving along with the horse following.

To get change, we have to join in. We have to be there in other words. We have put ourselves out there and be changed in the process. We have to believe that cart is worth pulling. We have to notice when it starts to roll back and judge whether to roll with it or dig our heels in.  We have to believe in it enough to feel the harness rubbing . . .

It is the linkage that is critical.

Being a player

In organizations, it is the willingness to be a player: to really put our money on the table. Willingness to win and to lose with everyone else.

  • Are we willing to sit at the table and make tough choices? And be accountable for the consequences?
  • Do we believe in our people enough to be accountable on the bad days?
  • Can we have the courageous conversations about what is truly rotten?
  • Can we accept the challenge about how we have treated people?
  • Can we do all of this will only one end in mind – keeping the group there for its members?

We don’t want to be talked at.  We want to talk with people who are also vulnerable in that their pride, future, pleasure, is also at stake.  We want to talk seriously with people about why we are doing this, whatever this is, and authentically discuss what is at stake for everyone.

Can we link our our futures to that cart?

Leading from within

This is the competency that HR Managers struggle with.

This is the competency that I hope social media managers will learn early ~ to be a player.

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So if I am not going to reify my organization, what should I do?

I was following up the new field of “performance studies“.   I have lost the link unfortunately.   Here are five statements and questions I re-phrased in “plain-language”.

1.  We make the company every day by what we do.

2.  Together we act out a story.

3.  Remember there is more that one story we could tell.

4.  Why do I have to speak for you?  What can’t people speak for themselves?

5.  What does the story we are acting out say about our relationships with each other and are we willing to talk about this question?

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ReadWriteWeb has come alive . . .

. . . with great and interesting posts every day.

Today Alex wrote on the recession, which is worrying lots of people. I’m a Zimbo so I am going, ahh! this ain’t so hard. Forgive me. This is what I have to say.

1. I have never worked with a lazy person, ever.

I have worked with people who were thoroughly disengaged and very unhappy. I have worked with people who I thought were misdirected (yes I thought, they didn’t).

People like working. The great trick is integrating people. And I will be the first to say that can be hard. I always take the view that we hired someone because they are good. If we are falling out, the responsibility is mutual and we should help the person (typically with the least power) move on to a better place – where they are highly valued, better paid, etc. And if we are so far down the road of conflict we can’t see the good anymore, we should back off and let someone else manage the relationship. I want to kiss goodbye (with relief as right now we are on a path to hating each other) and recover our friendship in due course. We both mismanaged our relationship. It is time for us to recover and make good.

2. I don’t want to work in a place where some pigs are more equal than others . . .

I’m a conventional HR-based psychologist. I do selection – you know those awful tests and reports telling you who you are. I can run up a comp-and-benefit scheme explaining who gets more money and why. I predict labor demand within organizations and match supply (to make sure we don’t suffer too much when you leave). I run the hello and goodbye programs. And I bollock anyone who gets into a disciplinary scenario because of the paper work they make for us all.

But I don’t want to work in a place where one person is more important than anyone else.

Everyone is important otherwise why did we hire them? Floors are not cleaned as a luxury. Clean floors are essential to the smooth running of our business, etc. etc.

I hate the idea that we look after the top 10% of people.  Why do I select people, then, I hear you say? Because we have the technology to identify the matches that will never work – the extreme cases. Let’s make ourselves useful, folks. I am also happy when my deli refuses to sell me something because what I intend to do with their food is just plain horrible. There is nothing wrong with someone who knows, leaning over to someone who doesn’t, and saying, if you want to achieve X, do it like Y.  What a wonderful expression of goodwill. I am saved disappointment and I feel great that someone cared enough to tell me.

3. Can organizations be egalitarian? Don’t we need leaders?

I discovered Barbara Sliter’s blog Creatorship – courtesy of Galba Bright. Thank you so much.

I have stopped believing in leadership. I believe we thrust up people to represent us. It is a dynamic process, as we are seeing the States right now. The answer is not given, and the person who most respects the dynamic will win, by definition.

On a daily basis, in my conventional role as a work psychologist, leadership is shared. I deliver data, collected professionally and organized to inform action in the circumstances we are in. Our understanding of the situation evolves during discussions, as mine does. And “leadership” shifts with the part of the situation we are considering. The “leader”, be it the senior line manager present, or any one else, leads by representing our collective and considered view to us and to others.

Sometimes the senior line person is so much more experienced than the rest of us, they add an overview we all recognize immediately as bringing us together. Mostly, they are sufficiently experienced, in our line of work and in leadership roles (they probably started practicing at pre-school!) and recognize when we are reaching agreement which they sum up effectively so that we can move forward with full confidence in each other.

