26. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Your emotions have a tremendous influence on your health. More specifically, the frequency with which you feel positive emotions, such as joy, laughter and relaxation, are critical for your ongoing physical health.

A recent study from the University of Kansas has added more weight to this relatively new line of thought linking positive emotion and physical health. The latest intellectual jaunt provides keen evidence of the deep-seated need for positive emotions throughout the world.

Sarah Pressman, assistant prof of psychology at Kansas stated, “We’ve known for a while now that emotions play a critical role in physical health, but until recently, most of this research was conducted only in industrialized countries. So we couldn’t know whether feelings like happiness or sadness matter to the health of people who have more pressing concerns — like getting enough to eat or finding shelter. But now we do.” The findings indicate the tremendous importance of positive emotions in the physical health of all individuals, particularly those in impoverished parts of the world.

Gathering an enormous sample that consisted of more than 150,000 adults from over 140 countries, the study represents more than 95% of the world’s population.  Individuals studied described their recent emotions including happiness, worry, anger, anxiety and sadness.  They also reported their physical status, including health problems such as physical pain, exhaustion and illness. In addition, they described the extent to which their basic needs were currently met (e.g., clothing, shelter, food).

Results found that the frequency of positive emotions experienced are ‘unmistakably linked to better health,’ even when basic needs were accounted for. Notably, the opposite was found to be true as well: Destructive emotions, such as anger, fear and sadness, were reliable predictors of reduced physical health.

Amazingly, the relationship between emotion and physical health was stronger than that between health and basic human needs, like food and shelter. Even for those individuals aching with hunger or suffering from a harsh environment due to lack of shelter, the presence of positive emotions increased health. In fact, the relationship was most powerful in the poorest countries involved in the study.

This essential human need for positive emotions and the importance of positive emotions for physical health is quickly getting established as medical certainty.

To laughter, life and love,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder Guide To Self, Inc.

Award-winning author and blogger

For free copy of John’s award-winning book, ‘Guide to Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Managing Emotion’ visit http://www.GuideToSelf.com and register with your name and email.

 MLA University of Kansas (2009, March 5). Human Emotions Hold Sway Over Physical Health Worldwide.

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24. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

University of Colorado Denver Business School study shows failure better teacher than success

Knowledge gained from failure lasts longer

DENVER (August 23, 2010) – While success is surely sweeter than failure, it seems failure is a far better teacher, and organizations that fail spectacularly often flourish more in the long run, according to a new study by Vinit Desai, assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver Business School.

Desai’s research, published in the Academy of Management Journal, focused on companies and organizations that launch satellites, rockets and shuttles into space – an arena where failures are high profile and hard to conceal.

Working with Peter Madsen, assistant professor at BYU School of Management, Desai found that organizations not only learned more from failure than success, they retained that knowledge longer.

“We found that the knowledge gained from success was often fleeting while knowledge from failure stuck around for years,” he said. “But there is a tendency in organizations to ignore failure or try not to focus on it. Managers may fire people or turn over the entire workforce while they should be treating the failure as a learning opportunity.”

The researchers said they discovered little “significant organizational learning from success” but added “we do not discount the possibility that it may occur in other settings.”

Desai compared the flights of the space shuttle Atlantis and the Challenger. During the 2002 Atlantis flight, a piece of insulation broke off and damaged the left solid rocket booster but did not impede the mission or the program. There was little follow-up or investigation.

The Challenger was launched next and another piece of insulation broke off. This time the shuttle and its seven-person crew were destroyed.

The disaster prompted the suspension of shuttle flights and led to a major investigation resulting in 29 recommended changes to prevent future calamities.

The difference in response in the two cases, Desai said, came down to this: The Atlantis was considered a success and the Challenger a failure.

“Whenever you have a failure it causes a company to search for solutions and when you search for solutions it puts you as an executive in a different mindset, a more open mindset,” said Desai.

He said the airline industry is one sector of the economy that has learned from failures, at least when it comes to safety.

“Despite crowded skies, airlines are incredibly reliable. The number of failures is miniscule,” he said. “And past research has shown that older airlines, those with more experience in failure, have a lower number of accidents.”

Desai doesn’t recommend seeking out failure in order to learn. Instead, he advised organizations to analyze small failures and near misses to glean useful information rather than wait for major failures.

“The most significant implication of this study…is that organizational leaders should neither ignore failures nor stigmatize those involved with them,” he concluded in the June edition of the Academy of Management Journal, “rather leaders should treat failures as invaluable learning opportunities, encouraging the open sharing of information about them.”

