Humans beings are future-oriented. Our ability to think about and plan for the future is what makes us unique. In thinking about the future we often set goals because we believe achieving them will increase our happiness.
But we need to be careful! It turns out that we are not very good at predicting our future emotions. Often we are wrong about how achieving a goal will ultimately make us feel.
In his book, Practicing Positive Psychology Coaching, Robert Biswas-Diener mentions three errors that prevent us from accurately predicting how we will feel in the future:
1) duration neglect – we over- or underestimate how long the feeling will last.
2) impact bias – we over- or underestimate the intensity of the emotion, expecting that we will feel much better or much worse than we really will.
3) valence prediction – in novel situations we sometimes we expect something will make us feel good, when in fact it will make us feel bad or vice-versa.
We have all experienced this. You might have thought you would feel unbelievably happy when you finally graduated. Or that it would be the end of the world if you didn’t get that job. But in the end you didn’t feel all that different. Or maybe something you thought would be scary turned out to be fun.
The question is, what can we do with this knowledge? When making decisions it could help to know that the emotional impact of an event is likely to be less intense than you expect and that the misery or excitement you anticipate probably won’t last as long as you think. This might be especially helpful when you have to make a decision about something you don’t want to do, like undergoing a medical treatment.
And when you are thinking about trying something new you should talk to someone who has done the activity before. This might help you to think twice before doing something you will regret or it could give you encouragement when you are nervous about doing something.
So the next time you are planning something for the future, remember that your expectations might be bigger than reality.
Happy Leaders Have Successful Teams
Research shows that our happiness influences our own success, but what about the impact of a leader’s happiness on the success of his or her followers? Studies have, in fact, found that leaders’ positive moods enhance their followers’ performance.
One study of 85 leaders and 365 team members showed that team commission from sales was higher in teams led by leaders with positive moods. In addition to a direct impact of leader mood on team performance, leaders with positive moods displayed more transformational leadership behaviors, which was also related to better performance.
Transformational leaders have four characteristics: 1) idealized influence is when followers seek to identify with the leader, 2) inspirational motivation is a leader’s ability to inspire followers by articulating a clear vision for the future, 3) intellectual stimulation is when a leader challenges followers to reach their potential, and 4) individualized consideration is the specialized attention paid by a leader to each follower’s needs for growth.
Another study also found that positive leader traits including hope, optimism, and resilience were related to transformational leadership, which positively influenced firm performance. Leaders with hope, optimism, and resilience have greater confidence and are more positive, both of which inspire followers to look up to them. Their positivity and ability to identify various pathways to achieve goals are motivating, and their ability to rebound from setbacks encourages followers to take risks themselves in order to reach their potential. Finally, because hopeful leaders generate numerous pathways toward goal attainment, different paths are available to meet the specific needs of each follower.
Companies who want successful employees should seek positive people when they are appointing leaders. They can also offer training to help leaders learn about the impact of positivity in the workplace.
Finding Good in the Bad
This Sunday is the year anniversary of the shooting in Tucson that killed 6 people and injured 13 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. What a tragedy! But this morning I have been reading stories in the AZ Republic about the good that has come from the tragedy.
The family of one of the victims, 9-year-old Cristina-Taylor Green, has created a memorial foundation in her name that sponsored a toy drive at Christmas, bought backpacks and school supplies for children that can’t afford them, and provided a new playground and interactive whiteboards for her elementary school.
Tonight U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will lead a televised special in Cristina’s honor where she will discuss with 12 Arizona students how to improve the tone of political discourse, find common ground on controversial issues and foster civil discussions.
Patricia Maisch, who survived the shooting, is now an activist who testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee in favor of an act that would toughen background checks on people trying to buy guns.
Unfortunately, bad things do happen. But people can and do find good in the bad. As Nietzche said, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger”. Psychologists call it posttraumatic growth.
Surviving trauma can give people a sense of personal growth and enhanced self-confidence when they realize they are stronger than they thought. People who experience tragedy often come away with closer relationships. And they are inspired by the compassion of family, friends, and even complete strangers. Trauma often changes people’s outlook, giving them a greater appreciation for life, leading them to experience life with heightened awareness, and giving them the sense that life has renewed meaning.
The pain of the Tucson shooting lives on. But it is heartening to see people’s resilience and to know that good can come from bad. As Patricia Maisch said, she was “impressed by the courage and kindness of strangers that morning” and, in the year since, she has been “awed by the ability of people to find good in the face of overwhelming loss.”
Notice the Good
The holidays can be a stressful time and stress can bring out the worst in people. Some of the stories from Black Friday are enough to make you wonder what has happened to human decency. But the truth is that people want to be good. Our nature is to be caring, decent human beings. When we aren’t, it is often because of the situation we face.
Rick Hanson is a neuropsychologist who writes about the inner skills that can help us achieve happiness, love, and wisdom. He encourages people to make an effort to notice good acts. Our negativity bias, spurred on by the media, causes us to focus on the bad things that people do. In order not to forget all of the good in the world, we need to make a point to take note of the good things that people do.
