Work – Page 5 – Working with ACT

Care with Labels – Lessons for Talent Management

Posted on November 12, 2011November 12, 2011 by Dr Rob Archer

Be careful with labels. That’s what Julian McNally warns in his excellent blog post: “Labels, including diagnostic ones, are only useful to the extent they enable constructive action”.

This got me thinking about labels within organisations. One of the most common is the label ‘talent’. This is the idea that organisations have a small number of workers who are ‘talent’ – as first decreed by Mckinsey’s in their 1997 paper The War for Talent.

Identifying the top 5 or 10% of performers allows organisations to focus their resources on developing a small number of people and to groom them for senior leadership positions.

But what else results from assigning the ‘talent’ label? This is only my view – but based on my own experience of both being identified as ‘talent’ and not, this is what I observed:

When I was first selected as talent, I thought it was tremendous. I did some great training courses and it gave me a confidence boost. But the effect of this enhanced confidence was like monetary inflation. I simply had more to say about subjects I knew too little of.
Because talent was a label assigned to me, not my behaviour, I assumed that my talent was permanent. It became my formula for success, dressed up in the weasel words of ‘strengths’. This made me far less likely to question the workability of my approach and far more likely to cling to being ‘right’.
As a result my job became one of impression management. I did not pay attention to performance but rather the appearance of performance.
The first rule of impression management is to avoid mistakes. Especially in an organisation of very bright people. But trying to avoid mistakes is not a great recipe for creativity, learning or improving performance.
Finally, being labelled as talent encouraged me to persist in goals which had nothing to do with my values. I climbed the ladder, only to find it leaning against the wrong wall.

Overall, therefore, I would say being labelled as talent hindered my performance. And in my next post, I am going to describe the effect of not being labelled talent…

Finding True North: How to Clarify Values (part 2)

Posted on November 1, 2011October 11, 2015 by Dr Rob Archer

In my previous post I talked about exploring values and looking for patterns across a number of different tests.

Over the years I have taken countless values exercises and tests. Below are some of the best and I’ve interspersed my results to demonstrate the variability involved – and the risks of doing just one!

1. The Obituary Exercise

The classic and probably still the one that has had most impact on me. How do you want to be remembered? Try it here.

My values in this test always include doing meaningful work first and foremost. This means using my skills and talents to actually make a difference to other people and to ‘dent the universe’ in some way. Another top value (for me and others) is courage. I don’t want the fears I experience day to day to hold me back.

2. Values in action questionnaire

I have taken this test 6 times over a period of 8 years. Although my top 6 values vary each time, there are some which remain consistent. The values which have made it in every time are:

Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness
Curiosity and interest in the world
Social intelligence
Fairness, equity, and justice

3. Your Values by Franklin Covey

I think this is an excellent resource which asks different questions to elicit values. My values here include growth and development, curiosity, humour and freedom.

4. Values Sort Task by Goodwork Toolkit

Having said I don’t like ranking values, it can be quite revealing to ‘sort’ them for importance. This online values sorting tool is quite fun and works well. My top values here turned out to be honesty and integrity, social concerns and professional accomplishment.

5. Career Values by Stewart Cooper & Coon

Another values sorting exercise, but the sorting is done differently and so it is interesting to observe differences. I find this kind of test more difficult because it is hard to know how to assign importance to values without comparing them to other values. Therefore, I think you respond differently to the values at the beginning of the test than the end.

The values that came top in this test were freedom, security, helping others, recognition, honesty and integrity.

6. Valued Living Questionnaire

This test is used extensively by the ACT community, along with the similar Bull’s Eye. This test identifies 10 different life domains and asks you to identify key values in each. Clearly, this test deals with broader values than those which simply relate to work. Nevertheless, this in itself can be useful to identify any conflicts or tensions between work-related values and values in other life domains.

My work-related values in this test include doing meaningful work (again), making a difference to others, collaborating with excellent people and acting with integrity.

