Developed and used properly, employee surveys can provide a powerful tool for both predicting behaviors and creating rich, transformational coaching conversations. Unfortunately, most surveys fall short of providing the feedback that is most needed for modern team success.

Aristotle's observation about human behavior and motivation speaks to the very heart of exceptional team leaders. Over the course of my career and doctoral work I have talked with hundreds of team leaders, the majority of whom aspired to build energized engaged teams that delivered exceptional performance. Yet, for most of them, their results did not live up to their aspirations... For team leaders, the most important reflection is the one that captures how your habits foster energy and engagement, or drive deterioration and disengagement, across the key relationships of your team. For more on this important topic, Listen to our Podcast below:

Lauri Love is charged with masterminding a 2013 attack by Anonymous on US government websites. Will Britain allow him to spend the rest of his days in an American prison?

What message would you send to outer space?

NASA/JPL-Caltech, CC BY

Jason Wright, Pennsylvania State University

Forty years ago, NASA launched Voyager I and II to explore the outer solar system. The twin spacecraft both visited Jupiter and Saturn; from there Voyager I explored the hazy moon Titan, while Voyager II became the first (and, to date, only) probe to explore Uranus and Neptune. Since they move too quickly and have too little propellant to stop themselves, both spacecraft are now on what NASA calls their Interstellar Mission, exploring the space between the stars as they head out into the galaxy.

Instructions to a far-off listener.

NASA/JPL, CC BY

Both craft carry Golden Records: 12-inch phonographic gold-plated copper records, along with needles and cartridges, all designed to last indefinitely in interstellar space. Inscribed on the records’ covers are instructions for their use and a sort of “map” designed to describe the Earth’s location in the galaxy in a way that extraterrestrials might understand.

The grooves of the records record both ordinary audio and 115 encoded images. A team led by astronomer Carl Sagan selected the contents, chosen to embody a message representative of all of humanity. They settled on elements such as audio greetings in 55 languages, the brain waves of “a young woman in love” (actually the project’s creative director Ann Druyan, days after falling in love with Carl Sagan), a wide-ranging selection of musical excerpts from Blind Willie Johnson to honkyoku, technical drawings and images of people from around the world, including Saan Hunters, city traffic and a nursing mother and child.

Greetings to you, whoever you are; we have good will toward you and bring peace across space.

NASA/JPL8.23 KB (download)

Since we still have not detected any alien life, we cannot know to what degree the records would be properly interpreted. Researchers still debate what forms such messages should take. For instance, should they include a star map identifying Earth? Should we focus on ourselves, or all life on Earth? Should we present ourselves as we are, or as comics artist Jack Kirby would have had it, as “the exuberant, self-confident super visions with which we’ve clothed ourselves since time immemorial”?

But the records serve a broader purpose than spreading the word that we’re here on our blue marble. After all, given the vast distances between the stars, it’s not realistic to expect an answer to these messages within many human lifetimes. So why send them and does their content even matter? Referring to earlier, similar efforts with the Pioneer spacecraft, Carl Sagan wrote, “the greater significance of the Pioneer 10 plaque is not as a message to out there; it is as a message to back here.” The real audience of these kinds of messages is not ET, but humanity.

Pioneer 10’s plaque: ‘Hi, we’re here.’

NASA, CC BY

In this light, 40 years’ hindsight shows the experiment to be quite a success, as they continue to inspire research and reflection.

Only two years after the launch of these messages to the stars, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” imagined the success of similar efforts by (the fictional) Voyager VI. Since then, there have been Ph.D. theses written on the records’ content, investigations into the identity of the person heard laughing and successful crowdfunded efforts to reissue the records themselves for home playback.

The choice to include music has inspired introspection on the nature of music as a human endeavor, and what it would (or even could) mean to an alien species. If an ET even has ears, it’s still far from clear whether it would or could appreciate rhythm, tones, vocal inflection, verbal language or even art of any kind. As music scholars Nelson and Polansky put it, “By imagining an Other listening, we reflect back upon ourselves,

"Don’t blame it on the sunshine, the moonlight, or on good times." Instead, the late Michael Jackson urged: “blame it on the boogie”.

When it comes to unethical behavior at work the song should go;

“Don’t blame it on the employee, blame it on job insecurity.”

Growing evidence suggests job insecurity can be an important driver of unethical employee behavior.  Corporate scandals of the previous decades triggered much new research.  Yet the big question remains: why do people behave in unethical ways in business?

A new study in the latest Business Ethical Quarterly suggests it may all come down to two factors. First, does the employee feel “embedded” in their job?  Second, what is their degree of personal adaptability?

Embedded individuals feel well-connected to their company. This strong attachment though increases the chances they will suffer from emotional exhaustion. This may stem from pressure to perform, hard to reach goals, and a desire to show loyalty at almost any cost. People who suffer from emotional exhaustion are less able to handle ethical challenges.

In contrast, adaptable employees are more likely to view job insecurity as a potential opportunity. For example, to find a new job, or start their own venture. They’re less likely to suffer from emotional exhaustion and more likely to avoid unethical practices.

This well-researched study tries to unravel how job insecurity saps people’s ability to make good ethical decisions. Beyond this study, real life examples seem to support this conclusion.

For example, Wells Fargo staff were under serious pressure to meet sales goals every day. There was an industry culture of pressure and fear—generating emotional exhaustion. This helped drive low-wage employees to become willing to rip off customers.

