Why leaders need to develop mindfulness

A less obvious threat within organisations is the that of a psychologically unhealthy workplace. When colleagues, or worse managers, add mental and emotional fatigue to an employee’s work day, it’s enough to drive down productivity if not drive out workers.

It’s not an isolated case either. In Australia alone, the government pays approximately $543 million in workers’ compensation for work-related mental health conditions.

While it’s true that managing processes matters in leadership, managing people is even more crucial. Likewise, creating a mentally-safe workplace starts with having strong policies and processes in place, but ultimately it is defined by the behaviours of the people within.

That’s where mindfulness can play a crucial role.

 

Mindful leadership

Mindful leadership based on being attentive to the present moment and recognising personal feelings and emotions while keeping them under control, particularly during stressful times. It requires an individual’s awareness and understanding its impact on others.

Researchers identified the benefits of mindful leadership and summed it up into three meta-capacities:

  • Metacognition. This is the ability to observe what you are thinking, feeling, and sensing during critical times. It is like removing yourself from an intense situation to actually see what’s going on. It’s an effective means of escaping the dangers of operating on autopilot.
  • Allowing. This refers to the ability to let situations be. It isn’t about weakness or passiveness. Rather, it’s about dealing with experiences with openness and kindness to yourself and others. It links firmly with not letting our criticism of ourselves and others crush our ability to observe what is really happening.
  • Curiosity. This means taking an interest in what occurs within our inner and outer environments. It drives a strong impetus for bringing our awareness into the present moment and staying with it.

 

Emotional intelligence and mindfulness

There are three parts to emotional intelligence according to the man who coined the term back in 1995, Daniel Goleman. The first involves self-awareness, and this is where mindfulness fits in. By monitoring what’s happening within your mind, you can handle it better. This leads to the second part of emotional intelligence, self-management which in turn allows you to manage stressful situations and display a positive attitude despite upsets. The third part is the presence of others and how the other two components combine to determine the quality of our relationships with those around us.

 

Developing mindfulness

A note of caution: this is not a quick fix. Attending one mindfulness session doesn’t make a mindful leader. The key to developing this ability is practice. Take just a few minutes each day to focus on your thoughts and gradually integrate it into your daily tasks.

The Info: Must read

Derek Parker reviews the latest essential reading for Managers and Leaders 

Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness

By Rick Hanson

(Penguin, $33)

A critical area of study that has emerged in the past few years is the intersection of thinking – how you experience things and make sense of them – with neuroscience – the study of the brain as a physical organ. Rick Hanson, an American psychologist, was one of the first to examine this subject with his 2013 bestseller, Hardwiring Happiness. In Resilient he takes the theme further, looking at how feelings of wellbeing can be enhanced and strengthened as a buttress against adversity.

He points to scans of brain activity that show there is a natural ‘negativity bias’. This is an evolutionary hangover from the time when awareness of threats and danger were necessary survival tools but these days the effect is to create undue sensitivity to the stresses of everyday life: rushing about, being continually interrupted, having to jump between tasks, feeling pressured and being overloaded by information. The culture of the 21st century is continually trying to grab our attention with one thing or another, forcing us to move on from positive experiences before they can make their way into our consciousness. The result is anxiety, uncertainty, the sense that nothing is really within our control.

The counter to this, says Hanson, is to grow resilient resources within ourselves, by learning methods to profit from our positive experiences. This can change the physical structure of the brain, in the same way that a muscle is strengthened by conscious training. There are particular chemical responses in the brain that flag an experience as an important one, and new neural pathways to support it are formed.

The crucial step is to become acutely aware of positive experiences. Stretch out the good feeling, Hanson suggests, even if it is only by 20 seconds. This embeds it in our memory. Also, focus on why it feels good and how it connects with other experiences. Try to see what makes it unusual, meaningful, and personally relevant.

He emphasises that there is no definitive ‘good’ experience. It might be walking in a field, or enjoying a game of football, or playing with your children. It might be accomplishing some small task that leaves you quietly satisfied. It is likely to be different for everyone: the point is to understand it, focus on it, and draw upon it. With a conscious effort, moments that would otherwise slip away can become part of a stock of wellbeing, and help to build mindfulness. Over time, the hardware of our minds becomes more resilient and more capable of dealing with challenges, whether personal or professional.

From his neuroscience research and his work as a therapist, Hanson draws up a list of 12 “fundamental inner strengths” that can help to deal with problems and setbacks. Each of these – compassion, mindfulness, learning, grit, gratitude, confidence, calm, motivation, intimacy, courage, aspiration and generosity – is carefully unpacked by Hanson, but he also notes that various individuals might look to other qualities. The principle of training the brain – the technical term is positive neuroplasticity – remains the same.

The point is not to ignore negative experiences and emotions but to avoid being overwhelmed by them. A core of inner strength has the benefit of placing things in context. This means that small stresses and aggravations do not accumulate into large ones. Equally, it is a means to move past old grievances. Of course, in any life there will be serious problems – a major illness, the loss of a close family member – but a sense of resilience can help to deal with them in an appropriate way.

Hanson does not claim to have invented this way of thinking, only to have taken existing methods and organised them into a therapeutic program as well as a set of tools for everyday life. It is not easy, he says, as it means putting aside old patterns of thought and deliberately creating new ones. The good news is that it gets easier as you go along, and eventually becomes nearly automatic.

