Is Anyone Listening?

“Listening is a skill that we are in danger of losing in a world of digital distraction and information overload.”  This pronouncement is from Seth Horowitz, an auditory neuroscientist at Brown University.

CEC Associates, Inc., has been offering single-issue courses, including communications skills, from our start as a company.  High on the list of our individual communication skills has been listening.  We have found that listening is a critical requirement in working with employees. 

Still, these basic skills have been denigrated as being unessential by many quarters.  In fact, employers have become less and less interested in wanting to sponsor training in them.

So we view Horowitz’s recent book, The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind, as being something of an affirmation.  Horowitz writes:

Hearing is a vastly underrated sense.  We tend to think of the world as a place that we see, interacting with things and people based on how they look.  Studies have shown that conscious thought takes place at about the same rate as visual recognition, requiring a significant fraction of a second per event.  But hearing is a quantitatively faster sense. While it might take you a full second to notice something out of the corner of your eye, turn your head toward it, recognize it and respond to it, the same to a new or sudden sound happens at least 10 times as fast.

The significance of listening, in both our personal and work relationships, is effectively described by Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, Brady Quinn as he discusses his late teammate, Jovan Belcher, during a December 2, 2012, press conference.

Now, as “digital distraction and information overload” are prevalent, do you think employers should sponsor training in communications skills?  Is listening a skill that needs more emphasis in college classrooms and workplaces?

Seven Survival Skills

One of the most important debates of society today is over who has the primary responsibility for teaching marketable job skills: schools or employers.  This is a classic “chicken-or-the-egg” question with no definitive answer.  Employers tend to decry the lack of useful skills of their job applicants, and schools, by and large, have not fully acceded to the idea that they are responsible to teach, first and foremost, critical thinking skills.

One of the key elements of the issue (simplified here) is the argument that the schools should teach students critical thinking skills and the employer is then responsible to teach the critical job skills needed in a specific industry.  Tony Wagner has contributed to the debate with his recent work, “Seven Survival Skills.”

Wagner, who describes his “Skills” as being “defined by business leaders in their own words,” submits these skills as those business leaders should look for in their job applicants:

1.      Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

2.      Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence

3.      Agility and Adaptability

4.      Initiative and Entrepreneurship

5.      Effective Oral and Written Communication

6.      Accessing and Analyzing Information

7.      Curiosity and Imagination

Wagner is the leader of “Innovative Education” in the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard University.  Employers interested in this idea might start their online search with Wagner, and continue their education on the subject with CEC Associates’ Fall 2012 New Worker feature article, “Hiring and Maintaining Employees for the Rapidly Changing Workplace.”

From your experience, who do you think is responsible for teaching marketable job skills, such as those outlined by Wagner?  Other than schools or employers, what about a third option for the job: the future employee’s parents? 

Some Economics Are Required: The Health Care System Wasted $750 Billion in 2009

Most Americans (especially employers) know that their health care system needs critical attention going forward. And most Americans know that that is the reality regardless of who will be elected the next president.  The American health care system is:

• complex
• resistant to change, and
• extraordinarily inefficient.

The most important source of information on this issue, the report that is serving as the baseline on the current situation and from which the $750 billion shortfall figure is derived, comes from the Institute of Medicine (IOM).  The IOM report, “Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America,” (September 6, 2012) lists three “imperatives” for change:

1. The rising complexity of modern health care,
2. Unsustainable cost increases, and
3. Outcomes below the system’s potentials.

It is important to note that the unsustainable costs are only one part of the problem as defined by the IOM.  In fact, the report indicates that the most important need is to establish a “continuous learning system” and “a culture of continuous improvement” in the health care system. The report asserts that continuous learning is needed to assure that “the lessons from research and each care experience are systematically captured, assessed, and translated into reliable care.”

While the thrust of the report is on the need for systemic improvements, it identifies the specifics of the waste for 2009:

• unnecessary services                      $210 billion
• inefficient delivery services            $130 billion
• excessive administrative costs        $190 billion
• too high prices                               $105 billion
• missed prevention opportunities      $55 billion
• fraud                                              $75 billion

Some employers belong to groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers, who have lobbyists to make their interests known to Congress. But employers without such resources also have a responsibility to make their best interests known by contacting their legislators. (You could help by bringing the IOM report to the attention of your legislator, for example). Consider and share your ideas on how and why out-of-control health care costs affect all employers, regardless of the number of employees.  

