BPS Occupational Digest_ Interpersonal Relations

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Thursday, 31 October 2013

What makes ill feeling between workcolleagues shift faster?

An instance of personal friction with a colleague cancreate angry feelings that are slow to abate.Paradoxically, when the prickly day also involves aspecific work-related dispute, bad moods dont linger solong. This counter-intuitive finding may reflect our willingness to seek a benign explanation for unpleasantsituations, blaming the context rather than the person.

The research, from a team led by Laurenz Meier, lookedat day-to-day swings in ratings of anger. This longitudinalstudy asked the 131 participants to diarise their moodbefore work, after work, and before bed, over a period of two weeks. The participants also recorded dailyincidents of task conflict - disagreements about how tosolve problems and incidents of personal frictions, or relationship conflict. Meier's team looked at how moodwas altered following such conflicts, after controlling for

start-of-day mood. Did conflicts lead to impaired well-being, in terms of a fouler mood, and if so, how much and for how long?

Study participants tended to feel angrier at the end of a day that involved interpersonalrelationship conflict with colleagues, feelings that continued in a weaker form to bed-time andcould even linger to the following morning. However, when the rough day also involved a taskconflict as well as a relationship one, well-being was only worse at the end of the day, andtended to recover by bed-time.

Consistent with previous research, the unpleasant nature of interpersonal tensions awakennegative feelings that colour the working day. Meier's team believe that their paradoxicalfinding for work-related conflict reflects a preference to attribute such instances to a situation:'tempers ran high because we all want the project to succeed', rather than to a person: 'she

just doesn't like me'. Taking the more benign interpretation allows us to go to bed feeling less

chewed up. The researchers also looked at somatic complaints such as headaches andback pain, and again found that these symptoms were highest with relationship conflict andno task conflict, but this mirroring of the angry-mood pattern did not reach overallsignificance.

According to this research, the more personal 'storm in a teacup' may actually be the mostinsidious type. With nothing wrong to fix, it's easier to paint the other person as difficult or even malevolent, and that may be a hard place to recover from. If you want to smooth ruffledfeathers it may be useful to focus attention on the task components of disagreements,encouraging reappraisal of the situation, and leading people away from a less defensivemindset.

Meier LL, Gross S, Spector PE, & Semmer NK (2013). Relationship and task

conflict at work: interactive short-term effects on angry mood and somaticcomplaints. Journal of occupational health psychology, 18 (2), 144-56 PMID:23506551

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2/16

Posted by Alex Fradera at 15:11 0 comments

Labels: anger , conflict , emotion , interpersonal relations , wellbeing

Further Reading: Spector, P. E., & Bruk-Lee, V. (2008). Conflict, health, and well-being. InC. K. W. De Dreu & M. J. Gelfand (Eds.), The psychology of conflictand conflict management in organizations (pp. 267288). San Francisco,CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Wednesday, 6 March 2013

How disclosing conflicts of interest canpass the burden to the customer

We habitually consult experts to advise on personal and professional matters, but their recommendations can be coloured by conflicts of interest. Commonly advisors are requiredto disclose conflicts: armed with this information, the consumer can account for bias beforemaking deci sions. But evidence shows it's hard to make such adjustments. And newresearch by Sunita Sah, George Loewenstein and Daylia Cain suggests moreover thatdisclosure may make consumers feel obliged to follow the advisor's best interests.

Their series of studies collected data using a mobile van offering people chances to winprizes - from gift vouchers to chocolate bars - through a dice-roll lottery. They could choosefrom lotteries A or B, where overall A's prizes were slightly but evidently better. Beforecomitting, the chooser met another participant, the 'advisor', who handed them a writtenrecommendation of which lottery to pick. In most cases, the advisor had a conflict of interest -they would also get a go on a lottery, but only if the chooser selected the weaker lottery B.The chooser then made their selection, rolled the dice and left; the advisor would then gettheir turn, if warranted. Participant numbers ranged from 124 to 278 for individual studies.

In the first study, 53% of choosers took lottery B after merely receiving the advice to do so.When the advisor's recommendation also included text revealing their conflict of interest,compliance advice rose to 81%. Yet in both conditions participants rated lottery A as moreattractive (this was consistent across studies). A replication examined whether relatively lowstakes were driving this abandonment of self interest, by doubling the prizes and recruiting

students with presumably lower income as participants. Without disclosure, only 36% tookthe recommended B, but disclosure took the proportion to 82%.

Was this an altruistic act, choosers electing to be generous and go on with their day?Unlikely: the post-study survey suggested that after compliance, choosers were less happy,sensed more pressure and felt more uncomfortable about the deci sion, which doesn'tsuggest general altruism. Instead, the researchers liken this to a 'panhandler effect', wheremoney is passed over due to discomfort over a face to face refusal. A third experimentinvestigated this: here, when the chooser learned of the conflict from the advisor compliancestood at 90%. When the information came instead from a 3rd party (embedded in the initialinstructions) their compliance dropped to 72%; it's less awkward if you're not told directly bythe person who hopes to gain, even if they know you know. And if the 3rd party info alsostated the advisor was oblivious that you had been made aware of the conflict, thecompliance plummet to 47%. This suggests that when choosers comply, it's partly to avoid

the perception that they have betrayed the advisor's interests. Without the shared knowledge- I know that you know I stand to benefit - they're happy to disi nherit them.