The benefits to both mental and physical health are significant. Essentially, this sort of resilience makes it easier to survive and thrive in our troubled, difficult times. It is a lesson we could all use.

The Future for Our Kids

By Phil Ruthven

(Wilkinson, $40)

As founder of the business information firm, IBISWorld Phil Ruthven has access to a huge amount of data, and he uses it to extrapolate existing trends to provide a picture of Australia’s future. He is generally upbeat, preferring to focus on opportunities rather than problems, and it is hard to not be caught up in his enthusiasm.

Interestingly, he sees outsourcing – often thought to be a destroyer of jobs – as the single biggest driver of job creation. Already, he says, many young people see themselves as entrepreneurial freelancers, moving from one project to another and being paid for outputs rather than inputs. Ruthven predicts this will increase as the pace of technology creates a truly global marketplace. At the same time, he says, the average working week will be around 20 hours by the end of this century, with a greater focus on fulfilment. Ruthven calculates that Australia is creating many more jobs than the number being lost, and will continue to do so.

At the other end of the demographic scale, longer lifespans will mean longer careers, with older people working well past the traditional retirement age. Older people will also be more likely to return to the education system, either to gain more qualifications or simply to keep their minds fresh.

Ruthven sees Australia as well-placed to take advantage of the continuing shift of economic momentum to Asia, and says Australia’s population mix will become even more diverse. The agriculture sector is likely to expand, both for domestic demand driven by a rising population and for export markets, although the real boom will be in the service sector, especially hospitality, tourism and aged care.

Along the way, Ruthven laments that governments have been slow to introduce ultra-fast broadband technology and to push for a higher GDP growth rate. Nevertheless, we are headed in a positive direction, he says, and the best is yet to come.

Give Back Lead Forward: why every leader should have a mentor and be a mentor

By Julian Carle

(Major Street Publishing, $30)

Julian Carle, the head of leadership training firm Synergen Group, believes that mentoring is the ingredient that turns good managers into great leaders, and in this book he provides a practical framework for getting the most out of the relationship, from both sides of the equation.

He makes clear that mentoring is not about getting together occasionally for a chat. Both mentor and mentee must be chosen carefully, both for their personal and professional attributes. Carle suggests that the two should not come from the same company, and perhaps not even the same industry, but a set of common experiences is important. Mentoring is not about teaching technical information but rather the soft skills of empathy and judgement. The mentor does not provide solutions but helps the mentee find their own answers.

For the mentee the benefit is the opportunity to draw upon the experience of the mentor; for the mentor the benefit is about the self-reflection that comes with understanding another person. The relationship is a balance of the personal and the professional, and there must be enough trust for discussion to be honest and forthright.

Meetings should be regular – Carle suggests every three weeks – with a firm schedule and agenda, as well as milestones to be discussed in quarterly reviews. Being a mentor is not easy: it requires skills to both inspire and motivate. An essential part is to show the mentee how to keep going in the face of setbacks. This can mean, for the mentor, revealing the mistakes they have made along the way – and, crucially, what they learned from them. For the mentee, it means making hard decisions about what sort of person they want to be. Often, says Carle, mentors find that their mentees inspire them.

Carle has mentored many mentees himself and is the host of ‘Mentoring Effectively’, a recorded IML webinar that explores the elements of good coaching practices and mentoring tips to promote personal development. The webinar is available online, here.

Moving up: how to consider the changes

By Geoff Cohen FIML

There you are – a hard-working team player in your thirties determined to have a successful business career. You want to leave a positive mark, your “footprints in the sand”.

With outstanding performance reviews as a technical specialist – complemented by competitive salary packages and bonuses – all your painstaking years put into studies have been rewarded in your career. Well done!

Then you learn that your team manager has moved into another more senior position. So finally, and without much notice, the chance arrives for you to step up into a managerial position and lead the team. Eager to make the most of the opportunity, you start off by getting all the training you need from your colleague. With all the necessary knowledge and expertise successfully transferred in a handover, you feel that you have landed on your feet as a new manager.

However, soon the hidden problems become apparent – your colleague tells you everything about the challenges of the job, from poor staff attitudes to the ever-demanding senior management group. For a second, you may begin to worry whether you’ve made the right decision to step into the role. Still, you are inspired to revolutionise the way things are done around here – no holding back!

Moving from star specialist to fledgling manager is probably one of the biggest challenges you will ever face because now you must manage people and your coworkers as your staff. These are people who have feelings, values and priorities that may not accord with your own. So how are you going to manage them? Should you order them around? After all, they work under your leadership.

However, what you may learn the hard way as a first-time manager is that your staff may put up with being directed by you for a while. But, if they don’t feel part of a consulted team, your best staff may quickly move on to where they will be appreciated – another team or organisation.

Autocratic behaviour is no way to be recognised as a leader. Great leaders earn a respect which makes people choose to follow them. You do not determine your success as a leader – that is something those around you will decide on. Their respect and behavioural response will provide the clues on whether they support you, or not. A wise colleague of mine once said of a new manager: “My loyalty he will have, my respect he will have to earn.”

Indeed, your welcome to management comes with a big challenge: how to instil respect for your leadership. Hopefully, you are attuned enough to know that there are no instant answers. There are many short development courses that you should certainly explore, but this must be abetted by long-term support – much of which you will get while on the job.

