If you’re happy and you know it.....

So what did you get up to this weekend? If you went to a concert and go every now and again, you may feel better about life. A study from researchers at Victoria’s Deakin University surveyed 1,000 Australians and found that those who attended any sort of communal musical experience, be that a festival or just a night out dancing reported higher levels of satisfaction with their lives.

This is probably no surprise. Most cultures have a tradition of people meeting up and belting out a few tunes, from the Cheile House in Ireland, to Jamming Sessions in more modern times, to singing at Sunday Service, to rhythmic rituals in ancient or indigenous cultures. Shared communal musical experiences have always been with us and according to Deakin University for good reason - our emotional well-being.

However, in recent times, musical experience has become much more personalized. We have our own playlists on Spotify, shuffle our MP3 collections or stream our favorite artists on YouTube. There is less of a shared musical experience and more of a niche  individual one. That is not all bad, it reflects our choice and preferences.

Many organisations which look at staff well-being have devised appreciation days, team building events and other initiatives to motivate and create a buzz. There has been a move away from the once common company or department night out.

You are now more likely to lift a work colleague over a wall on a team building day than you are to show them a near perfect Moon Walk routine on the dance floor. According to the people at Deakin University, we may need to swing the pendulum back a little and have a few more nights out, be that to concerts or just a night on the tiles, and do so regularly.

If for all kinds of logistical reasons, company nights out are hard to organise, create a scheme where your department regularly has subsidized concert tickets or allow staff to leave early / come in late to make attending events feasible. This could work both ways, staff get a perk and organisations get a workforce that is more satisfied with life.

As artists find it harder to get revenues from singles or album sales (because of the aforementioned Spotify), more and more are now touring. There has never been a better time for live music. Encourage people to leave the playlists at home, pack their dancing shoes or air guitar and enjoy their music.

Work can be funny

We have often been told that laughter is good for us. There are several studies backing up the positive effects of laughter on our mental health and general well-being. I've previously blogged on how laughter and humour can replenish willpower.

I recently came across a 2010 study in the Journal Psychological Science which looked at how positive mood affects our performance. A team led by University of Western Ontario psychologist Ruby Nadler showed participants three types of videos.

The first group got to watch a ‘negative’ video featuring coverage of a Chinese earthquake. The next group got to watch a ‘neutral’ video featuring the ‘Antiques Road Show’. The third group got to watch a ‘positive’ video of a laughing baby.

Each group were then given a test where they had to classify novel stimuli. This was to gauge their creative thinking and problem solving. The third group came out on top with the researchers suggesting that positive mood enhances creative problem solving and promotes flexible thinking

The theory is that cognitive flexibility is enhanced by positive mood. It improves our ability to take new information and apply it to things you already know about. Watching funny things draws us into humour where we use abstract thinking, entertain comparisons and develop perspectives we might not get from regular behaviour. Humour gets our brain moving and that improves our cognitive function.

The next time you have a few minutes to spare before a meeting, maybe go on YouTube for a giggle rather than take a last look over your less than hilarious PowerPoint presentation. Your cognitive flexibility and problem solving skills might get a boost. Now that's no joke. 

Creativity in a bottle?

Ernest Hemmingway  is reported to have said “When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day, what else can change your ideas and make them run in a different plane like whisky?” Famed authors David Foster Wallace, Edgar Allan Poe, and Truman Capote were also heavy drinkers, along with several musicians including Beethoven. So the question is, does a few drinks help creativity?

Andrew Jarosz set about researching this. He got 40 male social drinkers aged 21 to 30. All were required to avoid alcohol and drugs for 24 hours prior to the experiment and to avoid food and caffeine for 4 hours prior. Half the participants were allocated to the alcohol group and were given enough vodka to achieve a blood alcohol concentration of .07 (approximately two pints of beer for the average man). The other participants acted as controls and consumed no alcohol.

Both groups then did a Remote Associates Test (RAT) . This type of test is frequently used by psychologists to measure creativity. The test is called a Remote Associates Test because it measures the ability to see relationships between things that are only remotely associated e.g. what word is associated with the words 'pay’, ‘call’ and ‘line’? the answer is ‘phone’.