Low bank wages were also an incentive to behave in unethical ways. People didn’t fear being fired for overzealous selling. Instead, they worried about losing their job for not meeting sales targets.

Wells Fargo staff concluded it was more important to sell than treat the bank’s customers well. Uncertainty in Wells Fargo and the need to preserve jobs, drained employees’ emotional reserves. It undermined their natural tendency to be ethical and adapt. Instead, some 5000 staff responded to the management pressure by resorting to mass unethical behavior.

Implications

Employees in many companies suffer from job insecurity. According to an ILO report, around three out four of the world’s workers live in economic insecurity. Job security has fallen even in the industrialised European countries, and Canada.

For example, more than 3,000 workers aged between 20 and 60 were interviewed in 2012 for the UK Skills and Employment survey.  It revealed increased insecurity and fear among all types of employees, with those in the public sector as worried about work as those in the private sector.

Job security varies widely across nations – see table. Concern with security and benefits matter to employees. For example, while most want job security, more than half (65%) feel their current job already has it.

Best practice insight and technology company CEB found  43% of workers are unhappy with the stability their employers and jobs provide. The result was a drop in employee satisfaction or engagement. This may create emotional exhaustion which contributes to corruption levels; and lack of concern about unethical behavior.

Among the known causes of job insecurity are:

More flexible employment and short term contracts

Globalisation–less down-sizing, outsourcing

Reduced regulation of the labor market

Retreat on unemployment benefits

Growth of personal debt

Weakening of trade unions

We also need to know far more about the health consequences of these trends and how to alter them.

Monica Grady, The Open University

“In space, no one can hear you scream” was the tagline of the 1979 box office film success Alien.

And it’s true. Sound waves propagate mechanically as a vibration and therefore need a medium – solid, liquid or gas – to travel through. Although interplanetary (and interstellar) space is not completely empty, gas molecules and dust grains are so sparsely distributed that they do not form a continuous medium that would enable sound waves to be transmitted directly.

But there are many locations in the solar system where it might actually be quite noisy. Such places will have a medium through which sound waves can be transmitted – for example, an atmosphere or an ocean. And we have only started to explore what they sound like.

NASA announced that its next mission to Mars, the Mars 2020 lander, will carry a microphone so that the soundscape of the planet can be recorded. This is not the first time that a microphone has been sent to Mars – the US Planetary Society sponsored a microphone on the Mars Polar Lander mission in 1999. Unfortunately, the spacecraft crashed before any recordings could be transmitted. A microphone was also part of one of the instruments on the Phoenix Lander of 2008, but because of concerns about an interface problem with the landing system, the instrument was not switched on.

The tantalising sounds of Titan and comet 67P

Titan in true color.

NASA

We do have some recordings of space sound already – when the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Huygens spacecraft landed on Saturn’s giant moon Titan in January 2005, the probe recorded its journey down through Titan’s atmosphere. When you listen to the recording, you get a real impression of the capsule being buffeted by winds as it floated to the surface.

The point of an experiment like this is to use the sound to infer how the pressure of Titan’s atmosphere changes with depth. This can then be used to build a circulation model for Titan, similar to the ones we use on Earth to forecast the weather and understand changes in climate.

Speeding through Titan’s haze.

ESA443 KB (download)

And, at a time when ESA’s Rosetta mission is drawing to a close, we should remember that its target comet, 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko, was singing out into the void as it approached the sun. We also heard the thud of the comet lander Philae’s arrival when it touched down on the comet in November 2014.

There are soundscapes of other solar system bodies including Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. But these are not direct audio recordings – they are a conversion of electromagnetic vibrations into audio signals. They sound pretty weird.

Sounds of the planets.

Music of Mars

You only have to imagine being in a desert to realise the variety of sounds a microphone on the surface of Mars could record – and how they can be interpreted. First of all, the wind, whistling across the planetary landscape – how fast is it travelling? How often does it vary in speed or direction? What does a dust devil sound like? Or a dust storm? What about the crack of thunder associated with a lightning bolt? Or the variation in pressure during an electric storm? Once the wind drops, the gentle sounds that break the silence can be heard: the settling of dust grains disturbed by the wind.

There are several engineering advantages to having a microphone carried by a rover on Mars. As the vehicle trundles across the landscape, we might hear the noise of crashing gears, and realise that sand had clogged the wheels. This would allow engineers to diagnose problems more efficiently, and work out strategies to ameliorate or avoid them.

We have heard some sounds of a rover on Mars already: NASA released audio from the Opportunity rover’s 11-year marathon. But like the sounds of Jupiter and Saturn’s rings,

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve just been asked to lead the Creativity Champions Group on Linkedin. A group of 5000 + vibrant and diverse individuals whose passion is creativity. The Group will welcome new members – simply click here to join.

To kick off proceedings here is a Radio interview I did on the subject for Voice America:

In the interview Chris Cooper discusses the 11 questions:

What does a passion for science, business and music bring to the world of business?

What was it like leading innovative teams in the pharmaceutical industry?

How does innovation vary from creativity?

What are the roots of creativity?

How do we create the situation where creativity just occurs naturally?

Are businesses creative enough today?

How do you create a BBE (Brain Based Enterprise)?

What are the best ways to build creativity into teams?

Creativity is great but how do you best turn it into innovation?

What were the stand out messages from the interviews with Richard Branson, James Dyson etc?

How do you become a true learning enterprise?