Richard Hurd | Co-Creation

What Science Teaches Us About Ourselves and Work

Richard Hurd — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 12:55:18 +0000

Sometimes it feels like 21st century life is at odds with being human, doesn’t it?

Take work, for instance. The fundamentals of our working lives have changed and continue changing, ever more profoundly and rapidly. However, recent economic and technological developments are not matched by improvements to how employees feel about their work.

In their recent report (State of the Global Workplace 2022 * link to full report), Gallup confirmed that 60% of us are emotionally detached at work and 19% are miserable – despite the long-held and widespread belief that engaged people are more productive.

This raises some important questions about work and our current relationship with it:

Is growth a means of fulfilling purpose or an end in itself?
Are the demands of change ‘retiring’ important values (e.g. respect, empathy, kindness)?
Is more stress making or breaking us?
Is technology (in practice, not theory) our friend or foe?
Is autonomy disappearing and, if so, does it matter?
What’s the impact of valuing individuality more than teams, for example?

Such questions are complex, and each is worthy of a full response. However, the focus of this article is simply to explore why we’re so dissatisfied with our work and offer some suggestions on what we can do about it.

Well, science provides us with some interesting and potentially helpful answers.

Developments in neuroscience are helping us understand why we’re increasingly conflicted in our work, what triggers this, and how we can help ourselves (and others) maintain wellbeing and performance.

But first, the bad news:

WE’RE SURVIVAL GEEKS

You might already have realised we’re survival geeks, armed with brains wired first and foremost to detect and avoid threats. You’re probably also aware that our prehistoric ancestors’ strong ‘flight or fight’ response enabled them to flee predators and defeat rivals for their food and shelter.

However, our brains have hardly evolved since then and certainly not commensurately with the demands of modern working. We’re still brilliant at anticipating threats, but our ‘fight or flight’ response can distract us and compromise our higher cognitive functions – including those that support collaboration, innovation and decision-making.

Which is a big problem affecting everyone who doesn’t feel safe and secure at work.

2. WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S NEXT

Contrary to what we might claim about ourselves at job interviews, we prefer certainty in work and life and, consequently, expend considerable effort trying to anticipate the future. Which is quite challenging when we’re increasingly asked to live with uncertainty and avoid speculation – at least until our leaders have had time to determine the way forward and communicate everything to us.

But we can’t help ourselves, and it’s not our fault.

So, good luck to all the change agents out there wrestling with this one.

3. WE’RE BORN LAZY

Well, our brains are quite lazy or certainly not as industrious as we might like to think. This enables us to conserve energy for more important tasks – such as out-running a sabre-toothed tiger or brawling with a neanderthal. This might explain why some of us enjoy stapling documents so much – it doesn’t require much brainpower!

However, this tendency means we rely on our existing habits (since these require less effort) and avoid learning new things (since these require more). And this is true, however productive this might be in the long-term and irrespective of the recent discovery that this affords us cognitive protection as we age.

So, here’s a challenge to all you learning and development professionals: We’d rather not try to learn anything new – if that’s OK with you!

4. STRESS IS GOOD AND BAD

…depending on the dose. And the person, of course. And their situation or context.

It’s quite complicated. Too little stress and you won’t maximise the performance of your pre-frontal cortex (the area of the brain that enables you to control your goal-centred behaviour); too much and it simply shuts down.

Unfortunately, this might be challenging news for anyone who thinks stress is to be avoided at all costs, but no more encouraging for those who think you should merely ignore it and get on with your work. Get the dose wrong and you might be in big trouble, so don’t get it wrong.

Damn it, I’ve just increased my stress thinking about it!

5. WE’RE SOCIAL BEINGS

Being part of a tribe enabled us to survive. We simply might have been unable to out-run the sabre-toothed tiger or successfully wrestle a neanderthal for food without others’ help. And this very same survival instinct means our desire to connect with others remains strong to this day.

But make no mistake, social rejection is a performance assassin. It reduces our sense of meaning and purpose, negatively impacts our thinking and limits persistence with difficult tasks.

Which might make us think a bit differently about inducting newbies to our own teams.

Now, the good news.