Conclusion

There’s a huge range of different values tests out there. The ones listed above are really good and all of them are free. However, they do tend to yield different results and this can be disconcerting. However, remember that you do not have a single set of values – too much depends on context. So take these tests and look out for patterns. And when you have your list, hold it lightly and aks yourself in this moment, which way is True North?

Why Values in the Workplace Don’t Work

Posted on September 29, 2011September 29, 2011 by Dr Rob Archer

Since identifying and following my own values my life has changed immeasurably. Not happier necessarily, but I am now truly engaged in what I do and experience a lot of meaning. If you asked me today whether this life is what I would choose I would not hesitate to say yes. 6 years ago, I would have been stunned into silence.

My experience of values in the workplace is very different. The usual approach is for a management team to identify the organisation’s values in a darkened room or at a ‘team away day’ in a hotel just off the M4. Then, the values are declared via an exciting combination of communications experts, office posters and mouse mats.

What follows is the ’embedding’ phase. This means identifying what behaviours the organisation wants to see to demonstrate each value. Very often they will identify what ‘good’ behaviour looks like and what ‘excellent’ behaviour looks like. These behaviours will be embedded into competency frameworks, which are then used to assess each member of staff at appraisal time, and help the organisation find the right cultural ‘fit’ with new recruits.

That, in my experience, is best practice. And it is utterly useless.

The result is usually a sense of incomprehension (at best), and at worst cynicism. It leads not to engagement, but a sort of dull compliance, coupled with an acute sense of injustice if a manager breaches the behavioural code.

From an ACT perspective, this is easily understood. Because these are not values being implemented, but what is known as pliance. Pliance is where…”wanting to be good or please others dominates over one’s direct, personal experience of what works.” Pliance (taken from the word compliance) is therefore a form of rule-governed behaviour which does not take into account context.

Rule governed behaviour may be useful in some contexts, but it also leads to a kind of insensitivity to the environment which can harm performance and rob the individual of a sense of autonomy and control – both critical to engagement.

Put simply, values work in organisations is usually not values work. It is a form of managerial control masquerading as values work. It is more accurately described as pliance, or rule-governed behaviour, which leads to disengagement and an insensitivity to one’s environment. Both of these will harm performance and wellbeing.

And both can be avoided.

Fairness is a Double-Edged Sword

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Rachel Collis

In my work as an Executive coach I usually ask my clients to take the VIA Character Strengths test. The test gives you a list of your top five character strengths or ‘values in action’.

I have observed that strengths can be a double-edged sword. We can overplay certain strengths to our detriment.

For example, those who rate ‘Fairness, Equity and Justice’ in their top five can find that their determination to be ‘fair’ to others means that they can have a tendency to carry too large a workload.

The wisest response to these issues seems to be to dig a little deeper into what ‘fairness’ is.

Carol Gilligan described three levels of ethical development;

Focus on the self – making sure that my needs get met.
Focus on the well being of others – a desire to do good through self-sacrifice
A focus on ‘nonviolence’ – do not hurt others or self

The first two stages are easier perspectives to make decisions from – is it all about me or all about you? However, the third stage, where both my needs and yours need to be considered is a much more complex decision making situation.

What can help here is a to look at the decision from some different perspectives:

The perspective of the future you – If you repeatedly make this decision, what will your life be like in 10 years time? Is that what you want?
The perspective of a wise person – What would a wise person do?
The perspective of an observer – If someone watched all your choices what would they say were your values? What would they think your life stood for?

Getting Clear About Values

Posted on March 26, 2011March 26, 2011 by Rachel Collis

Having clarity about our values is really important.

Here are some tips Russ Harris gave at a recent Happiness Trap workshop. I found them really useful – I hope you do too!

1. Values are ‘desired qualities of behaviour’. They are about who we want to be in the world. What sort of employee, manager, co-worker, friend, partner etc.

2. Values are not goals. Goals can be achieved whereas values are moment to moment choices. In this moment now, I can be curious but I can never achieve ‘curious’.

3. Values are not rules. They are qualities we choose freely. As soon as we start to feel we have to follow a value, it loses all it’s vitality. It stops being a value and starts to be a rule. In vital workplaces, people are happy to sign up for the organisational values. In workplaces lacking vitality, staff members follow the organisational ‘values’ because they will get into trouble if they don’t.