The research found that the drinking participants solved more items on the Remote Associates Test compared with the non drinkers participants (58 per cent vs. 42 per). It got better, they also solved items quicker (11.54 seconds per item vs. 15.24 seconds). The people with a few drinks also seemed to have a more intuitive experience and reported solving more items through ‘Eureka’ moments rather than analytical analysis of the words.  

It is worth noting that people with a few drinks on board performed worse on working memory tasks, though this would be expected. The point to consider here is that a few drinks or mild intoxication may help relax our thoughts and stimulate creativity. Clearly drinking to excess would undo this so moderation is key.

If you are trying to tease out a situation that requires some out of the box thinking or need to come up with a creative approach, treat yourself to a glass of wine or a beer and see if creativity kicks in. If you are having a working lunch then maybe have a little more than coffee tea and water on the menu.

Is less really more?

yes

Mood for thought

There is a radio station in Ireland that kicks off its afternoon drive time program with the presenter waffling on about a daily ‘happiness index’. I always thought this was a bit bland and a gimmick. After all, who keeps or compiles this happiness index and how could it possibly mean anything?

I then read something which put me thinking. Researchers at the University of Manchester and Indiana University have put some science behind this idea of  ‘sentiment tracking’.

They looked at how global emotion and mood, as measured via something like Twitter, could predict stock market activity. They investigated whether measurements of collective mood states derived from large scale Twitter feeds, correlated to the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) over time. They analyzed the text content of daily Twitter feeds by two mood tracking tools, OpinionFinder that measures positive vs. negative mood and Google-Profile of Mood States (GPOMS)

Their results indicated that the accuracy of DJIA predictions can be significantly improved by the inclusion of specific public mood dimensions. If you want to predict closing prices on the Dow Jones, have an eye on the Twitter feed.

This raises some interesting questions about how we look at social media data or activity. It may justify a more qualitative approach. When it comes to social media marketing, we may need to look at how our followers feel, rather than just counting them. 

This type of index should make us stop and think about how we interpret the holy grail of Big Data. Does this happiness index change with the weather?, with a regions sporting success? and if so does that affect stock markets or consumer spending? Which is cause and which is effect? Plenty for the self proclaimed big data scientists to ponder there. 

Wish you were here

I came across an interesting BPS Research Digest post which looked at a study by Belgian psychologist Saartje Cromheecke.

Working with a Belgian technology company Cromheecke’s  team sent out a real job opportunity to 1,997 potential applicants. Half got the standard email we all see every day and the other half got a hand-written postcard showing a coffee mug and a blank daily agenda. The email and postcard message featured the same layout and included the same written information and content about the job vacancy. Both type of applicants now had the same chance to apply.

Over all 62 of the those contacted applied for the job. But 82% of them had received the postcard, just 18% had received the email. Put another way, only 1% of those emailed actually applied for the job compared with 5% of those who received a postcard. Follow up research also suggested that respondents to the postcard tended to be better educated, consistent with the researchers' prediction that a recruitment message sent via a "strange" medium will be more likely to grab the attention of better-qualified personnel who aren't actively looking for new opportunities.

The BPS post does make the important point that Cromheecke's team aren't saying that postcards will always be the answer. Rather, "this field experiment puts forth 'media strangeness' as a more general evidence-based principle, which recruiters might take into account when selecting media for communicating job postings."

Recruitment aside, this could also play a role in other customer or client contact situations. Would potential targets respond better to a postcard or some other ‘strange media’ than an email? Would you be better off sending a special offer on a cup, coaster, postcard? The ‘strange media’ does not have to be the last word in graphic design, it just has to be different and convey the necessary information.

If you get the time, try it out. For the price of a few postcards you could see the improved response levels Cromheecke's team did. If they relied on email, they would have had nothing like 62 candidates to choose from. 

A Blog a view when recruiting?

I recently came across an article on the BPS Research Digest about linking bloggers words and their personalities. It looked at a study by Tal Yarkoni who analysed the content of 694 blogs, containing an average of 115,000 words written over an average period of about two years. It then matched this with the authors’ answers to on-line personality questionnaires.

