FROM FROM THE CEO
W
elcome to the September issue of Work Life. This issue is dedicated to The Future of Work. Yes, we are assuming work has a future and we’ve dared to explore it. Why? Because as we deliver consulting and education to more and more corporations and organisations around the world, we are seeing increasing levels of work-related stress and anxiety, in part brought about by the way in which work and workplaces are changing. • • • • • •
You know the common trends: Downsizing, restructuring and redundancies Increased workloads and responsibilities Changing job roles that frequently require new skills A trend away from the 9-5 work life to flexible availability A trend away from fixed locations, to hot desks, work from home,
And we know that wellbeing at work is strongly associated with overall wellbeing – after all, work occupies so much of our lives. But we also know that work can be good for wellbeing and for recovery from mental disorders! Yes, you heard it. Having a job can help you get back to sanity. But, you may say, my experience is that my job often drives me to the brink of insanity, how can it be healing? Well, as you’ll see in this month’s feature, in my interview with Michelle Duval from Fingerprint For Success, (and she recently appeared as an expert consultant on the SBS show ‘The Employables’) meaningful work has a lot to offer us, when we have the right attitude.
Peter D ia CEO - z Wor Mentakl place H Instituteealth
Have a read and watch the interview. Enjoy, and let us know what you think. • • • • •
Other articles this month include: Identifying your Upper Limit problem Losada Line Leadership Rethinking Failure 4 Key Factors for Resilience
By the way, if you want to support your team as they manage the challenges of the new and changing workplace, why not invite us over to talk to your team?
Talk soon and have a brilliant, mentally wealthy, day.
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Author: Peter Diaz
M
The Employables and The Future of Work ichelle Duval is one of those people who makes a mark on other people’s lives. She’s a quiet achiever, but a high achiever nevertheless. Michelle has a knack for being able to see people’s patterns, and help them to shift. And she’s also a shrewd business person, an Australian who plays on the Global stage. I first met Michelle in 2007, when I was on the Board of the ABNLP. We had invited her to speak at one of the events, and I was impressed not only with her resume which includes being one of the first people to bring professional coaching to Australia, cofounder of the Meta Coach Training System in 35 countries, and the Meta
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Coaching Foundation, co-author of two books and featured in another 15, and the list goes on… More recently, Michelle appeared as an expert consultant on the SBS TV series, The Employables. A show about those people in the fringes of our society but have a big drive to succeed. They may be disabled, disadvantaged or old, but they don’t give up. Can they be helped to create a business that will return their self esteem? Some will, some won’t. I had the great pleasure of being able to sit down with Michele recently, and talk to her about her experience on The Employables, coaching, the Fingerprint for Success tool, and her ideas about the future of work.
Some of the highlights that stood out for me were:
very different in the life of 21st century workers
1) Michelle is positive about the future of work, but it may not be like it used to be.
1 billion people intend to start their own business in the next 3 years… and 1 in 3 people have a “side hustle”. Means they are doing something on the side. That opens up freedom. If your role isn’t giving you all the fulfilment you want, just like in life we don’t look at one aspect to make us happy, we do multiple things to create fulfilment. So starting a side hustle is a great idea.
“The reality is I believe we’re a long way away from that (digitalisation, automation, Artificial intelligence and machine learning) really affecting number of jobs available, but I think new jobs get increased, and new types of roles are coming along……so don’t be fearful of redundancy. What will be made redundant isn’t people, but their roles and skills…..what is transferrable or re-deployable is people’s attitudes.”
2) Mindset and attitude must be addressed and built on in order to survive and thrive “So when we look at the future of work, we know that those who will thrive, and all of us can, [is those who can] become more resilient around appreciating that that things are rapidly changing, and to become accepting and appreciating that change. And that is where coaching is helpful, to coach teams, workforces, workplaces, through those things so it becomes normal, rather than that being really shocking and difficult for people.”