In San Francisco last month I was about to get on a train to go to the airport when a man nearby who must have overheard me warned me that the train I was boarding did not go to the airport. Then a few weeks ago a woman honked at me to tell me I had a flat tire just before I turned onto a busy highway. These random acts of kindness really made me feel good and reminded me that people do care and want to help.
Hanson suggests that we take note of the good within ourselves as well. Think about the occasions when you do something small to help someone or demonstrate patience in a frustrating situation or control your anger or forgive someone. While stress may cause you at times to act in ways you regret, you do have good intentions and when you think about your day you will surely find many things that demonstrate what a good person you are.
Don’t get overwhelmed by negativity! Make it a point to notice the good in yourself and in others.
4 Keys for Keeping Female Talent
Companies with more women on their top management team outperform companies with fewer women managers. Yet most women don’t stick around long enough to make it to the top. With Ginni Rometty joining IBM and Meg Whitman’s recent move to head HP the number of female Fortune 500 CEOs is at a record 18, which is still only 3.6%.
So what can companies do to retain female talent? Here are 4 suggestions:
End the stigma
While many firms have flexible work policies, they continue to reward face time and full-time work. Women who work from home or work reduced hours are perceived as less committed to their careers. As a result, they are not given choice assignments and are passed over for promotion.
Keep flexible hours flexible
All too often, flexible hours are not truly flexible. Once an employee has chosen a “flexible” schedule, say working from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., expectations are created that eliminate the flexibility needed to respond to family duties such taking an ailing mother to the doctor at 1:30 p.m. Women need real control over their working hours to integrate their careers and personal lives.
Focus on results
One way to provide flexibility is to move away from an emphasis on face time toward a focus on results. Best Buy has done this with an alternative work program called Results-Only Work Environment. Employees have total control over when, where, and how they work. The only thing that matters is that they meet their objectives.
Consider arc of career flexibility
Flexibility in place and time needs to be combined with flexibility over the arc of a career. This type of flexibility allows individuals to pass through a series of stages in their careers. They might have periods of intense work followed by some time out, then ramp back up to part-time work and later return to full-time work, possibly telecommuting once or twice a week. Companies that provide flexibility across the career arc allow women to continue their careers while adjusting their workloads to balance work and personal demands.
Are you getting stressed as the holidays approach? Doesn’t it seem like there is never enough time to get everything done? Having enough time isn’t the real problem, though. It’s having enough energy!
According to Tony Schwartz, author and founder of The Energy Project, we can improve our performance and our well-being by learning how to better manage our energy.
He identifies four energy needs that we must meet in order to be at our best. If we learn to efficiently manage the following needs, we will have the energy necessary to survive, even thrive, during hectic times.
1) Physical needs include eating right, exercising regularly, resting, and getting enough sleep. When we feel pressed for time we tend to ignore all of these. Don’t let that happen! Build rituals into your daily schedule to balance your rushing around with time to rest, eat well, and get to the gym. And don’t stay up all night addressing Christmas cards! If you go to bed instead you’ll have the energy to work on them tomorrow.
2) Emotional needs can be consciously cultivated. Positive emotions directly impact how energetic we feel. So this season make an effort to focus on the good things in your life, to feel grateful for all that you have, and to recharge your batteries by spending quality time with people you love.
3) Mental needs help us get things done more efficiently. You can meet these needs by focusing on one thing at a time rather than trying to multitask, by prioritizing your tasks so that you attend to the most important things first, and by balancing 60 to 90 minutes of working intensely with time for more strategic, creative thinking.
4) Spiritual needs are satisfied when we serve a purpose larger than our own self-interest. The more we feel something really matters the more energized we are. So when you start to get stressed about all the gifts you still need to buy, stop and take a moment to think about the real meaning of Christmas or to focus on the joy of giving.
This holiday season try to be more physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and spiritually aligned. You won’t need more time if you have more energy!
Make Every Day a Day of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is such a wonderful holiday! A time to spend with friends and family and to reflect on all that we are grateful for. The only problem is that it comes just once a year.
Since gratitude is one of the greatest ways to stay positive, I think we should make every day a day of thanksgiving. I know we are thankful for many things everyday, but do we consciously think about it? We get so caught up living our lives that sometimes we forget to be grateful.
That’s why we need to make gratitude intentional. Picking a moment everyday to count our blessings is a great way to make sure we don’t start taking things for granted. I take a minute every morning as my kids head off to school to think about what I’m thankful for. At first I just felt gratitude for my two wonderful children, but now I’ve started adding other things for which I’m especially grateful. It’s a great way to start the day by focusing on all the good in my life.
Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, has a number of suggestions for building moments of gratitude into your life. She thinks about what she is grateful for each time she turns on her computer. Other ideas include choosing a screen saver that reminds you to be grateful, setting an alarm on your calendar that goes off once a day as a reminder, or practicing a threshold ritual by thinking about what you are thankful for each time you enter your home. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it reminds you to take a moment every single day to count your blessings.