4. Values are about my behaviour not what I want to get from others. In a recent moving post, Rob gave an example of a ‘value’ that lacked vitality:

‘I value my family, for the love and support they offer me.’

Rob wrote about the importance of exploring the feelings underneath this statement to get to something a little more vital. He made an important point. I would also like to add that this ‘value’ is actually a statement of a want or need. And mixing values and needs is problematic. What if my family get preoccupied with their own problems and don’t give me the support I need? Do I then stop valuing them? Whereas, if I can convert this statement into a quality of my own behaviour then it becomes completely in my control. Each moment I can choose to act on the value or not. Perhaps it is:

‘I value my family. I show this by being affectionate and caring in my interactions with them’

This means that values can be incredibly empowering. They are about how I choose to behave. They aren’t dependent on how others respond to me. I do need to add a rider here, values need to be flexible. The context determines which values I act upon in any given moment. With a bullying boss, I may choose to act on my values around assertiveness and justice. With an unhappy client, I may choose to act on my values around kindness and compassion. But because it is always about me, I have the power to choose.

What is Better than Work-Life Balance?

Posted on March 21, 2011March 26, 2011 by Rachel Collis

A life dripping with meaning and purpose!

Work-life ‘balance’ is tough. Does this sound familiar to you? At any moment it is important to me that I: hang out with my kids; spend time with friends; be with my partner; get some exercise; do some marketing; write a blog post; write the session I am to deliver next week; do some chores…..the list goes on and on.

Many of us worry that we are working too many hours. We know that this is a bad idea as it limits time to rest, play, exercise, connect with loved ones etc. But my observation is that just knowing we should work less and spend more time on our health and our relationships, doesn’t seem to lead to change.

For people to take action, a number of approaches seem to be helpful:

Exploring what it is about work that keeps us hooked in. For me, work is interesting, challenging and meaningful. Work often gets me into flow. At work I get to use my strengths. Any meaningful ‘work-life balance’ plan needs to acknowledge this. It is important to recognise that sometimes it is hard to step away from the satisfaction that work can provide.
Looking at what painful thoughts or feelings are avoided by spending too much time at work. (‘I am not good enough, if I don’t work long hours I will disappoint my clients.’ If I leave work undone I feel anxious). Again, any meaningful plan must involve developing a willingness to experience those thoughts and feelings.
Identifying what is important enough to be willing to tackle this issue over and over. This is a moment to moment choice. It will involve repeatedly getting it wrong. This issue is unlikely to disappear for many years (and when it does and we have retired, we will probably feel sad about it!). This is where identifying values helps – The Brief Bull’s Eye activity can be a good place to start.
Getting better at mindfully and compassionately noticing both when I am living my values around this and also when I am a long way off. This is a wagon I fall off over and over again. And each time I notice I am out of kilter, I gently and compassionately readjust my behaviour.

When I am 80, I won’t judge my life by how many hours I did or didn’t work. I will judge it by whether my life had meaning and purpose. My hope is that if I keep making small moment to moment choices based on my values, then I will look back and feel pleased.

How Can Job Design Improve Workplace Health and Productivity?

Posted on March 19, 2011November 10, 2011 by Dr Rob Archer

A great presentation by my old supervisor Frank Bond is published on the Institute of Employment Studies website.

What’s interesting about this kind of intervention is that when combined with ACT, the benefits of organisational redesign are also enhanced (Bond, Flaxman & Bunce, 2008).

What this study found was that increasing job control significantly improves mental health and absenteeism. But these effects were enhanced in people with higher levels of psychological flexibility.

Those with higher levels of psychological flexibility perceived that they had greater levels of job control as a result of the intervention, and this greater perception of control led these people to experience even greater improvements in mental health and absenteeism.

Psychological flexibility therefore allows people with more job control to better notice, where, when and the degree to which they have it, and therefore better recognise goal-related opportunities.

Brain: ‘Do More, Sleep Later!’