4) In order to retain talent, companies need to provide meaning, fulfilment, and alignment for employees “Research published by Facebook through the Harvard Business Review showed that people were leaving because they weren’t motivated in the work they were doing. They were matched to a role that was not aligned with their core passions, interests and values” “We know from Millenials, unless they are working in a role that has meaning for them, and they are growing in,… they won’t stick around”
5) People can be coached and there are sophisticated tools that can help organisations develop their teams
3) The worklife balance is Many different companies going to mean something like Canva, EY and
KPMG are using the tool (Fingerprint for Success) to identify innovative talent, align it to work roles, … and add value to their teams.
6) Focus on building Self Awareness, Confidence, and Self Belief. But work on your weaknesses too! “When you have a lot of self ºawareness, and you also develop confidence and self belief…. The two things together allow you to be able to identify what you are talented at, where you struggle and where you need help…. When we know WORKLIFE | SEPTEMBER 2018
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what we are talented at, and you have permission to be able to realise that, then we’re unstoppable.” “We take a strengths based approach, yet there may be vulnerabilities that can get in the way and may be dominant things. We need to
understand and explore it.” ‘And where there are gaps that we have…. Look at partnering and teams. Learning how to team up is a critical skill and ability, so we don’t have to be perfect! We can use the assets of a team.”
See the video here for the full interview
You Can Access the Tools Michelle mentions here:
A Few Facts about the Future of Work. • A survey of people in 60 different countries around the world showed that two thirds said they intended to start a new business in the next 3 years. That’s 1 billion people! • 1 in 3 people already have a “side hustle” • Immigrants are twice as likely to start a business as non-immigrants. • Successful female founders have higher orientation to big picture thinking than successful male founders. • Over the last several years, the number of co-working spaces in Melbourne has risen by over 900%
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I
t sounds like some kind of country dance formation, or perhaps even a flamenco choreographed manoevre, but the Losada Line is actually the key to higher profits, performance and retention in work teams. Otherwise known as the Positivity Ratio, the Losada Line refers to the ratio of positive interactions
Leadership By Peter Diaz
interaction ratio of at least 3:1 (to be precise, 2.901 to 1, although the exact mathematical formula used to determine this number has been challenged). The most optimal ratio for work performance was discovered to be between six and eight positive interactions for every negative interaction. If your team is facing challenges and set-backs,
1:1 ratio resulted in ‘depressed’ team performance. This is a particularly important piece of information for managers who lead by exception – only providing feedback when something goes poorly, only interacting when there is a need to correct performance. In extreme cases, managers may endorse their unconscious biases by filtering for the opportunity to criticise performance (yes, it happens). The positive to negative ratio may be flipped so that the manager or supervisor is engaging in more negative interactions than positive with a team member, whose performance subsequently suffers as a result. But can a leader be too positive? In short, the answer is yes – too much positivity can be counterproductive. Without some attention on the errors and mistakes, the positive interactions can become benign or may be considered sycophantic. Performance begins to drop from the optimal level once reaching a positive to negative to negative ratio of 9:1, and returns to low performance once the positivity reaches 12:1.
to negative interactions necessary for optimal performance in the workplace. Mathematician Marcial Losada and Psychologist Barbara Frederickson observed real business teams in research settings to determine the influence of positive and negative interactions with workers. They discovered that the most productive, engaged and profitable teams had a positive to negative
it might be time to escalate the praise! Fredrickson discovered that those teams experiencing a positive to negative feedback ration of at least 3:1 also began to flourish in other areas of their lives, due to an increase in optimism, happiness and fulfillment. Below this rate, engagement was poor and attrition was high. A ratio of 2:1 produced what was described as ‘languishing’ teams, whilst a
Tips for Above The Line Leadership • Find ways to engage on a positive level regularly. • Positive interactions can be task-specific or simply positive personal interactions like discussing weekend plans in the tea room. • Don’t go over-the-top with praise or positivity.
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Do you
Have an Upper LIMIT
problem?
