Leadership Today - Practical Tips For Leaders

Great ideas often get missed. This week we explore how to keep good ideas alive.

Welcome to episode 145 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how to keep good ideas alive.

I'm sure you've had the experience where someone raises a great idea and, for whatever reason, it is ignored by others and slowly dies. Equally, a confident person might share a not-so-great idea that gains traction just because of the popularity, enthusiasm or position of the person. The best ideas don't always win.

In our teams we want to cultivate the right ideas. That means keeping an eye out for others' good ideas and helping them to grow.

Researchers Satterstrom, Kerrissey, and DiBenigno identified five practical things leaders can do to cultivate others' good ideas.

1. Amplifying - this involves bringing the idea up at a later time. For example - Fiona raised a great idea about our marketing in our last meeting.

2. Developing - asking clarifying to help you and others better understand the idea. For example - Can you tell me more about how that might work?

3. Legitimising - publicly supporting an idea by sharing where you've seen it work. For example - Company XYZ tried something like this and it was quite successful.

4. Exemplifying - performing a low-stakes test of the idea to gather more evidence. For example - We tried this approach with two customers last week and they were both positive in their feedback.

5. Issue-raising - calling out the weaknesses in an idea so they can be addressed. For example - One potential challenge with this approach is the additional time required. How might we address that?

Being a great leader isn't always about having the best ideas. Often our role is to help keep others' ideas alive.

Patricia Satterstrom, Michaela J. Kerrissey, and Julia DiBenigno, How the Best Teams Keep Good Ideas Alive. Harvard Business Review, May 18, 2022

Research shows disagreement has a negative impact on our brain function, so what can we do about that?

Welcome to episode 144 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore the impact of disagreement on our brains and how to move forward.

Our brains operate very differently where we are in agreement versus disagreement with another person.

When two people are in agreement, researchers have demonstrated harmonious patterns of brain activity, mainly focused around sensory areas such as the visual system. When we are in agreement, it's likely we're paying attention to social cues from the other person using our senses. We're not having to worry too much about higher-level functions. Our brains aren't working very hard at all.

When we're in disagreement though, research shows our brain function shifts more towards the frontal lobe, responsible for higher-level functions like reasoning and restraint. The overall amount of brain activity also increases dramatically, using both emotional and cognitive resources. It takes a lot more conscious effort to process and work through disagreement. As a result, disagreements can wear us out.

Given disagreement takes a lot of effort, it makes sense to try to resolve it. Disagreements rarely become better with age so we want to act quickly. Here are some ways to move forward when we find ourselves in disagreement:

1. Share your desire to resolve the disagreement or at least find a way forward. It's important to lead with our positive intent. That will help to calm both us and the other person, so the disagreement becomes less confrontational.

2. Ask open questions to understand the other person's perspective. Disagreements often result from misunderstandings. Explore the other person's views, interests, needs and wants. Be curious about their perspectives and respectful of their views. You may actually have more in common than you think.

3. Provide insight into your own views and opinions. Be clear about what is important to you and why. If you really explore their perspective, it becomes quite natural for them to explore your perspective.

4. Tackle the disagreement as a shared problem. I picture a disagreement as two people sitting across from each other at a table, facing off. Moving to a shared problem is like we're both on the same side of the table, with our focus on the issue rather than each other. Here we want to focus on how we can either meet both our needs, or reach another satisfactory conclusion.

5. If you can't reach agreement, figure out how you can still work together. It may be that you agree to disagree. It's rarely worth losing a work relationship over a disagreement.

So next time you have a disagreement, think about these five steps. Have a great week.

Joy Hirsch, Mark Tiede, Xian Zhang, J. Adam Noah, Alexandre Salama-Manteau, Maurice Biriotti. Interpersonal Agreement and Disagreement During Face-to-Face Dialogue: An fNIRS Investigation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2021; 14 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.606397

In this episode I speak with Belinda Morgan, author of the book Solving the Part-Time Puzzle - How to Decrease Your Hours, Increase Your Impact and Thrive in Your Part-Time Role. You can find our mote about Belinda and buy the book via her website - www.belindamorgan.com

Research demonstrates that showing stress can lead to greater support from others.

