Career “planning” In “VUCA world,” occurs in rapidly-shifting conditions, defined by the U.S. Army War College as volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous environments,
As a result, it is difficult to meaningfully respond to the interview question: “What are your career plans for the next five years?”, and one can question the value of this inquiry in any assessment situation.
Kathleen Eisenhardt
Planning is most suited to relatively certain circumstances when processes and decisions are linear, argued Stanford’s Kathleen Eisenhardt and Behnam Tabrizi.
In contrast, frequently-changing or uncertain conditions like VUCA world, require improvisation, frequent testing, and revision. These approaches are applicable to rapid changes in economic, political, and technology changes that affect career paths.
Applicable skills used in Agile software development include iterative exploration, rapid prototyping, and experimentation, and can be applied to navigating emerging career paths.
Confidence is correlated with career effectiveness and advancement. However, people who exhibit too much of a good thing may be seen as “narcissistic.”
-Inflated views of the self, -Grandiosity, -Self-focus, -Vanity, -Self-importance,
according to San Diego State University’s Jean M. Twenge, with Sara Konrath and Brad J. Bushman of University of Michigan, collaborating with University of South Alabama’s Joshua D. Foster, and Keith Campbell of University of Georgia,
Calvin S Hall
One well-validated assessment instrument to identify narcissism is the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, developed by University of California Berkeley’s Robert Raskin and Calvin S. Hall.
Sara Konrath
Raskin and UC Berkeley colleague, Howard Terry examined responses from more than 1000 volunteers and found seven constructs related to narcissism:
Authority,
Exhibitionism,
Superiority,
Vanity,
Exploitativeness,
Entitlement,
Self-Sufficiency.
Timothy Leary
They related ratings of “self” and “ideal self” to participants’ responses on the Leary Interpersonal Check List, developed by Harvard’s Timothy Leary before he investigated psychedelic drugs.
Brian P Meier
An alternative to Leary’s lengthy NPI was developed by University of Michigan’s Sara Konrath, Brian P. Meier of Gettysburg College, and Ohio State’s Brad J. Bushman of Indiana University. The Single Item Narcissism Scale (SINS) measures grandiosity, entitlement, and low empathy characteristic of “narcissistic” behaviour.
The team asked more than 2,200 participants to rate their answer to a single question on a scale of one to seven: To what extent do you agree with this statement? “I am a narcissist.”
Brad J Bushman
Konrath’s team demonstrated that the Single Item Narcissism Scale is a valid, reliable alternative to longer narcissism scales because it is significantly correlated with scores on the NPI and is uncorrelated with social desirability.
People who change gender continue to use their education and experience at work. However, many of these people report that their compensation, degree of respect, and recognition at work changed following gender change. This suggests that gender can directly affect compensation and workplace interactions.
Two Stanford professors’ personal experiences in gender transition were highlighted by University of Chicago’s Kristen Schilt.
Joan Roughgarden – Jonathan Roughgarden
Stanford’s Joan Roughgarden, was an evolutionary biologist for more than 25 years as Jonathan Roughgarden before she made her male-to-female (MTF) transition.
Her experience contrasts with Stanford colleague, neurobiologist Ben Barres, who made scientific contributions as Barbara Barres until after he was 40.
Schilt surveyed FTM and MTF to compare earnings and employment experiences before and after gender transitions with questions similar to 2002 Current Population Survey (CPS) survey items:
Last job before gender transition,
First job after gender transition,
Most recent job.
Kristen Schilt
Female-to-male transsexuals (FTMs) reported that as men, they had more authority, reward, and respect in the workplace than they received as women, even when they remained in the same jobs.
Height and skin color affected potential advantages enjoyed by FTM.
Tall, white FTMs experienced greater benefits than short FTMs and FTMs of color. In contrast, MTF reported reduced authority and pay, and often harassment and termination.
