25. September 2009 by John Schinnerer.

How engaged are you in each moment of your life?

The video below provides a tremendous reminder that life is a series of brief moments strung together. As we become more mindful and nonjudgmental, each moment becomes a treasure unto itself. The less we judge moments as good OR bad, the more likely we are to be able to appreciate them for what they are - life.

What’s more, one of the three paths to happiness is to string together series of moments infused with positive emotion (e.g., awe, surprise, curiosity, love, contentment, relaxation, pride, delight, joy, excitement).

Directed by William Hoffman (www.anyoneeverything.com)

Have a fantastic, mindful weekend!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Positive Psychology Coach

Posted in Emotion & productivity, Employee engagement, Mindfulness, Consciousness, Dr. John Schinnerer, Happiness, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

25. September 2009 by John Schinnerer.

Dr. John Schinnerer

Guide To Self, Inc.

www.GuideToSelf.com

Are business people purely logical? Do employees go through their work day devoid of emotion? Does the stock market rise and fall according to rational principles?

The answer to all these questions is ‘No,’ however many people like to go through their days as if they were true.

Last month, I spoke at a corporate leadership summit. Afterwards, I was selling copies of my book when two businessmen in suits came up. Both men thumbed through a copy of Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Emotion and Thought. One man purchased a copy and said ‘This looks fantastic.’ The other man teased him saying ‘Oh yes, emotions, you need that kind of help.’ And the derogatory tone of voice in which it was said caused me to think about emotions and how they relate to business. Being ‘emotional’ in a corporate setting is akin to being insane, neither of which is helpful in climbing the corporate ladder.

At the same time, I’ve had numerous discussions with companies looking to market goods or services aimed at improving emotional connections between businesses, customers and employees. This gets at the heart of employee and customer engagement. Engagement is an emotional construct. Nearly every definition of engagement has at its core an emotional component such as enthusiasm, commitment, or trust.

What Is Engagement?

The Corporate Board defines employee engagement as ‘a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, and that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work.’ Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina, co-authors of Follow This Path, lay out twelve parts to employee engagement. Of these twelve, seven are emotionally-based:

1.      high energy and enthusiasm

2.      an emotional commitment to what the employee does

3.      create positive things to act on (based on constructive emotions)

4.      broaden what he or she does and builds on it (the key theory in positive psychology is broaden-and-build by Barbara Fredrickson)

5.      has a commitment to the company and people that work there (commitment is based largely on an emotional connection)

6.      intentionally builds supportive relationships (positive emotions are the ‘glue’ which hold relationships together)

7.      naturally innovates and works toward efficiency (innovation is more likely to occur when in a positive emotional state)

Most individuals in the corporate world like to maintain the illusion that they are 100% calm, rational and in control. They make the mistake of thinking they are the ‘thinker,’ the part of the mind that is rational, controlled and conscious. In fact, a mere 10% of the human mind is rational. The other 90% of the mind is emotional, unconscious and automatic.  

How Can Engagement Be Measured?

What’s more, recent studies show that there is a way to measure whether or not an individual is flourishing and performing to the best of his or her ability. The cutoff point is a 3:1 ratio of positive emotions to negative emotions. For high-performing executive teams, the cutoff point is 5:1 where there are five times as many positive, supportive comments and open-ended questions as negative comments and ‘I’ statements where people defend their own positions. One way to measure engagement is to look at the ratio of positive to negative emotions that the firm elicits in employees. The higher the ratio of positive to negative emotions, the more engaged the employee.

Zappos – Exponential Employee Engagement

Increasingly, high-performing companies are demonstrating an understanding of the power of positive, constructive emotions to engage both customers and employees mindfully and profitably.  This is most easily seen in those firms that create a competitive advantage via corporate culture, such as Zappos.com, an online retail company which was recently purchased by Amazon for approximately $900 million.

Zappos has shown an uncanny ability to tap into the mind and hearts of its employees using some unusual and counterintuitive practices. One of Zappo’s corporate values is ‘create fun and a little weirdness.’ This allows employees autonomy and freedom to think for themselves and express themselves, both of which endear the firm to the employees. Zappos offers newly hired employees $2,000 to walk away from the job, ensuring that those who refuse the offer to stay are more committed and engaged. Trust is placed in employees at all levels of the corporate hierarchy. This allows phone reps to connect and engage with customers however they deem necessary. This leads to increased customer and employee engagement as both parties tend to enjoy their interactions far more than the typical script-based call center reps and their victims/customers. The favorite book of CEO Tony Hsieh is The Happiness Hypothesis by Jon Haidt, a pillar of positive psychology. Hsieh intentionally cultivates happiness in the workforce as a business goal in and of itself. Courses in positive psychology and happiness are offered to employees in addition to the myriad of business courses.  As a result, the culture increases employee well-being, engagement and eventually, productivity and profitability. A positive, upward spiral results from a culture that has mindfully developed based on values such as open-mindedness, happiness, confidence and humility.

The importance of emotions in culture cannot be overstated. Emotions provide the glue that binds relationships together.  In order to build a high-performing culture, one must be aware of the emotional landscape of employees, regardless of whether they want to cop to being emotional or not.

About the author:

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that focuses on coaching individuals and groups to optimal human functioning using positive psychology. Dr. Schinnerer consults with Resonance Technologies, a firm with a patented methodology to quantify emotional responses to workplace issues. Dr. Schinnerer hosted Guide To Self Radio, a daily prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Schinnerer is also President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer has worked with companies such as UPS, Sutter Health, Erie Insurance Group and Schreiber Foods. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. His areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development to employee selection. Dr. Schinnerer is the award-winning author of “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought.” He has written articles on corporate ethics and EQ in the workplace for Workspan magazine, HR.com, and Business Ethics. He has given numerous presentations, radio shows and seminars to tens of thousands of people for organizations such as SHRM, NCHRA, KNEW and KDIA.