Often, they find the group view is very much at odds with their own, but they represent our view effectively anyway. They value their people. We are on the team for a reason. Together we will make good decisions. We won’t always be right. And sometimes we will be right, but won’t win.

But we will put our best foot forward! They know that.

Barbara Sliter puts this so much better than I do. People who haven’t had the privilege of working in professional, collegial settings are ready. Ready to co-create meaning at work.

What I can do, is add the stories and the robust HR technologies for the pay systems, etc. I’ve seen places where the “least senior” person chairs the meeting. It works. And why not? They will be the least opinionated after all!

4. Recessions offer opportunity too.

Go back to Zimbabwe I hear you say. Maybe I will. I haven’t heard that for a while – at least 6 months. I must be keeping good company.

What counts in life is finding opportunity in what looks like a negative space. A 3% downturn is not trouble, believe me! But it is disconcerting. The firms that sit down, and openly talk about what is opening up for them, will thrive.

To refer to the American elections again, I deliberately engaged with Obama-skeptics to find out their objections. They don’t want universal health insurance, presumably because it may cost them a little. My scampering mind screams OPPORTUNITY! Where is Melissa Clark-Reynolds? I don’t know if you are Kiwi, Alex, but Richard will know whom I mean.

Whomever asks the best questions under frustration wins! I’ve also just found Galba Bright’s blog. He has posted today a great heuristic for managing meetings and particularly tricky meetings. I am going to look at that more closely today.

Thanks, Alex. I liked your post. It is closer to the egalitarian world I like (provided I am in charge of course!). I like working with knowledge workers. And BTW, Gen Y really get this. I had a conversation late last night with a colleague’s son who had been deputed by his father to help me with a website. At one point the young man said to me: tell me a little more about your skill set so I know what you will be contributing. Yep, indeed. They hold their own!

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What does positive psychology “do”?

Psychologists are very proud of being scientist-practitioners, and so we should be.  But if truth be told, we don’t write too many exams on the practice bit, and once we get to the practice bit, we get nervous if it doesn’t look like the science bit.

For people new to the practice of positive psychology, the part we have clients, this may help.  I wrote it when explaining my rather specialised blog, flourishing with 2.0.

“Positive psychology focuses us on the need to reach out, to engage with the world, and to pursue what we love and enjoy vigorously.”

Mmm, would you move that “vigorously” into the sentence?

 

UPDATE: As my contribution to keeping the internet free of debris, I shut down blogs that I have not being updating regularly.  Flourishing with 2.0 is one of those.

Here is the About page from that blog!

Why flourishing and 2.0?

I’m a serial migrant and I have become good at starting again in new places with new faces.

Fortunately for me, I am both a psychologist and media savvy. The task we migrants have, is to rebuild our psychological and social spaces at a lightening pace. We want and we need to become connected again in meaningful ways. We want and need to hear our voices again. And we want and we need to be heard again.

This site is not just for us though. We are not alone in this task of rebuilding our lives. Anyone going through a large transition faces the same task – students going to university, students leaving university, women whose children have left home, breadwinners who have been made redundant. We are all reconnecting and revisioning, rebuilding and regenerating, the way we live and who we are.

Though our changes are hard, we are also quite lucky to be making them now. Since the turn of the millenium, since 2000, both the internet and positive psychology have exploded. The read/write web, or web2.0 has brought a wider and better range of content generated by ordinary people. We can join in and speed up our connections to people around us.

Positive psychology focuses us on the need to reach out, to engage with the world, and to pursue what we love and enjoy vigorously.

Welcome. I am looking forward to this site and to your comments and feedback.

Yours,

Scotchcart

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putting Humpty back together again – the psychologist’s challenge

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again”.

So goes the nursery rhyme, and for most psychologists, any understanding of a person in his or own terms.

We are trained, for our sins, to be analytical.  I trained other people to be analytical.   And I would still defend our training.  But after we have finished being trained, we have to learn to put Humpty together again.  How does all the information we have collected about someone, amount to a person with a hopes and dreams, with a history and with a future,  and with fears and determination.

Two key ideas for  understanding people

The first is the idea of a sense of self, that, through whatever means, begins to take shape quite early.

“Hold to your own truth, at the center of the image, you were born with”.   (David Whyte, p. 349, River Flow).

Well, maybe you weren’t born with it, but you probably started exploring images of who you are, quite early in your life.  And the question is, what images can you remember that you were drawn to?