The most effective way of development leadership, not matter what stage of your career you’re in, is this: have good ‘soft skills’ – for example, listening, communicating and empathy – and marry them with the ‘hard skills’ that landed you the management position in the first place. With a combination of these, you will have the resources to successfully set you up on your desired career path.

There are few more things worthwhile to think as a manager:

  • Cynicism is, regrettably, part of the workplace today. So, if your staff don’t already know you, will there be a degree of scepticism?
  • Have you just been brought in to shake the place up, make jobs redundant, cut back staff expenditure and budgets?
  • If your staff do know you and watched you rise to new heights, what are they thinking?
  • Maybe they feel you are just filling in until the ‘real’ manager arrives.
  • They could confide in you when you were a co-worker, but maybe not anymore.
  • Perhaps they think you’ll just be a ‘yes man’ for senior management, totally compliant.

While it might be a daunting thought that all these above situations might be a reality, it is important to remember that ultimately, learning from your experiences is necessary for development, even if the message may not be what you want to hear.

Reflecting on these experiences allows you to gain understanding of your leadership strengths and weaknesses, and often it is helpful to reflect on how you are going to manage yourself before you start managing others. It is also a good idea to find a colleague who you respect and trust to share experiences and advice, a proven strategy for professionals around the world. Nurses at hospitals put aside time at the end of a shift each day to ‘debrief’ with the next crew coming in. This process is not just about explaining the status of patients but to relieve stress by telling someone about the frustrations of the day.

Debriefing with someone regularly will improve your resilience, help you manage stress, lead staff with humility and transparency and, above all else, remain positive.

Give it a go… step up to a management role! Don’t wonder what might have been later on.

Geoff Cohen FIML Geoff Cohen FIML, a former General Manager focusing on regional business growth / major property development in NSW, works with startup business entrepreneurs and new managers.

5 Minutes with Brad Fenech

At just 24 years of age, Brad Fenech CMgr AFIML, senior consultant at Approach ICT, has already enjoyed a flourishing career in Canberra’s public and private sectors. He says the key to being a good manager is practising what you preach. we asked him to share six lessons from his career to date.

As told to Lisa Calautti

  1. Be yourself

“Build your own self. And what I mean by that is: it is all well and good to have role models but take bits and pieces from each as it is impossible to mirror one specific person. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses.”

2. Be uncomfortable

“Go outside your typical comfort zones. Take some risks. For me, that’s learning to be more creative. It forces you to learn more skills and talk to people. With that, you naturally find new ideas popping into your head at random times of the day or night.”

3. Take time out

“Something I have really committed to is meditation. And I can’t get enough of it. We are always on the phone, or a computer or some sort of technology, so there is so much going through my head. A good way to just unwind and collect my thoughts is through meditation.”

4. Be creative and innovative

“While I have found it challenging, these traits allow you to be one step ahead.  As a manager or a leader, if you aren’t practising these qualities, when it comes to your team you can’t expect your colleagues to do the same. It is basic psychology – practise what you preach.”

5. Be a good problem solver

“Two words come to mind – passion and confidence. Someone once said to me that life is all about finding problems that you enjoy solving. I guess the stereotype is that a problem is a negative thing but I am slowly coming around to the notion that they are not all negative. I try to find problems that I
enjoy solving.”

6. Be strong in your decisions

“This goes back to confidence for me. You make a decision and you might not be right, but you sure won’t be the last person to make a wrong decision. There will be naysayers but if you are comfortable with your decision and you have remained ethical and considered all the sources of information, then I don’t think there is anything more that you can do. As a manager or leader, it is important to be able to make a confident decision while remaining ethical. It is as simple as that – make a good example of yourself.”

Suncorp’s Dominique Layt – Investing in your leadership with Chartered Manager

 

Dominique Layt CMgr AFIML, Head of Stores and Speciality Banking Delivery at Suncorp and Board Director has built her leadership career from the ground up, over 30 plus years in the financial services industry. After finishing Year 12, Dominique’s parents encouraged her to take all the Banking entry exams, which lead to her first job as a trainee bank teller with NAB. She was keen to learn, asking other colleagues to show her their different roles so she could cover their days off. Dominique worked her way up to a senior role in the State Office over 17 years. She then moved to Westpac as a Regional Manager, but found that she’d need to move to Sydney or Melbourne for further promotion.

Dominique joined Suncorp in 2007 in business banking strategy just as the global financial crisis was biting, which she credits as an amazing learning experience working on the restructure. She moved into risk management, setting up the bank’s risk frameworks and committees. Dominique’s subsequent role was to establish the bank’s customer retention and insights strategy and capability, handpicking a team which took Suncorp to #1 in customer satisfaction over that time. The team implemented a new way of having a conversation with customers, which lead to positively impacting Suncorp’s S&P’s rating.

You’ve enjoyed an incredible career in the Financial Services industry, and you describe coaching, mentoring and leading high performing teams as your greatest passion. Tell us how you’ve built your leadership step by step over your career. 

One of the things I learnt early in my leadership journey was that each individual is different and to be an effective leader I needed to adjust my approach to the individual where needed. The other thing I learned with experience and growing confidence as you get older is to be factual, clear and open when giving feedback and coaching. Most people do not like conflict and they expect they will receive it if they provide constructive feedback to individuals. Whilst this can happen I have found the majority of people are grateful for honest feedback especially when it comes to career development.