However, salary reduction was no joke for MTFs in Schilt’s survey sample. Participants reported significant losses of 12% in hourly earnings after becoming female.
FTMs, however, experienced no change in earnings or small positive increases up to 7.5% in earnings after transitioning to becoming men.
Any gender transition was associated with risks of harassment and discrimination, reported more frequently in “blue-collar” jobs, particularly for those with “non-normative” appearance and not consistently “passing” as the other gender.
These “naturalistic experiments” confirm continuing gender-based pay discrepancies.
-*To what extent have you observed these gender-linked differences in compensation and workplace credibility?
Situations outside the workplace can affect employees’ productivity, commitment, mindset, attitudes, and health.
Similarly, experiences at work can affect employees’ quality of life at work and outside of work. Workplace Employee Assistance Programs, on-site medical centres, concierges, meals, and fitness centres are intended to address this bi-directional influence to improve employee retention and productivity.
Christopher Barnes
When employees suppress their true feelings about work experiences, they engage in “surface acting” as they display appropriate, but unfelt facial expressions, verbal interactions, and body language.
Brent Scott
Surface acting at work was associated with emotional exhaustion, work-to-family conflict, and insomnia outside of work for more than 70 volunteers in a high stress public service occupation, found Singapore Management University’s David T. Wagner, Christopher M. Barnes of University of Washington, and Brent A. Scott of Michigan State University.
Arlie Hochschild
“Emotional labor” was Arlie Hochshild’s earlier term for “surface acting” in customer service interactions when employees present prescribed verbalisations and emotions.
She contrasted “surface acting” with “deep acting” in which the person:
Exhibits the emotion actually felt,
Uses past emotional experiences to elicit real emotion and empathic connection with others, in a form of “organizational method acting.”
Christina Maslach
“Surface acting” at work can lead to occupational “burnout,” characterized by emotional exhaustion, detachment from others, and reduced workplace performance, noted University of California Berkeley’s Christina Maslach and Susan Jackson.
Céleste Brotheridge
In contrast, high emotional labor with deep acting was associated with a greater sense of personal accomplishment in research by University of Regina’s Celeste Brotheridge and Alicia Grandey of Penn State.
These behaviours usually are associated with non-participative work environments, minority status, and high self-monitoring.
Terence Mitchell
. Impression management, characterised by ingratiating behaviours in two-person relationships which can favourably influence career outcomes, according to Georgia Tech’s Robert C. Liden and Terence R. Mitchell of University of Washington.
Compliance, or publicly stating changed beliefsin response to external pressures, without truly modifying personal convictions, according to Leon Festinger.
Leon Festinger
Most people at work encounter situations in which they choose to behave in “appropriate” ways that are inconsistent with their true feelings, and may experience similar stress spillover from “surface acting” at work.
-*How do you prevent “burnout” when workplace settings seem to require “surface acting”?
Two types of empirical studies provide evidence about coaching’s efficacy:
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT), in which participants receive one of several interventions or no intervention.
This is considered the more credible research approach.
Peter Langford
.Quasi-Experimental Field Studies (QEFS), which use “time series analysis” but not random participants to measure outcomes.
Linley Curtayne
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) found several effects among executives who received 360-degree feedback and four coaching sessions over ten weeks:
. Lower stress, according to Grant and University of Sydney colleagues Linley Curtayne and Geraldine Burton,
Geraldine Burton
Greater goal attainmentcompared with an eight week educational mindfulness-based health coaching program, reported by University of Sydney’s Gordon B. Spence, Michael J. Cavanagh and Grant,
Gordon Spence
Increased goal commitment, and environmental mastery, compared with peer coaching among adults in a Solution Focused/Cognitive Behavioral (SF/CB) life coaching program, according to research by Spence and Grant,
Michael Cavanagh
. Increased cognitive hardiness, mental health, and hopeamong female high school students in a 10 session solution-focused cognitive-behavioral (SF-CB) life coaching program, found University of Wollongong’s L.S.Green, Grant, and Josephine Rynsaardt,
Lindsay Oades
Increased goal striving, well-being, hope, with gains maintained up to 30 weeks, reported by Grant and Green with University of Wollongong colleague Lindsay G. Oades.
