Keeping Your Clients Informed and Providing A Timely Response Are Essential To Great Customer Service

2013 May 13 By

customer-service

Photo Credit: Flickr

I have written before about customer service on this blog (e.g., poor customer service hurts your business and customers leave you because of poor customer service).

In this post, I want to talk about the importance of providing timely responses to customer questions/inquiries and keeping your clients informed, and how failure to do either one or both will hurt your business.

Two instances come to mind when I think about consultants who lost clients because they either ignored their clients’ emails or neglected to keep their clients updated about the status of a project.

The first example involved a skilled consultant who was hired to provide technical services for a client. Although highly talented, the consultant neglected answering client emails, a key to maintaining good relationship with the customer. Multiple questions from one client went unanswered, and by the time this consultant responded, the client either had already come up with a solution or the opportunity to address the issue had already passed.

The second example involved another experienced consultant who failed to keep clients informed about problems or issues that might delay delivery of services. After the first missed deadline, inquiries from a client were met with excuses for why the deadline was missed, and instead of taking ownership and responsibility for the missed deadline, the consultant blamed others for the delay.

In both examples, highly skilled consultants lost clients.

A health professional once told me that in health care, providers will sometimes make a mistake because, let’s face it, no one is perfect and as hard as professionals try, they’re still human and can and do mess up. However, this health professional told me that he learned a very important lesson in running his own healthcare practice. He said if you have a great relationship with your clients, even if you screw up, you’ll have a much better chance of retaining your client than if you have a shoddy relationship. He told me that even if you are highly skilled, if your relationship with your clients are second-rate, the chances of losing them are much greater than if you are moderately skilled but provide excellent customer service.

“Many times . . . consumers do not complain . . . but instead take actions such as switching brands [or companies] or engaging in negative word of mouth (WOM)” (Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, 2010, p. 636).

Take-Away: No matter how skilled or good you are at your job, if you provide a service to customers (whatever that service might be), be sure to remember that you need to also provide exceptional or first-rate customer service, which includes providing timely responses to customer questions/inquiries and keeping your clients informed. Failure to do so can result in lost business (or clients) or damage to your reputation, or both.

Reference

Hawkins, D. I., & Mothersbaugh, D. L. (2010). Consumer behavior: Building marketing strategy (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

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Filed Under: Business, Coaching, Consumer Behavior, Leadership, Organizational Psychology, Training & Development Tagged With: , , , , ,

Strategic Leaders-Challenges, Organizational Abilities & Individual Characteristics

2013 May 1 By

compass

Photo Credit: Flickr

I’ve written before about the challenges of successfully executing strategy. In this post, I’ll clarify the difference between leadership and strategic leadership. I’ll also discuss what constitutes strategic leadership, a major controversy surrounding strategic leadership, five challenges of strategy execution, and nine factors of strategic leadership.

Strategic leadership is different from leadership. Whereas leadership refers to leaders at any level within an organization, strategic leadership talks about leaders at the top of the organization (Vera & Crossan, 2004). Another important distinction is that leadership studies focus on the micro levels (relationship between leaders and followers, trait and style of leaders, individualized leadership models, etc.), while strategic leadership focuses on the macro level of executive work (e.g., instead of looking at leader-follower relationship, the macro view looks at how the dominant coalition of the company influences the strategic process of the organization)(Vera & Crossan, 2004).

According to Yukl (2010), a major controversy surrounding strategic leadership research is the level of impact CEOs have on the effectiveness of their companies. Critics maintain that CEOs exert little influence due to limitations imposed on them by stakeholders, corporate culture, lack of resources, strong competitors, and unsympathetic economic conditions. These opponents assert that industry performance and economic conditions play an even greater role on a company’s effectiveness and success than CEOs.

There are FIVE challenges of strategy execution (Franken, Edwards, & Lambert, 2009):

  1. Relentless pressure from shareholders for greater profits. This forces top business leaders to redefine their strategy more often.
  2. Increased complexity of organizations. For example, the activities it requires to create products and services span various functional, organization, and even geographical boundaries.
  3. Balancing demands of executing complex change programs with business performance. In particular, in cases where management is tied to rewards based on performance, it can be difficult to get buy-in into creating strategic plans for the future.
  4. Low levels of involvement of managers at the beginning stages of strategic execution.
  5. Difficulty securing the required resources to execute the strategy. As a result of the large number of concurrent change programs, many of the company’s resources will already be allocated and even if they are available, managers will aggressively compete for them.