The trawl of data by Tal Yarkoni allowed him to zoom in on how certain words were used. Some strong correlations included Neuroticism with use of 'irony', Extroversion with 'drinks' and Openness correlated with 'ink'. While the specific correlations may or may not be important, the interesting point here is that blogs and other parts of the internet now allow new ways of examining and studying our personality types. Contrary to the idea that we use some idealised or false alter ego when on-line, our use of words and other on-line behaviours may in fact betray our real personality.

This got me thinking. In many different industries today, roles involve some customer or market facing activity. Increasingly our Facebook, Twitter or some other social media presence are part of our professional identity. I began to wonder if we should ask  some job applicants to write a blog or maintain a Twitter feed for a few weeks as part of the recruitment process? The subject matter may or may not be related to a specific job.  Rather than focus on just the content, it would be an opportunity to see how engaging, relevant and professional the candidate can be in their on-line presence. You could throw the proverbial cat among the pigeons and introduce a few trolls or incendiary comments and see how they are handled.The level of effort put in may also show how badly the candidate wants the job. The end result would inevitably be subjective but would give another understanding of the candidate, outside the comfort zone of the rehearsed interview and sanitised CV.

On the flip side, if you are hunting down the ideal job in a company you would like to work for, a blog or Twitter feed about the market or technology used in that ideal job could be a way of showing how competent you are, how badly who want it and the type of new thinking you could bring to an organisation. This is especially the case for many new jobs that previously didn't exist and don't have a defined qualification profile e.g. Social Media Marketeer, Data Scientist, SaaS Analyst. There is no one degree to qualify you for these types of jobs, you need to qualify yourself and get that across to employers. 

The take way here is that a blog is another window into who we are as people, how we behave and beyond that a source of information about how motivated, competent and suitable we may be for some jobs. This can work if you are hiring or want to be hired.

Funny Works

There are many studies which espouse the value of humour in the work place. An often quoted study by Professor William Hampes looked at the relationship between humour and trust. Those who scored high on a test that measured sense of humour for social purposes were considered more trustworthy.

Other studies suggest that humour is good for group cohesiveness and leads to richer, more efficient communication. One such study by Jessica Mesmer-Magnus, David J. Glew, Chockalingam Viswesvaran looked at how humour is associated with employee health (e.g. burnout, health), work-related outcomes (e.g. performance, job satisfaction, withdrawal), perceived supervisor/leader effectiveness and how it can counteract workplace stress.

They found that employee humour is associated with enhanced work performance, satisfaction, workgroup cohesion, health, and coping effectiveness, as well as decreased burnout, stress, and work withdrawal. That is no joke. Supervisor use of humour was associated with enhanced subordinate work performance, satisfaction, perception of supervisor performance, satisfaction with supervisor, and workgroup cohesion, as well as reduced work withdrawal.

As is the case with many studies in this area there is the challenge of defining what is funny (some people just don’t get it). We also need to be careful not to cross any lines with sexist or some other non-appropriate humour among work colleagues.

That aside, given the positive associations with being able to make a few wise cracks, perhaps humour should be a skill we look for when building teams or hiring a supervisor. Worst case scenario, they will be a good laugh on company nights out or a bit of light entertainment on a dreary Monday morning.

To get started try this out ‘I said to the librarian I hope you don't have a book on reverse psychology ‘. Funny?, well you had to be there. Btw, free humour tip: If you find yourself Saying "You had to be there" chances are you need to work on your funny game a bit more.

What's your problem? How you describe influences how you solve

When problem solving, re-ask the question you are trying to figure out, but each time describe it a different way, thinking about what the problem really means. The way you describe a problem you are trying to solve influences how you think about it.

Different descriptions, allow us to think about it in different ways, we then end up with different perspectives and this increases the potential sources of a solution.

You could get different members of your team to each describe the problem in their own way or from their perspective. The differing descriptions could show up different avenues for a solution or work around. For example, a server or web site starts to run slow. The techies will have something to say about load balancing, VMware etc, the Customer Service Manager will have the end users in mind, the Sales Manager might consider it a PR / Sales problem.