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Located on the University of Colorado Denver’s downtown campus, the Business School is the largest accredited graduate school of business in Colorado with more than 18,000 alumni. It serves more than 1,200 graduate students and 1,400 undergraduate students each year. Students and faculty are involved in solving real-world business problems as they collaborate on more than 100 projects with area businesses every semester through classroom work, guest lectures and research projects.

From EurekAlert!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder Guide to Self

Award-winning author, blogger and speaker

For a limited time, get Dr. John’s award-winning self-help book for FREE at http://www.GuideToSelf.com. Just register with your email address and name!

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21. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2010) — A Midwest utility company learned firsthand that it pays to keep healthy employees fit, reaping a net savings of $4.8 million in employee health and lost work time costs over nine years.
A University of Michigan study of workplace wellness programs is one of the only longitudinal studies of its kind, said co-author Louis Yen, associate research scientist in the School of Kinesiology’s Health Management Research Center.

Over the nine years, the utility company spent $7.3 million for the program and showed $12.1 million in savings associated with participation. Medical and pharmacy costs, time off and worker’s compensation factored into the savings, said Alyssa Schultz, research area specialist intermediate.

The findings are good news for companies looking to implement wellness programs, said Dee Edington, director of the U-M Health Management Research Center and principal investigator.

“One of the advantages of the study is it shows that a sustainable program will give you savings,” said Edington, also a professor in the School of Kinesiology and a research scientist in the U-M School of Public Health. “Previous studies looked at programs that are short and intense and cover the same people.”

The U-M study differed in three important ways. First, it shows that wellness programs work long-term, even though the employees who participated aged during the study. Second, the study took into account all bottom line costs for implementing the wellness plan. For instance, indirect costs such as recruitment and costs for changing menus. Most studies include just the direct costs to the company for paying for employees who participate. But even using the very conservative U-M figures showed a cost savings, Yen said.

A third difference is that it looked at lost work time as well as pharmacy and medical costs, Schultz said. The employees who participated in all years saw those costs had increased by$96; those who participated in some of the years rose $230; and costs for those who never participated jumped by $355. The program cost $100 per year per employee whether the employee participated or not. Therefore, a participation-related savings of $257 and $125 was calculated for the employees who participated in all years and those who participated in just some years.

Slowly, companies are realizing that while insurance plans must care for sick employees, those plans must also include wellness plans to keep healthy workers healthy, Edington said.

“It’s still a large company activity, but the growth (in wellness plans) is in the medium-sized companies,” Edington said.

So what should a company do when looking for a benefit plan for employees?

“You want a benefit plan that will take care of your sick people but also keep your healthy people healthy and working,” Edington said.
Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Michigan.

 MLA University of Michigan (2010, August 18). Workplace wellness plan saves money over the long-term, new study shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 20, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/08/100818151824.htm

Posted in Employee engagement, Corporate Culture, Emotion & productivity, Optimal Human Functioning, San Francisco Bay Area, Happiness and Income, De-escalating anger, Well-being, Assertiveness, Mindfulness, Anxiety, Organizational change initiatives, Managing stress, Customer Engagement, Anger Management, Resiliency, Organizational psychology, Business & psych | Print | No Comments »

20. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

How do you feel about your employer? A new study in Perspectives on Psychological Science indicates that how happy a company’s employees are is strongly related to how well the company performs in a number of important areas - increased employee retention, improved customer loyalty, and greater profitability.

Such findings may signal a coming downturn for companies such as JetBlue whose former flight attendant recently told a customer over the loudspeaker to take a hike and then jumped out the emergency exit. Assuming more of Jetblue’s workforce is equally unhappy, the company’s profitability is likely to decrease in the short term.

Given the amount of time you spend at work, it seems reasonable that work influences how happy we are. More and more studies are documenting the connection between your attitudes towards work, your mood outside of the workplace and physical outcomes like coronary heart disease.
Come to find out, that may be merely the tip of the iceberg. Gallup scientist James K. Harter reported recently that how you perceive your work conditions also seems to have a significant effect on company profitability.

In Harter’s latest findings, Gallup examined data from over 2,000 business units (e.g., retail stores and sales offices) within 10 firms. Harter and colleagues pored over employee satisfaction surveys, customer loyalty numbers, employee retention rates, and financial performance of the organizations. Harter performed data anayses to determine the strength of relationships between employee job satisfaction and the outcome measures of the firms.