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I
t is quite probable that you have hit an upper limit at some point in your life and not realised it. Maybe you are experiencing one now. Do you want to know what having an upper limit problem is? Gay Hendricks wrote a wonderful book “The Big Leap” and in it, Gary’s 12 year old grand daughter describes the The Upper Limit problem. She’s says to her friend, “If you don’t know it’s ok to feel good and have a good time, you’ll do something to mess it up when things are going well”. Can you relate? How often have things been going well and somehow you manage to sabotage what ever good thing you’re doing? It’s quite common for people to do this. Remember Tiger Woods world champion golfer. Revered and respected all over the world. He just had to sabotage being so awesome by having multiple affairs. And then there are all people we know that have fallen from grace after they have won their gold medals and peaked in their careers. OJ Simpson, Lance Armstrong, Grant Hackett. The list is endless. My own experience is very much based on not feeling good enough and therefore not deserving. So anytime there was good stuff going on in my life I would sabotage it to reinforce my belief that I didn’t deserve whatever was good in my life.
subconscious mind manifest a loss of job, a redundancy, an affair etc, so you eventually have to turn around and confront what you have been ignoring, or not. If you don’t know about upper limits you might just think it’s just bad luck. Prevention & Protection almost always occur at the same time. Have you ever been invited somewhere and you really didn’t want to go, but you said yes anyway. Then on the day of the event, you end up with a massive migraine, or one of your kids ends up in hospital. This is your unconscious mind preventing and protecting you from feeling things you don’t want to feel. Do you recognise your upper limit problems? It pays to address them. I recommend Gay Hendrick’s book, “The Big Leap” and I also recommend Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) for removing these upper limits. Sue Paton is a Parenting & Relationship Coach. With over 20 years of experience in the psychotherapy and education field, she brings a wealth of knowledge to your business and professional career.
Hendricks discusses the three P’s: Punishment, Prevention & Protection. Punishment - Have you ever been going along thinking everything is ok, but have these simmering dreams and visions for your life, but you’re stuck in a marriage or a job that you can’t get out of. Watch how your
If you, or anyone you know are interested in dealing with your upper limit problem email info@suepaton.com Wishing you success always.
WORKLIFE | SEPTEMBER 2018
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Are You As Tough As You Think?
T
4 Kteoyrs
Fac e silienc for Re
Author: Emi Golding
he question ‘what is resilience?’ remains of great debate amongst professionals. What does it really mean to be ‘resilient’? What is at its core? How do we measure it? How do we enhance it? While viewpoints differ, we tend to agree that ‘Resilience’ captures a number of different processes and hence needs to be viewed as a collection of a number of key factors. Resilience can require emotional resources, physical energy, psychological attention, or a combination of any of these (Abraham, 2004). Failure to allocate the appropriate resources can result in maladjustment to the challenging situation, poor decision making by leaders and subordinates, a decline in the
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quality of work performance, and ultimately a failure to deal with the challenge.
Resilience identified four key factors which are required for resilience.
In this context, resilience can be defined as:
Factors correlated with resilience
• the ability to quickly adjust to the changing demands and recover from adversity (Block & Kremen, 1996; Luthans, Vogelgesang & Lester, 2006) • the ability to bounce back (Waugh, Fredrickson & Taylor, 2008) • the stress coping ability (Connor & Davidson, 2003)
1. Situational Awareness Situational Awareness involves three main processes. First, it involves the ability to perceive elements of a situation (to pay attention to details or dynamics or what is occurring). Second, the ability to comprehend and make sense of the current situation, to interpret it appropriately and accurately. And third, the ability to project and predict future outcomes (Endsley, 1995).
Resilient people also appear to be more competent at emotional regulation and better able to ‘sit with’ distress (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004). A review of the literature on
Poor situational awareness leads to slower detection of problems or deviations, and in extreme cases problems go undetected.
Additionally, a lack of situational awareness lead to poor projections of future outcomes and consequently substandard decision making behaviours that may in turn lead to unwanted outcomes.
3. Decisive Leadership This involves having a clear and strategic vision, a focus on overall purpose, an unwavering and hopeful forward focus, action orientation, and courage to follow through.
Having good situational awareness is a key factor for resilience because it allows the person to create an accurate understanding of the situation (not an exaggerated, overly-negative or overly optimistic interpretation), and then accurately predict future outcomes so they can make adjustments if needed or possible, to achieve better results, or be prepared mentally and emotionally to cope with that outcome.