Posted in National speakers, Organizational psychology, The human brain, Danville CA, Emotion & productivity, Employee engagement, Corporate Culture, Morals and values, Happiness, Dr. John Schinnerer, Measuring emotions, Business & psych, Creativity, Guide to Self, Customer Engagement, Emotional IQ, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

24. September 2009 by John Schinnerer.

A reader turned me onto a blog by J. Henrique Alves in Perth. I found some fantastic writings on Henrique’s experiences with music sparking a connection with his autistic son. It is as I’ve said in the past, there is something quite powerful inherent in music. The perfect note, the right tune, the proper tempo have a way of connecting people in a deep and meaningful way, even those of us who typically are unable to connect.

Here is an excerpt:

‘In the last few years, I’ve discovered still another magical side of music, through the relationship with my 8-year old autistic son. While practicing the bass, I could notice how his attention would shift from whatever he would be doing, drawn by my plucking of the strings, and the simultaneous sound this would produce through the speakers of my little practice amplifier. I’d then lay the bass on the bed, so that he could explore the sounds, plucking gently the strings, showing some surprise with the connection between his touching the strings, and a matching sound being produced. Throughout the years, he has consistently shown a higher level of interest in our musical exploration sessions than he would typically demonstrate in other activities.

[snip]

Based on our experience, it was not surprising to find out that results published this year from a recent study conducted by Dr. Ami Klin, of the Yale Child Study Center, have confirmed that the synchronous nature of sound and movement captures consistently the attention of autistic children, more than any other form of interaction with objects or people (such as eye contact, touch, or movement and sounds in isolation). In a recent interview, Klin said:

“I and colleagues looked at a way […] 2-year-olds with autism would look at adult care givers, […] and those children spend less time looking at people’s eyes and more time looking at people’s mouth […] And that was puzzling because the eyes are really the window for the soul, they are the way that we experience people, their emotions and their intentions. And so we are puzzled by the fact that they showed increased attention to the mouth. With […] the new insights, we raised the hypothesis that the reason why they were looking at mouth is because the mouth is the part of the face that contains the greatest audio-visual synchrony, lip movements and speech sounds co-occurring.”

Our experience with music, which is a generalization of this synchronicity between movement and sound, provides, in our minds, a further confirmation of the results published by Dr. Ami Klin and his colleagues at Yale. His new insights provide further, scientific proof, to why music therapy programs, such as the few we have contacted here in Australia to strengthen the basis of our daily interactions with our son, are so successful, providing not eyes, but music as a window to the souls of autistic children. ‘

The full post is here…

http://beachesfromafar.blogspot.com/2009/05/music-is-magic-for-autistic-children.html

Henrique has other tremendous posts as well about music, autism, science and more. Thanks for sharing, Henrique!

All the best,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Positive Psychology Coach

Posted in Awareness, Hope, Music psychology, Curiosity, Emotion & learning, Science of love, Relationships, The human brain, Positive mood music, Creativity, Parenting, Emotional mind, Consciousness, Emotional management, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

24. September 2009 by John Schinnerer.

Apparently humans have some free will after all.

From New Scientist…

Champions of free will, take heart. A landmark 1980s experiment that purported to show free will doesn’t exist is being challenged.

In 1983, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet asked volunteers wearing scalp electrodes to flex a finger or wrist. When they did, the movements were preceded by a dip in the signals being recorded, called the “readiness potential”. Libet interpreted this RP as the brain preparing for movement

For full article, click here.

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Positive Psychology Coach

913 San Ramon Valley Blvd. #280

Danville, CA 94526

Posted in Curiosity, Danville CA, The human brain, Consciousness, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Rational mind, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

23. September 2009 by John Schinnerer.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2009) — Training in mindfulness meditation and communication can alleviate the psychological distress and burnout experienced by many physicians and can improve their well-being, University of Rochester Medical Center researchers report.

The training also can expand a physician’s capacity to relate to patients and enhance patient-centered care, according to the researchers, who were led by Michael S. Krasner, M.D., associate professor of Clinical Medicine.

“From the patient’s perspective, we hear all too often of dissatisfaction in the quality of presence from their physician. From the practitioner’s perspective, the opportunity for deeper connection is all too often missed in the stressful, complex, and chaotic reality of medical practice,” Krasner said. “Enhancing the already inherent capacity of the physician to experience fully the clinical encounter—not only its pleasant but also its most unpleasant aspects—without judgment but with a sense of curiosity and adventure seems to have had a profound effect on the experience of stress and burnout. It also seems to enhance the physician’s ability to connect with the patient as a unique human being and to center care around that uniqueness.

For full article, click here

From PhysOrg.com…

“Cultivating these qualities of mindful communication with colleagues, anectodotally, had an unexpected benefit of combating the practitioners’ sense of isolation and brought forth the very experiences that are such a rich source of meaning in the life of the clinician,” he said.

Edward A. Stehlik, M.D., governor of the Upstate New York branch of the American College of Physicians and an internist who practices near Buffalo, said the training was “the most useful thing I’ve done since my medical training to help me in my practice of medicine.”

“If you asked my patients, I think they would say I listen more carefully since the training and that they feel they can explain things to me more forthrightly and more easily,” Stehlik said. “Even the brief moments with patients are more productive. Are there doctors who desperately need this training? Yes, absolutely.”

Have a day filled with contentment!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Posted in Physician burnout, Mindfulness, National speakers, Emotion & learning, Men's emotions, Anger Management, Guide to Self, Customer Engagement, Depression, Emotional management, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »