Strengths-Based Talent Management
People who have the opportunity to do what they do best every day are happier and more successful. A strengths-based approach to managing talent recognizes the value of emphasizing strengths and adopts practices that help employees identify, use and develop their strengths at work.
Identify strengths – The first step in a strengths-based approach to management is to help employees discover their strengths. Managers can use strengthspotting to identify strengths in others. Clues that point to potential strengths are enjoyment, ease, energy, and excellence. Inventories can also be used to assess people’s strengths. Some popular ones include the VIA Survey of Character Strengths, the StrengthsFinder, and Realise2.
(Read the rest of this article on the ASTD Happiness Blog)
Celebrating Telework Week
Since this is Telework Week, I thought I’d discuss the critical role that telecommuting plays in creating positive workplaces where employees thrive. I was shocked and extremely disappointed when Marissa Mayer decided to ban working from home at Yahoo!. How could a tech company with a female CEO make such an out-of-touch, backwards decision?
Technology has allowed companies to stop babysitting their employees and to focus instead on what really matters; results. Thanks to technology, people no longer have to be physically side-by-side in order to communicate and collaborate. Research shows that teleworkers are more satisfied, more productive, work longer hours, take fewer days off, and are less likely to quit.
Having the option to work from home is necessary for people to balance their work and non-work responsibilities. Workplace flexibility allows parents to attend their children’s after-school activities and eat dinner together as a family. It makes it possible for people to take care of their aging parents. It provides Generation Y workers the option of working when and where they are most productive. Work-life balance is important for everyone and forcing people to work set hours in the office deprives them of the control they need to perform at their best.
In a survey I did of women workers, I found that job control significantly reduced work-life conflict. In her article, Why women still can’t have it all, Anne-Marie Slaughter explained that, “having control over your schedule is the only way women who want to have a career and a family can make it work.” She left her job as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department because the inflexible schedule made it impossible for her to spend enough time with her teenage sons.
Interestingly, Slaughter’s prior positions as a law professor and as dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, while both extremely demanding jobs, did allow her the flexibility to be with her children when needed and still get her work done. It’s not high job demands, but rather a lack of control that leads talented women to reject certain jobs.
That is why I’m celebrating Telework Week and I hope you will join me in spreading the word that flexible work options are the only smart option.
Do you have a goal that you’re trying to achieve? If so, I have good news for you. There is one easy thing that you can do to significantly increase your chance of success: plan how you will achieve your goal. That’s it! Deciding when, where and how you will take the steps needed to achieve your goal makes a huge difference.
In her book, Succeed, Heidi Halvorson describes an experiment where college students were asked to write an essay over Christmas break. Half of the students were also asked to decide exactly when and where they would write the essay. The students who were asked to make a plan were more than twice as likely to complete their essays. Seventy-one percent of them wrote the essay, compared to 32 percent of those without a plan.
The best plans are if-then plans: if I am in this situation, then I will take this action. This is an amazingly simple, but very effective strategy. If-then planning has helped people to eat less fat, stop smoking, remember to recycle, not drink alcohol, and use public transportation more.
If-then planning works because it helps you to take action by creating a link between a situation, which serves as a cue, and a behavior that should follow. The cue reminds you to take action. It helps your brain automate the behavior that follows so you don’t depend as much on your self-control.
Some of my if-then plans include:
- If I am asked what I’d like to drink at a restaurant, then I’ll order iced tea (instead of the diet coke that I’m tempted to order).
- If I want to eat chips and dip, then I’ll eat veggies with the dip instead.
- If I take the kids to the bus stop, then I will go to the gym before heading back home.
- If I feel stressed, then I will take three long deep breaths.
- If I’m going to write my blog, then I will close my email.
- If my children or husband want to tell me something, then I will stop whatever I’m doing to listen to them.
- If it is Sunday, then I will call my parents.
I’ve found if-then planning to be extremely helpful for remembering to practice strategies that keep me positive, like nurturing relationships and being healthy. What about you? What are some of your if-then plans?