Yukl (2010), however, insists that the research shows, despite these constraints, CEOs and top executives can still have “a moderately strong influence on the effectiveness of an organization” (p. 401).

Davies & Davies (2004) proposed 9 FACTORS of STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP. They include organizational and individual abilities.

Strategic leaders need to have FIVE organizational abilities:

  1. Be strategically orientated – link long-range visions and concepts to daily work.
  2. Translate strategy into action – identify projects that need to be undertaken to move the company from where it’s at to where it wants to go.
  3. Align people and organizations – aligning individuals to a future company state or position.
  4. Determine effective intervention points – knowing both what to do strategically and exactly when to intervene and change direction.
  5. Develop strategic competencies – in the example of a school, rather than delivering curriculum innovation, it is the fundamental understanding of teaching and learning.

Strategic leaders need to have FOUR individual abilities:

  1. Dissatisfaction or restlessness with the present – seeing where you want to be (vision), while dealing with your current reality; being able to envision the strategic leap that the organization wants to make.
  2. Absorptive capacity – recognizing new information, analyze it, and applying it to new outcomes.
  3. Adaptive capacity – ability to change and learn, having the cognitive flexibility linked to a mindset that welcomes and embraces change.
  4. Leadership wisdom – taking the right action at the right time; coming up with ideas, deciding whether ideas are good or not, making ideas functional and convincing others of its value, balancing effects of ideas on yourself, others and institutions.

Steve Nguyen

References

Davies, B. J. & Davies, B. (2004). Strategic leadership. School Leadership & Management, 24(1), 29-38.

Franken, A., Edwards, C., & Lambert, R. (2009). Executing strategic change: Understanding the critical management elements that lead to success. California Management Review, 51(3), 49-72.

Vera, D. & Crossan, M. (2004). Strategic leadership and organizational learning. Academy of Management, 29(2), 222-240.

Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in organizations (7th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Filed Under: Business, Coaching, Executive Coaching, Leadership Tagged With: , , ,

Snakes in Suits? Maybe Not — Psychopathy According to DSM-IV TR

2013 April 26 By

snake

Photo Credit: Flickr

I thought I would repost my comments to a discussion question in the SIOP (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology) group on LinkedIn about the notion of “corporate psychopaths” (made famous by the book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work [Babiak & Hare, 2006]).

From Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work (p. xiv):

“The premise of this book is that psychopaths do work in modern organizations; they often are successful by most standard measures of career success; and their destructive personality characteristics are invisible to most of the people with whom they interact. They are able to circumvent and sometimes hijack succession planning and performance management systems in order to give legitimacy to their behaviors. They take advantage of communication weaknesses, organizational systems and processes, interpersonal conflicts, and general stressors that plague all companies. They abuse coworkers and, by lowering morale and stirring up conflict, the company itself. Some may even steal and defraud.”

As a former mental health counselor, I am very cautious about buying into this notion of “corporate psychopaths.” Technically, psychopathy is not mentioned in the DSM-IV-TR as a diagnosis. It actually falls under “Antisocial Personality Disorder” (301.7).

For information sake (not trying to diagnose), the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder requires that a person must have (1) a history of conduct disorder symptoms as a juvenile, AND (2) antisocial symptoms as an adult. It’s important to note that the DSM-IV explains the pattern of those who engage in antisocial behavior “continues into adulthood” (DSM-IV TR, p. 702). In other words, their problematic behavior started before they were 18 and continued into adulthood.

The DSM-IV said the prevalence of psychopathy in the general population is about 3% in males and 1% in females (DSM-IV TR, p. 704).

Another important note is that generally a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder is not warranted if the person also has a substance abuse problem.

Based on the criteria listed above, many of those who would be described or classified as “corporate psychopaths” in the book “Snakes in Suits” might actually not be psychopaths.

This is why I am very skeptical about this idea of “corporate psychopaths.”

Indeed, the authors of Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work (pp. xiv-xv) warned:

We consider it important to caution the reader that, although the topic of this book is psychopathy in the workplace, not everyone described herein is a psychopath [and that] reader[s] should not assume that an individual is a psychopath simply because of the context in which he or she is portrayed in this book.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical
manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.

