In my new post at The Leader Lab entitled “Anxious and Avoidant Attachment at Work,” I discuss new research on how these two unhealthy personality traits affect work outcomes. There is very little research on attachment style at work, and the study I describe was very well done.

You can read the full text of my post by clicking on the link above or you can listen to me read the text of the post by accessing the podcast below. After you’ve read or listened to the post, please leave a comment!

Attachment at Work by BretSimmons

I’ve had the privilege of teaching MBA students since 1999. I’ve met both exceptional and abhorrent people over the years. One that I admire as much as anyone I’ve ever met graduated last weekend.

This woman is a single, working mother of a young child with special needs. During the two years I’ve known her, I’ve watched her juggle the demands of her job, child, and coursework with professionalism and grace. I’ve listened to her describe her demands in a matter-of-fact way, but never once heard her complain. She was always positive, always in search of solutions instead of excuses or pity. On top of everything else, she confronted personal health issues and also lost her job. Her response to losing her job was to start her own business.

She had plenty of very legitimate reasons to quit, but she determined to persevere instead.

I think that’s pretty impressive.

If you read this, you’ll know I’m talking about you. I want you to know that in addition to earning your MBA, you also earned my admiration and respect. People like you make the work I do very worthwhile. Thank you.

I’ve written before about the power of expressing gratitude, but on this day before Thanksgiving I wanted to see if I could learn more about it from a different source. Gratitude is listed as one of the strengths of transcendence in Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman’s book Character Strengths and Virtues. As a strength of transcendence, gratitude connects us to others and helps provide meaning to our lives. Here is how they define gratitude:

Gratitude is a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift be a tangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty. The word gratitude is derived from the Latin gratia meaning “grace”, “graciousness,” or “gratefulness.” All derivatives from this Latin root “have to do with the kindness, generousness, gifts, the beauty of giving and receiving, or getting something for nothing” (Pruyser, 1976, p. 69). Prototypically, gratitude stems from the perception that one has benefited due to the actions of another person. There is an acknowledgment that one has received a gift and an appreciation of and recognition of the value of that gift. It would be unusual to say that one is grateful to oneself. (p. 554).

I really like the idea that the ability to give to others without expecting anything in return is a character strength. Graciousness is transformational both for those that give and those that receive. Those void of grace never experience the fullness of a life lived beyond transactional relationship with others.

Someone with a strong grateful disposition experiences gratitude with intensity and frequency. They feel grateful for numerous things (e.g. family, friends, job, and health) at any given time. For any given positive outcome or life circumstance, those with a strong grateful disposition can find numerous people (e.g. parents, co-workers, mentors, and role models) to feel grateful for.

How grateful are you? Here are six questions psychologists use to measure gratitude (McCullogh et al., 2002).

1.     I have so much in life to be thankful for

2.     If I had to list everything I felt grateful for, it would be a very long list

3.     When I look at the world, I don’t see much to be grateful for (reverse scored)

4.     I am grateful to a wide variety of people

5.     As I get older I find myself more able to appreciate the people, events, and situations that have been part of my life history

6.     Long amounts of time can go by before I feel grateful to something or someone (reverse scored)

Make an intentional choice to be more gracious and grateful toward others today, and every day from now on. Be grateful for the fact that you have the ability to continuously improve your strength of character.

My new post at The Leader Lab is entitled “Emotional Intelligence at Work: Choose and Apply Your Measure Carefully.” It is based on a fascinating and well done study recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP).  I have to confess this JAP research article was NOT easy to read. Researchers could do a lot to advance evidence-based management if they would explain their findings in more practical and accessible ways. Ugh.

The take-away for me that I did NOT expect to find was to be very careful using emotional intelligence (EI) measures in your work place. While certain types of measures can predict job performance, there are too many measures of EI on the market and they produce different results. The authors of the study issued those cautions about EI even after showing that the ability to recognize, understand, and then regulate emotions affected employee performance.

