Exchanging ideas to create the well-being advantage

A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article on the BBC news website about Ian Usher, who decided to make a clean break after splitting up with his wife, having emigrated to Australia 6 years ago from the UK. He did this by putting his entire life up for sale on ebay! Yes, everything – his house and all its contents, his car, motorcycle, Jet Ski and parachuting equipment. He even included aspects of his lifestyle such as an introduction to his friends and a two week trial run at his job in a rug store – so he really was selling it all.

He states his reason for doing this on his website (http://www.alife4sale.com/index.htm) and the main driver is to do with moving on from all reminders of the life that didn’t work out with his former wife. This is despite the fact that he enjoyed his lifestyle and job in Perth, and had great friends. Before the sale went through he wrote on his website:

“On the day it’s all sold and settled, I intend to walk out of my front door with my wallet in one pocket and my passport in the other, nothing else at all”

Now, we’ve all probably had days where we’ve felt like doing this – but how many of us would actually go ahead and do it? Mr Usher is clearly hoping that selling his life will be the major cathartic experience that enables him to move on psychologically and start to live his life again. I sincerely hope that it works out this way for him, but there is a fine line between healthy unloading of issues and running away from them - it will be interesting to see how he feels a few weeks / months into his new life.

Interestingly, Mr Usher is not hanging around – since selling his life he has launched a new website which focuses on his new life (http://www.100goals100weeks.com/index.php) where, as the address indicates, he has laid out 100 goals to achieve in 100 weeks. Now, this is a move that we could all probably learn something from - because by giving himself clear (mostly) achievable goals he has restructured his life in a way that will stretch him to seek new experiences and learn new skills. All of which is great provided that it’s anchored by an overall goal or vision of the kind of new life that he wants to lead.

Of course, Ian’s position is rare because he is unencumbered by the responsibilities of a steady job and a nuclear family, which makes it easier for him to do this than for most of us. But he’s earned that because of the huge risk he’s taken and I wish him luck over the next 100 weeks…..and I hope that Richard Branson is at home when Ian calls by to meet him!!
http://www.100goals100weeks.com/goals_List.php?page=1

Have you ever dreaded going in to work in the morning? And I mean really dreaded it. I’m not talking about those mornings that we’ve all had when we’d rather stay in bed and avail ourselves of the infamous ‘duvet day’. I’m talking about something more fundamental than that – where a particular aspect of your job makes you feel so anxious, uncomfortable - or even fearful - that you just can’t face it.

Joseph Heller, the author of Catch 22, captured this feeling in his book Something Happened when he wrote the following about life in the office of his main protagonist, Bob Slocum:

If you asked any one of them [employees] if he would choose to spend the rest of his life working for the company, he would give you a resounding No!, regardless of what inducements were offered….. If you asked me that same question today, I would also give you a resounding No! and add: “I think I’d rather die now.”

Elsewhere Bob adds “Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.”

While not all of us have experienced this feeling at work, I’d be willing to bet that there are plenty of people out there who have done or are doing right now. There are many sets of circumstances that can cause these feelings – work relationships, feeling that you are going to lose your job at any minute, lack of role clarity / sense of purpose, unrealistic workload / timescales, unbalanced working hours, the general climate / atmosphere of the workplace, your depressing working environment / office, the level of autonomy you have over your deliverables …..the list of potential causes goes on and any combination of these that might lead to feelings of dread.

What’s interesting is how many of these ‘sources of dread’ stem from relationships – particularly that with your boss which, of course, can be such a key determinant of what work feels like. Other aspects influenced by your boss include level of pay, whether you know what’s going on higher up in the organisation and whether work feels like fun.

But what you can do if you feel this way? The first and most important thing is to take control. Stand back and look at the situation to understand which of the above factors are at play. But also consider your own role in this – have your needs gone beyond what this department in this organisation can offer you? Have you played any role in causing this situation?

Once you understand how things have got to this situation you have to take appropriate action. You may need to discuss the matter with a work friend to get a reality check and find out whether others share your perceptions. You may need to speak directly with your boss and find a way to raise the problem in an open and honest way. Or you may need more help with understanding the problem from a counselor or welfare officer. You may simply need to leave. The important thing here is that you move yourself on, that you don’t accept the status quo and drag yourself to work every day for the next five years hating every second. Taking action will change your perspective and help you to generate options for change: Change the job design, change the environment, work in a different part of the organisation or even a different organisation. The bottom-line is – if you don’t like it, change it.

Most importantly, don’t be like Bob Slocum who said “No one understands that carrying on bravely was the easiest thing to do.”