Findings showed that how employees perceive work conditions predict critical organizational outcomes. In other words, when employees hold their company in a positive light, the company was far more likely to have higher employee retention, increased customer loyalty, and improved profitability.

Unexpectedly, the findings indicate that employee perceptions influence these outcomes more than the outcomes affect employee perceptions. It may be that profitability begins with positive employee perceptions of their employer, their job and their overall contribution. Thus, happy employees seem to be key to increased profitability.

Harter suggests that ‘helping employees see the ultimate outcomes the organization is working to achieve and how they play a role in achieving those outcomes’ may be the greatest benefit managers can provide to those they supervise.

By John Schinnerer, Ph.D.
Founder Guide To Self
Award-winning author (Guide to Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Happiness)
Award-winning blogger (Top 3 in positive psychology by PostRank, Top 100 by The Daily Reviewer)
Free 216 page eBook on latest ways to increase happiness from the inside out at http://www.Guidetoself.com

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Journal References:

1.     Manon Mireille LeBlanc, Julian Barling. Workplace Aggression. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2004; 13 (1): 9 DOI: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01301003.x

2.     H. R. Bowles, M. Gelfand. Status and the Evaluation of Workplace Deviance. Psychological Science, 2009; 21 (1): 49 DOI: 10.1177/0956797609356509

3.     Paul E. Spector. Employee Control and Occupational Stress. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2002; 11 (4): 133 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8721.00185

4.     J. K. Harter, F. L. Schmidt, J. W. Asplund, E. A. Killham, S. Agrawal. Causal Impact of Employee Work Perceptions on the Bottom Line of Organizations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2010; 5 (4): 378 DOI: 10.1177/1745691610374589

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27. July 2010 by John Schinnerer.

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.
Guide To Self, Inc.

Have you ever been yelled at, screamed at, while at work? Doesn’t it suck? It can put you into an emotional tailspin for the rest of the day.

 So what’s the best way to handle it when the irritation of a coworker begins to escalate into rage?

The ability to de-escalate the anger of others is a critical political and emotional ability necessary for long-term success. As an executive coach and speaker, I have seen and heard about anger taking on a life of its own, damaging relationships and overturning promising careers. While we do our best to act the part of rational, reasonable business people, the truth is that we are also emotional. And we don’t always have control over the emotional mind. The essential trick is to learn skills to manage your emotional mind and the emotions of others around you. This leads to unbelievable, unshakeable power and ultimately, greater success. 

The Emotional vs. Rational Brain

The emotional brain (primarily the limbic system) has been in existence in human beings for 3 to 10 million years. On the other hand, the rational brain (the cortex) has only been around for roughly 50,000 to 1 million years.

The emotional brain has been through countless revisions and is nearly perfect in its ability to keep humans safe and act as a general guidance system (approach vs. avoidance). The emotional brain has the ability to take over the rational brain when someone comes between you and your goal (leading to anger) or when danger is sensed (leading to fear).

The rational brain is still in the earliest stages of revision on an evolutionary scale. It is prone to mistakes in thinking, and can be overpowered by the emotional brain in a matter of .33 seconds.

All of us are simultaneously rational and emotional. So anger is inevitable when you have groups of people who care passionately about their companies, their jobs and a wide assortment of individual, team and corporate goals. As goals come into conflict with others, anger is bound to result.

Anger exists on a spectrum. Think of the intensity of anger along a 1 – 10 scale where 1 is calm and 10 is enraged.

Top Ways to Defuse Anger at Work

1. The first step to take when someone is angry with you is to do a body scan. This is simply a mental scan of your body to monitor your own anger level. If your anger gets above a 5 on the anger scale, tell the person that you are getting upset and ask them to continue the conversation later (after you’ve calmed down). In my work helping executives with anger, I’ve found that anytime you get above a 5 on the anger scale, hurtful words are spoken and destructive acts are committed. It becomes highly difficult to manage yourself when your anger level is above a 5. And it becomes nearly impossible to help another person manage his or her anger if your anger spikes.

2. Be aware that anger is one strategy that people use to get their own needs met. I call the use of destructive emotions to get what one wants ‘emotional bullying.’ Keep that phrase in your mind and see if emotional bullying is taking place in your situation. If so, calmly state to the other person that they cannot use emotions to get what they want.  Or you can choose to tell them that you are happy to speak about the situation further when they have calmed down.

