July 24, 2008
Reflecting further on the British Open and reading the coverage in the papers this week, I realised that another lesson about pressure management was played out at Royal Birkdale last weekend. The eventual winner, Padraig Harrington almost had to pull out of the tournament after injuring his wrist in practice. He got through an Open Championship that was played in hellish weather conditions to win out – and when he was interviewed afterwards he cited the wrist injury (and the threat of its return) as a positive factor in enabling him to win and, more specifically, in helping him to manage the immense pressure of the situation.
When questioned about why this was the case, he revealed that he actively used the injured wrist as a distraction from the pressure over the four days of the tournament. By focusing on protecting the wrist and how he needed to flex his game to take account of the injury he found a way of improving his concentration for ‘managing’ his way around one of the toughest courses in the world. It also enabled him to focus on his own game and not worry unduly about what the competition was doing. Harrington gave us all a great example of how a positive mindset can work to our advantage in adversity – he took a potentially disastrous situation and made it work for him in the context of defending the championship.
Another player who used a different perspective to his advantage was the leading Amateur Chris Wood, who like Justin Rose ten years ago, managed to beat the majority of the professional golfers by coming in the top five. Unlike Harrington, no one had any expectations of him, but he used this lack of pressure and attention to put in an amazing performance. Because he had not been there before there was nothing to be afraid of so he used his inexperience positively and to good effect. I suspect that this week he will not be ruing the fact that, as an amateur, he couldn’t collect the £150,000 his finish merited, but will be celebrating the performance, media attention and the experience it gave him.
Both of these great sportsmen have shown us that by taking a different mental approach and by being positive – great things are possible. And Harrington, in particular, reminds us that when things go wrong at work you can still have a happy ending!
1 Comment | 
Management, Personal Resilience, Uncategorized | Tagged: managing, performance, pressure, pressure management | 
Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
July 9, 2008
Have you ever dreaded going in to work in the morning? And I mean really dreaded it. I’m not talking about those mornings that we’ve all had when we’d rather stay in bed and avail ourselves of the infamous ‘duvet day’. I’m talking about something more fundamental than that – where a particular aspect of your job makes you feel so anxious, uncomfortable - or even fearful - that you just can’t face it.
Joseph Heller, the author of Catch 22, captured this feeling in his book Something Happened when he wrote the following about life in the office of his main protagonist, Bob Slocum:
If you asked any one of them [employees] if he would choose to spend the rest of his life working for the company, he would give you a resounding No!, regardless of what inducements were offered….. If you asked me that same question today, I would also give you a resounding No! and add: “I think I’d rather die now.”
Elsewhere Bob adds “Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.”
While not all of us have experienced this feeling at work, I’d be willing to bet that there are plenty of people out there who have done or are doing right now. There are many sets of circumstances that can cause these feelings – work relationships, feeling that you are going to lose your job at any minute, lack of role clarity / sense of purpose, unrealistic workload / timescales, unbalanced working hours, the general climate / atmosphere of the workplace, your depressing working environment / office, the level of autonomy you have over your deliverables …..the list of potential causes goes on and any combination of these that might lead to feelings of dread.
What’s interesting is how many of these ‘sources of dread’ stem from relationships – particularly that with your boss which, of course, can be such a key determinant of what work feels like. Other aspects influenced by your boss include level of pay, whether you know what’s going on higher up in the organisation and whether work feels like fun.
But what you can do if you feel this way? The first and most important thing is to take control. Stand back and look at the situation to understand which of the above factors are at play. But also consider your own role in this – have your needs gone beyond what this department in this organisation can offer you? Have you played any role in causing this situation?
Once you understand how things have got to this situation you have to take appropriate action. You may need to discuss the matter with a work friend to get a reality check and find out whether others share your perceptions. You may need to speak directly with your boss and find a way to raise the problem in an open and honest way. Or you may need more help with understanding the problem from a counselor or welfare officer. You may simply need to leave. The important thing here is that you move yourself on, that you don’t accept the status quo and drag yourself to work every day for the next five years hating every second. Taking action will change your perspective and help you to generate options for change: Change the job design, change the environment, work in a different part of the organisation or even a different organisation. The bottom-line is – if you don’t like it, change it.
Most importantly, don’t be like Bob Slocum who said “No one understands that carrying on bravely was the easiest thing to do.”
No Comments » | Management, Personal Resilience, Well-being | Tagged: Anxious, autonomy, Bob Slocum, Confidence, control, Joseph Heller | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
July 2, 2008
One again I have the pleasure of sharing my blog with my good friend and colleauge Gordon Tinline who is a Director at my University spin off company Robertson Cooper - I hope you find Gordon’s post of interest and as always I welcome your comments!