Do You Get More Headaches than Most? Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) May Be the Cause

CEC Associates has written extensively about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) in terms of employee dysfunction in the workplace. The original ACE study was done by Robert Anda, M.D., at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Vincent J. Felitti, M.D., at Kaiser Permanente. The findings of this developmental research showed that in many adults, the cause of otherwise unexplained illnesses and impaired adult worker performance is ACE.

More recently, the research has been extended by other medical professionals to include other pervasive physiological difficulties in adults. The latest findings indicate that between 20% and 40% of headache patients have endured some kind of maltreatment during their early lives.

One of the lead researchers of this phenomenon is Dr. Elliott Schulman, a neurologist at the Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood.

Schulman’s study of ACE confirmed a strong association between childhood stress and adult headaches. The report, which studied more than 17,000 adults, examined the relationship between frequent headaches and eight early stressors:

1.      emotional abuse

2.      physical abuse

3.      sexual abuse

4.      domestic violence

5.      parental separation or divorce

6.      living with an adult who was mentally ill

7.      living with a substance abuser

8.      engaged in criminal activity

ACE research is only now beginning to look more into subtle manifestations of ACE, and we look forward to the findings of additional studies of these cause-and-effect factors. How strong do you think this causal relationship is between ACE scores and headaches? What would be an appropriate way, if any, to measure the effects of ACE in the workplace? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

For more information, see the summary article from Clinical Psychiatry News or the ACE study website. For more on the impact of ACE on workplace dysfunction, see this Continuing Education article written by CEC Associates.

Are There Benefits for Social Networking in the Workplace?

Admittedly, we may be woefully behind the curve on the application of social networking as a workplace tool. We are still seeking meaningful benefits for social networking in our business. As we understand, the helpful uses of a social network for business purposes include:

• marketing (creating brand awareness)
• knowledge sharing
• problem solving

While each of these sounds positive, and each has long since been accepted as standard business practice, we are still struggling with how marketing on Twitter, for example, is more effective, or even just as effective, as traditional marketing approaches.  What we are wondering is how a potential customer, other than by an anomaly, would develop from a Tweet. Below are some background notes on social networking, found in a Nielsen survey, “The Social Media Report":

• The most active social networkers: (1) Are females between the ages of 18 to 34, (2) Asian or Pacific Islanders in ethnicity, (3) Live in New England, (4) Have a bachelor’s degree, and (5) Have a household income of less than $50,000 a year.
• The U.S. ranks 9 among countries with most time spent on social networks or blogs. Australians are number 1.
• When Americans go online, they spend 22.5% of their time on social networking and blogs, 9.8% on games, 7.6% on emails, etc. (More time on social networking than anything else! We are really missing the boat.)African Americans are a demographic more represented on Twitter than any of the other nine social networks.
• While women are more likely to visit Twitter, Blogger, WordPress, MySpace, Tumblr, Yahoo!Pulse, and Typepad, men are more likely to visit LinkedIn and Wikia.

So tell us – how have you been using social networks to generate (or at least serve) your business? We’re ready to learn.

A Major Factor in Worker Satisfaction: Age

Of course most workplaces have some dissatisfied workers, but a new research study by the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College tells us that those who are most satisfied with their jobs are older employees. Workers under 30 are almost as satisfied as their older colleagues. The most dissatisfied?  Those employees between the ages of 30 and 39.

These results aren’t extrapolated from just a few respondents. For this study, the Sloan Center surveyed 11,298 workers working for seven multinational companies at 24 work sites in 11 countries.

Why is the 30-39 age group less satisfied?  Personnel from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania offer an interpretation: “That is the stage of life where people typically start a family and have young kids at home.” Further, “these people are more likely to feel the strains of balancing work and life, thus pulling their minds away from being fully engaged” at work. This age group “is in an intense career stage where they are often engaged in continued on-the-job learning, with greater responsibilities.”

These findings do not suggest that employers should not hire employees who belong to this age cohort.  They do mean that employers should be aware of these data and should work with these specific employees to pull them through the occupationally rough times indicated by the Sloan Center findings.

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Join the Fray

Unlike the vast majority of our emails and blog posts, this one does not have a direct connection to employer/employee relationships in the workplace.  It does, however, pertain to one of our favorite captains of industry, Virginia “Ginni” Rometty, CEO of IBM.

This post aims to question the predicament that the male-only Augusta National Golf Club, a bastion of gender discrimination, has with the three traditional and fixed seats on their Board of Directors: the CEOs of Exxon, AT&T, and IBM.

