Category Archives: Resilience

Resilience

White Men can Lead in Improving Workplace Culture

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Catalyst’s recent research study of employees at Rockwell Automation, Calling All White Men: Can Training Help Create Inclusive Workplaces?, found that white men who participate in leadership development training, modify their workplace attitudes and behavior to enable career advancement for women and minorities.
The study found that Rockwell employees who participated in leadership training labs presented by White Men as Full Diversity Partners:

• Reported increased in workplace civility and decreased gossip, attributable in part to improved communication and respect

• Managers were more likely to acknowledge that inequities exist in career advancement opportunities and practices for women and racial/ethnic minorities

• Managers increased five inclusion behaviors, including seeking out varied perspectives to becoming more direct in addressing emotionally charged matters

• Managers with few prior cross-racial relationships reported most change in thinking about issues and opportunities for different demographic groups

• Managers who reported least concern about appearing prejudiced reported most change in taking personal responsibility for being inclusive following the leadership training lab.

As in any civil rights transition, change adoption is increased when representative of the often privileges “majority” articulate the issue and present a call-to-action for change.

-*How have you seen men improve the culture in your workplace?

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Blog: – Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary

©Kathryn Welds

“The Motherhood Penalty” in the Workplace

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Myra Strober

Myra Strober, Labor Economist at Stanford University and Founder of Clayman Center for Gender Research, argues that women who are mothers are at an economic disadvantage in the workplace.
TED Talk

She found that they are less likely to be hired, are offered lower salaries, and are perceived as being less committed to a job than fathers or women without children, according to a recent study by Stanford sociologist Shelley Correll.

Shelley Correll

Strober and Correll discuss costs of child care (day care as well as nannies), as well as the cost of lost wages for the time that women leave the workplace to serve as primary caregivers to children.

-*What career impacts have you observed among employees with parenting responsibilities?

©Kathryn Welds

Women’s Post-Business School Work-Life Issues

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Claudia Goldin

Harvard Business School’s Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz showed the high price women pay if they choose careers in finance

Goldin and Katz’s survey of 6,500 Harvard and Radcliffe graduates from 1969 and 1992, found that women who had earned an M.B.A. were less likely to be employed and have children (30%) at their fifteenth class reunion than were female who earned M.D. degrees (45%).

Lawrence Katz

They concluded that female M.B.A.s with children select professions with shorter hours, compared to their male peers with children and childless peers of both genders.

The financial impact of this choice is significant: Goldin and Katz found that even after correcting for the amount of time out of work, female M.B.A.s who took a year and a half off made 41 percent less than their counterparts who had worked continuously.
The pay gap was somewhat less for J.D.s (29 percent) and M.D.s (16 percent).

Marianne Bertrand

Goldin and Katz collaborated with University of Chicago economist Marianne Bertrand on another survey of 2,500 male and female University of Chicago M.B.A.s graduating between 1990 and 2006, considered women M.B.A.s involvement in finance roles.

They found that only 8 percent of respondents working in venture capital were women, half the rate of women in investment banking.
In contrast, 59 percent worked in advertising and 71 percent held roles in human resources.

Again, this choice has a significant financial impact for women: Nine years after graduating, the Chicago M.B.A.s working in investment banking (both male and female) were making, on average, $700,000 a year (median was $470,000), compared to an average income for all respondents of $370,000 (median was $190,000).

Occupations with the highest numbers of men also had the highest average number of hours worked, with investment banking averaging 74 hours a week, and consulting averaging 61 hours per week.

In contrast, occupations with the highest numbers of women had the shortest hours: Human resources averaged 51 hours per week and advertising averaged 52 hours a week.
These occupations tend to have lower average pay in addition to requiring fewer average hours of work.

This trend was replicated in medical specialties, in which those with shorter and more predictable hours tend to have more females.
Women now make up 41 percent of new M.D.s in the U.S., but fewer than 30 percent of physicians under the age of 35 practice emergency medicine or general surgery, but 70 percent of gynecologists and nearly 60 percent of dermatologists in the same age cohort are women.

These studies demonstrate the relationship between income, hours worked, and gender-based occupational role choice.

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©Kathryn Welds

“Contemplative Neuroscience” Can Modify Brain Functioning

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Richard Davidson

Richard Davidson

Richard Davidson, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says disorders like depression and anxiety can be changed with brain training.

He is an award-winning researcher in neuroplasticity, the process by which the brain’s adaptable, transformative capabilities are deployed.
Davidson asserts that this intentional transformation is enabled by contemplative cognitive practices, including meditation to increase moment-to-moment consciousness.

Davidson distinguishes the neural and behavioral consequences of various contemplative practices, and argues for their positive impacts on physical health for both beginning and experienced practitioners.

His recent research demonstrated that even meditation-based interventions delivered online can produce behavioral and neural changes.
He explained that the field of epigenetics investigates how genes are regulated by the environment, including the neural milieu.

Davidson suggested that contemplative practices can modify the neural environment, and revealed that neurally-inspired behavioral interventions (NIBI) can invoke greater change than any currently-known pharmacological intervention.

He detailed research studies of expert practitioners of contemplative practice, both in the US and in India. He discussed the work showing the link between brain and heart, citing work of Francisco Varela in “neurophenomenology”.

He cited results comparing the impact of training in compassion training (visualizing suffering and wishing freedom from suffering for loved one, self, stranger, difficult person, all beings with the thought: “May you be free from suffering. May you experience joy and ease,” while noticing visceral sensations around the heart) vs cognitive reappraisal training.

Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman

He collaborated with his Harvard University graduate student colleague, Daniel Goleman, now known as the originator of the term, “Emotional Intelligence,” to produce a book on Consciousness: the Brain, States of Awareness, and Alternate Realities .

-*How have you used contemplated practices to evoke personal change in attitudes or behaviors?

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©Kathryn Welds

Developing “Charisma” and “Presence”

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Olivia Fox Cabane

Olivia Fox Cabane

Olivia Fox Cabane integrated research findings from social psychology and neuropsychology with principles of Emotional Intelligence and “Practical Buddhist Philosophy” in her book, The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism

She concluded that charismatic behaviors are based on managing internal state and beliefs through self-awareness to focus on others and “make them feel good.”

She found that “charisma” or “presence” is composed of:

•Presence – mindful attention, patient listening, avoiding interruption

•Power – appearance, clothing, occupy space, positive wording (avoid “don’t”), placebo effect

•Warmth – chin down, eye contact, Duchenne smile (mouth corners, eye corners), gratitude, compassion, appreciation – counteract “hedonic adaptation”

•Goodwill – wishing the other person well

•Empathy – understanding the other’s experience

•Altruism

•Compassion – a combination of empathy+goodwill

•Forgiveness of self and others

•Self-compassion – self-acceptance. Positively correlated with emotional resilience, sense of personal responsibility, accountability, sense of connectedness, life satisfaction, positive relationships with others, self-confidence, willingness to admit errors, low self-pity, low depression, low anxiety, improved immune system functioning

•”Metta” – loving kindness to self, others

Fox Cabane offered three “quick fixes” to increase your “charisma”:

•Lower the intonation of your voice at the end of your sentences (no “Valley Girl talk”…)
•Reduce the speed and rapidity of nodding
•Pause for two seconds before you speak

-*When you see a charismatic person in action, what behaviors and attitudes add to the interpersonal impact and appeal?

©Kathryn Welds