Welcome to episode 143 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore at how showing stress can lead to greater support from others.

Have you ever thought about why we demonstrate stress? Surely showing signs of stress to others puts us at a disadvantage. Why would we want to show weakness? And why do even the most accomplished professionals still show signs of stress?

Researchers from Nottingham Trent University and the University of Portsmouth recently reinforced what we already know - people are pretty good at identifying stress in others. As people feel more stressed, others notice more stress in them - there's nothing revolutionary about that finding. However they took it one step further to examine the impact of those stress signs on others. It turns out that people reacted more positively to those who demonstrated signs of stress than those who didn't. Those who demonstrated signs of stress were seen as more likeable. So why might that be the case? The researchers highlighted that human beings are largely a cooperative species - we survive and thrive by helping each other. They theorised that an honest sign of weakness may show that we are willing to cooperate, or at least that we're not a threat.

All of this builds on a body of research that suggests being more emotionally expressive helps us to be well-liked by others and results in more positive social interactions.

Here are some thoughts based on this research that you can take and apply:

1. Show your emotions - the goal of emotional intelligence isn't to become emotionless. In fact, showing no emotion may lead us to be seen as competitive or difficult to read.

2. Encourage others - when someone does show signs of stress, provide them with some support and encouragement. Imagine yourself in that situation and how much a kind word would help.

3. Don't overdo it - one of the worst ways to start a speech is saying "I'm really nervous". People want someone they can relate to, but also someone that they can be confident in.

4. Rewrite your emotions - if you feel stressed or nervous, reframe that as wanting to do a good job or being excited to present work that matters to you.

Stress isn't necessarily bad. We can use our own and others' stress as a way to build connections and cooperation.

Jamie Whitehouse, Sophie J. Milward, Matthew O. Parker, Eithne Kavanagh, Bridget M. Waller. Signal value of stress behaviour. Evolution and Human Behavior, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.04.001

Diversity isn't just great for teams and organisations - it can also help with recruitment.

Welcome to episode 142 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we look at how diversity can help with recruiting.

We know that diversity in organisations produces lots of benefits when it is well managed. A well-managed diverse team will out perform a more uniform team every time.

But actively promoting the diversity of an organisation also appears to help its attractiveness to job seekers. Recent research has found that disclosing key diversity scores in job advertisements increased the click-through rate of jobseekers, particularly for those organisations with higher diversity scores. Applicants were even willing to look at lower paying jobs where the employer had better diversity scores. Follow up research found this approach was particularly effective for women and people of colour who were more likely to see a diversity score as useful in deciding which jobs to apply for.

So let's assume that you've made the effort to improve the diversity of employees within your organisation. Here are some ideas of what you might do next based on these findings:

1. Think about diversity diversely - I always encourage clients to look beyond the more obvious diversity dimensions to also explore differing personalities, thinking styles and other factors.

2. Promote the diversity in your teams - if you have actively built diversity in your team or organisation, celebrate that and promote it to others inside and outside your organisation.

3. Diversity helps build even greater diversity - this research suggests that building and promoting diversity in your organisation will help attract more diverse candidates.

Diversity isn't just a nice-to-have - it leads to real benefits for organisations, even extending to our ability to attract stronger candidates.

Choi, Jung Ho and Pacelli, Joseph and Rennekamp, Kristina M. and Tomar, Sorabh, Do Jobseekers Value Diversity Information? A Mixed Methods Investigation (April 25, 2022). SMU Cox School of Business Research Paper No. 22-04, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4025383 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4025383

Mind wandering might actually be useful after all.

Welcome to episode 141 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how mind wandering can help us at work.