C. RIck Snyder
Increased hope is crucial to pursue any goal, according to University of Kansas’s C.R. Snyder, Scott T. Michael of University of Washington, and Ohio State’s Jennifer Cheavens.
Individuals seeking change are more effective when they:
Develop one or more ways to achieve a goals (“pathways”),
Use these routes to reach the goal (“agency”).
Edward Deci – Richard Ryan
Three additional elements contribute to goal achievement, suggested University of Rochester’s Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan:
Decreased anxiety and stressamong UK finance organization participants, in findings by Kristina Gyllensten and Stephen Palmer of City University London.
These empirical studies validate coaching’s contribution to participants’ increased goal attainment and increased satisfaction, well-being, and hope.
-*How do you “coach yourself” and others toward increased goal attainment and performance?
-*What are the “active ingredients” of effective coaching practices?
Shift attention away from past and future actions,
Increase positive emotions.
Kirk Brown
The team asked volunteers to complete Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, developed by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Kirk Brown and Richard Ryan of University of Rochester.
Richard Ryan
They also measured participants’ ability to resist “sunk cost” bias using Adult Decision-Making Competence Inventory, developed by Leeds University’s Wändi Bruine de Bruin with Baruch Fischhoff of Carnegie Mellon and RAND Corporation’s Andrew M. Parker.
Wändi Bruine de Bruin
In a decision task, participants could take an action or to do nothing, as a measure of sunk-cost bias. Taking action indicated resistance to the sunk-cost bias, whereas those who took no action were influenced by the sunk-cost bias.
Baruch Fischhoff
Volunteers who listened to a 15-minute focused-breathingguided meditation were more likely to choose action, resisting sunk-cost bias, than those who had not heard the meditation instruction.
Andrew M Parker
Barsade’s team noted that, “People who meditated focused less on the past and future, which led to them experiencing less negative emotion. That helped them reduce the sunk-cost bias.”
Jochen Reb
Mindful attention enabled negotiators to craft better deals by “claiming a larger share of the bargaining zone” in “fixed pie” negotiations, found Singapore Management University’s Jochen Reb, Jayanth Narayanan of National University of Singapore, and University of California, Hastings College of the Law’s Darshan Brach. Effective negotiators also expressed greater satisfaction with the bargaining process and outcome.
Jayanth Narayanan
Mindful attention also leads to a lower negativity bias, the tendency to weigh pessimistic information more heavily than positive, reported Virginia Commonwealth University’s Laura G. Kiken and Natalie J. Shook of West Virginia University.
The team assessed negativity bias with BeanFest, a computer game developed by Shook, with Ohio State’s Russell Fazio and J. Richard Eiser of University of Sheffield.
Natalie Shook
Participants associated novel stimuli with positive or negative outcomes during attitude formation exercises.
Russell Fazio
Volunteers who listened to a mindfulness induction correctly classified positive and negative stimuli more equally, expressed greater optimism, and demonstrated less negativity bias than those in the control condition.
J Richard Eiser
Mindful attention improves decision-making and enhances negotiation outcomes by reducing biases linked to negative emotions.
As a result, taking a brief mental break (“time-out”) during decision-making can improve choices and can reduce the possibility that “the wrong emotions cloud the decision-making process.”
-*How do you reduce bias in making decisions and crafting negotiation proposals?
Harvard’s Alison Wood Brooks and Maurice E. Schweitzer of University of Pennsylvania found that these negotiations patterns occurred due to participants’ “low self-efficacy” beliefs, meaning that they had low confidence in their negotiation skills.
Alison Wood Brooks
Brooks and Schweitzer induced anxious feelings or neutral reactions during “shrinking-pie” negotiation tasks. Negotiators who reported feeling anxious also said they expected to achieve lower profits, presented conservative offers, and responded cautiously to proposals by negotiation counterparts.