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3/16


Labels: dark side , decisionmaking , interpersonal relations

My only quibble with this argument is that in the final, 47% compliance condition, I mightpersonally view the advisor as shiftier. Holding secret information, I may spend theinteraction expectantly waiting for them to 'fess up to the conflict of interest - something theexperiment actually prohibits. When they don't, I might feel like punishing them by goingagainst their wishes. However, the post-survey scores suggest that there was no significantdifference between how much advisors were liked and trusted in this condition and the other disclosure conditions, which goes some way to minimise this concern.

Overall, disclosure leads to more compliance with the advisors interests, especially whendisclosure i s face to face. This happens even though trust in the advisor drops, and choosersare less happy with the situation. This suggests that the tactic of disclosure practiced si mplymay be unhelpful for the chooser and ultimately less conducive to the relationship overall.Sah and colleagues agree that disclosure remains important and necessary, but suggest

research into smarter ways to deliver it, as well as alternative approaches when conflicts of interest arise.

Sah, S., Loewenstein, G., & Cain, D. (2013). The burden of disclosure: Increasedcompliance with distrusted advice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,104 (2), 289-304 DOI: 10.1037/a0030527

Further reading:

Paul M Healy, Krishna G Palepu, (2001). Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, andthe capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature, Journal of Accounting andEconomics, Volume 31, Issues 13, September 2001, 405-440, DOI10.1016/S0165-4101(01)00018-0.(link to pdf )


Friday, 21 September 2012

Laugh and the workplace laughs with you

How far can a laugh carry? According to Christopher Robert and James Wilbanks, it canreverberate through time, with far-reaching consequences. Their theoretical paper,synthesising research from neuroscience, behavioural psychology and the workplace,suggests that funny incidents can have a cumulative positive effect through a 'Humour Wheel'.

Humour can be understood as a posi tive emotional state ari sing from incongruity: a joke putstwo elements together in an unexpected way, and sarcasm belies what is said with what isintended (and appears to facilitate creativity for this reason). It's one of the most intensepositive emotions, putting aside triumph, which tends to accompany rare events, and sensualpleasure, typically inappropriate for a workplace. Humour is instead quintessentially social,and can occur frequently; for Robert and Wilbanks this is crucial, as establi shed theories of workplace affective events (situations that change our mood or emotions) suggest thatquantity matters more than significance of such events for shaping workplace outcomes.

Moreover, the contagious nature of laughter - we laugh at a laugh even shorn of context, andour brains respond to laughter sounds in a similar way as they do to something funny -means that a single moment of humour can evoke and encourage others - both directlythrough emotional contagion and also by acting as a trigger to permit employees to breach

straight-faced operations with crinkled smiles. As a consequence, an instance of humour canlead to a longer-standing 'humour episode', and i t is these that lift mood and have an effecton interpersonal contact, deepening affection and also helping to shape group norms of what
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4/16


Labels: emotion , interpersonal relations

behaviour is desirable - including 'humour is ok'. Hence, a positive feedback loop or wheel.Not every humour instance need be joy inducing; a wry comment can be sufficient to seedthe ground and make it possi ble for other moments to follow.

What could be the consequences of the positive affect that humour elicits? Frederickson'sbroaden-and-build theory suggests it encourages us to approach opportunities rather thanretreat: exploration and playness ensue, allowing us to build posi tive resources for the future.This is a good way to make sense of the manifold effects of posi tive affect - on health,cooperation, organisational citizenship, job satisfaction, flow and more. And as negativestates can form their own feedback loops, humour can be valuable as a derailer - i tsdisruptive, intrusive quality ringing out over frustration or fear. Getting a 'humour wheel' goingin regular work teams is clearly useful, and other contexts suggested by the authors includementoring, where the importance of satisfying and informal relationships would naturally fit

with humorous episodes, and also leadership, where leader affect is known to be contagiousto employees, and the oft-desi red transformational style is linked to humour usage. They callfor deeper research into these areas, as well as how humour may work against tendenciesto absenteesim and attrition, and suggest that 'humor might be an unsung hero in peoplesday-to-day affective lives.'

Christopher Robert, & James E Wilbanks (2012). The Wheel Model of humor:Humor events and affect in organizations Human Relations, 65 (9), 1071-1099DOI: 10.1177/0018726711433133


Monday, 10 September 2012

How to leverage the diversity of teams for creative outcomes

Received wisdom suggests more diverse teams reach more creative outcomes. Yetresearch is equivocal, suggesting there may be specific conditions that allow diversity to payoff. Research from Erasmus University in Rotterdam suggests that one such condition is howprepared members are to take each others' perspectives.

The potential benefits of diversity were well-expressed by van Knippenberg and colleagues

some years back, in their categorisation-elaboration model. This suggests that diversity ismost useful as it offers deeper elaboration: expanding on, exploring and contesting the viewsof other members to reach richer, more tested positions, providing the opposite of group-think. Elaboration has been shown to depend on the nature of the task and on the membershaving the necessary ability and motivations. In their recent article, Inga Hoever and her teamexamined whether the approach taken by the team could be another factor.

The study asked three-person teams to attempt a task to improve a fictional theatre'sposition by coming up with a creative action plan. Diversity was manipulated by giving someteams assigned roles - an Artistic, Event, and Finance Manager - whereas members of other teams held unnamed, generic positions. All teams received guidance on the key artistic,events and finance goals for the theatre: one concise package for generic members or splitout, fleshed out, and handed out to the corresponding specialist manager.

In addition, some teams (both multi-role and generic) fell into a perspective-taking condition,where they were encouraged - both verbally and through an example-filled instructions page -
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5/16


Labels: creativity , diversity , interpersonal relations

to take each other's perspectives as much as possible during the activity. After an individualpreparation period, teams spent twenty minutes together preparing an action plan, whichwas subsequently coded for novelty and value of ideas; both were necessary to deem a plancreative.