I have lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had where someone has said they have asked many other leaders why they had missed out on roles. Or, why they hadn’t progressed and they had never been provided with tangible feedback that would allow them to develop and grow. One of my strongest influencers today is Brene Brown who talks a lot about vulnerability and authentic leadership. These practices are critical to developing high performing teams and being an effective coach and mentor.

You recently obtained your first Board Director role with the Somerville House Foundation. What are your initial observations on the different style of leadership required of Boards versus Management?

The Board is a team and whilst the Chair is in essence the leader of that team it is different than organisational leader roles where the leader has the ultimate decision making authority. Similar to organisational teams a Board has a mix of skills which, when fully leveraged, allows the Board to be effective at its role. The role of the Chair is much more about ensuring the key skills are fully utilised, each member is actively contributing and the focus is absolutely on the objectives of the organisation the Board is privileged to govern.

What has been your greatest challenge?

There have been many challenges throughout my career, as there are for most people, including strategic and operational challenges during the GFC, shifting from a defensive to a growth strategy and transforming cultures from a merged organisation into one cohesive team. The one that stands out the most is maintaining team members motivation and energy during extended periods of multiple restructures and change which involved carrying vacancies for several months.

What are you most proud of?

There are many team and individual successes over my 30+ year career I could talk about, but whenever I am asked this question the moments that make me the proudest have been individual coaching sessions. Those moments where you help someone realise what is possible and the only thing standing in their way is their own self-confidence. When you literally see the light bulb go on and they realise they can achieve what they are aiming for. Those are the moments where you know you have made a difference to someone else and then to watch them achieve their goals and grow and grow from there is truly rewarding.

What motivated you to pursue the internationally recognised Institute of Managers and Leaders’ (IML) Chartered Manager Accreditation?

I have invested most of my career into becoming the best leader I can be. I’ve pursued my own development, sought out mentors who are strong authentic leaders and consistently sought feedback from peers and direct reports. I once commenced a Master of Leadership through a University only to find it was cancelled after less than a year.

When I saw the opportunity to be recognised for the development and investment I have made into leadership I jumped at the opportunity to apply for Chartered Manager Accreditation with IML.

How has achieving Chartered Manager status impacted your leadership journey, and what do you see are the future benefits to come? 

I found the application process another learning opportunity. Completing the application provided me with an opportunity to review, self-assess and consider other areas I wanted to delve further into as part of my growth and continual improvement as a leader.

Now being a Chartered Manager I feel I have the opportunity to expand my career beyond financial services and potentially into areas such as executive coaching or leadership coaching.

What’s one piece of advice for future female leaders?

Read Brene Brown’s books and work out who you are and what sort of leader you want to be. Don’t be afraid to be your authentic self. We do not need to be like anyone else nor do we need to compete with others. If you can be an authentic leader with the right values as your anchor, your team will follow. Servant leadership is a great foundation but authentic leadership means you are “all in” and people will respect you for that; but it takes vulnerability and courage.

In partnership with:

4 KEY FINDINGS THAT DEMYSTIFY OUR BRAINS

NEUROSCIENTIST DR HANNAH CRITCHLOW SAYS THAT MANAGERS AND LEADERS HAVE A DUTY TO GET THEIR HEADS AROUND HOW THE BRAIN WORKS.

By Lachlan Colquhoun // Photograph by Paul Musso

OF ALL THE ORGANS, the brain has always been viewed in a different way, and with special reverence.

Weighing only 1.5 kilograms, or around 2 per cent of our body mass, the brain is seen as the driver of our personalities, the home of our soul, the repository of memory, and the computer that keeps the whole body ticking over so that we can function in society.

While medical science has gone a long way to demystify the physiology of other organs, such as the liver and the heart, our understanding of the brain and its 86 billion neurons has remained comparatively limited until recently.

Breakthroughs in neuroscience over the past decade, however, are rapidly lifting the veil on our understanding of the body’s most complex organ and, in the process, helping us understand more about human behaviour.

“This is a great time to be a neuroscientist, we are peering into the mind as never before,” says Dr Hannah Critchlow, a British author, neuroscientist and fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. “We are learning about the brain at an exponential rate now — there are as many as five to ten thousand new research papers coming out each month.

“We still have a lot to learn of course, and there are still major problems, as we can see with mental health, but we are discovering the real underpinnings of the brain’s operation and this information will help us to better treat some of the debilitating conditions of the mind.”

1. Reality check

Dr Critchlow is at the frontline of neuroscience and is on a mission to communicate its findings to the world. Nominated as one of the UK’s Top 100 Scientists by the Science Council, she is about to follow up her first book Consciousness with a second publication on the theme of “the science of fate”. Many of the insights from neuroscience, Dr Critchlow says, have come from understanding the brain as a physical organ. Advancing technologies such as optogenetics, which uses light to stimulate specific circuits in the brain, are revealing more about the physiology of behaviours that were previously considered part of the mystery of personality. Entrepreneurs and drug addicts, for example, have particular brain anatomies, as do people with ADHD and those who enjoy socialising more than others. For managers and leaders, the challenge is to work with an understanding that everyone has a different perspective on reality and that certain acts that were previously considered voluntary may, in fact, be hardwired. Although exercise and meditation can help us grow new brain cells and the connections between them, just as chronic stress and depression can kill them off, there may be limits to the ultimate “plasticity” of what a person can achieve with the particular brain they are born with. The old adage that “you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it” may prove to have clear scientific limitations. “We can literally see how the circuit board of the mind — this amazing machine comprised of billions of nerve cells, with trillions of connections between them — shifts and changes as we make decisions and experience the world around us,” she says. “We can switch feelings of pleasure on or off, and feelings of anxiety and even addiction, so we are really starting to understand how these discrete circuit boards in our brain give rise to very particular behaviours.” Part of this is a more holistic understanding that the brain does not exist in isolation at the top of the body, and that its interactions are strongly linked with the immune system, to our gut, and to organs such as the heart.