Babiak, P., & Hare, R. D. (2006). Snakes in suits: When psychopaths go to work. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Filed Under: Business, Coaching, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Psychology Tagged With: , , , , ,

Indecision and Fear of Failure-The Inefficiencies in a Bureaucracy

2013 April 14 By

indecision

Photo Credit: Flickr

Those who work for a government agency, a school system, a city government office, a nonprofit association, or even a church can understand this title and the point of this post. I previously wrote about people creating bottlenecks in their own companies or place of employment.

Too often, I have seen a hesitancy to act because of a fear of making the wrong decision. One way this fear manifests itself is through a reliance or dependence on endless surveys to support their decisions. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with surveys per se. Using surveys as an excuse to not act because of a fear of messing up is wrong.

While, on the surface, it might seem like these individuals (the ones who support doing additional and unnecessary surveys) are doing the right thing. They are, in fact, crippling themselves and failing their organizations by wasting time.

A VP in one organization was so indecisive and so terrified she would make a mistake that she solicited feedback from everyone in the office about the smallest decisions. In one instance, she could not decide on a simple logo to use for her office so she asked the staff for their input about a logo design. Weeks went by and even after getting feedback from the staff, no decisions were made. It was decided to contract out the work and have a professional design the logo. However, even after several logos were designed, no decisions were made because of the indecisive VP.

“Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.” George Canning

Sadly, after the time and energy the staff invested working on the logo design project, because of the executive’s indecision, a logo was never selected and the money spent hiring the logo designer was wasted.

Fear of failure is a dangerous addiction. It creates a vicious circle which goes like this: I’m afraid of making a mistake so I won’t act. I won’t act because I’m afraid of making a mistake.

Takeaway: Fear of failure cripples people from acting and causes them to rationalize their indecisions. Their rationalizations can become so habitual and strong that it blinds them from sound advice and feedback.

Filed Under: Attitudes & Emotions, Coaching, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Psychology, Teams, Training & Development Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Half-Truths and Omission of Facts in Selling

2013 April 1 By

6829357459_dcde4019fc

Photo Credit: Flickr

My first job was working for a sporting goods store in a mall. I was really excited because it was a well-known company and had a sister company selling athletic shoes and clothing. But my manager was a guy much more concerned with making a sale than building a quality sales team or creating customer loyalty.

One incident still stands out in my mind to this day. A teenager and his mother came into the store looking for a new backpack since the seams were coming apart. I asked him the brand of his backpack, and when he told me, I shared with him and his mom that he did not need to buy a new backpack. Instead, all he needed to do was write to that company and ask them to repair or replace the backpack since it has a lifetime warranty on it. I told them that I had done this and that company honored their lifetime warranty and repaired my backpack just several months before.

My manager smiled, but as soon as they left, he berated me for losing a sale. When I tried to explain why I did what I did, he dismissed my reasons and told me that I did not have to tell them the whole truth, and that I should have left out the lifetime warranty part so they would have to buy a new backpack from our store.

I shared this piece of information with them for two reasons. First, it was the right thing to do. Rather than leaving out important information (e.g., they did not need to buy a new backpack) or tell some half-truths I felt it was best to help them save money. Second, by saving customers money, I established trust and built an honest relationship with a potential repeat customer or have that customer share via word of mouth how helpful I was to their friends and family. In fact, the mother was especially thankful and kept thanking me as she was leaving our store.

BUSINESS LESSON: What that sporting goods store manager failed to understand was that a sale was not lost, but rather a customer was gained. And in the eyes and minds of those two customers, I had earn their trust and respect. What’s more, they might be returning to the store because I had taken good care of them. They might even tell other people about their positive experience with me and refer other customers my way. Making a quick buck by deceiving customers with half-truths and leaving out important facts is what a manager with a short-term, self-serving mentality does. However, a great long-range mentality manager knows that business sales depends greatly on establishing and maintaining relationships with customers, and this is achieved by earning their trust.

Filed Under: Business, Training & Development Tagged With: , ,

“This Is My First Time, I’ll Lead!”