There are things we can all do that complement our brain’s natural function, maintain our wellbeing and enhance our performance. This includes, but isn’t limited to, the following:

FOCUS ON REWARDS

Because our brains are wired to detect and avoid threats, the consequences of using these to motivate performance are generally negative, sometimes significantly so. Threats cause our brains to prepare for a run or fight; when neither occurs, we feel anxious and distracted, our memory deteriorates, and our focus narrows. How unhelpful is that?

Conversely, focusing on potential rewards makes us feel more positive and increases empathy, openness, and willingness to collaborate. Consequently, we become more creative, innovative and resilient.

So, focus on rewards if you want to improve performance. But please don’t call it a no-brainer!

PERSONALISE STRESS

Stress motivates performance by stimulating the brain’s prefrontal cortex (the area controlling goal-centred behaviour), but too much will overwhelm it. The trick is to provide the right level of support and challenge, although this varies from individual to individual, sometimes from one day to the next. The key is to understand each person’s context. So, if you want to get it right, make sure you know them well or ask them if it feels OK.

You see, stress is just our evolutionary friend, and getting the amount right for every individual is one of the most important contributions to performance you can make.

BUILD TEAMS

Organisations typically emphasise individual accountability through goals, development and rewards particularly. However, teams outperform individuals, in part by leveraging the social connections our brains need to perform at their best.

Nevertheless, effective teams only emerge when all their members are committed to a common purpose and shared approach to its fulfilment…and only then when the culture is characterised by psychological safety (i.e. everyone’s free to be and express themselves) and mutual accountability (i.e. they hold each other responsible for their voluntary commitments).

So remember: ‘All for one and one for all’ make us happier and more productive.

TEACH OLD DOGS NEW TRICKS

Recent developments have changed our understanding of learning as we age. Neuroplasticity is the term we use to reflect the capacity of our brains and neural networks to change their connections in response to new challenges or stimuli. In simple terms, we’ve discovered we’re more able to continue learning new things in our later years than we thought. Furthermore, doing this protects our cognitive function as we age – so it’s a win-win.

But remember: our brains are lazy and rely on old habits to conserve energy, so we might need encouragement to start and persist with this. This is where mindset comes in. A growth mindset means you believe your abilities can be developed through hard work, whereas a fixed mindset indicates you consider these innate – you have them, or you don’t. But growth mindset is consistent with neuroplasticity findings and strongly associated with better learning outcomes.

And the best news of all is we can all develop a growth mindset at any time.

So, why not get started on this right now?

For more information or support implementing any of these ideas, contact Co-Creation on 0161 969 2512, or email: info@co-creation.group

* COPYRIGHT STANDARDS This document contains proprietary research, copyrighted and trademarked materials of Gallup, Inc. Accordingly, international and domestic laws and penalties guaranteeing patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret protection safeguard the ideas, concepts and recommendations related within this document. The materials contained in this document and/or the document itself may be downloaded and/or copied provided that all copies retain the copyright, trademark and any other proprietary notices contained on the materials and/or document. No changes may be made to this document without the express written permission of Gallup, Inc.

Co-Creation Blog : Developing Teams – The Most Overlooked Source of Competitive Advantage?

Richard Hurd — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 17:00:17 +0000

When it comes to helping their organisations develop people-based competitive advantage, what do most HR executives prioritise?

A quick glance at a random selection of HR Directors’ agendas suggests it might be leadership, culture, engagement, talent or, increasingly, wellbeing – all worthy considerations, but hardly overlooked.

In contrast, developing teams earns not so much as a footnote in most HR strategies, despite many compelling reasons for its prioritisation, including (but not limited to) the following:

1) Teams are the primary unit of production – on average we spend about 54% of our time working in them and probably much more contributing towards them (source: Oxford Review Special Report on High-Performance Teams 2019)

2) They’re perfectly suited to resolving complex, urgent, and unprecedented problems that require learning at speed and sustained commitment – a summary of many organisations’ current challenges (source: Oxford Review Special Report on High-Performance Teams 2019)

3) They fulfil fundamental social needs for connection and belonging which underpins individuals’ engagement and contribution (source: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)

As Kenneth H. Blanchard once memorably quipped, ‘None of us is as smart as all of us’ – although he might have added that in today’s rapidly changing, increasingly complex, highly specialised world, ‘None of us is smart enough to do very much without all of us.’