“At its most basic, when you have a cold or the flu you feel down in the dumps and depressed, and there is a physical reason for that because your brain is almost in a depressed state at that point,” says Dr Critchlow. “There is also a lot of emerging evidence which suggests that people with chronic depression might have altered immune systems as well, so their immune system is attacking the brain. An altered immune system has even been linked to the terrifying symptoms of psychosis, and in some patients simply clearing their blood of the faulty immune cells can stop the symptoms for good.”

2. Performance enhancing drugs

These new understandings of the brain have created new treatments for depression and addiction, and perhaps controversially, opened up the potential to enhance our creative capacities through the use of smart drugs. “There is lots of information coming out now about how creativity and problem-solving in the brain is formed, and there are drugs called cognitive enhancers which seem to boost certain aspects of our alertness, or our reasoning and our concentration skills,” says Dr Critchlow. “There’s also psychedelics, which previously people were mainly interested in from a recreational viewpoint, but now small doses of these drugs have been implicated in boosting creativity and problem-solving skills, raising all sorts of considerations around whether we want people in the workplace to be taking small amounts of drugs, even if it does boost their performance.” Alongside research into drugs, there has also been work done on “brain helmets” that use mild electrical currents to stimulate specific areas of the brain to see how this can foster particular behaviours like, for example, creativity.

3. Plasticity has limits

But while this research shows that capabilities can be enhanced, and that we do each hold the scope for plasticity and flexibility within our brains, Dr Critchlow says a key finding of neuroscience is that many of our behaviours are “ingrained” because of how our brains process the vast amounts of information from the outside world, and accepting this has particular relevance in the workplace. “So rather than trying to make somebody fit into a role and a set of expectations, it may be more productive to just create the environment that will help them to flourish and make use of the skillsets they bring,” she says. “Although our brain has a huge scope for plasticity and we can learn new things, emerging neuroscience is showing that people have specific strengths and weaknesses that sometimes you just can’t change.” People whose brains have a larger prefrontal cortex, for example, with many “slots” for beta-endorphins, are “almost hardwired” to need a wide number of different friendship groups. “They are like conduits which let information be exchanged from clique to clique, so that is a very important role within society,” says Dr Critchlow. “And then there are people with a much smaller prefrontal cortex and they have a much smaller group of friends, or they spend more time with each of their friends in closer relationships. “There is a hypothesis that because these people have fewer beta endorphin spots they don’t need to go around filling them up by meeting lots of other people.” These two types of people respond differently to the workplace. The first type, with the larger prefrontal cortex, may be more comfortable working in an open plan office where they can mix with larger number of colleagues, while those with the second brain type may prefer to work in smaller groups.

4. Entrepreneurial thinking

Neuroscience is also beginning to understand the brains of entrepreneurs, which can sometimes be similar to people with ADHD. “People who are entrepreneurs and who are thriving in taking risks in business have an evolutionary drive to do so and that is based around their brain biology,” says Dr Critchlow. “Much of this is intuitive, of course, and we have talked about this for decades but neuroscience is now demonstrating how this has a basis in the brain.” In her next book, Dr Critchlow is focusing on the subject of “the science of fate,” looking at the extent to which our behaviours are predetermined by the brains we are born with. “I am interested in understanding how much of our behaviour is ingrained,” she says. “We are seeing now that a lot of what we do is predetermined, so that opens up the question on whether we actually have any agency, or any free will at all. We have been sold this concept that the brain is highly plastic and that we have the power to change our behaviours if we can put our minds to it, but this may not necessarily be the truth.” The take out from all this is one of acceptance and tolerance. People have strengths and weaknesses and need to work with them, but at the same time environments need to be sensitive to this to help a diversity of people flourish. “For leaders and managers there is a responsibility for acceptance, but also to use this to be the best person they can be and look after the mental health of their teams,” says Dr Critchlow. She says that she personally has “appalling spelling” as a result of dyslexia, “but I’m okay with that.” Everybody is on a spectrum for every different kind of behaviour, and although there is some wriggle room for moving, we must accept that we need an environment which can nourish us. “Our individuality is a beautiful thing, and it’s the brain which produces that individuality.”

MINDBLOWING EVENTS

Dr Hannah Critchlow will be speaking at a series of IML Leadership Impact events, exploring the neuroscience behind leadership. To find out more and book your seats in Brisbane (8 November), Melbourne (13 November), Sydney (14 November), and Canberra (15 November) visit managersandleaders.com.au/leadership-impact-series/

LEADERSHIP IN 60 SECONDS:

FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, SNAPCHAT OR LINKEDIN?

Facebook.

PHONE, EMAIL, TEXT OR FACE-TO-FACE?

Face-to-face. No question! Interesting face-to-face communication helps to synchronise brain waves. Your brain takes snapshots of the world at regular intervals.

WHICH LEADER HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM MOST DURING YOUR CAREER?

Trevor Robbins, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Cambridge. He is good at long-term strategy. A junior chess champion, he places people like chess pieces, to make sure his ultimate aim is realised. It’s beautiful to watch. He’s also very kind and generous with is time.

