Thriving and surviving at work — DOP conference day 1
My first attendance at the DOP Conference and by the end of day one I feel utterly inspired. I am a bit of an occ psych geek and as I type this Professor Binna Kandola OBE has seated himself at the table in front of me — ever the psych celebrity spotter. Is it rude to ask for a selfie?
More name drops that perhaps only fellow bus. and occ. psychs will appreciate, I met Professor Rob Briner of evidence-based management fame yesterday and following a flurry of emails last year, he’s still interested in running a session for managers, occ psychs and HR in the South West this year. Something I will begin working on when I get back to normal life.
A big highlight of the day was hearing a talk by Professor Denise Rousseau, who reminded us of some important points to improve our practice.
I gained some comfort in understanding that not getting the desired results from a people project is ok and will always form part of a future evidence-base. We’re practitioners applying research to our work, but unlike clinicians, we are working in a vast array of complex organisations — a range of sizes, sectors, cultures, hierarchies, politics, regulatory bodies… I could go on — which means we don’t have time to test and retest. We don’t always get quick feedback, we’re rarely peer reviewed and there’s no such notion of standard practice. In reality anyone can be a management ‘expert’ and typically management consultants don’t have access to the empirical evidence or research, or (potentially) have the skills to review and critique evidence to make the best people driven decisions. This is concerning to me, we spend a lot of time at work and people deserve better.
Denise Rousseau encouraged us to reflect on how we bias ourselves and how we often rely on our own personal experiences when conducting interventions. Ms Rousseau stated that “senior leaders have too much confidence in their own opinions”. Change managers, HR practitioners, anyone involved in people management need to talk more, bounce off ideas, challenge and share experiences. There is a growing interest in critical evidence but there are far more questions in organisations than there are pieces of research to fit.
So the key learning points— ask good questions (turn the problem in to an answerable question), introduce and support de-biasing, make the data better, involve stake-holders early and insist on considering a multiple of alternatives.
And that was just for starters.
I felt privileged to hear fascinating insight to Anna Kane’s PHD topic on self confidence at work — which, we were told, despite the lack of clear definition in literature is a mix of self efficacy and self esteem. Anna has created a new model of self-confidence at work which is underpinned by connectedness, competence and authenticity. These three elements create an ‘enhancing mindset’ linked to Professor Carol Dweck’s breakthrough growth mindset studies. The outcomes of self confidence at work, which is largely self- managed, include flow, articulacy, embodied (mindful) and showcased behaviours.
Anna was clear that this is a dynamic model and elements move and change. I look forward to seeing this report in full.
You may have felt a minor tremor across the North West in the afternoon as the occ psych community shuffled uncomfortably in their seats when Professor Stephen Woods — of Woods and West textbook fame (another celebrity moment) — presented a compelling body of evidence that personality traits are dynamic and changeable and not as stable over time as we have assumed and jobs have a huge impact on this. In a nutshell, it turns out that the jobs people do are a better indicator of adult personality traits than their childhood traits.
Professor Woods suggested that rather than focus on personality traits at selection stage, organisations should place greater emphasis on socialisation and adjustment — learning, development and coaching opportunities — to enable people to thrive.
Later in the day I learnt a new term — ‘dark triad behaviours’, encompassing narcissism, Machiavellian and psychopathy. I also heard an interesting piece of work about how people living with vision impairments experience work. Meticulous planning featured highly.
And the last session of the day for me, which was a popular one with a queue outside the door, was about mindfulness and meditation for management development. Emma Donaldson-Felder (Affinity at Work) has reviewed the literature on mindfulness and meditation on manager well-being, leadership and impact on employees. What was surprising to hear is that there are lots of theory and models around this area but little of it is empirical.
The few studies that met the criteria of this review tells us that there is promising evidence that mindfulness has positive benefits to leadership and well-being but there is no evidence that looks at the direct outcomes on managers’ employees or direct line reports. So while we know about the benefits of mindfulness in clinical settings -prevents relapses of depression- and supports focus and attention in sport, there is now a growing field of empirical studies on how mindfulness positively impacts leadership.