2013 February 18 By

Confident businesspeople

Photo Credit: Flickr

In the not-very-good 2010 movie “Robin Hood” starring Russell Crowe, a young, naïve King John (played by Oscar Isaac) had one of the funniest lines pertaining to leadership I’ve ever heard in a movie. With absolutely no leadership or battle experience, and only after the troops had already been rallied to go to war by someone else (the real leader), the young king foolhardily proclaimed, “This is my first time, I’ll lead!” and takes off on his own.

In a previous post, I talked about the importance of a leader to build credibility. According to Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy (2012), there are two components of credibility: (a) Building expertise, and (b) Building trust. Kouzes and Posner (2007) said, “Above all else, we as constituents must be able to believe in our leaders. We must believe that their word can be trusted, that they’re personally passionate and enthusiastic about the work that they’re doing, and that they have the knowledge and skill to lead” (p. 37).

Trust can be viewed as being made up of two things: the ability to clarify and communicate values to others, and the ability to establish, maintain, and strengthen relationships with others (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2012). The young, inexperienced king in that movie had not forged strong relationships with his men. He did not know them, and they certainly didn’t know anything about him, other than his birthright as king. Kouzes and Posner said in order to rally others, the leader must enable others to act by building solid trust and strong relationships.

Kouzes and Posner looked through thousands of the best cases of leadership and found that one of the best ways to tell if someone is on his/her way to becoming an effective leader is how often this person uses the word “we” instead of “I.”

But what I really love is an even greater lesson about leadership. It’s the idea that leadership is not a birthright, and that it isn’t inherited or reserved only for a few chosen people. Robin Hood was not born of noble blood and while he was portrayed as a leader, if we were to take a closer look at the army of men he led, we would have probably learned that there were great leaders among them.

“Leadership is not a gene and it’s not an inheritance. Leadership is an identifiable set of skills and abilities that are available to all of us. . . . [T]he theory that there are only a few great men and women who can lead others to greatness is just plain wrong. . . . [Great leaders] are the everyday heroes of our world. It’s because there are so many—not so few—leaders that extraordinary things get done on a regular basis, especially in extraordinary times” (Kouzes & Posner, 2007, p. 23).

References

Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (2012). Leadership: Enhancing the lessons of experience (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2007). The leadership challenge (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Robin Hood (2010). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0955308/

Filed Under: Coaching, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Teams Tagged With: , , ,

Video: When I Grow Up

2013 February 5 By

Note: If you have trouble viewing the video, you can watch it on Vimeo.

“When I Grow Up” is a short and wonderful video about the power of dreams. The story follows the imagination of a young boy and his dreams for his future. The message is a nice reminder to all of us, young and old, to never stop following our dreams.

Here are lines from the video:

Life is an adventure filled with amazing possibilities.

How about becoming a world famous explorer?
You could be an underwater adventurer.
Maybe even a hero of the untamed wild west.
You could always travel with the circus.

So explore a world that’s waiting to be found.

And though you may fall or the going gets tough, keep pushing on because there’s a world full of mysteries for you to solve.

So fire your engines.
Gather your courage.
Let go of fear.
And dig deep inside.

Because it’s never too soon to shoot for the moon.
So chase down those dreams.

Direction, Animation, & Story by Colin Hesterly.

Filed Under: Attitudes & Emotions, Coaching, Happy & Unhappy, Meaningful Work Tagged With: ,

An Employee’s Uncivil Behavior Can Harm Other Employees and Customers

2013 January 17 By

word of mouth

Photo Credit: Flickr

More than three years ago (12/13/09 to be precise), I wrote about people with a situational value system. That post in December 2009 was about my experience as a waiter and my story about a rude customer, the wife of a famous baseball player, who snapped her fingers in a demanding way to get my attention.

The situational value system post has become the most visited post on WorkplacePsychology.Net. Over the months, and now years, that followed, I have tried to come up with a follow-up or related post. It’s not easy to do a follow-up to something that has been so well received.

Based on the number of visits and people who have shared the post or clicked on the “like” button, it seems many people can relate to or have their own stories about knowing, experiencing, and/or witnessing someone with a situational value system (i.e., an individual who treats people differently based on that person’s status).