Negotiators who achieved better outcomes managed their emotions with strategies including:
Julie Norem
Strategic optimism, by calmly expecting positive outcomes, according to University of Miami’s Stacie Spencer and Julie Norem of Wellesley,
Reattribution, by considering alternate interpretations of events.
Approaches with mixed results include:
Andrew Elliot
“Self-handicapping”, defined as creating obstacles to explain poor outcomes and preserve self-esteem, according to University of Rochester’s Andrew Elliott and Marcy Church of St. Mary’s University,
Defensive pessimism, marked by high motivation toward achievement coupled with negative expectations for future challenges, leading to increased effort and preparation, according to Wellesley College’s Julie Norem and Edward Chang of University of Michigan.
Edward Chang
Norem and Cantor concluded that defensive pessimists performed worse when they were told that that they could expect to perform well on anagram and puzzle tasks.
Defensive pessimism among university students was related to lower self-esteem, higher self-criticism, more pessimism, and frequent discounting of previous successful performances, according to Norem and Brown’s Jasmina Burdzovic Andreas.
Jasmina Burdzovic Andreas
However, they also found that self-esteem increased to almost the same levels as optimists during university years. Pessimists’ precautionary countermeasures may have resulted in strong performance, which built credible self-esteem.
Defensive pessimism may be an effective approach to managing anxiety and performance motivation.
-*How do you manage anxiety in high-stakes negotiations?
Anxiety and excitement have similar physiological arousal profiles, but different effects on performance.
Using silent self-talk messages (“I am excited”) or reading self-direction messages (“Get excited!”) increases alignment between physical arousal and situational appraisal.
“Excitement” is typically viewed as a positive, pleasant emotion that can improve performance, according to Harvard’s Jeremy Jamieson and colleagues.
Efforts to transform anxiety into calmness can be ineffective due to the large shift from negative emotion to neutral or positive emotion and from physiological activation to lower arousal levels, noted Brooks.
Stefan Hofmann
Such efforts to calm physiological arousal during anxiety can result in a paradoxical increase in the suppressed emotion, reported Stefan Hofmann and colleagues of Boston University. However, most people in Woods’ studies said they believed that this is the best way to handle anxiety.
Brooks elicited anxiety among volunteers by telling them that their task was to present an impromptu, videotaped speech.
For some participants, she explained that it is “normal” to feel discomfort and asked them to “take a realistic perspective on this task by recognising that there is no reason to feel anxious” and “the situation does not present a threat to you…there are no negative consequences...” She also instructed volunteers to say aloud randomly-assigned self-statements like “I am excited.”
Brooks evaluated peoples’ reactions to another anxiety-provoking task, performing a karaoke song for an audience, and rated by voice recognition software for “singing accuracy” based on:
Volume (quiet-loud),
Pitch (distance from true pitch),
Note duration (accuracy of breaks between notes).
This score determined participants’ payment for participating in the study.
Before performing, she asked participants to make a randomly-assigned self-statement:
“I am anxious,”
“I am excited,”
“I am calm,”
“I am angry.”
“I am sad.”
No statement.
Following their performance, volunteers rated their anxiety, excitement, and confidence in their singing ability. People who said that they were “excited” had higher pulse rates than other groups, confirming that self-statements can affect physical experiences of emotion.
Volunteers who said “I am excited” had the highest scores for singing accuracy and also for confidence in singing ability.
In contrast, those who said, “I am anxious” had the lowest scores for singing accuracy, suggesting that anxiety is associated withlower performance.
Brooks elicited anxiety on “a very difficult IQ test…under time pressure” that would determine their payment for participation. To evoke further anxiety, she concluded, “Good luck minimising your loss.”
Before the test, participants read a statement:
“Try to remain calm” or
“Try to get excited.”