But this study also showed, much to my surprise, that measures of cognitive ability and conscientiousness not only affected the emotion-performance process, they also had direct links to performance.  Hire bright, conscientious folks and then partner with them to continuously improve your existing systems and create innovative new systems at work. There is more leverage to that approach than focusing on emotions.

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Grit

I am going to recommend that you read Robert Hogan’s book “Personality and the Fate of Organizations.” I purchased my copy of the book because Bob Sutton refers to it in some of his writings.

I want to make sure you understand that I strongly disagree with Hogan’s underlying premise – that it’s the people that make the place. My very first post at this site was entitled “Why do people do the things they do?”  If you follow my blog, you know I believe strongly that systems are stronger drivers of behavior than personalities. In the words of Pfeffer and Sutton (2006) “The law of crappy systems trumps the law of crappy people.”

But Hogan’s argument is important to understand, especially for systems thinkers. We need to understand the other side of the argument as well as possible so that we can be prepared to answer our critics, and Hogan makes the case for personality as well as anyone. I frankly learned a lot of new things from this book. And Hogan knows his history, especially the history of psychology, extremely well, and that contributes a unique perspective to his book.

I love Hogan’s no-nonsense writing style. From the moment I started reading I found myself chuckling aloud at some of the things he wrote (yes, I am a nerd). Here is an example of Hogan’s writing, partially explaining his point that two-thirds of the people currently in leadership positions in corporate America will fail:

New executives are often recruited from outside the organization, making it even harder to evaluate them because there is no track record or institutional memory. The most common selection tool is an interview; narcissists and psychopaths excel during interviews. Thus I believe many executives are hired based on characteristics that are irrelevant to their success as leaders. (p. 37-38).

And another excerpt from a section headed “The Origins of Psychological Taxation”:

Every large organization has two groups of people. The first and usually the largest group contains people who perform key work, the activities that actually define the organization…The second and much smaller group contains people who control important parts of the organization without contributing to its core work. These are the politicians who reside in the executive suite. Many of them are free riders – they participate in the profits of an organization without contributing in any direct way to the major work.

Unfortunately, Hogan understands the argument that “the place makes the people” very poorly.  When describing the American Quality Movement, Hogan states:

TQM is inherently hostile to personality; it is based on the assumption that individual differences in worker characteristics are relatively trivial influences on work process outcomes. Workers are “special causes” of errors in a system – they are replaceable cogs in a work process that account for perhaps 10% of the variance in team performance. (p.56).

Anyone that has read the works of W.E. Deming and understands what special causes of variation are will recognize that Hogan’s comments are void of credibility. It’s actually the attribution errors inherent to Hogan’s perspective that is hostile to most workers. I am heavily steeped in quality improvement logic, and you can see it in my statement of purpose “my purpose is to change your mind about the value of partnering with others to build healthy, responsible organizations where everyone can thrive.” This is hardly the philosophy of someone that views workers as replaceable cogs.

As I’ve stated before, I want to understand personality – first mine, then yours – so that I can learn to work better with you by adjusting the thing I have the most control over, my own behavior. I think that if we had a more specific understanding of and appreciation for how we differ as individuals, we could work better together and multiply our efforts to improve our organizations.

Hogan’s approach leaves you spending money on assessment tools like the one he developed so that you can select for personality. This selection approach creates a relatively homogenous organization that effectively minimizes the variation between worker personalities and behaviors. When everyone is more similar than different, it might make your organization easier to manage. But it is based on the very precarious assumption that your organization knows exactly what it needs to be doing and is currently executing with excellence. Systems thinkers strive to minimize the variation between worker behaviors so that they can better understand how to improve the system by shifting the average performance behaviors to levels beyond the constraints imposed by the current system and more in line with the voice of the customer.

Your company’s customers come from ALL different personality types; consequently, to best serve those customers, your employees also need to be made up of all different personality types.  Personalities are relatively stable, not subject to change. It’s important to understand that as a leader, you are not going to change anyone’s personality at work.  But your organization must change if it is going to survive and thrive. The ability to learn and improve is based on your assumptions, not your personality.