What I have wanted to do since that time was to further explore mistreatment and uncivil behaviors in the workplace. Because my original post in 2009 talked about the impact that one customer had on me (an employee), this post in 2013 will be about the negative effects of employee uncivil behaviors on customers, coworkers, or subordinates (if the employee is in a managerial role). There’s quite a bit of research in this area, although my guess is that by writing about it, it will not be anywhere near as popular.

Harm to Customers Who Directly Experienced It or Were Witnesses to It And the Negative Business Effects

Customers Who Directly Experienced Uncivil Behaviors

Hawkins and Mothersbaugh (2010) outlined three coping strategies customers use when confronted with bad customer service (p. 381):

  • Active coping: Thinking of ways to solve the problem, engaging in restraint to avoid rash behavior, and making the best of the situation.
  • Expressive support seeking: Venting emotions and seeking emotional and problem-focused assistance from others.
  • Avoidance: Avoiding the retailer mentally or physically or engaging in complete self-denial of the event.

The customer might work with the organization to try to resolve the situation (active coping). Other customers might decide to vent their frustrations to the company (expressive support seeking) or they might tell their friends or broadcast it online about their bad experience (negative word of mouth [WOM]). The last case, avoidance, is also damaging because a customer might choose to avoid an organization completely or continue to be a customer but makes an effort to avoid the company (either physically or mentally), in which case the result will be lost sales (Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, 2010).

“Many times, however, consumers do not complain to the company, but instead take actions such as switching brands or engaging in negative word of mouth (WOM)” (Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, 2010, p. 636).

Customers Who Were Witnesses to Uncivil Behaviors

Porath, MacInnis, & Folkes (2010) found that when an employee mistreated or was uncivil (e.g., being rude or discourteous, ignoring or making derogatory remarks, passing blame for their own mistakes, belittling the efforts of others, etc.) toward another employee, customers who witnessed it tended to “make negative generalizations about (a) others who work for the firm, (b) the firm as a whole, and (c) future encounters with the firm, inferences that [went] well beyond the incivility incident” (p. 292). What researchers discovered was that “consumers [were] also negatively affected even when they [were] mere observers of incivility between employees” (Porath et al., 2010, p. 301).

Harm to Coworkers or Subordinates

Pearson & Porath (2009) discovered in their studies that 1 in 5 employees reported being targets of incivility from a coworker at least once a week. About 2/3 said they witnessed incivility happening among other employees at least once a month. Ten percent said they saw incivility among their coworkers every day.

A survey of public sector employees in the United States found that 71% of respondents reported at least some experience of workplace incivility from a supervisor or coworker (e.g., being treated rudely or discourteously, having a coworker or boss ignore or make derogatory remarks, being blamed for a colleague’s mistakes, being belittled, having someone set them up to fail, being shut out of a team, etc.) during the previous 5 years, and 6% reported experiencing such behavior many times (Cortina, Magley, Williams, & Langhout, 2001).

Lim, Cortina, and Magley (2008) found that (1) “uncivil work experiences also appear to have a direct negative influence on mental health” (p. 104), (2) employees who experienced incivility were more likely to be dissatisfied with their boss and coworkers than with the the job itself, and (3) those personal experiences of workplace incivility can lead to them eventually quitting their jobs.

Take-Away:

An employee who engages in uncivil behavior (i.e., being rude, insensitive, or disrespectful) is harmful to: (1) other employees inside the organization, and (2) customers who are direct targets of such behaviors or who might simply be witnesses (from the outside) to uncivil behaviors between employees.

References

Cortina, L. M., Magley, V. J., Williams, J. H., & Langhout, R. D. (2001). Incivility in the workplace: Incidence and impact. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 6(1), 64-80.

Hawkins, D. I., & Mothersbaugh, D. L. (2010). Consumer behavior: Building marketing strategy (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Lim, S., Cortina, L. M., Magley, V. J. (2008). Personal and workgroup incivility: Impact on work and health outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 95-107. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.95

Pearson, C. & Porath, C. (2009). The cost of bad behavior: How incivility is damaging your business and what to do about it. New York, NY: Portfolio.

Porath, C., MacInnis, D., & Folkes, V. (2010). Witnessing incivility among employees: Effects on consumer anger and negative inferences about companies. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(2), 292-303.