Understanding how to balance Control and Support is critical for managing pressure and maintaining a sense of well-being – indeed, both are acknowledged in the Health and Safety Executive’s Management Standards for Work-Related Stress. Research shows that when work demands are high the difference between the highest and the lowest levels of performance is largely predicted by perceptions of control and the extent to which employees feel supported.
However, it seems to me that there is quite a difficult balance to strike between these elements. This is because performance outcomes are influenced by multiple factors – including your line manager’s behaviour, your behaviour and the context you are operating in.
I’ve recently been working with a team of professional footballers at the very highest level of the game. They encounter a version of this issue as they try to maintain control over the direction of their careers when surrounded by agents and other advisers who present themselves as essential sources of support. The risk here is that an over-reliance on these sources of support turns the puppeteer into the puppet – the result is that situations where agents end up exerting a controlling influence over the player are commonplace. This is understandably frustrating for many football managers, who are keen to educate young players to be able to make good judgements about when to exert control and when to draw on their support network.
There are obvious parallels here with the workplace situation – we need to be given enough space and autonomy to do our best work, but at the same time we need to know that we are not alone and can call on our manager / organisation for support when we need it.
Over-reliance on support means losing control. The solution lies in understanding where you need to exert control and where you need to seek the advice of others with more knowledge of a particular area - or whom you trust as truly having your best interests at heart. You are at the centre of the axis and to get the balance right you have to make good judgements about what you need as you go through your career.
Gordon Tinline
No Comments » | Guest Blog Spots, Leadership, Management, Productivity, Stress, Well-being | Tagged: autonomy, control, Gordon Tinline, HSE, managing pressure, support, Well-being, work related stress | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
June 19, 2008
Last month Personnel Today reported research from Frankfurt University showing that ‘professional smilers’, such as flight attendants, sales personnel, call centre operators, waiters and others in contact with the public for extended periods of time, were at risk of seriously harming their health. Professor Dieter Zapf, a psychologist and researcher into human emotions at Frankfurt University, said that fake friendliness led to depression, stress and negatively affected the immune system. The implication of the findings was that every time a person is forced to repress their true feelings, there are damaging consequences for their health.
This is hardly surprising, but for me puts the spotlight on recruitment decisions – those of both candidate and recruiter. For the recruiter, it’s critical to know what you’re looking for and how to identify it in the candidate. For example, if you are looking for a friendly, sociable flight attendant you need to understand the enduring personality characteristics that drive the behaviour you are looking for, as well as checking that the person has the skills to interact with passengers effectively. If someone has a personality characterised by high levels of neuroticism and introversion they are very unlikely to behave in the manner you require – no matter how well they perform in the role play at the assessment centre. Learnt skills can mask true personality in the short-term, but it never lasts.
Which brings me to the candidate’s responsibility in these situations: No matter how much someone wants the job there is no point in them pretending to be someone that they are not. If you like to spend time quietly problem-solving, analysing data or writing reports you are unlikely to enjoy the kind of work that requires a lot of human contact, outgoing behaviour and constant smiling. So it’s important to be honest with yourself and the recruiter and to self-select out of the process when this kind of mismatch occurs.
For people, who are naturally outgoing (in personality terms, extroverts who are open to experience and have low levels of neuroticism) I doubt that working in these roles would be inherently stressful, as the Frankfurt study claims. However, for someone who wasn’t completely honest during the recruitment process, or got the job as the result of a poor selection decision by the employer, these kinds of roles could become excruciating. I’d like to see the results of a study like this that controlled for personality type.
http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/05/16/45890/enforced-smiling-in-the-workplace-puts-health-at-risk.html
No Comments » | Management, Recruitment and Selection, Stress, Well-being | Tagged: Depression, personality, recruitment, Stress, stressful | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
June 16, 2008
I recently did some work for City & Guilds, the awarding body associated with vocational learning, who have just released the results of a national survey focusing on ‘happiness’. They found that ‘pay’ ranked only 4th in their Happiness Index behind the following aspects of working life:
• A stimulating and interesting job
• Financial security
• Good work-life balance
With all the strike action going on in the UK at the moment - Shell’s haulage workers went on strike this week - you’d be forgiven for thinking that pay is still as important as everyone thinks it is for employees. But these results offer an alternative view and reflect what I hear when I talk to both workers and managers – that, yes, fair pay is a factor, but without stimulating, challenging work and a good work-life balance it’s not enough.