What cue helps you cultivate an “attitude of gratitude”?
Last week Thunderbird School of Global Management hosted a Global Business Dialogue, bringing together business, government, and NGO leaders from around the world to discuss today’s most pressing topics in global business.
The dialogue was amazing! There were so many great insights that I thought I would share some of my favorite takeaways with you:
Leaders need to surround themselves with committed and positive people . . . they need to listen to the quietest voice in the room . . . in a crisis you often have to reach within and lead with your own values. – Bob Dudley, CEO of BP
Social media is about building relationships . . . we need to replace B2B and B2C with P2P, people to people. – Ekaterina Walter, Social Media Strategist for Intel
Today’s leaders need to be listeners and learners . . . their responsibility is to serve. – Katherine Garrett-Cox, CEO of Alliance Trust
Delete “personal branding” from your vocabulary . . . just be authentic. – Brad Feld, Foundry Group Managing Director
The world has been built on financial leverage, now it will be built on social leverage. – Howard Lindzon, Founder and CEO of StockTwits
If you aren’t passionate about what you’re doing you need to stop . . . you aren’t living your truth. – John Hope Bryant, Founder and CEO of Operation HOPE
We need values based leadership. – Manuel Sánchez, U.S. Country Manager of BBVA Compass
True leaders remove the barriers to success for their people. – Marty Evans, Retired Rear Admiral of the U.S. Navy
Labels are for jam jars, not for people . . . remove labels to help people from all backgrounds succeed. – Caroline Casey, Founder of Kanchi
1) the world will always accept talent with open arms, 2) you cannot win unless you choose to compete, and 3) a small deed done is better than a great deed planned . . . encourage innovation by hiring the best-educated, most creative people you can find and getting the hell out of the way. – Craig Barrett, Retired CEO and Chairman of Intel
We must move toward a low carbon economy because there is no planet B. – José María Figueres, Former President of Costa Rica
I loved hearing so many world leaders espouse the importance of positive topics such as relationships, values, being authentic, and pursuing profitability with a purpose. It was a truly wonderful event!
I’m attending the International Academy of Management and Business Conference in San Francisco next week. There I will present the results of a study I did about ways to reduce work-life conflict. Unfortunately, this is a topic that affects too many of us and it has negative consequences both personally and professionally.
I became interested in studying work-life conflict when I was doing research on women’s careers and realized what a huge impact it has on women’s decisions to walk away from their careers. Companies are losing valuable talent because they aren’t helping employees in their struggle to fulfill both work and life demands. And for many the challenge of making work work is escalating as companies reduce their workforce in order to survive lean economic times, which often increases the job demands placed upon employees.
For my study I surveyed 662 women who were members of an internet staffing service for women interested in flexible job opportunities. As expected, the findings showed that higher job demands lead to higher work-life conflict and that work-life conflict reduces job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intentions to stay with one’s company.
But the good news is there are ways to reduce work-life conflict even if job demands can’t be reduced. My study showed that job control and supervisor support directly reduce work-life conflict. The most stressful situation employees face is when they have high job demands and little or no control over their work. Employees experience less conflict, despite high job demands, if they are able to choose how, when, and where to work. Also, meeting job demands is less stressful when employees have supportive supervisors who understand the difficulties of managing conflicting demands and are willing to help employees find solutions.
By focusing on positive interventions, like offering more job control and support, companies can help their employees create work-life fit.
Love Thyself
The Bible teaches us to “love thy neighbor as thyself”. It’s a great idea except for one thing: most of us aren’t very good at loving ourselves.
Our competitive society pushes us to constantly try to do more, to achieve more, to be the best. We want to be smarter, more attractive, and more successful. If we don’t live up to our expectations we beat ourselves up with self-criticism, telling ourselves we are fat, lazy, or stupid.
Most of us treat others a whole lot better than we treat ourselves. Think of things you tell yourself when you mess up or fail to achieve a goal. I bet you would never say some of those things to a friend or even a stranger.
We think that being hard on ourselves is important for self-discipline. But self-criticism erodes our confidence, making us feel insecure and inadequate, which reduces our motivation. Because self-compassion is caring about ourselves, it makes us want to grow and reach our full potential.
In her new book, Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff explains that we should seek self-compassion rather than self-esteem. Feelings of self-esteem come from being special or above average. This requires that we compare ourselves with others. When we don’t measure up, our self-esteem takes a direct hit. People with self-compassion are more secure, which makes them more resilient in the face of difficulties.
Dr. Neff explains that having self-compassion is similar to feeling compassion for others. The first step is to notice suffering. When you make a mistake recognize that you feel badly about it, that you are disappointed or upset. The second step is to respond by being kind, caring, and supportive toward yourself. The third step is to recognize that imperfection is part of the human experience. Remind yourself that nobody is perfect, not even you!
People who have self-compassion are happier, more optimistic, and less likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. So be kind to yourself. Accept the imperfect nature of humanity and love yourself despite that fact that you aren’t perfect.