Filed Under: Attitudes & Emotions, Happy & Unhappy, Incivility, Occupational Health Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Psychology, Stress, Teams, Training & Development Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Your Negative (But Honest) Feedback Might Just Set a Narcissist Off

2013 January 4 By

narcissistic

Stock photo: Narcissism

How many times have you heard a supervisor or coworker say: “I welcome any feedback.” On the surface the statement “I welcome any (or your) feedback” suggests someone who is receptive to getting feedback. It might also imply that people are welcomed and invited to come share about problems, issues, and/or concerns.

Myers (2010) said feedback works best when it is presented in an honest and specific manner. However, there’s a caveat: Even when the feedback is delivered honestly and specifically, the reaction of the receiver to that feedback might not always be what you would expect.

There is research (Bushman, Baumeister, Thomaes, Ryu, Begeer, & West, 2009) suggesting that individuals high in narcissism and self-esteem are more likely to either retaliate or be aggressive toward those who give feedback that the person with high narcissism and self-esteem perceived to be critical or insulting.

Simply stated, if you have a narcissistic boss or colleague with very high self-esteem (yes high, not low; there are narcissists with low self-esteem¹), be careful the type of feedback (especially if it’s critical or negative) you share with them. If they perceive your comments/statements as threats to their inflated egos (researchers call it the threatened egotism hypothesis), then there’s a good chance their reactions (words and/or behaviors) will be aggressive².

“[N]arcissists with high self-esteem are eager to dominate their social environment and claim the admiration to which they apparently feel entitled, and when their interaction partners fail to cooperate, they may turn aggressive” (Bushman et al., 2009, p. 441).

Interestingly, the researchers “found no support for the view that low self-esteem causes aggression. . . . On the contrary, low self-esteem reduced or eliminated the independent effect of narcissism on aggression” (Bushman et al., 2009, p. 441).

¹Bushman and colleagues explained that, “Narcissists with low self-esteem may be shy, socially anxious and unconfident, and preoccupied with their own possible inadequacy, but they are still highly self-absorbed” (p. 441).

²Aggression is defined as, “Behavior directed toward the goal of harming another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment” (Baron & Branscombe, 2012, p. 322).

References

Baron, R. A., & Branscombe, N. R. (2012). Social psychology (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Bushman, B. J., Baumeister, R. F., Thomaes, S., Ryu, E., Begeer, S., & West, S. G. (2009). Looking again, and harder, for a link between low self-esteem and aggression. Journal of Personality, 77(2), 427-446. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00553.x

Myers, D. G. (2010). Social psychology (10th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Filed Under: Attitudes & Emotions, Coaching, Coaching Psychology, Executive Coaching, Incivility, Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Psychology, Teams, Training & Development Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Room to Read – Literacy Changes Lives

2012 December 31 By

rtr_logo_color

Toward the end of December 2011, I wrote about donating to charity: water. This year, I want to talk about Room to Read. For some visitors who might not know, I’m passionate about charity and philanthropy. I have written often about various charities here on WorkplacePsychology.Net. As I shared back in a post about WeFeedback (an initiative of the World Food Programme), WorkplacePsychology.Net is about work, but it’s also about understanding the struggles of people, many of whom work. People all over the world struggle (sometimes daily with unimaginable hardships), and many of them are children who are already working or will grow up to work.

Why Literacy? (from RoomtoRead.org)

793 MILLION PEOPLE
in the world are illiterate about 16% of the world’s adults. Of the illiterate, 2/3 are women and 250 million are children.

61 MILLION PRIMARY SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN
are out of school. The majority live in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

5.4 MILLION TEACHERS
are needed to achieve universal primary education by 2015, more than 1/3 of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

97 COUNTRIES
have not achieved gender parity at the secondary school level.

Room to Read combats global poverty by improving educational opportunities for children and “helping primary school children become lifelong, independent readers.” It does this by establishing libraries, improving school infrastructure, publishing local language children’s books and supporting reading and writing instruction through teacher training and material development (RoomtoRead.org).

Room to Read has an incredible story about an overworked and burnt out Microsoft executive named John Wood. What began as a backpacking trip to Nepal, resulted in a life-changing moment for John. While visiting a school, he saw “a dilapidated schoolroom and a severe shortage of books.” The headmaster of the school made a small request asking him to bring back some books if he ever visited again. A year later, after collecting children’s books, and with the help of his dad, John returned to Nepal with “a train of eight book-bearing donkeys.” When he saw the faces of the kids with the books, he knew what he had to do. John left Microsoft and started Room to Read.