Christine Brennan, a regular columnist on the sports pages of USA TODAY and an undergraduate classmate of Rometty’s, reports that Rometty did not return an email inquiry from her on the subject.  (See Brennan’s article about the Augusta quandary here.)  So the world waits with bated breath to see what Augusta decides.

• Is Rometty already a member and we don’t know it yet?

• How will the Board of Directors decide?  Will Rometty be the first female ever to wear a green jacket?  Or will she be rejected, too?

• Since they haven’t yet announced a decision, your opinion could count.  What should the Board of Augusta National decide?  We’d love to know what you think.  Please share your opinions in the comments section below.

We’re Naming Our Choice for the Poster Person of Positive Psychology, and We’re Pushing Her Hard! Care to Name Your Choice?

Skylar Diggins is very likely the best basketball player in women’s college basketball. Maybe the best ever. She plays for Notre Dame.

Diggins was an All-American High School player. So was LeBron James. Diggins was a high school phenom, just like James. James is now a multi-millionaire. Diggins will get to play for the WNBA. The top salary in the WNBA is $105,000 a year.

How do you become a star player – or a star anything? You have to arrange to have parents who eliminate the word “can’t” from the family vocabulary. In fact, Diggins admits in a New York Times Magazine interview that her mother permanently banned her from using the word “can’t.” In other words, Diggins’ mother may be an advocate for Positive Psychology.

So, anyone care to name someone to compete with Diggins (with or without her mother) as the personification of Positive Psychology? We don’t think anyone comes close, but we are willing to consider your choice. We’ll share it with others, too.

www.dailytribune.com

"Your Calling is Calling"

One of the most popular employment websites is Monster. For individuals looking for a job, Monster is frequently the go-to choice to submit one’s resume and search for available jobs. In addition to making resumes available for employers across the country and listing available jobs, the site provides specific advice to the job seeker in terms of how to prepare for the search from resume writing to interview skills.

Recently, when you visited Monster, there was a slogan beneath the site header that read: “Your calling is calling.” In fact, Monster seemed to be so attached to this slogan that the site had it trademarked. Now, however, the slogan is gone from the site without explanation. One possible reason for taking the slogan down is that few people understood what it meant.

Amy Wrzesniewski, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management also uses the term “calling” in her work. Wrzesniewski developed the concept that all employment falls into one of three categories from the worker’s perspective:

1. Job: the individual is primarily concerned with the financial rewards of work.
2. Career: the individual is focused on advancing within the occupational structure.
3. Calling: the individual works not for financial gain or career advancement but for the sense of fulfillment that work brings.

Wrzesniewski summarized her reseach:

My work addresses the possibility of finding positive meaning in work through a variety of paths: the work itself, its perceived contribution to the greater good, interactions and relationships with others on the job, and the ability to challenge oneself, to name a few.

The term “calling,” as it was used by Wrzesniewski and Monster, relates to the highest form of satisfaction derived from one’s work. To read more on Wrzesnieski’s work, as well as that of a researcher also focusing on an individual’s relation to work, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, see our feature article in CEC’s Fall 2011 New Worker.

Our opinion: Most people in this country work only for the financial rewards. Most people in this country don’t consider their work as anything but a “job.”

Your opinion: Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Measure Your Well-Being

Healthways, a global well-being company, teamed with Gallup to compile the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. The definition of well-being they use is as follows: While happiness is transitory, well-being is sustained physical, emotional, and social health. The Well-Being Index includes six domains: Life Evaluation, Physical Health, Emotional Health, Healthy Behavior, Work Environment, and Basic Access. These six domains can be broken down into three main categories: work, health, and relationships.

USA Today asked Healthways to cull from its data what contributes to high well-being for the largest demographic in America today – women between the ages of 45 and 55. Someone who may be said to enjoy a high level of well-being may relate to many of the following descriptors. (See the full checklist here.)

Work:

College degree, some graduate school, professional or executive class

Family income of $120,000+

Commute under 10 minutes

Professional full-time job

Health:

Good physical and emotional health

BMI (body mass index) under 30

Exercise 30-45 minutes, 6 days a week

Relationships:

Married and never divorced

2 children (gives birth between ages 27-36)

No caregiving for young children or sickly parents, in-laws, spouse

Has 4-12 intimate friends

Some people may aspire to achieve a higher level of well-being. The three categories of work, health, and relationships may serve as a working guide and helpful starting point for those who are interested in increasing their level of well-being.

We encourage our readers to respond in the comments about their level of well-being, and what areas they plan to focus on achieving a higher level in this new year.