Love is Good for Your Health
Since Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, I thought I’d dedicate this blog post to the topic of love. Barbara Fredrickson, who first peaked my interest in positive psychology with her wonderful book, Positivity, just published another book, Love 2.0. In it she summarizes findings from her research and other scientific studies showing the enormous power of love to transform your life for the better.
One of the most interesting aspects of this book is Barbara’s conception of love. Based on brain activity research, she redefines it as micro-moments of connection between people. When you share positive emotions with others you experience a positivity resonance. Your brain activity syncs up with that of the other person, which leads to a mutual motivation to invest in each other’s well-being. These micro-moments of connection can happen between two people who hardly know each other. Having a brief conversation with someone while waiting in line will increase your concern for that person.
Micro-moments of connection are important for your health because when your brain registers the emotion of love, the hormone oxytocin is released. Oxytocin reduces levels of stress hormones in your body, lowers your blood pressure and reduces inflammation, which can lead to heart failure, stroke, and diabetes.
So it is in your best interest to expand the amount of love in your life. Each time you encounter another person, you have the opportunity to connect with them with warmth, openness and goodwill. It helps to realize that each person you see has experienced both good and bad fortune. This means everyone deserves either your compassionate love for what they have suffered or your celebratory love for their good fortune.
Be mindful as you go about your day so that you notice people, on your commute, at work, in the grocery store (that means put your phone away!). Look for nonverbal signs that might indicate suffering or joy. Make eye contact, smile at them, and wish that they be released from suffering or that their good fortune continue.
You don’t have to be in a romantic relationship to reap the benefits of love. You can share micro-moments of connection with anyone. Short conversations, even eye contact, can trigger the release of hormones that will significantly improve your health.
Most of you know this is my first winter in Northern Virginia after having lived for 8 years in Arizona. Fortunately, it’s been a mild winter so far, but there are still more gray days here than there were in the desert. My mood has always dropped when I go too long without seeing the sun. So I thought I’d look into ways to try to keep my spirits up during the winter months. Here are some of the tips I discovered:
- Make sure you aren’t deficient in Vitamin D. Your body needs sunlight to synthesize Vitamin D, so levels are usually low during winter months. Since Vitamin D is related to the amount of serotonin, which controls your moods, in your brain, low levels can cause depression. Fish, eggs and milk are good sources of Vitamin D or you may want to take a supplement during the winter months.
- Omega-3 fatty acids are one of nature’s most powerful antidepressants. Foods rich in Omega-3 are important to mood and energy regulation. Salmon, flax seeds and walnuts are excellent sources of Omerga-3.
- As hard as it is, try to ignore your craving for carbohydrate-heavy foods. The decreased serotonin that comes with a lack of sunlight causes us to crave these comfort foods. That’s why we often gain weight in the winter. Opt instead for proteins and complex carbs like fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
- Since the reduced amount of natural sunlight is a major contributor to feeling sad in winter, light therapy is a great solution. Using a light box for 30 minutes a day can help alleviate seasonal depression. The iSAD Lamp app turns your iPhone into an alarm clock that simulates sunrise by emitting a bright glow from the screen. It also helps to spend as much time outdoors as possible during daylight hours, open the shades to let in more light and use brighter light bulbs.
- Aromatherapy is another great mood booster. You might choose smells reminiscent of spring and summer, like rose or honeysuckle, but a good option is a lemon-scented candle because the smell of citrus has been shown to be especially effective in lifting moods.
- Socializing is always one of the best ways to boost your mood. But bad weather and short days make you more likely to isolate yourself in the winter months. The problem is that staying cooped up in your house feeds loneliness and depression. So you need to make an effort to connect with people: go out to lunch with friends, call a family member, plan a Mardi Gras party.
- You already know exercise improves your mood. But did you know that the time of day you exercise makes a difference? It turns out the people who exercise in the morning sleep better and burn more calories throughout day. So as hard as it is to crawl out of bed on cold dark mornings, it’s worth the effort! If you have trouble motivating yourself you might want to hire a personal trainer for just a few months or partner with a friend.
Beginning a new year with new resolutions calls to mind an interesting aspect of goal setting. Many of our new year’s resolutions are about things we want to accomplish over the next year. We tend to think about these future goals differently than we do more short-term goals. When we make plans for the distant future we give more weight to what is desirable or valuable. When we set goals for the near future we put more emphasis on the feasibility of the goal. Have you ever committed to something in the future that you came to regret as the day approached?