“Literacy gives people tools with which to improve their livelihoods, participate in community decision-making, gain access to information about health care. . . . Above all, it enables individuals to realize their rights as citizens and human beings.” — Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General

Five Ways Giving Is Good for You (verbatim from Greater Good Science Center website):

1. Giving makes us feel happy.

In a 2006 study, Jorge Moll and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health found that when people give to charities, it activates regions of the brain associated with pleasure, social connection, and trust, creating a “warm glow” effect. Scientists also believe that altruistic behavior releases endorphins in the brain, producing the positive feeling known as the “helper’s high.”

2. Giving is good for our health.

In a 2003 study on elderly couples, Stephanie Brown of the University of Michigan and her colleagues found that those individuals who provided practical help to friends, relatives, or neighbors, or gave emotional support to their spouses, had a lower risk of dying over a five-year period than those who didn’t.

In a 2006 study by Rachel Piferi of Johns Hopkins University and Kathleen Lawler of the University of Tennessee, people who provided social support to others had lower blood pressure than participants who didn’t, suggesting a direct physiological benefit to those who give of themselves.

3. Giving promotes cooperation and social connection.

Several studies, including work by sociologists Brent Simpson and Robb Willer, have suggested that when you give to others, your generosity is likely to be rewarded by others down the line—sometimes by the person you gave to, sometimes by someone else.

4. Giving evokes gratitude.

Whether you’re on the giving or receiving end of a gift, that gift can elicit feelings of gratitude—it can be a way of expressing gratitude or instilling gratitude in the recipient. And research has found that gratitude is integral to happiness, health, and social bonds.

5. Giving is contagious.

A study by James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, shows that when one person behaves generously, it inspires observers to behave generously later, toward different people. In fact, the researchers found that altruism could spread by three degrees—from person to person to person to person. “As a result,” they write, “each person in a network can influence dozens or even hundreds of people, some of whom he or she does not know and has not met.”

December 2012 marks the three year anniversary of this WorkplacePsychology.Net blog. I am so grateful for all the loyal readers and visitors. The amount of visits and the media links and mentions of WorkplacePsychology.Net has been phenomenal and I want to thank each of you for continuing to stop by.

Wishing you great health and abundant happiness in the new year,

Steve Nguyen
WorkplacePsychology.Net

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:

How Expertise can Strengthen or Dilute your Credibility

2012 December 23 By

trust

Photo Credit: Flickr

Japanese television offers a wide selection of variety shows. Unlike those in the U.S., Japanese variety shows will invite a group of “talents” (although I’m still not sure what many of their talents are, other than smiling and tasting different foods). The thing that immediately got my attention about all of these variety shows was the repeated use of talents (actors or comedians) to comment on any issues, whether the person was qualified to do so or not.

It is simply baffling to me how a group of people, with no discernible expertise on a subject matter will comment on just about anything. The subjects can vary from management to mental health to melting snow, and believe it or not, a group of people will comment on it. Last week, I saw five people on one variety show standing around commenting on different shapes of snow.

In another week, a young man (one of the “talents”) was on a talk show embedded inside a joint infomercial and a soap opera (I’m not joking). The young man shared that he was concerned about his melancholy outlook on life and his tendency to be negative. Another “talent” (I think he’s a former teacher) proceeded to play armchair therapist by asking the guy to read aloud from Romeo and Juliet.

Ok, so what does all of this nonsense have to do with psychology and workplace behaviors? Two things: expertise and credibility.

I realize I’m making a huge leap from talking about Japanese variety shows to the business environment, so please bear with me. But, the more I watched these “talents” the more I kept thinking about expertise and credibility. Because these “talents” do not have the expertise to offer anything of substantive value (that I could not otherwise get by simply asking my next door neighbors for their opinions), they (at least in my eyes) end up diminishing their own brand and/or jeopardizing their own credibility.

In Business Leadership (2003), Kouzes and Posner said credibility is one admired characteristics of a leader:

“Credibility is the foundation of leadership” (Kouzes & Posner, 2003, p. 262).