Wow, what a spectacle the men’s single’s tennis final at Wimbledon turned out to be yesterday!! It had everything – Federer, the five times (in a row) Champion reduced to 2-0 down in the first hour; an heroic comeback to draw level at two Sets apiece and then two great players matching each other’s brilliance in the deciding Set before Nadal’s raw strength, talent and determination brought him through as a worthy winner. And the tension was compounded by two rain breaks which gave the both players time to think…..and for the pressure to mount!

Personally, I found the psychology of the final, hailed by the press as the best ever, fascinating. It showed how intense pressure (driven by the desire to win, the fear of losing, the size/prestige of the prize and the crowd) in the contained context of the match took both players, and ultimately the game of tennis, to new levels. And this is what pressure in all forms of work can do - as long as you have the right support around you, it doesn’t last too long and you have the personal resources to cope with it.

We are all like Federer and Nadal to some degree – extreme pressure asks us difficult questions and drives us to find answers we didn’t know we were capable of coming up with. And that means that we find levels of performance we didn’t know we could deliver. You can’t be under pressure 24/7 but, as in tennis, the most spectacular results can emerge from relatively short bursts of intense pressure followed by respite.

I think that Chef, Gordon Ramsay summed up the constructive role that pressure can play in life when he said the following in an interview with Simon Mayo on BBC Radio FiveLive last year – also note the pressure doesn’t have to come from an external source:

“… I put myself under immense pressure - I’m very healthy, but I need that pressure. It only becomes stressful when you can’t handle it…..and boy, do I love handling it!”

One again I have the pleasure of sharing my blog with my good friend and colleauge Gordon Tinline who is a Director at my University spin off company Robertson Cooper - I hope you find Gordon’s post of interest and as always I welcome your comments!

Understanding how to balance Control and Support is critical for managing pressure and maintaining a sense of well-being – indeed, both are acknowledged in the Health and Safety Executive’s Management Standards for Work-Related Stress.  Research shows that when work demands are high the difference between the highest and the lowest levels of performance is largely predicted by perceptions of control and the extent to which employees feel supported. 

However, it seems to me that there is quite a difficult balance to strike between these elements. This is because performance outcomes are influenced by multiple factors – including your line manager’s behaviour, your behaviour and the context you are operating in.

I’ve recently been working with a team of professional footballers at the very highest level of the game. They encounter a version of this issue as they try to maintain control over the direction of their careers when surrounded by agents and other advisers who present themselves as essential sources of support.  The risk here is that an over-reliance on these sources of support turns the puppeteer into the puppet – the result is that situations where agents end up exerting a controlling influence over the player are commonplace. This is understandably frustrating for many football managers, who are keen to educate young players to be able to make good judgements about when to exert control and when to draw on their support network.

There are obvious parallels here with the workplace situation – we need to be given enough space and autonomy to do our best work, but at the same time we need to know that we are not alone and can call on our manager / organisation for support when we need it.
 
Over-reliance on support means losing control. The solution lies in understanding where you need to exert control and where you need to seek the advice of others with more knowledge of a particular area - or whom you trust as truly having your best interests at heart. You are at the centre of the axis and to get the balance right you have to make good judgements about what you need as you go through your career.

Gordon Tinline

I think I saw the future today. Of course, I’ve seen it all before….but that was in an episode of Star Trek. This was the real thing!!

I’d encourage you to visit http://www.musion.co.uk/Cisco_TelePresence.html and take a quick look at this demo of the ‘Cisco On-Stage TelePresence Experience’ where holograms of two executives in California are beamed to a Stage in Bangalore, India and interact seamlessly with the CEO of Cisco, John Chambers. I’m not exaggerating when I say it looks virtually no different to if they were actually on the same stage together.

The two companies have clearly invested a lot of money in this system and they probably stand to make a lot of money too. But my interest is in the potential of this technology to change working lives. Business will be the first market for Telepresence and it has already been sold to companies in 23 different countries. After that it won’t be long before they start appearing in our homes!

There are several positive aspects to this advance – first, I can almost hear the sigh of relief from salesmen who pound out the motorway miles to get to and from customers each year. Imagine how stress levels will fall when you don’t have to get up at 5am to drive to the other end of the country – instead, you go to the office at the normal time and use Telepresence. Second, I can hear an equally large sigh of relief from the environment as cars are taken off the roads (which also benefits those who do have to commute) and less people need to fly for business purposes. Finally, consumers will benefit as the time to market for new products and technologies will be dramatically reduced because of the ease of having ‘face-to-face’ meetings using this system or ones like it.