Mind wandering is usually viewed negatively. We typically view mind wandering as a failure to maintain focus, taking us away from something to which we should be paying attention. However, mind wandering may not be quite as bad as we thought. As I've shared before, it's often in those mind wandering states that we come up with out best ideas. We're not really designed to operate for long periods of time with extreme focus on one thing. Research by Wong, Willoughby and Machado published just this month helps to shed more light on how mind wandering tendencies might help us.

Researchers found those with higher spontaneous mind wandering could handle forced switching between tasks far more effectively, transferring their attention to the new tasks faster than others.

We know human beings are pretty bad at multitasking on similar tasks. So while we can probably walk and chew gum, we are less effective at having a phone conversation while scrolling our Instagram feed. What our brain does instead is to switch between tasks, moving attention back and forth between the two activities. That takes time and energy. If we're constantly switching, there's going to be a drop in productivity.

As a result, we might try to focus on one thing at a time. But there are moments in every day that require us to shift our attention rapidly for reasons outside our control. For example, someone might come to us with an urgent query. Being able to shift rapidly from one task to another is called cognitive flexibility, and that's exactly what those with mind wandering tendencies appear to be better at.

Focus serves a purpose, and so does allowing our mind to wander. Perhaps we need to think about mind wandering as a skill that can be developed. Scheduling some down-time for your brain to wander across a range of spontaneous ideas could well help you to switch between tasks more effectively.

Yi-Sheng Wong, Adrian R. Willoughby, Liana Machado (2022) Spontaneous mind-wandering tendencies linked to cognitive flexibility in young adults, Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 102, July 2022.

Variety may be the spice of life, but it also helps with personal development.

Welcome to episode 140 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we discuss how variety can help with learning and development.

You may have heard the expression that variety is the spice of life, but variety also turns out to be important for development and learning. Research shows us that learning in a broader and more variable setting ultimately helps us to do three things:

1. It helps us to better identify which elements are relevant

2. It helps us to make broader generalisations

3. It forces us to reconstruct memories - getting us out of the ruts that might otherwise trap us

Let's take an example from the research. If an infant is learning what a dog is as a category, it's quick and easy to just show them one type of dog. Show them that exact dog, and they will tell you that it is a dog. It takes longer to learn what a dog is if we expose that same infant to multiple types of dogs, however they're then much better at generalising that learning to a new type of dog. If I've only ever seen one type of dog, I may not correctly identify a new type of dog as a dog. If instead I learned what a dog is by seeing lots of different examples, I'm much better able to correctly identify a new type of dog.

The same principle applies for adults learning a new sport. One option if I'm learning tennis would be to practice one shot over and over again. Another way could involve learning and practicing lots of different shots. The second way takes a lot longer to get us to the point where we can hit the ball over the net, but it is going to be much better in the unpredictability of a tennis match than the first approach to learning.

So variety and variability in learning is harder, but it leads to better generalisation.

The researcher Raviv highlights a great example of this relating to face recognition.He shares that "face recognition is affected by whether people grew up in a small community (fewer than 1000 people) or in larger community (over 30,000 people). Exposure to fewer faces during childhood is associated with diminished face memory." So even in social skills like face recognition, we're better off learning with variability and variety.

Other research highlights that even incidental exposure to something new primes us to learn more about it. There's something about allowing ourselves to be exposed to new experiences and things that sets us up for learning.

So how much variety is there in your job? How often in the average week are you trying things for the first time?

We all know that learning is hard - it takes effort. But if we want to maximise our learning and ability, it's important to remember that variety is the spice of development.

Limor Raviv, Gary Lupyan, Shawn C. Green. How variability shapes learning and generalization. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.03.007

Layla Unger, Vladimir M. Sloutsky. Ready to Learn: Incidental Exposure Fosters Category Learning. Psychological Science, 2022; 095679762110614 DOI: 10.1177/09567976211061470

Dr Kim Hazendonk shares the neuroscience of leadership. Find out more about Kim and her work at www.positivebrain.com.au

Have you ever received the feedback that you need to "be more strategic"? We pick apart what this might mean for your development.

Welcome to episode 139 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore what it means to be more strategic.