Manipulation checks confirmed that the multi-role teams began with more varied viewpoints(based on what members judged as the biggest priorities, recorded after reading their briefsbut just before the discussion began), and teams asked to take perspectives had actuallydone so (based on ratings at the study close). Alone, neither factor had a significantinfluence on the creativity of the action plans created. But when teams both were multi-roleand engaged actively in perspective taking, they performed better than the rest.

What's more, when the research team used video footage to rate teams on how much they

engaged in elaboration - acknowledging and building on suggestions, synthesising ideas -they obtained scores that were also higher for diverse teams that explicitly tookperspectives. Moreover, analysis confirmed elaboration scores were a mediator for howdiversity influenced creativity for perspective-taking teams. When diverse teams make effortto engage in perspective, this facilitates elaboration during the task, leading to more novel,valuable outcomes.

The useful thing about this study is that having more individual abili ty to elaborate, or theideal task, isn't always an option. Here we see evidence that altering the process of acreative task can play a part in unlocking the best that diverse perspectives have to offer.

Hoever, I. J., van Knippenberg, D., van Ginkel, W. P., & Barkema, H. G. (2012).Fostering Team Creativity: Perspective Taking as Key to Unlocking Diversity'sPotential Journal of Applied Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0029159


Thursday, 22 March 2012

Job outcomes and experiences suffer whenmanagers regularly work remotely

Technology gives us the option to work in locations beyond conventional offices, bothpartially - termed teleworking - or as a full-time 'virtual' worker. We now understand thatremote workers experience certain challenges such as isolation and less access to

resources. But there is scant research on the consequences of a teleworking or virtualmanager. Fortunately, a new article gets us up to speed.

Investigators Timothy D Golden and Allan Fromen surveyed over 11,000 employees from aFortune 500 company based in the US. The online survey asked each respondent to report -for themselves and for their manager - what their work mode was: tradi tional (in the office fulltime), teleworking away for a consistent fraction of the work week, or fully virtual. It alsomeasured a host of work experiences and outcomes. Respondents managed by teleworkingmanagers reported receiving less feedback and professional development, a moreunbalanced workload and feeling less empowered. A similar negative pattern was found for those with fully virtual managers. The effect sizes were small overall, suggesting this needn'tbe a make or break issue, but the trend was there.

The authors interpret this in terms of social exchange theory. Working relationships that are

partly virtual have less opportunities for rich exchanges, with communications lacki ng theface-to-face component and fewer obvious opportunities to 'grab a moment', described by
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6/16


Labels: engagement , interpersonal relations , team , technology

social innovator David Engwicht as spontaneous exchanges. Interactions are likely to bemore task-focused and obligatory, as email is more onerous to produce when compared toa quick coffee or moment in the corridor. And professional development and mentoringbecomes similarly laborious, always a dangerous place for any 'important to do' but non-urgent activity to be.

How about those respondents who themselves worked remotely? The data suggests theyhave a similar experience regardless of their manager's work mode. The authors hadpredicted this group would experience better conditions when their manager also workednon-traditionally: they would both experience comparable challenges and make efforts to findmutually productive outcomes. But in reality, higher scores on the outcome variables wereonly found in a few instances and were extremely small. This suggests that if you don't sharephysical space with your manager, i t doesn't matter much where they happen to be.

It's worth noting that in the US, rates of teleworking dropped between 2008 and 2010.Perhaps organisations and individuals have begun to appreciate that the attractions of remote working are tempered by modest but genuine drawbacks.

Golden, T., & Fromen, A. (2011). Does it matter where your manager works?Comparing managerial work mode (traditional, telework, virtual) acrosssubordinate work experiences and outcomes Human Relations, 64 (11), 1451-1475 DOI: 10.1177/0018726711418387


Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Resolutions 2012: Working together

In our final set of resolutions for 2012, we look at the foundation of any organisation, the need to work together. The workplace hasalways lived or died by the abili ty of its members to communicate,collaborate, and navigate tensions. Even oft-maligned areas likemiddle management make contributions by helping different parts of the organisation make sense of others , translating grand concepts

to the practicalities of the shop floor and vice versa.

Get smarter about being creative together.

1. Encourage helping on creative tasks, but avoid that responsibility falling to thesame people. Evidence suggests that soliciting and obtaining help can lead individuals tomore creative outcomes. The catch is that help-givers show reduced creativity , perhapsbecause helping behaviours eat into their own time for exploring possibilities, or theybecome increasingly sure of their own perspective, narrowing their horizons.

2. Bring ideas up-front to a collective brainstorm. This isn't a new idea: there issubstantial evidence that ideas can get lost in the mix of a freewheeling conversation drivenby social factors. Recent research suggests another issue : early suggestions in thebrainstorm can activate related concepts, leading to a domination of one class of suggestionat the expense of others. Ensuring you have surveyed your own mental landscape beforeexploring those of others' makes i t more likely you can cover all the bases.

Responsibility and collaboration

3. Avoid diluting responsibility when setting goals. Research suggests we put in lesseffort to plan and monitor progress towards goals when we contemplate how others will stepin if we fail. In this sense, strong support networks can have counterproductive effects: theylet us off the hook. It's a good i dea to make it clear that sources of support shouldn't beburdened with keeping things rolling, but are there to provide help with problems or whenthings are truly stuck.