WHICH LEADERSHIP BOOK DO YOU MOST RECOMMEND?

My next book! It will be about the science of fate.

WHAT IS THE BEST PIECE OF LEADERSHIP ADVICE YOU WERE GIVEN EARLY IN YOUR CAREER?

Always have a Plan A, B and C.

NAME THREE QUALITIES THAT A LEADER CAN’T SUCCEED WITHOUT

The ability to take other people’s thoughts and perspectives on board; pragmatic and practical problem solving; to know when to relax and stop stressing.

COMPLETE THE SENTENCE. LEADERSHIP MATTERS BECAUSE…

Looking to the future, as a species, we are going to be exposed to many problems. We need leadership to help solve them so that we can survive.

The Neuroscience Behind Leadership

In just a matter of weeks I’ll be taking to the sky, travelling from Cambridge UK to the other side of the world, visiting Australia for my first time. I’m incredibly excited about my trip hosted by the prestigious Institute of Managers and Leaders. I’ll be visiting the East Coast cities: Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra. There I will be unlocking the mysteries of the mind to discuss how neuroscience findings can help better inform leaders and managers for business.

How do our minds operate? How does our unique perception of the world shape our decision-making? How do fear and stress affect our behaviour? How can neuroscience knowledge help promote creativity and problem solving? What can we do to refine our focus and attention? We’ll be answering these questions and more during the sessions.

Knowledge is power, I strongly believe! And so, as we understand more about the brain, how it shapes our behaviour, we can be empowered and flourish, as both individuals and as companies. During my visit I’m also hoping to literally dive into the minds of leadership professionals, reading their brainwaves live on stage using an EEG machine, to help unravel the thinking behind our decision-making.

So, why now? We currently live in the era of the brain: a recent revolution in technology allows us to peer into the mind as never before. We can visualise the architecture and operation of the brain, in fine detail, as the world is navigated and our sense of self formed. As a result, we are discovering that certain complex behaviours are ingrained, whilst others are skills that can be built on and improved. Neuroscience is also helping us to understand more precisely the nature of what it means to be conscious, and to live with the ability to form a subjective view. We’ll explore the ramifications of this, how it can sometimes lead to conflict, and how to help prevent it. We’ll also discuss the emerging fields studying the science of altruism and compassion and the relevance for business environments. Through neuroscience, we are learning how to open minds to more productive collaborations. These findings build on research from the disciplines of theology, psychology, sociology and philosophy and provide the lens through which we can have a mechanistic understanding of the very nuts and bolts that makes us, well, us! The results and have vast implications at the level of both the individual and society.

I’m really looking forward to my trip. I’m hoping to also discover new ways of thinking about the brain from you, the business leaders, learning from your perspective.

On that note I would love for you to take part in little experiment! Listen to the below audio track.

It’s tricky to understand, right? In fact, it’s complete gobbledegook! Now listen to this second track. Poor camel! Now play back the first track again. Suddenly it makes sense, right?

First Track:

Second Track: 

The cadence of both sentences is the same. This happens because our brains are both awe inspiringly sophisticated and mesmerising in their action, but also inherently lazy, always trying to take short cuts in their processing in order to make assumptions about the world. As a result the brain superimposes your previous experience of making sense from the sentence with the similar cadence onto the first gobbledegook track. This simple audio illusion helps us to understand how our perception of the world is built from a culmination of our highly individual life experiences. It also helps us to appreciate how we can each hold such wildly conflicting views of the world and why consensus building can be so tricky. Such consensus building, taking onboard other people’s perspectives, is vital for leadership and management and we’ll be exploring how neuroscience can also help us achieve that. I’m really looking forwards to discussing this and more, meeting you shortly in Australia!

Dr Hannah Critchlow is an internationally-acclaimed neuroscientist with a background in neuropsychiatry. She is best known as the presenter of BBC’s Tomorrow’s World Live as well as for her work demystifying the human brain on regular radio, TV and festival platforms. Hannah’s work in science communication saw her named as a Top 100 UK scientist by the Science Council and one of Cambridge University’s most ‘inspirational and successful women in science’. During her PhD she was awarded a Cambridge University Fellowship and as an undergraduate received three University Prizes as Best Biologist.

4 reasons to trust (valid and reliable) psychometric assessments

It goes without saying that human behaviour is incredibly complicated. It’s determined by an intricate combination of factors, and – as you can imagine – trying to predict how a person is going to behave, or react, or perform is no easy task.

Enter psychometrics, whose goal is to get accurate and unbiased insight into people’s mental abilities, personality, and behaviour. But how on earth is this possible?

1. There’s a lot of evidence that they work

Organisational Psychologists have spent over five decades researching, creating and rigorously testing psychometric assessments that are robust enough to predict when and why a given person will be successful or not in a given job. And as someone who is working towards becoming an Organisational Psychologist, let me tell you that these folks are an extremely hard to impress, detail-focused and highly sceptical bunch.

There’s now a large body of highly credible scientific evidence that demonstrates that a person’s results on a (valid and reliable) psychometric assessment can strongly predict a number of different work-related factors, including:

  • Future job performance: how well they will learn new tasks, solve complex problems and perform on the job
  • Organisational fit: whether they’re likely to share the organisation’s values and feel more committed and engaged in their job
  • Safety behaviours: how likely they are to accept personal responsibility for safety at work and avoid risky behaviour
  • Behaviour and personality: how someone naturally prefers to behave at work, the kinds of behaviours they have adopted, and how difficult it is to sustain behavioural changes
  • Emotional intelligence: how well they can identify, understand, manage and use their own and other people’s emotions.