Having good relationships with work colleagues was also seen as important by respondents. This should be no surprise as we all have examples of our working lives being damaged by poor relationships with our boss and/or colleagues. Conversely, if you have good relationships work-based friends can be a critical source of support when times are tough or when the pressure is on.
All of the above factors are fundamental to employee well-being and happiness, as well as a firm’s ability to retain their employees and deliver sustainable success. Of course, given the current negative economic climate and the associated media hype, it is harder for employers to maintain levels of well-being / happiness. Staff are focusing on the security of their jobs and may not give much credence to their employers’ overtures about the benefits of well-being at work. But if well-being levels were good before the economic downturn resilience levels are likely to be higher now, staff more receptive to change and the task of managing them in the current context easier all round.
There are lessons for all of us here in terms of how we motivate, retain and develop our people. This survey, together with the Learning and Skills Council’s ‘Train for Gain’ programme, is encouraging all employers to stimulate people, give them more autonomy, provide a reasonable level of security and invest in creating a high morale work environment - and that’s no bad thing.
1 Comment | Engagement, Management, Personal Resilience, Productivity, Well-being | Tagged: autonomy, happiness, motivate, pressure, resilience, Well-being, work-life balance | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
June 6, 2008
It’s been tragic this week to see arguably the most talented footballer of a generation, Paul Gascoigne, being admitted for treatment again after years of depression and alcoholism. One of the most thought provoking reactions to the news came from our most successful club manager of all time, Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson. He reminded us that he tried to sign Gascoigne for United in the late 1980s and, he believes, that things could have been very different had he done so. He was quoted as saying the following:
“We had a structure of players who could have helped him and I think it would have given him some discipline. Maybe it would have helped him, too.”
There are lessons here about the perils of following a career path driven by the quest for thrills and money, whatever the occupation. Indeed, it has been reported that it started badly when Sir Alex left the UK for his holiday that year believing he had signed his man, only to return to discover alledgedly that another club had tempted Gascoigne to sign for them by buying his mother a very large house. This would have been undeniably tempting for a young man, but is hardly the right platform for a stable, open and two-way psychological contract between player and club.
Ferguson’s point about structure and discipline is the important one though – we all want to tap into the raw talent and enthusiasm of younger employees, but it needs to be carefully nurtured if we are to generate sustained levels of high performance that serve the organisation over the long-term. Managers of all kinds have a responsibility for creating a climate where discipline and structure sits in the background, but is not constraining and does not stamp out energy and creativity.
There’s no doubt that younger workers can benefit from the parental / mentoring role that Ferguson plays for his team members and it can be that which makes the difference between a career defined by 2-3 explosive years followed by burn-out and twenty years of sustained brilliance. Returning to the football example – just look at two players from Gascoigne’s era who have just lifted the European Champion’s League trophy for the second time - Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs. The latter has also just broken Sir Bobby Charlton’s all time appearance record for Manchester United at the age of 34. That could have been Paul Gascoigne.
No Comments » | Leadership, Management, Well-being | Tagged: high performance, psychological contract, Talent | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
May 27, 2008
This week I’ve been at the Police Federation conference in Bournemouth presenting the results of a survey that my University spin-off company Robertson Cooper administered to Inspectors and Chief Inspectors in England and Wales. The Police Federation is the staff association that represents rank and file officers in all 43 police forces in England and Wales – that’s the majority of serving police officers so its views carry some weight!
Much of the debate at the conference centred on police officers’ right to take strike action. In this country this is a right that they don’t currently possess because of the critical role that the police play in upholding law and order. This is something that has been taken for granted for many years, but now that we have entered more uncertain economic times where strike action is becoming more commonplace (see my earlier post on the Oil Workers strike things are changing. This situation for police officers was exacerbated by the Home Secretary’s refusal to grant police officers a pay rise for which they had been lobbying earlier in the year.
All this got me thinking about the psychological side of strike action and what having the right take it is really about for police officers. The conclusion that I came to was that it’s about feeling in control. Police officers have to deal with some of the most difficult, dangerous and stressful situations that you can imagine – where often they can not control what will happen next. Having the right to feed back to their employers about their working conditions through political lobbying alone is just not going to feel like it’s enough – particularly when all other sectors have the right to strike. Entering a protracted process of negotiation (where someone that they don’t know and have never met is representing them) is hardly likely to give officers the sense that they are in control of your own destiny. In this sense, it’s easy to see why having the right to withdraw their services in extreme circumstances may provide a powerful means of taking control. In many ways, it’s the ultimate form of feedback to the organisation!