As I coach and work with a range of people, it's amazing how often people share they've received feedback that they need to be more strategic. They're typically no more clear about it than that - just that they've been told to be more strategic.

If this sounds like you, the first advice I give is to setup time with the person who provided the feedback to better understand what they meant. In a non-challenging way, ask for examples. Have them describe what being more strategic would look like in your role. This is likely to draw out a clearer picture of what you should be working on and the impact it is having on your performance.

I believe there are four main areas where we can all be more strategic. That being strategic is about time horizon, breadth of focus, interpersonal consideration and openness to new ideas. Let's take a look at each of these.

1. Being more strategic could be about the time horizon you bring to your work. We can all end up not looking far enough into the future, particularly when we're under pressure. We all have a tendency to focus on immediate threats, rather than longer-term threats and opportunities. Take time to look and plan further out into the future.

2. Being more strategic could be about the breath of your focus. Sometimes we can become too narrowly focused on our own interests or areas of expertise. Take the time to look more broadly beyond your specialisation. What are people doing in other industries or geographies? What broader trends are playing out in business and society? A great way to do this is to read more widely. If you find yourself reaching for the same kind of reading material, branch out. Ask for recommendations from others. Meet with people with different professional backgrounds and speak to them about emerging trends they are seeing.

3. Being more strategic could be about Interpersonal consideration. Sometimes we don't take enough time to take others' needs and interests into account. We can then end up blind-sighted when our brilliant plan is opposed. Build connections across your organisation and run your ideas past others to gather their views and feedback. Ask for advice. You don't have to just take on everything they say, but it's much better to be genuinely interested and informed.

4. Being more strategic could be about openness to new ideas. Those who are seen as not being strategic can often be caught up in the past or the current way of doing things. They may oppose change, even when the change is inevitable or likely to be beneficial. A great quality and practice here is curiosity. Rather than seeking to respond to others' ideas right away, stay curious and ask lots of questions.

Take some time this week to examine how strategic you're being across these four areas. Have a great week.

Research shows the way we interpret emotions in men and women differs, where we're more likely to see men as angry and women as happy or sad. We look at ways to challenge this to make sure we understand where people are coming from.

Welcome to episode 138 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we look at the way we interpret emotions in men and women.

It turns out that we are more inclined to associate anger with male faces, and happiness or sadness with female faces. Research shows it can work both ways - the emotion we see encourages us to perceive someone as more male or female, but also whether someone is male or female influences the emotions we see.

While this field of research is still expanding with these findings published in Emotion just recently, it builds on the idea that we don't always get it right when we try to guess at someone's emotion and how they're feeling. This can lead to all sorts of confusion and interpersonal challenges in the workplace.

Here are three tips for counteracting this tendency:

1. The first tip is really simple - just ask how people are feeling. Rather than guessing or interpreting what we are seeing, a simple question such as "how do you feel about that?" can make all the difference. It can also help the person to consider how they are feeling. So often we are not tuned in to our emotional state. We can help others to check how they are feeling.

2. The second tip is to check your biases. We all have biases - there's no point trying to pretend we don't. Rather take some time to review your areas of bias. Is it about gender, or age, or nationality? It's a fine line, but we want to recognise and celebrate diversity, while not letting it drive the way we act towards others.

3. The third and final tip is to watch your language. Are there words that you use exclusively with one gender and not the other? I found that I would occasionally describe female colleagues who I admired as "feisty" - a word I would never use to describe a man. Instead, now I'm trying to use words like "determined", "clear" and "confident" - words I could use equally with men and women. And it may not just be gender, it could be words you use with people of different ages or nationalities. Take some time to pay attention to the words you use.

Understanding our biases around interpreting emotions can help us to pause, reflect and change the way we respond. Take some time this week to reflect on your approach.

Sebastian Korb, Nace Mikus, Claudia Massaccesi, Jack Grey, Suvarnalata Xanthate Duggirala, Sonja A. Kotz, Marc Mehu. EmoSex: Emotion prevails over sex in implicit judgments of faces and voices.. Emotion, 2022;