Depending on your natural goal-setting tendency, this can be helpful or not when setting resolutions. Some of us have a tendency to set conservative goals that we feel we can realistically achieve (that would be me!), while others tend to think big and are more willing to take risks when it comes to setting goals.
Since I tend to choose less risky goals, I benefit from setting longer-term goals. When the goal is in the distant future I worry less about what it will take to achieve the goal and how practical it is. This helps me to think big and take on challenges that I wouldn’t commit to if the deadline were around the corner.
If, however, your tendency is to set big audacious goals in the first place, then you need to be careful about committing to new year’s resolutions that are too ambitious. If you over-estimate what you will realistically be able to accomplish you’ll become discouraged and will more likely give up.
In either case, the best resolutions are those where we weigh both the desirability and the feasibility of the goal. So choose an ambitious goal that you’d like to achieve over the next year and then identify smaller doable steps that you will need to take in order to achieve the goal. Setting a longer-term goal will encourage you to aim for something that will really make a difference, while considering the more immediate steps that need to be taken will help you to assure that your resolution is also realistic.
Tips for Increasing Your Well-being
In their book, Wellbeing, Gallup researchers Tom Rath and Jim Harter explain why we often make decisions that work against our own best interest when it comes to our well-being. The problem is that we tend to make choices that satisfy our short-term desires, rather than doing what is good for us in the long run. You know, like eating that red velvet cupcake, skipping the gym because you are too tired or buying that adorable coat with the fake fur collar. While these choices may be extremely satisfying in the moment, they aren’t good for your health or your finances in the long run.
The best way to increase your overall well-being is to make smarter choices in the moment. Small changes in your daily routine can have a huge impact in your quality of life. But doing so is easier said than done!
Setting positive defaults can help you resist the temptation to make short-term decisions that hurt your long-term well-being. This means setting things up in advance that will kind of force you to do the right thing in the moment. For example, to increase your financial well-being you can have a portion of your paycheck automatically deposited in a savings account each month. To increase your physical well-being buy healthy food at the grocery store so the only options you have when that craving hits are foods that are good for you. This is why my poor children never find any cookies in our pantry. I know if I buy them I will end up eating them!
It also helps to find an immediate payoff for good behaviors. My motivation for going to the gym isn’t how I will look in my skinny jeans a few months later (just kidding, I hate skinny jeans, but you know what I mean). I go because of how it makes me feel the rest of the day. I have more energy and am in a better mood on the days that I exercise. It’s also easier for me to say no to the burger and fries at Five Guys when I think of how gross I usually feel right after I eat them.
Increasing your well-being takes a lot of will power to make smart choices in the moment. But there are ways to make these choices easier. Think of positive defaults you can set to make good behaviors automatic and try to find more immediate incentives for doing the right thing.
Choose Your Friends Wisely
In a previous blog I mentioned a study by professors Christakis and Fowler that found that kindness is contagious. In their book Connected, they site many other examples of social contagion. Results from the research on social influence is fascinating and even a bit scary! Here are some other ways in which your life is influenced by your network of connections:
- Obesity – the probability that you become obese increases 57% if a friend of yours becomes obese. Having an obese spouse makes it 37% more likely that you become obese. You are also more likely to lose weight if a friend or even a friend’s friend loses weight.
- Divorce – you are 75% more likely to be divorced if someone that you are directly connected to is divorced. Your probability of being divorced is 33% higher if a friend of a friend is divorced.
- Smoking – having a direct connection to someone who smokes increases the odds that you will smoke by 61%. You are 29% more likely to smoke if a friend of a friend smokes and 11% more likely to smoke if your friend’s friend’s friend smokes.
- Happiness – having a friend who is happy increases your happiness more than a $10,000 raise. In fact, having a friend of a friend of a friend who is happy will make you happier than the raise.