4. Address lack of trust and bad feelings in teams to prevent things turning toxic.Evidence suggests that a key precursor to teams fracturing into subgroups is a low level of liking or trust. A group in this si tuation could continue to function as long as members
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7/16


Labels: communication , interpersonal relations , leadership , resolutions

nonetheless understood each other's perspectives; however, the factionalism would stillpersist, as this comes down to how people feel, rather than think, about each other.

5. Prevent teams going rotten by pairing members with non-team buddies. The darkside of trust: too much within a morally flexible team gives them the freedom to embark ondodgy behaviour . If trust isn't absolute - the team isn't fully "psychologically safe" - then suchsuggestions are more likely to be suppressed. One way to produce this might be to ensureteam members have regular individuals outside the team that they are encouraged to speakto and confide in; peer mentoring or buddy systems would mean that unscrupulous ideas arenever safe from some sort of exposure.

Ethics and power

6. Role model better moral perspectives to followers. When your team chuckles over that customer who couldn't get the hire car out of the garage you could join in, or stand apartand draw attention to the responsibi lity they should be feeling. Standing apart can be risky;being typical of the group helps leaders retain sympathy, especially after failures ( externallink, abstract only). But it's only by doing so that you are able apply influence to shift people toa new perspective. And the evidence shows that leaders who take this different perspectiveare accepted as more ethical by their teams .

7. Call out abuses of power to prevent bad seeds rising. It seems that casually breakingrules makes you appear more powerful to others , probably because the converse is true -powerful people can afford to break rules. As positions of power are apt to be given to thosewho appear ready for them, this attitude can help the wrong people to the top. If organisations encourage employees to challenge personal rudeness, skipping lunch queues,and the like, we can put the bad behaviour back i n its box.

Leader support

If you're towards the top of your organisation, there's good you can do within and beyond i t.

8. Commit to longer mentoring relationships to give the most to mentees. It can taketime for mentoring relationships to yield value to those involved , especially when there areimpedi ments to the relationship quickly forming, such as coming from di fferent backgroundsor being a di fferent gender. A few months isn't enough to get over that hump, so put yourself in the picture for longer.

9. Offer support to other leaders. According to one study , a CEO receives twice as muchwork-related support from having access to a CEO network as they do from their friends andfamilies. Offering this support, through one to one conversations or i nformal groups, enables

other leaders to engage in more critical leadership behaviours, such as mentoring their ownsubordinates; the help gets paid forward, so to speak.

Recommend this on Google

Thursday, 1 December 2011

Formal mentoring relationships gainmomentum over timeThe support that mentors offer can have considerablebenefits, for both their proteges and the organisation atlarge. Recognisi ng this, many develop formal mentoringprograms to encourage and manage this process.However, such a managed system provides differentconditions to an informal one, where parties identify analignment of person and circumstance. Frankie Weinbergand Melenie Lankau at the University of Georgia decidedto explore what this means for mentor contributions within formal mentoring relationships.

Weinberg and Lankau worked with a voluntary nine month mentoring program where mentor-

protege pairs were formed by the organisation's executive committee; 110 such pairs joinedtheir research. Questionnaires were used to understand how much time mentors dedicated
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w-adwM3D0R0/TteS4tq3-iI/AAAAAAAAArc/yIgH2JNTUFE/s1600/Mentoring.jpghttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/formal-mentoring-relationships-gain.htmlhttp://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=1396755872171973741&postID=8988781876647852429&target=pinteresthttp://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=1396755872171973741&postID=8988781876647852429&target=facebookhttp://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=1396755872171973741&postID=8988781876647852429&target=twitterhttp://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=1396755872171973741&postID=8988781876647852429&target=bloghttp://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=1396755872171973741&postID=8988781876647852429&target=emailhttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.com/2011/09/ceos-weather-personal-problems-better.htmlhttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.com/2011/12/formal-mentoring-relationships-gain.htmlhttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.com/2011/06/onlookers-see-people-who-break-rules-as.htmlhttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.com/2011/04/leaders-considered-more-ethical-when.htmlhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597807000386http://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.com/2011/06/psychologically-safe-teams-can-incubate.htmlhttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/resolutionshttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/leadershiphttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/interpersonal%20relationshttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/communicationhttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/resolutions-2012-working-together.html#comment-formhttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/resolutions-2012-working-together.html


8/16


Labels: interpersonal relations , leadership , learning , mentoring

to the relationship, and how much they felt they were fulfilling various mentoring functions:providing career guidance, psychosocial support, and role modelling good behaviours.

Mentoring relationships are understood to move through phases, so the authors sampledmentors views twice: two months into the program and one month after its end. This allowedstudy of the initiation phase, where each party gets the feel of the other, and the followingcultivation phase, which insight and the relationship deepens. Mentoring activity is expectedto be optimised during the cultivation phase, so Weinberg and Lankau investigated therelationship be tween the time spent on mentoring, and the mentoring functions on offer. Timespent on mentoring increased all three mentoring functions during initiation (time one), but bythe cultivation phase, time expended was even more strongly associated with enhancedmentoring function, suggesting an hour of mentoring i s worth more during cultivation thanduring initiation.

Weinberg and Lankau were concerned that mixed-sex pairs may suffer in a formalisedcontext, as weaker resemblance can lead mentors to i nvest less effort than when workingwith a 'younger version of me'. Indeed, during the initiation period, mentors paired withproteges of the other sex overall reported providing lower levels of all three mentoringfunctions. However, once they had reached the cultivation stage, these mixed-sex penaltiesdisappeared for psychosocial support and role-modelling, suggesting that increasedfamiliarity managed to erode some of these barriers.