These kinds of assessments also give employers a standardised, fair and equitable way to compare candidates for a role, based on criteria that have been scientifically proven to predict success in a particular role.

2. They need to demonstrate reliability and validity

The next question has to be: how do we actually know that these assessments can really do what they say they will? It all comes down to two little words: reliability and validity.

These two properties are the foundation of psychometric assessments, and are the reason you can have confidence that psychometrics will help you identify and select the right people for a role.

So, what do we mean when we talk about reliability and validity? Let’s take a look at each concept on its own.

Reliability refers to the ability of an assessment tool to produce stable and consistent results. For example, a personality assessment should produce very similar results for the same candidate each time they complete it within a similar time period.

We can break reliability down a little further as well, into sub-categories that include test-retest reliability and internal consistency.

Test-retest reliability happens when we administer the same test to the same group of people several times, and achieve similar results each time. So, if someone is assessed as being a top performer in their first test sitting, a reliable test will give us a similar result the second time they complete the same test.

Internal consistency reliability examines the consistency between the different items within a test. This means that if there are two or more items in an assessment that measure the same construct – for example, in a safety assessment, there might be multiple items that assess a person’s locus of control – we would expect that the same person will answer all of the items in a similar way.

Validity refers to the extent to which an assessment measures what it is intended to measure. For example, a measure of intelligence should measure intelligence, and not something else, such as memory. Like reliability, validity has a number of sub-categories which all need to be met for a test to be considered a legitimate psychometric measuring tool.

A particularly important sub-category is predictive validity. This concept is all about how well a test score can predict performance on a set of future criteria.

A nice example of predictive validity is the incredibly strong and rigorous scientific evidence that a person’s score on a cognitive ability test predicts their future performance at work. In other words it is very likely that the higher a candidate’s score on a (valid and reliable) cognitive ability assessment, the better their job performance will be.

There are many other cases of strong and rigorous associations between people’s scores on a particular construct and their subsequent performance at work, including:

  • A robust association between a candidate’s score on a measure of work reliability or integrity and their rate of absenteeism from work
  • A clear association between candidate’s score on a measure of safety and their likelihood of suffering a workplace injury or accident.

3. They go through an extremely stringent development process

Developing a psychometric test is not the kind of endeavour that can happen overnight. While anyone can pull together a quiz or questionnaire and deliver some results to people (certain magazines do this very well – and they’re fun to complete), constructing a proper, valid and reliable psychometric assessment is a whole other world of complexity.

Because they do have such stringent criteria to meet and need to prove that they can provide genuine information about a candidate’s suitability or ‘fit’ for a particular role, psychometric tests can take up to 10 years to develop.

To be taken seriously, the test developers have numerous hoops to jump through. One of these is making sure that the items in the test are measuring the construct they’re supposed to measure – and just that particular construct – as precisely as possible.

This involves conducting an intricate statistical analysis to determine which items should be eliminated from or retained in the item pool, and whether additional items need to be developed.

Yet another challenge is ensuring that psychometric assessments remain up to date and relevant. This usually means that tests need to be continually updated over time, based on feedback and new research in the field.

4. They have safeguards to prevent faking or response distortion

‘But wait!’ you may say. ‘This is all very well and good, but what about candidates giving the answers they think you want in an assessment?’ And that’s a really good question.

Obviously, when candidates are applying for a job, they’re motivated to show you their very best side. This also means that they’re likely to be tempted to give fake or distorted responses on an assessment, such as telling you they’re more reliable than they really are.

This is a question that psychologists have pondered for many years, and there’s a whole body of psychological literature dedicated to it. From all of this research, there are a number of different – and effective – ways we can reduce the opportunity for candidates to fake their responses, including:

  • Verification testing: candidates complete the same assessment (with different questions) a second time under supervised conditions to verify their original results
  • Validity scales: checks are built into the assessments (by certain questions or algorithms) to detect whether candidates are trying to present an overly positive image of themselves or their behaviour

Making candidates aware of the consequences of faking: some psychometric assessment providers (Revelian included) also collect some fairly sophisticated forensic data behind the scenes, and are alerted when candidates exhibit suspicious behaviour. Alerting candidates of this before they begin the assessment and that their results may be deemed invalid if they do not respond honestly is a useful and effective method of reducing faking. So, as you can see, developing and delivering a valid, reliable and robust psychometric assessment is no mean feat and there are some extremely stringent guidelines attached.

And while this is a burden that we – as psychometric assessment developers – must bear, the great news for employers is that these same stringent guidelines mean you can be confident that tests meeting these requirements will give you accurate, fair and reliable predictions of how candidates will behave and perform at work.

Take short courses to tailor your leadership to your employees’ psychometrics

In addition to using psychometric tools to help find top talents for your business, it’s important to have the skills to manage and work with a range of personality types. We know this and have developed a range of short courses to help you communicate clearly with employees and make decisions effectively so that each individual is catered for and can get the support they need to work effectively and deliver results. 