Read this book. You will learn a lot, and it will force you to think about what you really believe controls the fate of organizations.

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I am sitting in the United Airlines Red Carpet Lounge waiting to board a flight to London. I got access to the lounge because I purchased the Premier Travel Plus option when I reserved my flight. This option got me Economy Plus seating and access to the lounge, which I wanted because my connecting flight in San Francisco was five hours early.This upgrade cost me well over $250.

I first checked into the lounge a few hours ago. When I checked in, the person looked me up in a computer, then verified that I could enter the lounge. I got some free junk food and coffee and went to log on to the WiFi hotspot. The T-mobile login page clearly says that Red Carpet One-Time pass holders (I think that is me) get access to free WiFi via a pin number. When I asked two different United Airlines lounge employees about this, both told me I needed to be a business class or higher customer to get the $8 worth of free WiFi. One told me she would look to see if she could find any old ones lying around that I could use. I was confused and disappointed, but because I was also hungry I uncharacteristically did not challenge them.

I left the lounge to get some dinner. When I returned, a different person was at the desk. He too checked me in, but this time he gave me without my prompting two drink coupons and a card with a pin number to access the T-mobile WiFi for free. So I am enjoying a free glass of pretty good wine as I type and post this from the United Airlines Red Carpet lounge.

How do you explain the very inconsistent service experience I had with United Airlines today? Is this a crappy people problem, or a crappy system problem? I know how I would answer that question, what about you? For an upgrade that costs so much money, why would United Airlines make an $8 benefit an issue? Or is the problem the interface between T-mobile (providing the WiFi service in the lounge and the wording for the login) and United Airlines that caused the confusion in my expectations?

I look forward to reading your responses from London and Spain!

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The Service-Profit Chain

The next meditation on developing courageous followership from Ira Chaleff’s book The Courageous Follower is: I am responsible for the attractive and unattractive parts of who I am. This is a tough but important principle to practice.

We are who we are. By the time we reach adulthood, our personalities are relatively stable. Our responsibility is to understand our personality and how it affects what we are attracted to, what we like to avoid, and how we interact with others as we engage in both the activities that we love and those that we despise. We can’t change who we are, but we can control what we do and how we interact with others along the way.  It is unacceptable to blame personality for bad choices or bad behavior.

Our attitudes, on the other hand, are subject to change.  As I have said before, please stop thinking in terms of “good attitude” and “bad attitude” - those approaches are not useful. If we can identify a specific attitude at work in ourselves, then we can take specific action to change that attitude. For example, if we realize that we have low job satisfaction, then by understanding the most powerful drivers of satisfaction at work we can partner with others to try to improve those characteristics of the job and work environment with the hope of eventually becoming more satisfied.

Because of the self-serving bias in explaining our behavior, it is much easier to see and take credit for the attractive parts of who we think we are, and much more difficult to identify and take ownership of the unattractive parts. We are very skilled at deceiving ourselves into into believing things about ourselves that are distorted or simply not true.

One way we facilitate this skilled unawareness is to surround ourselves with people just like us. We are much more comfortable with people that we perceive to be like us along a dimension that is core to our identity and much less comfortable with people that provide a stark contrast to who we think we are. This exclusivity makes it easier to justify who we are and those that fit with us and to discount and disregard any notion of a need to change and grow.

We also must assume full responsibility for our own happiness. Smile, because happiness is a choice and we should appreciate how the attractive parts of who we are can make a significant difference in the lives of others.

We need to see clearly how who we are affects how we follow because how we follow will more than anything affect who we ultimately become.

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Exclusivity Fits

In this video, I discuss an attribution process we use to explain our own behavior. This is an abbreviated version of explanatory style that I got from Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism, which I recommend highly.

When we look to explain our own behavior, once again we try to determine if it was something internal – e.g. personality, attitude, values – or something external – e.g. process, training, staffing – that caused our behavior.  We also try to determine if that cause is stable (it will always be that way) or unstable (it is subject to change).  