3. Take a deep breath. Studies show that focused breathing reduces the intensity of negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and resentment. Negative emotions lock the body into certain patterns of movement and thinking. For instance, anger locks you into shallow breathing, tightened muscles, and thoughts which reinforce the anger. Deep breathing into your belly is the most important step in unlocking anger.

4. Avoid criticizing or blaming the angry person. Criticism, blame and judgment are highly likely to heighten the intensity of the anger.

5. Look for common ground between your experiences and the focus of their anger. There is usually a kernel of truth in angry statements, even if it is a tiny kernel. Your job is to seek out that truth and magnify it. If you can relate to their experience, let them know, ‘If I put myself in your shoes, I’d be angry too. Let me see what I can do to help you make this situation better.’

6. Tune in to the early warning signs. These can tip you off that a coworker is getting progressively angry. It’s powerful to know someone is ready to blow their top before they actually lose their temper.  There are physiological indicators of anger for which you can be on the lookout. These include clenched jaw, furrowed brow, upper lip curled up on one side (disgust), muscle tension, narrowed eyes and shallow breathing. Beyond that, you can look for deviations from typical behavior patterns. For instance, when a coworker who is usually boisterous and outgoing turns silent and withdraws, it may be a red flag for anger. When you notice such changes in people, simply call attention to them gently to diffuse them before they erupt. For instance, ‘Hey Jan, I notice you have become quiet all of a sudden. What’s going on for you?’ or ‘Bob, you seem to have an irritated look on your face. Is there anything we may have missed?’

7. If you cannot prevent the angry party from exploding in rage, there are several approaches of which you will want to be practiced. This includes active listening, apologizing, acknowledging their feelings, and offering to make an attempt to rectify the situation.

8. Active listening is the process of genuinely and sincerely attempting to truly hear what it is the angry party is trying to convey. It involves listening at several different levels simultaneously including

a. the text (interpreting the words they are speaking to you),

b. the subtext (what is not being said yet is still part of the problem),

c. the emotional (which emotions are involved in the anger such as resentment, disappointment, fear, sadness, contempt, disgust and more)

d. the physical (the body language of the angry individual, how agitated are they, how tightly are they holding their hands, how contorted are their facial expressions, etc.)

9. Attempt an apology if you feel one is warranted or appropriate. Apologies consist of five parts. First, you want to sincerely admit to the wrong doing (assuming you or your company made a mistake). ‘I know that I made an error when I filed the report with mistakes in it.’ Second, you want to apologize, ‘I apologize.’ Third, you want to ask what you can do to make things right. Ask them, ‘Do you have any constructive criticism for me?’ Fourth, let the other party know that you will behave differently next time. ‘Next time, I will make sure there are no errors in the report before I file it.’ Finally, ask for their forgiveness. ‘Will you forgive me for filing the report with errors?’

10. Acknowledge their feelings. Help the angry party feel heard. Say something along the lines of ‘I think I understand how you feel. You are very upset. I hear you. Your anger makes complete sense to me. What can I do to help?’

11. Attempts to reason with angry individuals are likely to fall on deaf ears. When anger gets intense, the emotional mind is firmly in control of the angry person and little if any information gets in. The exception to this is information that reinforces their anger. This sort of info will get in, will be focused on and will be magnified.

12. Act with compassion. Compassion is empathy, the ability to put yourself in another’s shoes. The goal is to understand the situation from the perspective of the other person. The better you get at this learnable skill, the easier it is to unlock their anger.

13. In some instances, these de-escalation skills will not be enough to defuse a rage. You always want to be aware when dealing with angry individuals that they may not be thinking completely rationally. As a result, you want to ensure your own safety. This means you must be mindful of an escape route should things take a turn for the worse and become violent or abusive. Make sure the angry party is not blocking your path to the door or a window.  Keep this in mind if the conversation escalates and slowly, calmly work your way towards a better escape route. If the situation escalates to a point where you feel it is out of control, do not hesitate to call the police to ensure your safety.

14. Learning proven methods to stay calm in emotionally charged situations is critical in business.  Meeting anger with anger is usually a recipe for turning irritation into a full blown rage.

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About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping people learn anger management, stress management and the latest ways to deal with destructive negative emotions. He also helps clients discover optimal human functioning via positive psychology. His offices are in Danville, California. He graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive, speaker and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches executives to happiness and success using the latest in positive psychology. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a daily prime time radio show, in the SF Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to anger management, to executive coaching. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com. His blog, Shrunken Mind, was recently recognized as one of the top 3 in positive psychology on the web (http://drjohnblog.guidetoself.com).

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