17. September 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Richard Boyatzis and his colleagues (Boyatzis, R.E., Murphy, A.J., Wheeler, J.V. Philosophy as a missing link between values and behavior. January, 2000) have proposed that each of us uses an underlying philosophy to determine how we behave in relation to our values. Boyatzis suggest three major philosophical systems that are likely to influence an individual’s actions, thoughts, values and feelings in various ways.

These three philosophies are pragmatic, intellectual and humanistic.

A person with a pragmatic outlook looks at the output or consequence of a decision as the key to the perceived value. The desire is to maximize the output relative to the input. Pragmatists focus on the individual and assume that the individual chooses actions based on their own self-interest in order to maximize their benefits. This is akin to rationalizing away any values above and beyond those that work in the favor of self-interest. For example, a pragmatic person might list “family” as a top value, yet spends eighty hours a week away from his family working at his job. He spends as little time as possible at home. He says his behavior is in accordance with his values since he is earning money and providing for his family’s needs. In truth, his behavior is a function of his workaholism. He is addicted to working because he is afraid of intimacy and therefore is uncomfortable at home.

A person with an intellectual philosophy uses his intellect to make most decisions. The intellectual gauges the value of an activity, person or effort by its consistency with a set of rational ideals such as the Ten Commandments or a professional code of ethics.  The intellectual uses logic as the main means to make judgments of value and meaning. An example is the intellectual person who lists “family” as a top value, and spends 55 hours a week at work and evenings and weekends with his family. He is present to help with homework and bedtime. The intellectual interacts with his family rationally and gets irritated when his children are not rational in their response to him. While he spends more time with his family, he is not available emotionally for his children and wife. His behavior is in keeping with his stated value of “family” but the quality of time spent with family members is low due to low emotional and social awareness.

An individual with a humanitarian philosophy views personal relationships as the primary yardstick for judging meaning and value in life. Emotions and actions within the context of a relationship are seen as most important. In particular, family and close friends are the most important of all relationships. People with a humanitarian outlook prize values that emphasize the worth of the individual and interpersonal relationships as the greatest “good.” The worth of an activity or effort is judged in terms of its effect on an individual’s close relationships. For example, the humanitarian lists “family” as his top value and establishes a balance between work and home. He also has a balance between his intellect and his emotions. Thus, when he is home with his family, he is available to them emotionally as well as intellectually.

On the face of it, it seems that a high degree of emotional intelligence is required for an individual to operate based on the humanitarian philosophy. If that is true, then these three philosophies might be related to the degree of IQ and EQ that an individual possesses. For instance, a person with adequate IQ and little EQ is likely to be employing the pragmatic view. And a person with adequate IQ and moderate EQ is probably using the intellectual philosophy. Finally, a person with adequate IQ and a high EQ is likely to use the humanitarian outlook.

Boyatzis states that no one philosophy is “better” than another. Hi belief is that the philosophies merely drive the individual’s behaviors, thoughts and emotions in different ways.

What If One Philosophy Is Better Than Another?

While Boyatzis has made great progress in clarifying part of the mystery connecting values and behaviors, I believe that these philosophies are hierarchical and developmental in nature. This means that one philosophy is better than another.

My model states that all of us start out as children with a pragmatic or self-centered philosophy. Assuming a normal developmental path, we eventually learn the intellectual philosophy and adopt it as the primary means by which to evaluate our actions, thoughts and feelings. For those of us who continue to learn, grow and develop beyond our intellect, into the realm of emotional intelligence, we adopt the humanitarian outlook as our method of judging the worth of our behavior, thoughts and emotions. This implies that certain values and/or strengths will be “available” to different individuals at different times in their lives. And some values may never be available to individuals that don’t progress past the pragmatic philosophy, such as allowing one’s self to be loved and wisdom (or perspective-taking).

In other words, the pragmatist may never be able to truly act in accordance with a stated value such as world peace because it is not in his best interest to do so. He can state world peace as a value yet it would not make any sense to work towards it as it does not maximize output and minimize input. Just the opposite would be true; he would have to put in a great deal of time and energy to make a tiny difference.
Every one of us has a values system.  A values system is the set of values that we hold important and the way in which they are prioritized. 

Personal Values As Ends and As Means

Personal values come in two types — ends and means. 

End values are the desired outcomes that a person desperately wants to achieve such as “freedom”, or “a purposeful life.”  Each individual has a different set of end values in his or her values system. 

Means values are beliefs about a person’s desired traits or ways of being such as “loving”, “forgiving”, or “kind.”  We possess means values because we believe that each one of the means values helps us to achieve our ends values.  For instance, “loving” may be a means value that helps one move towards the ends value of “a purposeful life.”

Take a moment to clarify your own top values. Take a moment to figure out which of the three philosophies is your primary one. Figure out where you want to go from here and how you want to get there. Figure out your values and the personal philosophy that underlies them…on your way to success.

To life, love and laughter,

John Schinnerer Ph.D.

Founder of Guide To Self, Inc.

Visit the site above for a complimentary copy of my award-winning book on the latest ways to manage your own thoughts and emotions to ensure greater character, integrity and success! Be character driven, not emotion driven!

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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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12. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

‘Excuse me’, I said kindly, ‘there is a mistake in this report.’ My coworker roared, ‘And I assume you’re perfect?! My reports don’t have mistakes in them. Why don’t you take that report and shove it up your a..!’ She continued with her tirade while I did a quick scan for any sharp objects nearby that she might use on me. After 3 long minutes, she snatched the pages from my hand and stormed off.

While this took place nearly 20 years ago, I remember it vividly as it was an early lesson that the anger of coworkers is not always directed at the right person. More often, the anger of coworkers is misdirected at people who had no involvement in causing the anger in the first place.

So how do you handle it when someone else’s anger begins to escalate in the workplace?

The ability to de-escalate the anger of others is a critical ability for long-term success. As a shrink, father of 4 and award-winning author, I have seen anger take on a life of its own, destroying relationships and derailing careers. While we do our best to act the part of rational, reasonable business people, the truth is that we are also emotional beings…

For the entire article AND my free award-winning eBook, head now to http://www.GuideToSelf.com. You can have instant access to 216 pages of proven tools for advanced management of the mind. This includes the latest tools to turn UP positive emotions (passion, love, contentment, relaxation, etc.) and tools to turn DOWN negative emotions (anger, anxiety, depression).

To love, laughter and life,

John Schinnerer Ph.D.
Founder Guide To Self
Award-winning author (Guide to Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Managing Emotion and Thought)
Award-winning blogger (Shrunken Mind at http://drjohnblog.guidetoself.com)
http://www.GuideToSelf.com

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