I will give you an example.  At about 10 years old, I saw an American movie about a basketball team who put some magic bouncy stuff on their shoes.  I had never seen a basketball game in real life, we played netball, but I was fascinated.  Five years later (a long time when you are a kid), our school announced that we were going to drop netball and play basketball.  I immediately, and I mean immediately, within thirty seconds, asked my mother if I could play in the team (with all the expense that implied).  She happily agreed, as I was well known for not being able to catch a ball, and hey presto, I was captain of the Under 15’s within weeks.  How I loved that game and it took me from clutz to school hero.

We all have creative images, though some we aren’t going to blog about, and it is worthwhile thinking about them, because however bizarre they are, they are important to us.

The second key idea, which David Whyte makes again and again, but rather obliquely, is that these images are essentially social.  They talk to our relationship with the world and the relationship we want with the world.

Now I am not much of an exhibitionist, and I was rather shy as a youngster, but I think I was drawn to two things in the basketball movie: the shared excitement of the crowd and the nippiness of the game.  And those are the roles I played.   The fast break specialist and the ‘man-to-man’ marker.  These are results-oriented ‘closing roles’, bringing home the bacon so to speak, and roles which the crowds understand and set them alight. For someone lousy at sport, this was gratifying.  It was something I could do in a sports-mad school that helped me learn about how crowds become excited and why we enjoy it so much.

We weave our story from a young age.  We see movies quite by chance, and are taken by some and not by others.  Opportunities arise, and we respond to some and not to others.  And we move on, giving up pursuits of our childhood and adopting others.   It is always our story though, woven partly from chance encounters and partly through choice.  We learn as we go, working out what’s next, from the story we are telling to the world and ourselves.

Understanding this story, delighting in this story, cherishing this story, is the privilege of the existential coach.

We are happier as workmates and colleagues when our story is heard and when our current circumstances are woven in to what went before and what will come soon after.  There is no right or wrong.  Simply the unself-conscious bringing of who we have been, to whom we are with, and the celebration of the richness of our imagination in the past, with the shy pleasure of the growing imaginative awareness of a gentle birth into the future.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Employee priorities under high inflation

Zimbabwe has inflation of 150 000%. Yep, that is right. Prices go up about 2.7% per day. As fast as prices go up in most countries per year.

What are employees’ priorities under these circumstance? Here is a survey from a Zimbabwean HR consultancy firm, OEC.

We asked employees through our website surveys on their views concerning the question below.

(250 people responded)

I not leaving my current employer because I am enjoying

Percentage

Free Fuel

13.33 %

Company Car

10.00 %

Good Basic Salary

6.67 %

The working environment

13.33 %

Relationships with work colleagues

86.67 %

Educational Loan/Assistance

6.67 %

School Fees

6.67 %

Could be because the pecuniary benefits aren’t there. Must ask them!

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To centre our sense of self in our relationships

Feeling stuck?  Not looking forward to 2010?

From guru to psychologist, all the people who know about this sort of thing say the same thing.  Start close in.  Begin with everything and everybody right here in life with you now.

“Arrgh,” you say, “That is exactly what I am trying to get away from!”

Uh-uh.  You are trying to get away from the feelings of frustration, irritation and stuck-ness.  You simply need some places to push off against.

Ask some questions

This is what I want you to do ~ ask some questions.

  • Who is around me?  What is around me?
  • What does my relationship with [these things/people] want more of?
  • What’s working, and what should I be celebrate?
  • What would help create a sense of fun and ease in this relationship?

and . . .

The checklist where I found these questions is at WidgetWonder.  I just worked through the whole list checklist for reviewing 2009 and thinking about 2010.  It asks much deeper questions than most goal setting and life purpose blogs.

How we hold the conversation

It is how we hold the conversation.

Consider the space

  • The list helped me put my finger about what I will be doing to contribute to my relationships with others and allow them to be more enjoyable

Store away what is no longer needed

  • The list helped me put my finger on what I feel is ‘done and dusted’ and what I still need to resolve, one way or another. It was amazing how quickly I could resolve things once I had put things like that.

Include more people!

  • The list reminded me that all my plans for 2010 depend upon other people.   What support do I need?  How is this a community project?  The list helped me identify where I was trying to take 100% responsibility when the project is not my responsibility alone.  The responsibility is mutual.  Taking a step back and asking what support do we need to make this happen together has been an invaluable for me.

Clearing our minds for 2010

I strongly recommend you print out the list at Widgetwonder and work through it.

It will help you clear your mind, relax, and enjoy 2010 no matter what it brings.

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