“The qualities of being honest, inspiring, and competent compose what communications researchers refer to as source credibility. In assessing the believability of a source of information—whether it is the president of the company, the president of the country, a sales person, or a TV newscaster— researchers typically use the three criteria of trustworthiness, expertise, and dynamism. Those who rate highly in these areas are considered to be credible sources of information” (Kouzes & Posner, 2003, p. 261).

Kouzes and Posner (2003) said your credibility must be earned over time. It’s not something that’s bestowed upon you when you get a new title or job. What’s more, credibility can affect the workplace.

“Credibility has a significantly positive outcome on individual and organizational performance” (Kouzes & Posner, 2003, p. 266).

In The Leadership Challenge (2007), Kouzes and Posner explained in greater details about why credibility matters. They wrote (pp. 38-39):

“Using a behavioral measure of credibility, we asked organization members to think about the extent to which their immediate manager exhibited credibility-enhancing behaviors. In our studies we found that when people perceive their immediate manager to have high credibility, they’re significantly more likely to

  • Be proud to tell others they’re part of the organization
  • Feel a strong sense of team spirit
  • See their own personal values as consistent with those of the organization
  • Feel attached and committed to the organization
  • Have a sense of ownership of the organization

When people perceive their manager to have low credibility, however, they’re significantly more likely to

  • Produce only if they’re watched carefully
  • Be motivated primarily by money
  • Say good things about the organization publicly but criticize it privately
  • Consider looking for another job if the organization experiences problems
  • Feel unsupported and unappreciated

“Credibility makes a difference” (Kouzes & Posner, 2007, p. 39).

References

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2003). Leadership is a relationship. In J. M. Kouzes (Ed.), Business leadership (pp. 251-267). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2007). The leadership challenge (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Filed Under: Attitudes & Emotions, Business, Coaching, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Meaningful Work, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Psychology, Teams, Training & Development Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Silly Job Titles Are Not Funny

2012 November 20 By


Photo Credit: Flickr

Forbes had a funny post earlier this year about the silly job titles that some top executives now carry. These include Chief Listening Officer (Kodak), Chief Listener (Dell), Chief People Officer (Microsoft), Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer, Chief Quality and Product Integrity Officer (all at Coca-Cola). Please understand I’m not commenting on the skills and competencies of the individuals who hold these titles, only in the silliness of the titles themselves.

The Forbes article quoted Mark Stevens, author of Your Marketing Sucks, in saying: “It is all corporate Kindergarten playtime title-making . . . It’s a puppet show.” According to Stevens, having “Chief” in the title is merely for show. “These people have absolutely no power . . . Most of these vanity titles don’t even report to the CEO.”

Here’s the bottom line: “The only C’s with ‘real’ power are the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and, occasionally, Chief Operating Officer” (Forbes).

Similarly, Josh Dreller wrote in a blog post about the most meaningless job titles on LinkedIn. As his post showed, title inflation is not unique to top executives. Instead, it’s an epidemic that is spreading to every level, in every company. On LinkedIn, Josh came across various silly titles, such as “Senior Road Warrior Marketing Intern”, “The Social Media Badass”, “Chief Thought Provoker”, “Chief People Herder”, and “Digital Marketing Magician.”

I love what Robbin Block (an author and a radio host who commented on Josh’s post) said:

“It’s getting ridiculous to the extreme. A label can be useful, but not if it’s completely fabricated . . . Titles actually used to mean something and indicated a person’s expertise and experience.”

Although Robbin was referring to marketing titles, I think this is certainly applicable in every industry.

All silliness aside, a job title is important for several reasons. I/O psychology professor Michael Aamodt (2010) explained that an accurate job title does the following:

  • It describes the nature of the job.
  • It aids in employee selection and recruitment (by indicating the nature of the job, thus helping an organization match potential applicants with the requirements for the job).
  • It provides employees with some form of identity.
  • It affects perceptions of the status and worth of a job.

References

Aamodt, M. G. (2010). Industrial/organizational psychology: An applied approach (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Dreller, J. (2012, July 31). The most meaningless job titles on LinkedIn. Retrieved from http://www.imediaconnection.com/article_full.aspx?id=32359

Goudreau, J. (2012, January 10). C Is For Silly: The New C-Suite Titles. Retrieved from www.forbes.com

Filed Under: Business, Meaningful Work, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Psychology, Training & Development Tagged With: , , , ,
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