According to Snyder (1994) people who are not hopeful when facing adversity also tend to be less creative, opportunistic, and come up with very few if any strategies to overcome the challenge at hand. Consequently they have little confidence in their strategies, have a tendency to not reach out for assistance, and overall poor decision making ability.
2. Uncertainty Tolerance & Adaptability Intolerance of uncertainty (Boelen & Reijintjes, 2009) is a dispositional feature stemming from negative beliefs about uncertainty and its implications, and is associated with the experience of anxiety, fear and distress. When people cannot tolerate uncertainty they tend to use coping mechanisms such as avoidance, micromanagement, perfectionism or even self medication. Conversely, being able to tolerate uncertainty allows the individual to feel relatively comfortable in the unknown, when full information is not available, and act regardless. Since in much of life, we do not possess all the information about a given situation, being able to tolerate uncertainty, and adapt to changing circumstances is critical for emotional stability and resilience.
Decisive leadership (of self or others) fosters resilience because it allows the person or the team to maintain their focus on the future, the vision, the next steps needed, rather than get caught up in the failures, disappointments or setbacks which may have occurred. 4. Resourcefulness Resourcefulness involves being able to take personal agency and responsibility for ensuring an outcome. It means shifting your focus from “What” or “Why” questions to “How” or “Who”. It is the ability to be creative in the face of obstacles and find a way through. Obviously this is critical to resilience. When faced with a challenge, those who are not resourceful get stuck in a pattern of thought that focusses on the failure of Plan A, and the associated negative emotions, rather than the development of Plans B, C and D, and what resources may be needed to get a better result.
When we are resourceful, we get creative and ask ourselves powerful and useful questions to determine a next step.
Developing Resilience The good news is that Resilience can be learned. In ‘Elite Edge’ our advanced resilience course for managers, we help participants to develop self awareness about their strengths and weaknesses in each of these four key areas, and practice skills to build their capacity in each, for improved resilience overall, allowing them to better face the challenges of leadership, and better lead themselves and their teams to high performance. Contact us at admin@wmhi.com. au for more details.
References Abraham, R. (2004). Emotional competence as antecedent to performance: A contingency framework. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 130, 117-143. Block, J., & Kremen, A.M. (1996). IQ and ego-resiliency: Conceptual and empirical connections and separateness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 349-361. Boelen, P.A., & Reijintjes, A. (2009). Intolerance of anxiety and social anxiety. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 23, 130135. Connor , K.M., & Davidson, J.R.T. (2003). Development of a new resilience scale: The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Depression and Anxiety, 18, 76-82. Endsley, M.R. (1995). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors, 37, 32-64. Luthans, F., Vogelgesang, G.R., & Lester, P.B. (2006). Developing the psychological capital of resiliency. Human Resource Development Review, 5, 25-44. Snyder, C.R., & Lopez, S.J. (2009). Oxford handbook of positive psychology New York: Oxford University Press. Tugade, M.M., & Fredrickson, B.L. (2004). Resilient individuals use positive emotions to bounce back from negative experiences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 320-333. Waugh, C.E., Fredrickson, B.L., & Taylor, S.F. (2008). Adapting to life’s slings and arrows: Individual differences in resilience when recovering from anticipated threat. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1031-1046.
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HEALTHY BODY + HEALTHY Mind = HEALTHY CAREER
O
ur bodies are finely tuned machines, yet we tend to drive them to the ground, ignore warning signs and generally treat them poorly. Christopher Paterson from Alchemy Career Management reports. Most of us do not fully understand the intricate design of our brain and bodies and, as a result, we are operating at a fraction of our full capacity. Multiply this across an entire organisation and the gap between current performance and potential performance widens exponentially. Neurological, biological and psychological data shows us that we have prioritised our workloads and our success far above our mental and physical wellness. As a result, we have become disconnected with the fundamentals of how the human body functions. This is having an impact on our ability to solve complex problems, come up with new ideas and push the
65%
drop in fatigue by those who do 20mins of low intensity activity a day.