Of course, it won’t actually be a face-to-face meeting – but you can’t get much closer to having one without actually being in the same room. I’m sure that using this system would take some getting used to, but compared with the stop-start nature of tele-conferencing it seems like this offers a whole new level of remote communication. Anyway, check out the demo and let me know what you think….and remember, this is not science-fiction!

This week Labour MP Tom Harris hit the headlines after he wrote a blog post entitled “Heaven knows we’re miserable now”. He suggests that although we are richer and more secure, we are actually less happy and more miserable than we were decades ago.  He implies that even with the credit crunch we are wealthier and relatively more secure than ever before - because in the past we had the fear of nuclear war, poverty and the average wage was much lower.  In some respects, I agree that we are better off now and that this hasn’t led to corresponding increases in happiness – the well-rehearsed ‘money and material goods doesn’t buy happiness’ theory! 

However, I disagree that our cynicism, whinging and apparent pessimism is part of the intrinsic British makeup.  On the contrary, as an American who has lived and worked here for over 30 years, I think we have become more optimistic, less cynical and less whinging.  The ‘70s saw the height of pessimism, conflict and cynicism - but since the ‘80s we have progressively become more positive and the benefits of a positive mindset have been demonstrated and acknowledged in the fields of professional sport, business and our language – for example, the proverbial glass ‘half full’, ‘positive mental attitude’ from the ’80 and ‘90s and more recently ‘positivity’.

In my opinion, what we are seeing today is not ‘national miserableness’, but a reaction to an underlying concern about our security.  The insecurity of our jobs, financial insecurity, insecurity because we live in a world where we know terrorists are prepared to give up their lives to destroy others, the lack of community as we hunt the almighty ‘buck’ to look after ourselves and our families.   

I suspect what is happening is that people at the moment don’t feel they have much control over their own lives. At the same time, they don’t feel that the ‘significant others’ in society (e.g. government, employers, Bank of England, FSA, etc.) are in control of events either.  This lack of control - whether it relates to the cost of fuel and food or the decline of the economy or the rising influence of the EU - causes concern and anxiety for people. So, this so-called nation-wide ‘miserableness’ is a means of expressing our worries, a reaction to a specific way of life that characterises our society – it’s not an intrinsic national negative personality trait!

Read Tom Harris’ Blog post at http://tomcharris.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/heaven-knows-were-miserable-now/

Last month Personnel Today reported research from Frankfurt University showing that  ‘professional smilers’, such as flight attendants, sales personnel, call centre operators, waiters and others in contact with the public for extended periods of time, were at risk of seriously harming their health. Professor Dieter Zapf, a psychologist and researcher into human emotions at Frankfurt University, said that fake friendliness led to depression, stress and negatively affected the immune system. The implication of the findings was that every time a person is forced to repress their true feelings, there are damaging consequences for their health.

This is hardly surprising, but for me puts the spotlight on recruitment decisions – those of both candidate and recruiter. For the recruiter, it’s critical to know what you’re looking for and how to identify it in the candidate. For example, if you are looking for a friendly, sociable flight attendant you need to understand the enduring personality characteristics that drive the behaviour you are looking for, as well as checking that the person has the skills to interact with passengers effectively. If someone has a personality characterised by high levels of neuroticism and introversion they are very unlikely to behave in the manner you require – no matter how well they perform in the role play at the assessment centre. Learnt skills can mask true personality in the short-term, but it never lasts.

Which brings me to the candidate’s responsibility in these situations: No matter how much someone wants the job there is no point in them pretending to be someone that they are not. If you like to spend time quietly problem-solving, analysing data or writing reports you are unlikely to enjoy the kind of work that requires a lot of human contact, outgoing behaviour and constant smiling. So it’s important to be honest with yourself and the recruiter and to self-select out of the process when this kind of mismatch occurs.

For people, who are naturally outgoing (in personality terms, extroverts who are open to experience and have low levels of neuroticism) I doubt that working in these roles would be inherently stressful, as the Frankfurt study claims. However, for someone who wasn’t completely honest during the recruitment process, or got the job as the result of a poor selection decision by the employer, these kinds of roles could become excruciating. I’d like to see the results of a study like this that controlled for personality type.

http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/05/16/45890/enforced-smiling-in-the-workplace-puts-health-at-risk.html

I recently did some work for City & Guilds, the awarding body associated with vocational learning, who have just released the results of a national survey focusing on ‘happiness’. They found that ‘pay’ ranked only 4th in their Happiness Index behind the following aspects of working life:

• A stimulating and interesting job
• Financial security
• Good work-life balance

With all the strike action going on in the UK at the moment - Shell’s haulage workers went on strike this week - you’d be forgiven for thinking that pay is still as important as everyone thinks it is for employees. But these results offer an alternative view and reflect what I hear when I talk to both workers and managers – that, yes, fair pay is a factor, but without stimulating, challenging work and a good work-life balance it’s not enough.