Those instructed to “get excited” produced more correct answers than those who tried to “remain calm.”
These reappraisals of physical experiences evoked an “opportunity mind-set” and a “stress-is-enhancing” mind-set, found University of Toronto’s Stéphane Côté and Christopher Miners. These appraisals enabled superior performance across different anxiety-arousing situations.
In contrast, inauthentic emotional displays can be physically and psychologically demanding, and often reduce performance.
People have “…influence…over…emotions,” according to Woods. She noted that “Saying ‘I am excited’ represents a simple…intervention…to prime an opportunity mind-set and improve performance…
Advising employees to say ‘I am excited’ before important performance tasks or simply encouraging them to ‘get excited’ may increase their confidence, improve performance, and boost beliefs in their ability to perform well in the future.”
-*How effective have you found focusing on “excitement” instead of “calm” in managing anxiety?
Contrary to this expectation, most people agree to a subsequent request, possibly to reduce discomfort of rejecting others’ overtures for help.
Vanessa Bohns
In a study, participants estimated they would need to ask 10 people to get three people who would agree to lend their mobile phones for brief calls.
In fact, volunteers asked substantially fewer people for this favour, an average of six people. The team concluded that most people hold a pessimistic bias about the likelihood that others will provide assistance.
In another study, volunteers requested two favours from people they did not know:
1. Complete a brief survey, 2. Take a letter to a nearby post office.
Help seekers predicted that people who refused the first request to complete the survey would be less likely to take the letter to the post office.
In contrast, more people agreed to the second request than to the first request. Requesters tended to “anchor” on the first refusal, and hesitated to make a second request. This finding suggests that requesters have a greater chance of agreement after initial refusal, so it’s advisable to persist.
Help-seekers typically considered the magnitude of the “ask,” whereas potential helpers considered the inconvenience costs of saying “yes” compared with the interpersonal and self-image costs of saying “no.”
This underestimation bias may be reduced by:
Comparing actual degree of personal influence compared to perceived influence,
Considering the means of influence, including incentives, suggestions, reinforcements, punishments,
Invoking organizational culture.
These findings suggest the benefit of asking for what you want and that you have more influence over others than you expect.
-*How do you assess your likelihood of getting what you want when you ask?
-*How likely are others to influence you by evoking social discomfort to increase your compliance?
She found that admissions of guilt and remorse give plaintiffs and “wronged” parties a sense of satisfaction, and fairness, and enables forgiveness to reach a settlement with reduced monetary damage awards.
Robbennolt asked more than 550 volunteers to serve as “plaintiffs” in an experimental scenario, then report their reactions to “settlement levers” including:
Reservation prices,
Aspirations,
“Fair” settlement amounts.
Apologies enabled “injured” parties to modify their perceptions of the situation and the “offender,” and to become more willing to participate in settlement discussions. In addition, apologies changed the values injured parties’ assigned to settlement levers, leading to increased likelihood of settling the “case.”
The type of apologies and situational context affect the likelihood of case settlement. Apologies that acknowledge responsibility and “blame” are more influential than apologies that express sympathy. Acknowledging accountability reduces the injured party’s anger, increases willingness to accept a settlement, and moves toward emotional “closure.”
Janelle Barlow
Apologies are a well-known tactic to handle complaints in customer service settings, where “every complaint is a gift,” according to Janelle Barlow of TMI and Claus Møller.
Claus Møller
They view complaints as valuable feedback that points out a gap between customer requirements and business performance. In addition, complaints indicate needed changes in products, services, and market focus.
However, lawyers who participated in other Robbennolt studies expressed concern that admission of guilt may lead to larger settlements. This worry led to at least thirty-five U.S. states making some apologetic statements inadmissible at trial.
-*How do you determine when apologies are likely to repair a relationship and lead to “closure”? -*What are the signs that apologies can deepen an interpersonal rupture?
Kathryn Welds, PhD | Curated Research + Commentary 