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boundaries for our capability. It is not surprising that it is also inflating our levels of stress and anxiety. Changing the way we do things and working with, rather than against, our body will ultimately allow you to be at your best both in and out of the office.
Wellness Benefits Our review of the published research shows that individuals who work with this knowledge experience lower stress levels, greater mental alertness, more energy, higher selfesteem, better memory, greater work fulfilment, less workload pressure and greater concentration. Not surprisingly, this facilitates improved job output, increased creativity and greater overall career success. On an organisational level, imagine a whole workforce of these individuals! This is organisational performance and capability redefined and adds a
0.1%
the blood alcohol level equivalent resulting from fatigue in Australian workplaces causing accidents.
50%
drop in heart attack risk for those who regularly take holidays.
unique dimension to a company’s market differentiation. The good news is the research also highlights the mistakes that we’re making and identifies the specific things that we can do to be at our best. This data points to three key elements of wellness that all play a role in our work and life success:
Cognitive wellness Understanding our brain functionality, particularly the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), allows us to unlock the full potential of our cognition. Unfortunately, we currently tire our brain out with low level tasks and are left wanting when we need to switch into higher order analysis or creativity. In addition, the multitasking way in which we attempt to work creates unnecessary pressure for the poor old PFC and we fail to produce our best thinking.
Emotional wellness While still in the brain, our limbic system is the centre for all of our emotional responses, even mild ones. So every time we’re a little bit worried, stressed or feeling under pressure, this powerful system gets quickly activated and absorbs all of the cognitive energy, decreasing the quality of our thinking and pushing us beyond our sweet spot.
15%
the increase in your happiness probability as a result of having happy friends.
7 years the reduction in life expectancy from sitting for more than six hours per day.
Six cylinders of wellness In a 2009 review of our career transition clients, we observed that there were two types of people being coached through career change. While both had equivalent levels of intelligence, experience and capability, Group A would navigate change with confidence, resilience and focus while Group B struggled to adapt, took a lot longer to bounce back from setbacks and experienced higher levels of stress and anxiety. A closer investigation of the factors at play, cross checked with the research, revealed that Group A were simply making better decisions in six key areas of their life. We call them the six cylinders of wellness and they are: Nutrition, Social Connections, Activity, Time Out, Sleep and Outlets. We tested a program that educated staff on these three wellness elements, including the six cylinders. This enabled them to identify the areas that require attention and the specific, practical actions that they can take to facilitate a stronger wellness profile. We found that by making small adjustments, staff were able to reduce their stress levels by 8% and their workload pressure by 16% while also increasing their focus and concentration by 5%.
Christopher Paterson is the managing director of ALCHEMY Career Management, a firm which supports individuals to transition their career, provides coaching support to leaders, and assists companies adapting to organisational change. For more information, visit alchemycm.com.au WORKLIFE | SEPTEMBER 2018
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RE
O
ne of my former bosses once said to me, “Some people never learn from failure. Smart people learn from failure. The smartest people learn from the failure of others.”
FAILURE By Alison Skate
that creates the most fear. Having failed so spectacularly has demystified the experience of loss on many levels, and has revealed a new capacity for resilience – making future failures a far less daunting prospect.
It should have been a helpful pep talk. I should Ways Failure is Beneficial have taken away from this conversation that failure is something from which we can learn. Instead I interpreted the guidance as a warning to • It shows you where your limits in knowledge, resources and flexibility lie. avoid failure and the risk of being seen as not-so• Failure concludes effort that was being smart. applied to something unworkable. • Failing gives you information to try something This fear of failing often leads to a different kind more effective. of failure, through the dedicated avoidance of taking risks, of doing anything unfamiliar or new. • It makes the successes more satisfying. • Accepting the risk of failure promotes creative thinking and innovation. Luckily for me, I did go on to experience failure in a monumental and expensive manner. At the time it seemed to be the end of my identity – I’d never failed on that scale before; no bluffing my way out of it. It proved to be one of the most impactful lessons I learned in business, but also in relationships, and my values, and my ability to bounce back from adversity. Often it is not the failure itself, but not knowing how we would cope with that outcome
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” JK ROWLING 14
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