I’m not saying that police officers definitely should have the right to strike – there are clearly issues of national security and the need to uphold the law to consider. But equally, not having the right when the rest of the UK workforce does have it fundamentally affects the psychological contract between officers and their employers. As always, I’d welcome your views.
1 Comment | Management, Productivity, Stress, Well-being | Tagged: control, police, Stress | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
May 21, 2008
I’ve been struck recently by how widespread the application of Lean Management principles has become in the UK economy – both in the private and public sectors. Traditionally reserved for the manufacturing and retail sectors, Lean is a model for managing organisations in a way that focuses only on delivering exactly what the customer wants, when they want it. In other words, there is no slack or waste in the system and this allows businesses to keep costs to an absolute minimum. The current trend for using these principles pre-dates the credit crunch, but the shortage of cash in the economy makes them more relevant than ever.
However, these are not new ideas. In fact, the American Edwards Deming pioneered many of the techniques associated with the Lean approach when he exported this way of thinking (which became Total Quality Management and Just-In-Time manufacturing) to the Japanese car industry in the ‘50s - a time when US car manufacturers were on top of the world - rich, comfortable….. and complacent. This complacency came back to bite them over the next forty years as leaner foreign manufacturers gradually eroded their market share. And the effects of this abide to this day, as I’m reminded by the proliferation of Japanese cars I see every time I return to the States!!
The claims made for the efficiency gains that Lean processes can deliver sound impressive – with 50% improvements in performance and quality being perfectly achievable in relatively short timescales. But are we to believe that there are no negative consequences to such major change? Think about it for a minute - even if the costs vs. outputs balance better on paper after the changes are made, removing cost generally means removing people (often in significant numbers) as well as other resources. How can removing hundreds of people from an organisation not affect morale, motivation and employee engagement?
As a result of such changes, the workload of some people grows exponentially which, in turn, puts pressure on work relationships, communications and employees’ ability to maintain quality under pressure. For some this will change what work feels like forever in terms of the nature of the relationship they have with both their job and their employer. These people may feel that their employer has broken the psychological contract and the risk of the best people leaving is increased. All of this is against a new background of relative job insecurity that has accompanied new economic times and this is a particularly unusual feeling for public sector workers who in the past have been immune to such concerns. But these days, given the current climate, we can all justifiably ask ourselves the question “Will I be next?”
It’s here that the spotlight falls upon leadership and internal communication. Because I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with the Lean model, just that this kind of ‘all or nothing’ cost-based approach requires extremely high levels of leadership skill and ability if it is to be a success. Apart from managing the aftermath of the change process itself, this is fundamentally about culture change and the trick is not to lose all of the good aspects of the old culture while bringing in the new ways of thinking and acting. For example, I have talked before about discretionary effort - something which has been given willingly in many organisations where in the past there has been space and time to go beyond the current task. But one of the likely side-effects of the Lean approach is a new employee mindset that sees spending time thinking about the bigger issues as a waste of time in a world where it’s only important to focus on the essentials of the next deliverable. Of course, organisations can manage impressions to the outside world so that it looks like they are becoming leaner and fitter for purpose, but inside these things can quickly take on a life of their own and before you know it you have a completely new culture! This is fine if you want a completely new culture and weren’t fussy about what you lost from the old one, but most organisations have positive differentiators that are worth holding onto – cherishing even.
Radical change always has consequences. Lean is a very efficient way of finding the dead wood, but it can be a brutally blunt instrument so the changes it suggests should be thoroughly evaluated for sustainability and implemented wisely. Above all, it should only be considered if a leadership group is confident and talented enough to pull it off.
1 Comment | Engagement, Leadership, Management, Productivity, Talent | Tagged: culture change, employee engagement, Leadership, Lean, morale, Motivation, performance | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
May 13, 2008
This week, I’m really pleased to welcome another colleague and good friend to share my blog, Gordon Tinline. Gordon is a Director of Robertson Cooper and a Chartered Occupational Psychologist. Most of his work in the last four or five years has been helping organisations reduce stress and realise bottom-line benefits through well-being improvement. Increasingly this work focuses on the links between leadership behaviour and staff well-being. Over to you Gordon…
Middle management is so often the forgotten layer in organisations – the focus is always on high profile senior leaders and those subject to the pressures of the frontline – whether that be police officers on the street, Northern Rock bank tellers or nurses in Accident and Emergency. But in reality, being a middle manager is just as difficult – in many cases, more difficult.