So, why don’t we prioritise developing teams more?

It’s possible many of us still negatively associate it with running around together outdoors (usually when it’s cold and wet) and completing relatively pointless tasks (build a raft, cross a river, transport some eggs or something similar in the process) or being encouraged to share uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that many would prefer remained private. At worst, such events evoke dread, at best they might be considered harmless fun. Few genuinely anticipate any significant and sustained benefits to the team’s effectiveness (for which some development professionals have a lot to answer for).

Now, some executives might simply consider team building to be an integral component of leadership. However, curricula typically focus on developing leaders’ attributes and not usually on gaining any practical understanding of how to develop the teams on which their performance ultimately depends.

Most importantly, there’s an inherent, cultural bias (at least in most organisations) towards individual accountability which is rigorously reinforced through individual performance objectives, development interventions and rewards – all of which goes some way to explaining the low prioritisation of team building.

But if it’s important to develop teams, how do we do it effectively?

Recent authors have thrown more light on the discipline. Two texts are particularly interesting and potentially particularly important.

Katzenbach and Smith (The Wisdom of Teams, HBS School Press) emphasised the causal relationship between the team’s performance requirements on its effectiveness. A demanding performance challenge creates great teams, not team-building exercises, or leaders with particular profiles – ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ after all. A shared purpose – effectively the team’s expression of their performance challenge – is fundamental to team building, as is working together to determine a common approach to collaboratively fulfilling it. This understanding, borne of their extensive observations of teams in many different organisations, also enabled the authors to conclude that not all groups need to become teams (consider a company executive operating primarily through its respective functional departments and producing little or nothing collectively), and not all teams need to be high performing (only those with the most demanding performance challenges require the level of investment that this inevitably requires) – a clear departure from the misguided convention that all groups benefit from developing closer and more interdependent working.

Whereas Katzenbach and Smith focused principally on organisational team-building disciplines, Amy Edmundson (The Fearless Organization, Wiley) emphasised cultural and behavioural aspects by linking the development of innovation for competitive advantage to psychological safety and accountability. In short, she argued that high levels of psychological safety and mutual accountability enable and motivate teams to increase the intellectual friction they experience when working together (something diversity alone can’t provide) and that this fosters better innovation.

Together, these texts provide the basis for a fundamentally different, more effective approach to building teams.

What does this mean for team development?

The implications of the findings I’ve referred to here are that team building interventions should be systematic, research-based and focused on tangibly improving their performance (not just improving general feelings or relationships between members).

They should enable leaders and their teams to determine together a compelling, shared purpose and an effective, collaborative approach to its fulfilment – because this is what differentiates ‘real teams’ from ‘pseudo teams’ (groups aspiring to become a ‘real team’ but lacking any common purpose and/or collaborative approach to its fulfilment). High levels of psychological safety and mutual accountability should be developed through the process (as opposed, for example, from charging through the countryside with their team in tow).

The process centres on some fundamental questions for leaders and their teams designed to help them determine their focus and function. Development professionals can valuably assist such interventions, but only if they understand the principles that underpin this approach (otherwise you might be better off asking them to help you build a raft to transport eggs across a river, so to speak).

Why not consider these now for your team?

1) Do the performance demands made on our group require us to produce something tangible together that exceeds the sum of our individual parts? (YES = you have the potential to become a ‘real team’ and, if the performance required is particularly demanding, a ‘high-performance team’)

2) For what purpose does our team exist and how will we measure our success? (ANSWER = your common purpose & performance goals)

3) How will we work collaboratively to fulfil this purpose and achieve our goals? (ANSWER = your approach for determining, planning, executing, and evaluating your work together)

4) How comfortable are we being and expressing ourselves in this group? (ANSWER = team’s current levels of psychological safety)

5) To what extent do we expressly hold ourselves and each other accountable for both our actions and results? (ANSWERS = team’s current levels of mutual accountability)

If you want to know more about how to develop teams or team leadership in your organisation, drop us a line at info@co-creation.group.