This study clearly evidences how formal mentoring relationships gain momentum: after theinitiation phase, investments into the relationship yield greater dividends and impediments tothe relationship tend to be shucked off. So organisations considering formal mentoringshould ensure that the relationships they cultivate have the time that they need to blossom.

Weinberg, F., & Lankau, M. (2010). Formal Mentoring Programs: A Mentor-Centricand Longitudinal Analysis Journal of Management, 37 (6), 1527-1557 DOI:10.1177/0149206309349310


Friday, 25 November 2011

Cynicism is bad for business

When someone we trust takes us for a ride, the bump back to earth is something we'reunlikely to forget. But when we suspiciously reject an offer from someone else, we may never know what we've missed out on due to too little trust. Over time, such asymmetries infeedback can tip us toward an unwarranted cynical stance. It's clear that cynicism is asunhelpful a bias as naivety: it leads to guarded communication, reduced sharing, and moreself-serving biases, all of which may cause interactions to nosedive. A recent review byChia-Jung Tsay and his team from Harvard Business School may help us understandcynicism and how it develops.

The review identifies some key triggers that enhance cynicism, including:

Being new to negotiation - novices are more likely to believe that negotiation isalways competitive;

Thinking about the power of i nfluence; for instance, knowledge that another partyis a sales expert leads negotiators to suspect their offers more;
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JB1-tgf5TOI/Ts-U70s30lI/AAAAAAAAAq8/PtfRjdTjMHY/s1600/dv360013e.jpghttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/cynicism-is-bad-for-business.htmlhttp://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=1396755872171973741&postID=7287474512319024152&target=pinteresthttp://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=1396755872171973741&postID=7287474512319024152&target=facebookhttp://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=1396755872171973741&postID=7287474512319024152&target=twitterhttp://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=1396755872171973741&postID=7287474512319024152&target=bloghttp://www.blogger.com/share-post.g?blogID=1396755872171973741&postID=7287474512319024152&target=emailhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0149206309349310http://www.researchblogging.org/http://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/mentoringhttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/learninghttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/leadershiphttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/interpersonal%20relationshttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/formal-mentoring-relationships-gain.html#comment-formhttp://bps-occupational-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/formal-mentoring-relationships-gain.html


9/16


Labels: communication , decisionmaking , interpersonal relations , trust

Inclusion of a shady character - negotiating groups take the least trustworthyindividual in the other group as the best indicator of group trustworthiness;

Clear power asymmetries - people expect more misrepresentations fromauthorities with access to hidden information.

The authors point to a range of studies where participants reject offers that are in their rational best interest because of lurking cynicism that puts them off the whole venture. Theywarn us that the consequence is that "cynicism regarding others' motivations may become aself-fulfilling prophecy that leaves both sides worse off than would otherwise be the case."Happily, the review concludes with some advice we might take on to chart a better course:

perspective-taking to recognise your 'opponent' is an active party in negotiations,cultivating a "healthy skeptici sm" that considers a full range of motives on their part;

act with integrity - it increases the likelihood the other party will;

encourage a level playing field that minimises hidden information;

foster repeated exposure to specific negotiators to build a history of trust that iscostly to undermine.

Try the techniques out, you won't regret it. Trust me.

Tsay, C., Shu, L., & Bazerman, M. (2011). Navet and Cynicism in Negotiationsand Other Competitive Contexts The Academy of Management Annals, 5 (1),495-518 DOI: 10.1080/19416520.2011.587283


Monday, 14 November 2011

MBA early career challenges: handlingothers and reconceiving yourself

MBA courses are meant to prepare their students tobecome effective business leaders, and give a lot of attention to that goal. This mid-late career focus makes itreasonable to wonder how MBA graduates are equippedfor their earlier career, when they take their classroomknowledge to a managerial role with significantresponsibilities. Beth Benjamin and Charles O'Reilly of Stanford University conducted a qualitative investigation

into early-career challenges for 55 such manager-graduates, to understand the near-termneeds of a newly minted MBA, and hence how their course could leave them better prepared.

Their interviews, exploring especially challenging episodes in the early career of thesemanager-graduates, illustrated how an educational experience emphasising analyticalproblem solving, graft, and individual success, inevitably shapes a more task-orientedapproach. Often knowing 'what' to do, the manager-graduate is less sure on 'how to do it',notably in the social dimension.

Aggressively outdoing his peers to wind up with a promotion, one interviewee entered hisrole only to have several team members - once his peers - walk out. His learning from thiswas to treat your peers as though they might someday be your boss or di rect reports.

Another trap was assuming that others share your approach, motivation and skills towardswork issues; this can lead to overly relaxed expectation-setting or misjudging how tomotivate others for a new direction. One interviewee baldly stated "[Business School]doesnt prepare you to manage a wide swatch of people", such as those whose life doesntrevolve around business excellence.

Another theme of the research was the need for manager-graduates to shift mind-set. Theyneeded to flourish when their role didn't provide opportunity for direct personalachievements, by embracing being a "caretaker for something larger than myself". They alsoneeded to cope with, and learn from, personal disappointments, which can be a realchallenge for a perennial straight-A student unused to such situations.
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10/16


Labels: failure , interpersonal relations , leadership , motivation

All the challenges represented some form of transition point, where the manager-graduatehad to drop old assumptions, turn to different skills, renegotiate relationships or take a newapproach. Such transitions are vital times for spurring learning forward, but can beproblematic if they come before the individual is ready for them.

Benjamin and O'Reilly fear the MBA system doesn't accomplish this preparation, as"teaching leadership principles without sufficient application opportunities runs the risk of making complex leadership concepts appear simple and obvious"; for instance, we shouldbe empathic leaders - but how do we manage that? Although applied learning does occur inMBAs, they feel there is a need for better integration, to understand the how in the context of the what, to provide their students well-practiced strategi es to carry them through thesituations of stress that will undoubtedly define their early career.