My work on well-being as a Director of Cary’s university spin-off company, Robertson Cooper has shown that those in middle management positions tend to experience demands from both above and below. This is often compounded by a feeling of getting all the grief without the power to influence the root causes of many of the problems faced.
Picture the scene: Your boss is on your back and asking you to justify last month’s results… “Oh and by the way, can you also dig up some information to support the strategic change initiative I’m working on at the moment?” Piling on the pressure, your staff keep asking you why they are not being kept in the picture about all the recent changes that they perceive as being designed to make their lives difficult. You are seen by them as ‘the problem’ in that you clearly know what’s going on and are just not telling them. Of course, they can’t see your perspective - you don’t know much more than they do, and when you ask your boss he doesn’t seem to know either – but tells you to stay positive and keep morale high. So it’s back to square one!
So what are your options? A. Get promoted, but be careful what you wish for unless you are heading directly for the top tier!! B. Keep sympathising with your staff and tell them you know how they feel - that it’s all down to the organisation and your boss. But then don’t be surprised when they rate you as a weak manager in your next 360 appraisal and your relationship with your boss deteriorates. C. Chill out and try not to let it get to you – it’ll soon be the weekend and you can forget it all for at least half a day before you start preparing for the week ahead and checking your blackberry in case anything has occurred to your boss on his Sunday stroll.
Of course, none of these options are really going to get you anywhere on their own. The answers lie in building open and constructive relationships upwards, downwards and sideways. Get closer to your boss and find out what it is that’s driving his behaviour – what are his real goals and what makes him tick. Start to join this up with the needs of those you manage - make things more transparent for them. This is not always easy and you will need to devote time to it as a specific goal…….on top of your current workload.
But this is my point- the best middle managers are able to step back from the day-to-day tasks and multiple demands from above and below. They make time to consider the vital role that they play as an ‘operator’ of many of the organisation’s strategic aims and policies; that is, by taking a different perspective middle managers can start to see themselves as the lynchpin of delivery, as opposed to a pawn for more senior managers to move around on a whim.
And finally, option (c) above is not entirely facile - the middle manager needs to learn to switch off. Work pressures may be endless, but you have to believe that you are not failing (yourself or your employer) by not being able to work endlessly to keep everyone happy. If you fall into this trap the result will be a downward spiral of performance and health where no one wins.
Gordon Tinline
No Comments » | Leadership, Management, Well-being | Tagged: 360 appraisal, leaders, manage, middle management, middle managers, performance, pressure, staff | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
May 8, 2008
With the teacher’s strike, the Grangemouth oil refinery worker’s strike in Scotland and other groups considering industrial action, we have to ask the question: Are we going back to the bad old days of industrial relations we saw in the 1970s - the ‘them and us’ mentality that caused so much damage all those years ago?
It is certainly the case that in difficult financial times, with jobs insecure, pension funds under pressure and financial markets in turmoil relations between management and employees often get strained. On the other hand, if employers engage with their staff, treat them with respect and communicate with them accurately and honestly about what’s happening the consequences can be managed more easily.
Senior management must be proactive about trying to empathise with the perspectives of their employees - who at times, like these, feel less secure about their jobs and more worried about their own personal financial situation. They therefore rely on the skills of their manager and other organisational leaders to provide accurate information about the viability of the organisation and future plans so they can make good decisions to safeguard themselves and their families. Where possible, employers should be making every effort to involve staff in decision making on these important issues – this effort will be repaid tenfold when things settle down and the workforce appreciate that they were dealt with fairly. Ultimately, engaging staff in any process of change helps to ensure survival now and growth in the future.
Taking a step back, I think there are signs that the current unrest is not so much to do with salary issues, but more an underlying concern about the openness of management and their lack of engagement with and trust of their employees. There are also signs that the shear amount of work that certain professions are being asked to do is taking its toll and is not in line with the rewards offered – and that’s rewards in all their forms, not just pay. For example, earlier this month figures from The National Association of Head Teachers showed that more than a thousand Head Teachers and Deputies are leaving the profession early every year because of work pressures.
General Secretary Mick Brookes blamed a long-hours culture which saw nearly 44% of his members working 60-hour weeks. This is reflective of a general sea change in public attitudes which indicates that people have started to think that ‘enough is enough’, and that society will have to change. Undoubtedly, it’s going to take some strong leadership and a reappraisal of our values to get us out of an ever frenetic life style, so I’ll leave you with a question even bigger than the one I started with:
Where is the drive for that change going to come from?
1 Comment | Engagement, Leadership, Management, Personal Resilience | Tagged: Engagement, leaders, Leadership, engage staff, work pressure | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
