Healthy Work

In Episode 39, we have a special guest host, Dr. Kimberly French, to discuss her paper (French, Drummond, Storey, 2022) on how experiencing psychological neglect and abuse as a child leads to a reduced sense of control and social support as an adult, thus making it more likely that you’ll experience work-family conflict. We also talk about governmental policies and organizational strategies that can reduce the instances of psychological maltreatment of children.

Note: In this episode we talk about childhood psychological trauma. If that’s triggering for you then you’ll probably want to skip this episode.

In this BONUS episode Keaton talks with Drs. Gordon Schmidt and Sy Islam about their upcoming book Leaders Assemble: Leadership in the MCU. Specifically, we chat about the chapter on leadership and stress. You can pre-order the book from an independent book store here.

In Episode 38, we discuss a paper by Pluut, Ilies, Su, Weng, & Liang (2022) on how social stressors at work can impact how you treat your partner at home. Specifically, in line with a wealth of literature, this study shows if you have social stressors at work, you’re more likely to feel burnt out, and ultimately treat your partner poorly, especially if you’re a trusting person.

We’re back from our unexpected hiatus!

In Episode 37, we discuss a paper by Hughes, Freier, & Barratt (2022) on the experience of receiving unhelpful help at work. Receiving unhelpful help is associated with a range of negative attitudes and behaviors, and there are certain personality traits that put you at higher risk for these outcomes. We suggest creating a culture and habit of asking people if they need help, what that help is, and listening to and respecting their answers.

In Episode 36, we discuss a paper by Cho & Kim (2022) on the impact of eating behaviors at night on next day job performance. If you eat “poorly” at night you feel bad physically and psychologically the next morning, and this translates into worse on-the-job behavior (less likely to engage in helping behaviors and more likely to withdraw).

Please note that in this episode we do talk about “unhealthy” eating, but we recognize that everyone has different dietary goals. Also, if this content may be triggering for you, this might be an episode you want to skip.

In Episode 35, we discuss a paper by Cheung, Anderson, King, Mahabir, Warner, & Jones (2022) on the subtle discrimination women with children face when applying for jobs. Parenthood and applying for jobs are both stressful enough on their own, but this study shows that women applicants with children are viewed more negative and rejected more quickly than their men counterparts and their women counterparts without children.

In Episode 34, we discuss a paper by Shen, Liang, Brown, Ni, & Zheng (2022) on how supervisors abuse poorly performing subordinates, but that this causes emotional exhaustion for the supervisors. Having a chronically poorly performing subordinate increases supervisors’ emotional exhaustion, due in part, to supervisors’ higher levels of abusive supervision. This further challenges the usefulness of the “tough love” approach to poor performance.

In Episode 33, we discuss a paper by Van Egdom (2022) on how companies' announcements about upcoming cost-cutting measures during COVID impacted employees' feelings of job insecurity and their ability to focus their attention. Take away: these announcements made employees feel less secure which makes it harder to focus, unless they have a supportive supervisor.

In Episode 32, we discuss a paper by Yuan, Ye, & Zhong (2021) on how people reengage with work after a long break (like the one from COVID-19 lockdowns). In this sample, having leaders who were safety-oriented made reattachment efforts more effective at increasing work engagement, safety behavior, performance, and withdrawal at work.

In Episode 31, we discuss a paper by ten Brummelhuis, Calderwood, Rosen, & Gabriel (2021) on the impact of physical activity during the day on self-efficacy, ego depletion and job performance. People who are intrinsically motivated to work out experienced a self-efficacy boost on days they did vigorous or light workouts, but a self-efficacy drop if they only had moderate workouts. People who were intrinsically motivated to workout experienced a self-efficacy boost only if they had a moderate workout. Those self-efficacy boosts translated into performance improvements as rated by a coworker. So, go forth and exercise.

CORRECTION NOTICE: In this episode, we occasionally reference self-esteem when what we mean is self-efficacy. Sorry for the confusion. Thank you to the listener who pointed out this error. So to be clear, this study examines self-efficacy, not self-esteem, as an outcome.