About the author:

Jarrah Watkinson is a provisional psychologist undertaking a Masters of Organisational Psychology at Macquarie University. Jarrah is presently completing an internship at Revelian with the Sydney team, and during her time at Revelian Jarrah has been involved in a number of projects to deliver assessment and selection solutions across a range of industries. Jarrah is passionate about employee health and well-being, user-experience, and creating innovative ways to select and assess employees.

The Institute and Managers and Leaders have just partnered with Revelian, an Australian-owned company trusted by top employers around the world to provide psychometric assessments that reveal powerful insights about people, organisational culture and development. Revelian helps leaders to improve their HR metrics and find the best people for their organisation.

Find out more about how Revelian’s psychometric tools can help you recruit top talent here.

The big, fat lie on my CV. Why leadership is about creating a mentally healthy workplace.

Ok, it’s confession time. My CV is not 100% accurate. Actually, that’s not 100% accurate. I’ll re-phrase it and tell it how it is; I tell a big fat lie on my CV.

I guess that now I’ve gone public with this uncomfortable fact, I’m going to need to fish out my CV and ‘make it good’. Were I ever to apply for a new position it’s pretty likely that I’ll be ‘googled’ and this article will probably pop up. Given that fact, I’m probably best to correct my omission and admit to my … my … my what?

My anxiety disorder.

My anxiety disorder that stemmed from doing a job that I absolutely hated, in a workplace environment I found incredibly stressful and toxic.

I ‘survived’ in the role for just 4 months. And then I called and said I wasn’t coming back. Ever. And I didn’t. I never went back. Not even to complete the dreaded ‘clear your desk’ routine. I simply stayed home one morning and decided to pretend the job had never existed. And I deleted it completely from my CV. It was easier that way. It meant that I didn’t need to explain that I’d taken a job and quit after 4 months. That I was a quitter. Or worse than that; that I was a quitter who called one morning and said I wouldn’t be coming into work. Ever again.

The morning that I called to say I was never coming back will live in my memory for years to come. That’s because it was totally different from the previous four months of Monday mornings to Friday mornings. On each of those mornings, I had travelled from home to Wynyard Station in Sydney by train. I had then sat on a bench on the platform of Wynyard Station for anything from 30minutes to 2hours (yes, on more than one occasion I sat for two whole hours!) trying to muster the courage to walk into the office. Every single one of those minutes sitting on that bench on the platform was nothing less than personally excruciating. Each minute was spent trying to pluck up the courage to stand up and go into work. On a few occasions I didn’t. I simply walked over to the opposite platform, boarded a train heading back the way I came, and went home.

Even when I did make it into the office (via the longest possible route from Wynyard Station to Castlereagh Street), I headed straight for the bloke’s toilets. Once in the toilet, I invariably needed to remove my shirt. And wait. And wait. And wait.

This waiting game was due to the fact that I’d developed a very weird ‘sweating issue’. And when I say sweating, I don’t mean normal ‘Sydney style sweating’. I mean sweating that resembles swimming. In a swimming pool. Fully clothed. My time in the toilet of the toxic workplace was spent wafting my shirt in a vain attempt to dry it out, and mopping my torso with a towel. A towel that I had been forced to carry with me when the weird sweating thing had started about two weeks into the job.

Needless to say, I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Looking back now, I guess I’m pretty lucky. I did pluck up the courage to seek help and that help really helped. The psychologist suggested that quitting the job might be the best course of action.

And yet, the odd thing is that I continue to lie on my CV. I continue to pretend that ‘it’ didn’t happen. And I know exactly why this is. It’s because I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed to say that I couldn’t cope. That I was weak. That ‘it’ (a toxic workplace) got to me. That I quit.

In the cold light of day, if I were to describe the workplace (that description is for a different blog on another day!) it would be crystal clear to everyone that the workplace was a complete disaster. It was totally toxic. From top to bottom. And yet, I remain embarrassed. Embarrassed that I couldn’t cope. That ‘it’ got to me. That I didn’t man up and push through. That I regularly sat frozen on that bench on the platform at Wynyard Station – sometimes for up to two hours. That I sometimes just went home. That I stood in the toilet mopping the sweat from my body with a towel I carried solely for that purpose.

That I wasn’t mentally strong enough to cope with a workplace that wasn’t mentally healthy.

And I’m still not. I continue to lie on my CV.

And I’m certainly not alone or unique in this. Research by beyondblue has found that up to 1 in 5 employees is working with a mental health issue. They also found that whilst 91% of staff thought that mental health in the workplace was a crucial issue, only 52% felt that their workplace was mentally healthy. In the UK, stress, depression and anxiety is the single biggest cause of absence from work – accounting for almost 13million days off work every year.

Here in Australia, all States have WH&S legislation that require employers to provide and maintain a working environment that is safe and without risks to health, including psychological health. The onus is firmly on employers to provide a workplace that is mentally (and physically!) healthy, and to monitor the mental health of their employees.

Creating a mentally healthy workplace is a key leadership issue. As leaders we must ensure that our workplace operates in a way that protects workers from harm to their psychological health. Doing nothing is no longer an option. It’s time for the stigma surrounding mental health to end. It’s time for change. Maybe it’s time for me to change my CV.

 

In February and March 2018, the Institute of Managers and Leaders, in conjunction with beyondblue, will deliver a workplace mental health series in 18 different locations around Australia. The series – called Leadership Outlook will focus on equipping helping businesses with the practical strategies and resources to create mentally heathy workplaces. Click here to register for your nearest event.

 

By David Pich FIML, Chief Executive

Institute of Managers and Leaders