Co-Creation Blog : The Mindset Paradox

Richard Hurd — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 12:37:38 +0000

If you’re responsible for delivering development solutions in your organisation – a leader, coach, mentor, or trainer perhaps – you will already know something valuable to your organisation:

Mindset determines learning outcomes.

Now I don’t mean to denigrate the fantastic content, expert instruction, or skilled facilitation on offer in many organisations, but without the ‘right’ mindset learning simply doesn’t happen. Yet despite the paradox, little attention has been paid to developing it and learning investment remains primarily focused on delivery.

So, why is this?

Well it seems science has been partly responsible.

Until relatively recently, studies suggested that intelligence – the basis of our understanding, reasoning, abstract thinking and problem-solving – is largely genetic and relatively fixed. Studies on personality – another area of long-standing interest to developers – suggested something similar. These conclusions lend themselves to a relatively deterministic view of people – that is, our abilities are ultimately determined by causes beyond our will.

However, recent discoveries – particularly in neurology and psychology – are challenging these beliefs and opening new, exciting possibilities for development. For instance, we have learned that our brains can radically improve their cognitive function when we learn new things – even when we’re older.

Carol Dweck, a professor from Stanford University who bridged ideas from personality and development psychology, conducted extensive research into the impact mindset has on our motivation, self-regulation, and achievement.

She suggested there are two basic types of mindset – ‘Fixed’ and ‘Growth’ – with significant implications for development.

FIXED MINDSET

Those with ‘fixed mindset’ believe their abilities are largely innate or pre-determined and can’t be developed significantly. They are likely to avoid challenging tasks or get frustrated and give up because they are concerned about failing. They prefer to stick to what they know, see feedback as criticism, and others’ success as threatening. You might hear them say things such as: ‘I can either do it or I can’t’ or ‘I’m good at it or I’m not.’ Their beliefs impact their preparedness to take risks, motivation to learn new things, and ability to continually develop their performance – a necessity in an ever-faster changing world.

GROWTH MINDSET

Those with a GROWTH MINDSET believe their attitude determines their abilities, not their genetics. They think they can acquire almost any given skill provided they invest time and effort. They embrace challenge, view feedback constructively, setbacks positively and are likely to find others’ success inspiring rather than threatening. They might not emulate Einstein, but they believe they can get smarter if they work at it. Moreover, they see failure as an opportunity to develop, not a reflection of their abilities. They might say things like ‘I can eventually learn to do anything I want’ or ‘Challenges help me grow.’ Their beliefs enable them to take risks, accept difficult challenges, learn more effectively and continue developing their performance throughout their careers.

In simple terms, Dweck teaches us that:

GROWTH MINDSET enables significantly better development outcomes than fixed mindset
GROWTH MINDSET can be developed
Learning is maximised when ‘teachers’ and ‘learners’ both have a GROWTH MINDSET

However, until recently there were no established tools to help measure and develop mindset – in stark contrast to the plethora of instruments for exploring ‘fixed’ traits – and what gets measured (or can be measured) gets done.

In 2011, Dr. Jodi O’Dell, an occupational psychologist, changed the game when she developed an empirically validated diagnostic based on the growth mindset concept. She called this ENGAGE.

It provides a snapshot of how you think and feel about yourself and your challenges, and highlights things that currently inhibit or accelerate your development. This enables you to determine practical actions to improve your learning outcomes.

For organisations and development professionals interested in leveraging their investment, it is a gift.

It is simple and intuitive to use, surfaces quickly and easily what might otherwise require protracted and potentially delicate conversations, and complements just about any development intervention you can think of. It can be used at an individual, team and organisational level, and can be effective with or without coaching support.

Most importantly, it enables you produce better development outcomes for your learners and organisation.

You might have already known how important mindset is, but now there’s a tool that can help you develop it. Remember: GROWTH MINDSET improves learning outcomes – ENGAGE enables you to develop GROWTH MINDSET.

Want to know more about this approach to improving the outcomes from your development activity? Over the next three weeks we will be telling you more about ENGAGE, what it measures and how you can use it to transform your results.

Contact the Co-Creation team and discover how we can help you develop a growth mindset and improve your organisation’s learning outcomes. Call: +44 (0) 7876 024555, or email: info@co-creation.group