Posted on February 23, 2011May 19, 2021 by Dr Rob Archer

Our brains evolved to scan the environment, seek out possible problems and solve them. Our brains did not evolve to say: ‘tell you what, I’ve done enough analysing / thinking / scanning for today, I’m clocking out’. And the brains that did do this, were soon weeded out. Probably by lions.

So, the non-stop brain is highly adaptive for survival situations.

But what happens if, like now, the imperative is not survival but productivity, and where the information we receive is increasingly limitless?

Well, the response is the same. We naturally keep scanning the environment, seeking out problems and attempting to explain or resolve them. And of course, this takes time.

So fast forward to today and we are naturally feeling very busy. We are trying to cram more in. Not all of the side effects of this are negative of course, but I want to focus on just one that is.

I came across some Australian research recently which simply looked at the number of hours we work vs the number of hours we sleep. Here is the result:

Now, I don’t know if this is a bad thing for productivity per se, but I suspect overall it is, especially if we are working in a highly distracted, disengaged way. But I do know about some fairly conclusive research from the University of Warwick, which found that people who slept for less than 6 hours per night were almost 50% more likely to die from heart disease and 15% more likely to die from strokes.

Our minds naturally seek meaning and coherence from the world around us. But our worlds have expanded and we have become addicted to activity. As Ian Price argues, today we even get status from being busy.

So in an age of limitless information, our natural responses may no longer be adaptive. We may need to re-think our thinking in order to thrive.

Self Compassion in Business

Posted on February 16, 2011May 22, 2021 by Dr Rob Archer

A few years ago, I’d have laughed at the idea of using compassion – let alone self compassion – in a business context. It seems so incongruous.

But now I think it’s indispensable.

I think it could be argued that the main problem with the workplace is lack of compassion. Showing compassion is often equated with weakness, or letting ourselves or others off the hook. In fact Paul Gilbert has shown that we fear that we will become lazy if we are too compassionate, so it is seen often as a bit soft, unbusinesslike.

Yet I would argue the alternative is far less successful. Effective leadership, organisational design, employee engagement, meaning in work, resilience – all of these start with compassion. And the evidence is growing to support this view:

Students with most self compassion were least likely to procrastinate (Williams, Stark and Foster, 2008)
Self compassion predicts resilience / re-engagement with goals following failure (Neff et al, 2005) *
Self acceptance predicts willingness to receive and act on feedback (Chamberlain et al, 2001)

As Kelly McGonigal outlines here, self compassion correlates with lower depression, social anxiety, anger, judgment, close mindedness, less unhealthy perfectionism, greater social connection and empathy. And not only that, but self compassion can be taught. The big question is how.

Many cognitive therapists would start with disputing or changing negative thoughts about ourselves. Yet I would start with context, and acceptance. And for this, no one says it better than Ken Robinson:

“Human beings were born of risen apes, not fallen angels. And so what shall we wonder at? Our massacres, our missiles, or our symphonies?

The miracle of human kind is not how far we have sunk but how magnificently we have risen. We will be known among the stars not by our corpses, but by our poems.”

Using Social Network Theory to Build More Effective Teams

Posted on February 7, 2011February 16, 2011 by Rachel Collis

Brian Uzzi, from Kellog School of Management, has done some interesting work on social networks and team performance.

He found that the most effective teams include:

a mixture of both experienced people and individuals who are new to the field
some people who have worked together before and some who haven’t.

This may be because this mixture will create a team who:

are starting with some pre-existing relationships of trust which can be built on if handled well
are more flexible – there is likely to be an inherent tendency to question and cross fertilize idea’s

In order to get the most out of the team once you have selected the right members:

Have some team values conversations – What do we want the work of this team to stand for? What do we want to think when we look back on this team?
Develop some behavioural agreements – How will we deal with conflict? How will we give each other feedback? etc
Have an attitude of acceptance – working in a group inevitably involves some difficult moments
Be curious – about both the newcomers (What are their strengths and interests? What are the triggers that can cause them problems?) and also those you have worked with before (Try not to assume that you know who they are and what they do best, see if you can see them afresh as you start this project together).