For example, if I have a success, and I explain that success as something about me (my skill), and I think that explanation is stable (I am always going to be skilled), then I will probably feel pretty good about myself.  And if I have a failure, and I explain that failure as something about me (I don’t have what it takes) and stable (I will never have what it takes), then I am likely to feel pretty bad and possibly even depressed. 

Seligman suggests that we can learn to be more optimistic by changing how we explain the things that happen to us.  If you or anyone you know have ever suffered from depression, I would recommend taking a look at Seligman’s book Learned Optimism.

As a final example, let’s say I had a failure, and I reach the conclusion that there were things outside of my control (e.g. processes, policies, procedures) that played a big part in my failure, and those are potentially subject to change.  Now instead of being depressed I can feel optimistic and hopeful.

Does this suggest that we should never accept responsibility for our failures?  NO! 

Recall that if you have an internal locus of control (LOC), you inheriently want to assume responsibility for the things that happen to you and take action to affect your future outcomes.  So people with an internal LOC can see the systemic causes of their behavior, but they assume responsibility for taking action to change those causes so they don’t experience the same failure over and over again.  They don’t dump on their leaders (this sucks and so do you!); instead, they partner with them to fix the crappy system.

In my final article in this series on attribution, I’ll give you my two-cents worth on how to deal with the fundamental attribution error and the self-serving bias, so stay tuned!

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Attributions: An Introduction

Attributions: Let’s Talk First About Locus of Control

In this third video in my series on attribution, I explain the two powerful attribution errors that often lead us to develop an inaccurate explanation for the behavior we observe in ourselves and others.  The explanation for why folks behave the way they do will always be a combination of something internal which we believe they can control - e.g. personality, attitudes, values – and something external which they cannot easily control – e.g. policies, procedures, training, staffing, equipment.

There is a powerful tendency to attribute to internal causes nearly all of the behavior we observe in others.  So we blame folks when things go wrong and make them heroes when things go well. This is a Fundamental Attribution Error because it is very likely that their behavior was driven by external things outside of their control.

Systemic causes of behavior are powerful but often very difficult to clearly identify and understand. Instead of struggling with the complexity, people prefer quick, seemingly simple explanations (those folks are lazy) and solutions (get rid of the deadwood) so they can move on to the next fire they have to put out. They rarely see how their own actions cause the very problems they lament.

There is an equally powerful tendency to cast ourselves in the best light possible as we explain our own behavior.  When things go well, it is of course something about us – e.g. talent, attitudes, motivation – that can explain our success. And when things go poorly, we always seem to find an excuse in factors beyond our control. This Self-Serving Bias leads to inaccurate explanations, ineffective action, and interpersonal conflict.

These attribution errors are so powerful that even if you are aware of them you will struggle to avoid them, especially when the stakes are high and the problems hit close to home.  But you will never become a truly effective leader or follower until you can master your attributions.

“The cure can be worse than the disease.” Peter Senge

Tomorrow I will discuss one process we can use to help us explain the behavior we observe in others, so stay tuned!

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Attributions: An Introduction

Attribution: Let’s Talk First About Locus Of Control

In this second video in my series on attribution, I discuss some of the basic concepts of attribution.  An attribution is your explanation for the behavior you observe at work in others and in yourself. 

There are two types of attributions: internal and external.  An internal attribution means that your explanation for the behavior you observed is something internal to the individual that they can control - e.g. their personality, attitude, values.  An external attribution means that your explanation for the behavior you observed is something outside of the individual’s control – e.g. policies, procedures, staffing, training, supervision, equipment, materials, methods.

Attributions are critical because the action you take as a leader is contingent upon your attribution or explanation.  If your attribution is not accurate, then you will take the wrong action and be less effective as a leader.  For example, if the real reason your employee failed to perform was something outside of their control (external attribution) but you blame them for their failure (internal attribution), you have essentially failed your employee as a leader.

Tomorrow I will discuss two powerful attribution biases – the fundamental attribution error and the self-serving bias – so stay tuned!

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