Having good relationships with work colleagues was also seen as important by respondents. This should be no surprise as we all have examples of our working lives being damaged by poor relationships with our boss and/or colleagues. Conversely, if you have good relationships work-based friends can be a critical source of support when times are tough or when the pressure is on.   

All of the above factors are fundamental to employee well-being and happiness, as well as a firm’s ability to retain their employees and deliver sustainable success. Of course, given the current negative economic climate and the associated media hype, it is harder for employers to maintain levels of well-being / happiness. Staff are focusing on the security of their jobs and may not give much credence to their employers’ overtures about the benefits of well-being at work. But if well-being levels were good before the economic downturn resilience levels are likely to be higher now, staff more receptive to change and the task of managing them in the current context easier all round.

There are lessons for all of us here in terms of how we motivate, retain and develop our people.  This survey, together with the Learning and Skills Council’s ‘Train for Gain’ programme, is encouraging all employers to stimulate people, give them more autonomy, provide a reasonable level of security and invest in creating a high morale work environment -  and that’s no bad thing.

Well, according to The Great Place to Work Institute (http://www.greatplacetowork.com/), which named Google as America’s ‘Best Company to Work For’, it’s because its employees think that….

“..this company has created a culture that is high on trust, low on politics, great at sharing resources and sharing the wealth, and is full of meaning and significance.”

As one Google employee put it “The don’t be evil” mantra is more than skin deep; it is the core of the culture”.

So, the culture runs a lot deeper than the perks that ‘Googlers’ receive, but they can’t hurt either – just take a look at the selection below:

And more recently they have added:

• Annual on-site Health Fair offering various free testing services, including eye exams and cholesterol testing; plus free flu shots.
• Fuel Efficiency Vehicle Incentive Program encourages employees to purchase hybrid cars by providing a $5,000 financial incentive.
• Their new maternity leave policy gives new mothers, who have been Google employees for at least 1 year, 6 additional weeks of paid leave (a total of 18 weeks) to bond with their baby. New fathers can take up to 7 weeks of paid time off during the baby’s first year.

Now, I know you’ll be thinking that this is an impossible vision. That Google is one of the world’s richest companies and doesn’t have to worry about making a profit each month. And you’re right, it does highlight a gulf between most UK workers’ experiences and those of the Googlers; but it also shows us what’s possible.  What if your business leaders applied the philosophy of Google’s leaders in your organisation? It wouldn’t be the same, but how might work feel different for you and your fellow employees?

It’s been tragic this week to see arguably the most talented footballer of a generation, Paul Gascoigne, being admitted for treatment again after years of depression and alcoholism. One of the most thought provoking reactions to the news came from our most successful club manager of all time, Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson. He reminded us that he tried to sign Gascoigne for United in the late 1980s and, he believes, that things could have been very different had he done so. He was quoted as saying the following:

“We had a structure of players who could have helped him and I think it would have given him some discipline. Maybe it would have helped him, too.”

There are lessons here about the perils of following a career path driven by the quest for thrills and money, whatever the occupation. Indeed, it has been reported that it started badly when Sir Alex left the UK for his holiday that year believing he had signed his man, only to return to discover alledgedly that another club had tempted Gascoigne to sign for them by buying his mother a very large house. This would have been undeniably tempting for a young man, but is hardly the right platform for a stable, open and two-way psychological contract between player and club.

Ferguson’s point about structure and discipline is the important one though – we all want to tap into the raw talent and enthusiasm of younger employees, but it needs to be carefully nurtured if we are to generate sustained levels of high performance that serve the organisation over the long-term. Managers of all kinds have a responsibility for creating a climate where discipline and structure sits in the background, but is not constraining and does not stamp out energy and creativity.

There’s no doubt that younger workers can benefit from the parental / mentoring role that Ferguson plays for his team members and it can be that which makes the difference between a career defined by 2-3 explosive years followed by burn-out and twenty years of sustained brilliance. Returning to the football example – just look at two players from Gascoigne’s era who have just lifted the European Champion’s League trophy for the second time - Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs. The latter has also just broken Sir Bobby Charlton’s all time appearance record for Manchester United at the age of 34. That could have been Paul Gascoigne.