Each perspective expands the problem but also expands the mitigating tasks you can employ e.g. contact all users and let them know there is a problem but you are working on it. This will reduce the inbound support calls. This frees up the techies to fix the issue and not get pulled into reactive inbound support calls. The Sales Manger contacts key clients with updates from the techies. When it is fixed, users can be contacted with the good news and the episode used as an example of how well your support works.

Put it another way. When you start solving a problem, you normally have a fairly specific description of what is wrong. You think about the problem in terms of how it presents itself. If you are trying to fix your car when it won’t start in the morning, you think about the battery, fuel, the starter, plugs or alternator.

When you describe your problem as being something other than, ‘How do I start the car?’, e.g. ‘How do I get to work?’, ‘How do I get someone to cover for me if I can’t get in?’, 'who can fix my car?' your thinking gets a little more abstract.

You now think about not having transport, not being able to keep to a schedule. As the details change, it leads to new insights and potential solutions. You might decide to call a mechanic, call work and put on your ‘out of office’ or work from home for a few hours.

That might be a better solution than dissecting your engine and figuring out if the spark plugs or starter is bust. You will still be late for work and may only have swapped one problem for another.

Not To Do Lists

We are used to having To-Do lists. Our email programs, hardback diaries and many apps now available on smart phones allow us to create and manage these lists.

They are useful in that we do need to be reminded of important tasks, its good to be able to prioritise tasks and research has shown that strategies like doing the most unpleasant/difficult tasks first is more productive.

Consider also the use of a Not-To-Do list. We all know the habits, tasks, interactions, where we end up procrastinating, wasting time or where our motivation drops. For example, I noticed over the years that when I decide to take time out from work to check a news website, I'm usually doing it not for the news but to avoid/delay some task. Now if I find myself checking out a news site, I cognitively take a 'time out' and ask myself why. Cutting back on checking news websites in zombie mode saved me quite a bit of time and is a type of 'Canary in the Mine' for how my day is going.

To start this off and see how it works for you, try keeping a diary. Each time you find yourself mentally wandering, your motivation slipping or your frustration building, write down what you are doing or have just done. You will then build up a list of items to be avoided (not everything can be unfortunately) . Hopefully by using this list you will have a more productive day and be a little happier in your work. You may also have identified 'your canaries'.

The thinking behind this was inspired by Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, where we all have conditions where we are more productive and can be immersed in our work is a positive way. My thinking is that if we know what keeps us in Flow, we also need to know what can knock us out of that Flow and avoid (again where possible) these scenarios.

AA Type Sponsor in the Work Place?

In AA you get a sponsor assigned to help you through difficult times and to be there for you when you may waver. In business we all know the right thing to do, plan, monitor, review etc. Admitting that we have a problem with basics like these is not that hard or unusual.

We are very good at acknowledging that we need to start listing daily tasks, and often 'turn over a new leaf' for a few days doing these things to make us happier people and better professionals.

However many of us 'fall off the wagon' and get back into our bad habits of fire fighting, not sticking to planned tasks and end up back where we started in a matter of weeks, except with our resolve and perhaps egos damaged.

Would it be a good idea to have a 'Work Smarter/Change Sponsor', some one who will be there when you waver, will check and ask how you are keeping to your new regime, and pull you up on any deviations.

This sponsor need not be an expert in your field, they are just there to keep you honest to your new goals, on track for any promises to amend behaviour and to be there to give encouragement for when you are having second thoughts.

Recognising the need for change is easy, planning change is not that hard, making change is OK too, its sticking to it over a sustained period of time that most of us fall down on.

Have a think about your co-workers, family, college friends or in this day and age a social media buddy. Next time you are promising yourself that you will list tasks in order of difficultly and complete those first, that you will keep an accurate diary, that you will document client interactions correctly, hook yourself up with a sponsor that will check in on you. Explain the change you want to make and be answerable to your sponsor as well as your self.

Maybe this time you will stick to your guns and really make a change.