Benjamin, B., & O'Reilly, C. (2011). Becoming a Leader: Early Career ChallengesFaced by MBA Graduates The Academy of Management Learning and Education, 10 (3), 452-472 DOI: 10.5465/amle.2011.0002


Thursday, 4 August 2011

Social networks of extraverts are bigger butno more intimateDo extraverts have more numerous and deeper socialrelationships? Organisations are increasingly interested insocial capital , the networks accessed through individuals,so this is no idle question. Thomas Pollet from the Universityof Groningen, investigated this with University of Oxfordcollaborators Sam Roberts and Robin Dunbar, and their answer is yes, and no.

Recognising that our relationships a ren't monolithic, theresearchers treated social networks as a set of three layers.The inner support group contains those people (typically

around five) that you would turn to in a crisis. Around this are a further ten-odd people, asympathy group who would be deeply affected by your death. Finally there is an outer layer of more variable size, containing people connected to you by weak ties.

Pollet recruited 117 Dutch adults, who were asked to list their family, friends andacquaintances, and for each one, state the recency of communication and how emotionallyclose they were. Each network was grouped into layers, the innermost comprising those withpast-week contact and over seven out of ten on the emotion measure; the sympathy layer those with past-month contact; and the outer layer receiving the rest. Each partici pant alsocompleted a measure of extraversion.

The researchers found extraverts had more people in every layer more weak ties, but alsomore individuals they contacted frequently. Although larger social networks have beenreported before, this study finds the effect after controlling for age, a potential confound inother studies. However, extraversion didn't affect emotional closeness to their network: weakties with occasional contacts don't appear stronger in extraverts.

The authors scrutinised every layer of the network, finding this same lack of effect throughout,but I'm cautious about interpretation at the inner layers, given that the emotional closenessscore is both the variable of interest and the criteria used to determine membership. On myunderstanding, i f introverts had a support group of contacts that they met frequently but gavelow emotional closeness scores - fives or si xes - the methodology would never identify this.

It's worth noting the data suggests that regardless of extraversion, i t's somewhat harder tokeep close to all the members of a very large outer layer, which suggests a practicalconstraint that extraverts may be more liable to hit up against.

This study suggests extraverts have larger networks that are not simply populated by weakties, but contain larger sets of close relationships. An organisation trying to tap into its socialcapital might start by talking to i ts most extraverted members. However, they shouldn't forget
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11/16


Labels: extraversion , interpersonal relations , networks , personality

that introverts have equally deep relationships, nor that valuable networks contain the rightpeople, not the most.

Pollet, T., Roberts, S., & Dunbar, R. (2011). Extraverts Have Larger Social NetworkLayers Journal of Individual Differences, 32 (3), 161-169 DOI: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000048



Labels: crossover , interpersonal relations

Continually juggling stakeholders can leadto doubting the value of your mission

If your work has taken you into meetings with a partneringcompany, a cross-institutional committee, or any situationworking together with another organisation, you've takenthe role of a boundary spanner. Organisations do well out of boundary spanners, who deliver them information aboutexternal conditions and increase their reach to broader stakeholders. But Lakshmi Ramarajan and colleagueshave demonstrated that there are costs for the boundary

spanner, particularly in challenging, multi-party si tuations.

Social psychology suggests that contact across group boundaries is problematic outside of ideal circumstances. Disparate goals may fuel conflict; unfamiliar patterns of behaviour canbe hard to adjust to; outside perspective may cast your own organisation in an unfavourablelight. To investigate this, Ramarajan's team surveyed 833 Dutch military personnel, whospent time between 1995 and 1999 engaged in peacekeeping missions. Such missionsoccur against a backdrop of heavy conflict, and are made more problematic by status andresource differences between the peacekeepers and their non-military counterparts: NGO's,governmental bodies and local authorities.

Each partici pant detailed their frequency of personal contact with each type of party, and thedegree of seriousness of work-specific problems that emerged with that party acombination of objective severity and their personal involvement. Their responses confirmedthat peacekeepers with more frequent contact with other parties had greater experiences of work-specific problems.

Previous research has suggested an inverse relationship between conditions 'home' and'away', as i f a spat with an external partner makes you more grateful for your colleagues. Butin the current study, more work-specific problems with other parties led to more negativeattitudes towards their own job and doubting the value of their mission. This resemblesspillover from one domain to another, due to ruminations or drained psychological resources.The authors attribute the difference to the high demands on peacekeepers, juggling manyparties on non-facilitated, difficult issues without the option to walk away, a situationincreasingly common for more and more 21st Century organisations.

Boundary spanning activities are certainly useful to the organisation, and can benefit theindividual, who tends to be more trusted and gai n reputation with other organisations. But weshould be concerned with its costs, eroding engagement with the work and faith in theorganisation, which are especially likely in complex situations with soft organisational

boundaries. As the authors conclude, those in this position may want to weigh these issuesup when thinking about the costs of alliances, joint ventures, or other cooperativemechanisms.

Ramarajan, L., Bezrukova, K., Jehn, K., & Euwema, M. (2011). From the outside in:The negative spillover effects of boundary spanners' relations with members of other organizations Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32 (6), 886-905 DOI:10.1002/job.723


Tuesday, 19 July 2011
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12/16


Labels: ability, interpersonal relations , interview , personality

Interview decisions are influenced by initialrapport

Research last year demonstrated that interviewees are judged according to their early rapport with theinterviewer, even when a highly structured interviewformat is followed. The same team have now put thisfinding to the replication test and dug deeper into itscauses.