Wow! Hard to believe, huh? Network contagion works by influencing your perception of the social acceptance of certain behaviors. The more people you know who are divorced, the more getting divorced will seem like a valid option to you. If people around you become overweight your idea of what normal weight is will start to change. If many of your coworkers go to the gym everyday you will start seeing exercise as a typical daily activity and might convince a friend from the neighborhood to join you for walks. If people around you tend to look on the bright side of things rather than complaining about what is going wrong, this will draw your attention to more of the good and less of the bad, thus increasing your happiness.
Your health and happiness really do depend in part on the people in your social network. So it is in your best interest to spend as much time as you can with people who have good habits and positive outlooks on life.
Choosing a Career is Like Buying Shoes
In her book Working Identity, Herminia Ibarra argues that the best way to choose a career is to try out different things. She believes that doing and experimenting are more useful than self-assessment exercises for determining whether or not you’ll be happy in a particular career.
The two internships I had in college provided invaluable information when trying to decide what career I wanted. I spent the first semester of my senior year working for a large bank in downtown Memphis and the second semester working in a small travel agency. I learned pretty quickly that I did not want a corporate career. While many of my peers couldn’t wait to graduate and join a large company, I realized I didn’t want to wear suits and spend long days inside an office building. I preferred the flexibility and informality of a small business, but I also figured out I wasn’t going to satisfy my love of travel by planning trips for other people. Both experiences helped me choose a career in academia. I was very happy with the autonomy it offered and the opportunity to work with others who shared my love of learning.
The good news is that internships aren’t just for college students anymore. People who want to reinvent their career or return to one after taking time off can try out new “working identities” at Vocation Vacations. You can test-drive your dream job by spending your vacation working with someone who has a career you think you might be interested in. Here are some great stories of people who have switched careers after trying out something new and discovering they loved it.
Another option is a “returnship”. A recent Harvard Business Review article highlights the growing number of companies that are offering short-term paid positions designed for professionals who have been out of the workforce for several years. Returnships help companies decide whether they want to hire people interested in returning to work, while also providing an opportunity for professionals looking to reinvent themselves to try out a potential career move.
If you’re considering a new career, experience can really help you to make the right decision. So at the very least find someone working in that career and see if you can shadow them for a few days. It will give you a good idea of what tasks you’ll be doing and the kind of environment you’ll be working in. Choosing the right career is a lot like buying shoes. The best way to know whether or not it fits is to try it out.
Next week I’m moderating a conference, organized by the Northern Virginia Technology Council and sponsored by Invertix Corporation, entitled “Best practices for recruiting and retaining talent”. The panelists, winners and finalists of the 2012 Hottest Company Culture Hot Ticket Award, will discuss how company culture helps them successfully recruit and retain top talent.
In thinking about the importance of culture for organizations, I realized most of the research that I have done throughout my career has been related to company culture:
- For my very first research project at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, a colleague and I designed a computerized tool that let HR professionals select employees based on the alignment of their values with the company culture. Selecting people who share the values of the company significantly increases the likelihood that they remain with the company. They will also be more engaged because doing work that is aligned with their values is more meaningful to them.
- Another line of research that I pursued was knowledge management. At the time technology was being used to create platforms that let employees share information about their projects; what worked, what didn’t, what to do differently the next time. The problem was that the focus was on technology and not on the people who were expected to use it. My colleagues and I studied ways of motivating employees to want to share their knowledge. The solution was to create cultural norms that encouraged the sharing of information.
- When I moved to Arizona I became interested in women’s careers. My research reveled that many women were leaving their careers in order to care for their children. It was clear that one of the main reasons they were opting out was because company cultures did not support their need to manage both work and non-work responsibilities. Until cultures become more supportive of employees by allowing them the flexibility needed to balance work and non-work demands, they will continue to lose talent. And this is no longer just a gender issue. Research on Generation Y shows that more men are demanding greater work-family balance than ever before.
- Finally, my current research focuses specifically on how to create positive workplace cultures. Findings from positive psychology have made it clear that people who experience positive emotions are more successful. So companies with positive cultures will benefit from higher levels of performance. They will also be more successful at attracting and retaining the best and the brightest.
I look forward to learning how the panelists at the conference have created positive cultures. I truly believe company culture is the key to organizational success. It is vital for attracting, retaining and engaging talent!