Murray Barrick and colleagues gathered 135 studentvolunteers keen to improve their i nterview skill, and puteach through two interviews with different interviewersfrom a pool of business professionals. Each interviewproper was firmly structured with predefined questions oncompetency areas, but commenced wi th a few minutes of unstructured rapport building. Each interviewee wasrated in terms of initial impressions just after the rapportstage, and their interview responses evaluated at the end

of the interview. Just as in the 2010 study, the early impressions and final interview ratingsstrongly correlated.

The judgements we form from first impressions are rarely arbitrary but capture informationabout the other person, so it's possible the influence of pre-interview rapport isn't sheer bias.Through personality testing, Barrick's team found that first impressions were strongly relatedto interviewee extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.Conscientiousness is generally associated with better job performance, and tied into severalof the study competencies such as 'work ethic' and 'drive for results'. The other traits, whilenot necessarily desirable in all roles, can appear attractive qualities in a prospectiveorganisational member.

Initial impressions also correlated with volunteers' self-perception of how qualified they werefor the job, and also with an independent measure of verbal ski ll. The latter was assessedthrough a separate task where the volunteers interacted face-to-face with a series of peerswho rated features such as articulacy of speech. These findings suggest that the rapport-building stage was giving early insight into some sense of perceived fit to the specific role,as well as genuine candidate abi lity, in addition to personality factors. By careful analysis, theresearchers found that all of these factors influenced the final interview ratings, and that thiswas due to the way they shaped first impressions: after those first few minutes, there waslittle extra influence of these qualities across the rest of the interview.

As social animals we're reluctant to do away with rapport altogether, and impressions canform even in snatches of seconds. The researchers suggest with the caveat of moreresearch - that interviewers may as well embrace the first impressi on, explicitly evaluatingsome relevant criteria, such as those identified in this study, once the rapport stage i s over.

And candidates shouldn't unduly panic: this study reveals that the first impression is partlydown to an accurate appraisal of some of your true qualities, things you can't do very muchabout.

Barrick, M., Dustin, S., Giluk, T., Stewart, G., Shaffer, J., & Swider, B. (2011).Candidate characteristics driving initial impressions during rapport building:Implications for employment interview validi ty Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8325.2011.02036.x

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Monday, 11 July 2011


Labels: creativity , interpersonal relations , team

Help on tasks boosts creativity for theseeker but impedes it for the giver

Seeking help from others gets us to morecreative solutions, according to a recentpaper in the Journal of AppliedPsychology. However, there's a rub: beinga help-giver may impede creativelysolving your own problems, and seeking

and helping turn out to be intimatelyrelated.

In a collaboration between the IndianSchool of Business and the University of Pennsylvania, Jennifer Mueller andDishan Kamdar surveyed engineers at a

refinery in central India, who work in teams that try to find creative ways to improveoperations. The 291 mainly male participants assessed themselves on help-seeking byrating items like I frequently ask team-mates for assistance in creative problem solving.They also completed a complementary measure of help-giving, together with measures of motivation and a control measure of 'creative personality'.

The study found that individuals who sought more help were rated as more creative by their

team leaders. The investigators suggest two reasons for this. Firstly, help-seekers receivenew information to form a broader base to construct solutions from. Perhaps moreimportantly, seeking help requires you accept that you don't have all the answers, making youmore open to new perspectives. As such, it wards off that major obstacle to creativity:locking into a 'perceptual set' that obscures any alternative view.

The authors felt that help seeking might shed some light on an issue in creativity research:whether being intrinsically motivated to solve a problem leads to more creative solutions.They felt that rather than firing up some creative centre, motivation might operate by makingyou do something you wouldn't otherwise: admi t your limitations by seeking some help. Andthe data corroborates this, suggesting creativity is enhanced by motivation partly through anincrease in help-seeking.

So far, so good. But the research found that people who received help tended to reciprocateit back on other occasions, and, crucially, that giving more help was associated with a cost tocreativity. Why? Well, working on others' problems may restrict the time available for your own, and we know that creativity suffers under high time pressure. The authors also suspectan attitude shift: just as the help seeker humbly surrenders their suppositions, the helpprovider can be flattered into believing their perspective is objectively better, reinforcing fixedways of thinking.

On balance, help-seeking did lead to more creativity, even when the reciprocal demandswere high; a culture of help is ultimately superior to a lone-wolf one. Organisations may wantto think about ways to inoculate their members against putting their viewpoint on a pedestal,even when others seem to value i t. And help-seekers may want to ensure that their requestsdon't swamp an accommodating help-giver. Yet we have to face facts: for creative help-seeking to flourish, that help needs to come from someone prepared to pay the cost.

Mueller, J., & Kamdar, D. (2011). Why seeking help from teammates is a blessingand a curse: A theory of help seeking and individual creativity in team contexts.Journal of Applied Psychology, 96 (2), 263-276 DOI: 10.1037/a0021574


Wednesday, 20 April 2011

Drinking habits of freelance musicians are aresponse to job demands
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14/16


Labels: environment , freelance , interpersonal relations , job demands , music

When we pore over biographies of Cobain, Mozart, or Shakur, are we gettinga true insight into the psychology of musicians? Doubtful; dealing with rarefigures whose musicianship isconfounded with celebrity , the

psychological autopsy is inadequate for understanding this ancient and valuedprofession. The stereotypes it canreinforce, such as the 'mad genius', areoften dispelled by more rigorous

investigation: a study of psychopathology in a sample including artists, writers and scientistsrevealed that composers had almost the lowest rate.

And how about the other stereotype, that musicians love to get trashed? It's true that jazzgreats often got high , but their reasons were more varied than simply hedonism; many useddrugs to deal with pressure from the job and from peers. A recent study suggests our current

jazz and string musicians, in a similar spot, find themselves deep in the drink.

Melissa Dobson from the University of Sheffield conducted interviews with eighteenfreelance musicians, half string players and half jazz musicians. Reviewing these reveals thata key professional capability for these musicians is social expertise with peers. If looking todraft in a cellis t for an event, differences in talent between candidates may be too minor tomatter for the audience, so the job may swing to whoever's a better laugh to hang with duringthe breaks. In their informal economy, musicians know the power of these fickle deci sionsand do what needs to be done to maintain a reputation that they get on with people.

Typically, that involves drinking. Partly a generational legacy, as hard drinking is tied into thesubcultural furniture, it's also a fact of the environment, as venues for live music typically servealcohol. It fills dull gaps between sets in unfamiliar places, and after the show offers a form of psychological detachment from work. Ultimately, it's socially self-perpetuating: if everyonedrinks, then you need to develop a habit too. Some interviewees had mixed feelings aboutthis: lots of players that haven't been offered jobs.... [are those who] won't really go out for thewhole sort of sociali zing thing... a bit sad, but that's sort of the way it works.

As well as alcohol, the interviews revealed the highly political nature of the freelance musicworld, where musicians both compete against and depend upon each other for work, andcan find themselves trading disparaging judgements on absent peers to shore up their in-crowd posi tion - another form of social currency.

Melissa Dobson concludes that the professional training that musicians undertake focuses

on technical development over the challenges of navigating a freelance career, leaving themto figure out how to maintain reputation through a 'hidden curriculum' that operates out of sight of the convervatoire. Is this the only form of professi onal training that this critiqueapplies to?

Dobson, M. (2010). Insecurity, professional soci abili ty, and alcohol: Youngfreelance musicians' perspectives on work and life in the music professionPsychology of Music, 39 (2), 240-260 DOI: 10.1177/0305735610373562


Tuesday, 15 February 2011

Influencing others by showing emotion: anew emotional ability?
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15/16

Many workplaces recognise that besides more cognitive notions of intelligence our capability to solve problems, use logic, process and judge factual information they alsoneed Emotional Intelligence (EI): the capabi lity to recognise, make the most of and manageemotion. Now a new theoretical paper makes the case that we should be expanding thisconcept of EI to include the ability to influence others through emotional displays.

EI currently focuses on spotting, dealing with and making sense of emotions. Can I figure outwhy I was feeling increasi ngly uneasy through the meeting? Spot how you are feeling rightnow? Guess what might cheer you up? Authors Ct and Hideg focus their a ttention onanother feature of emotions: that we disp lay them physically to others in emotion displays.This insight goes back to Darwin, and has since been extensively researched notably byPaul Ekman (whose work is popularised in the TV series Lie to Me) with the field nowrecognising that the face, voice and touch are all used for this purpose. Emotional displays,even subtle ones, can cause our heart rate to rise, our skin to sweat, and our emotions toswell, often to then be displayed onwards in ripples of emotional contagion, such as whenlaughter gathers any within earshot.

Ct and Hideg draw attention to the workplace consequences of these displays. Anger atthose who have neglected their duties can provoke them to redouble their efforts, guiltdisplays increase the likelihood of forgiveness, and positive emotions can result in more pro-social behaviour. Clearly there is an advantage to being adept at these displays, and theauthors point out at least two ways in which one can be better. One is displaying the rightemotion for the situation; considerations include the communication medium, as someemotions, such as anger, are displayed more strongly via the voice than the face (and thereverse can be true). Another is displaying that emotion effectively, facilitated by approachessuch as 'deep acting' which tries to change the emotion itself, contrasting surface acting,which just acts on behaviour and can be perceived as inauthentic. (You can decide for yourself what's going on in the photo above.)

Ct and Hideg amass research showing genuine variety in how well people can influenceothers through displays, for instance the abili ty of bill collectors to communicate urgency todebtors. They argue that all this evidence suggests a real human capability that showsindividual di fferences, concerns emotions, and can result in better or worse outcomes. Onthis basis, they call for it to be considered as a new emotional ability within the EmotionalIntelligence framework.

In an illuminating section the paper explores how influencing others through emotionaldisplays also relies on another: the intended recipient. They may fail to recognise the displayif they come from a different culture with different cues. They may be unmotivated to give their attention to your display, because they don't trust you, because they hold the power in theinteraction and are blase about how you may feel, or because they dont see the value intrying to understand the situation (what the authors refer to as epistemic motivation). There isevidence for each of these factors moderating the effect of emotion displays.

We all know that people are i nfluenced by the emotional reactions of those around them. Butits valuable to recognise the ways this does and doesnt work, know its genuine workplaceconsequences, and be aware that this may be better treated as an abi lity, rather than anunaccountable influence in the workplace. This paper does a fine job of this, drawingtogether a wealth of evidence, and because this research is clear, readable, and released inthe freely-accessible Organizational Psychology Review, I'd encourage having a lookyourself.
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16/16

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Labels: ability, emotional intelligence , emotional regulation , interpersonal relations , surface

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Ct, S., & Hideg, I. (2011). The ability to influence others via emotion displays: Anew dimension of emotional intelligence Organizational Psychology Review, 1 (1),53-71 DOI: 10.1177/2041386610379257


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