Leadership Today - Practical Tips For Leaders

Welcome to day one of the growing gratitude challenge.

So why, as leaders, would we spend a week focusing on gratitude? To answer that, we need to think about what gratitude is.

From a psychological perspective, it's best to think of gratitude as having two elements. The first element is recognising the good things in our life. Most people would agree with that definition. The second element though is often overlooked, and that is appreciating that many of these good things are due to other people and factors other than ourselves. Much of what we can be grateful for in life is a gift from others rather than a reward for our own actions. Gratitude only really makes sense in the context of community - whether that's the community around you at work, where you study, where you live, or with your family and friends.

Gratitude is both an emotional state and an ongoing trait or disposition. We can feel gratitude in a moment. But we can also develop a grateful outlook to our life. We can actively seek out things to be grateful for through daily practices. Equally, we can seek out things to be disappointed or negative about. Much of gratitude is in the outlook we bring and where we choose to focus our attention and efforts.

So why does gratitude matter? The research into gratitude outlines a range of benefits. For the individual the benefits of gratitude range from improved physical and mental health, elevated mood and happiness, increased life satisfaction, and reduced burnout. By way of example, patients recovering from heart failure who completed a gratitude journal had reduced signs of inflammation after an 8 week period. Other research showed people reported better and longer sleep, and improved overall physical health by increasing their practice of gratitude.

For groups and organisations, research has demonstrated that gratitude can increase generosity and kindness, while helping to build stronger relationships and improving work climate. Gratitude is like the glue for society that binds people together. If someone is generous towards you, you're likely to feel grateful and, in turn, do something nice back for them or for someone else. Gratitude multiplies.

So on day one of this challenge, I would like you to think about the current balance of negative and positive inputs into your life at the moment. What are you feeding yourself? Where are you focusing your attention?

By way of example, I recently found myself becoming absorbed in true crime documentaries on Netflix. Before long, the world around me seemed to be filled with art thieves and serial killers. I had let the ratio of negative to positive inputs become out of balance, and it changed my outlook on the world. So we start this challenge with two simple reflections:

What people, activities or habits feed your disappointment or discouragement? What is bringing you down at the moment?

What people, activities or habits feed your gratitude? What is elevating you up at the moment?

Note down your thoughts in your workbook.

Download the workbook at Leadership Today or via Leadership Today On-Demand

Hi everyone. The Leadership Today podcast is going to be a little different over the next week as we undertake what I have called the Growing Gratitude Five Day Challenge.

It's all too easy in the busy-ness of life to become caught up in the negatives - the obstacles, complaints and risks. We're hard wired to identify threats. However, this obsession with the negatives in life comes at a cost. The Growing Gratitude challenge is all about restoring some balance and capitalising on the benefits that a more positive mindset brings. This isn't some overly-optimistic wishful thinking - it's about bringing an evidence-based approach to increasing our performance and well-being through gratitude.

The challenge is running live from 14th to 18th June 2021 at Leadership Today On-Demand and via the Leadership Today podcast.

Each morning starts with an introduction to the challenge for that day. These are backed up by a workbook that includes a range of activities. You can download the workbook via our website - leadership.today. Links are in the show notes.

I'm looking forward to working with you across the week.

Download the workbook at Leadership Today or via Leadership Today On-Demand

Here's a replay of our 27th June 2020 episode titled Turning Criticism into Feedback and Growth.

Are you less interested in exercise after a hard day at work even though you know it will make you feel better? You're not alone. And research has discovered why.

Hello and welcome to episode 116 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. In this episode we're looking at why a stressful day at work makes us even less likely to exercise, despite that being exactly what we need.

If you have a stressful job chances are you already know that exercise will help. Exercise is a great antidote for stress. Exercise effectively burns through stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. In addition, exercise can stimulate production of endorphins which boost our mood and also reduce pain.

But perhaps you have also had this experience: It has been a hard day at work. You know that a quick visit to the gym or walk will make you feel better. But you're even less motivated than usual to exercise. You know exercise will help you to feel better, but still you don't do it.

Recent research suggests that the design of our job can have an impact not just on our stress levels at work, but also on the actions we take outside of work to reduce stress. It turns out that the more demanding our day at work, the less likely we are to exercise.

The research involved setting up a call-centre environment where the demands of the job and level of individual control could be varied. The researchers initially set up two versions of a call-centre job - one with greater demands and one with lesser demands placed on the individual. After their shift, participants were then invited to exercise. Those with the more demanding versions of the job undertook less exercise. Having just experienced a demanding job reduced the exercise they would have otherwise have undertaken.

Researchers then repeated the experiment, but this time some participants were allowed greater freedom and control over the job. They found initial evidence that greater autonomy and freedom positively impacted the individual's sense of control outside of the job, which in turn could influence the amount of exercise they chose to undertake.

So it appears that job characteristics such as demands and autonomy impact exercise. Our work spills over into the rest of our life.

However, there are things we can do to help change this pattern.

1. Exercise at the start of the day - this will help to buffer you against stress and also increase sense of control

2. Make exercise a habit not a choice - remove obstacles to exercise by laying out your gym clothes the night before

3. Focus on how you will feel at the end - starting exercise can be painful, but you almost always feel great after a workout - focus on that feeling to get you over the initial hump

4. Vary the demand level in your job and build in breaks - chronic stress is terrible for us, so mix up your day to include breaks and recovery time

So this week, get moving even when you don't feel like it. Focus on the benefits and remove the obstacles. Have a great week.

Abdel Hadi, S., Mojzisch, A., Parker, S. L., & Häusser, J. A. (2021). Experimental evidence for the effects of job demands and job control on physical activity after work. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 27(1), 125–141. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000333

When have you learned the most at work? I bet it wasn't sitting in a training course. In this week's replay we look at the four best ways to learn at work.

This week we explore how showing the right amount of emotion can improve the impact you have on others and their willingness to invest in your ideas.

Hello and welcome to episode 115 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. In this episode we're exploring eight steps to effective delegation.

There are a whole host of reasons why people don't delegate. Perhaps they are worried about quality of the results. Or they just don't have the time to delegate. Many have had bad experiences with delegation going wrong in the past. However, effective delegation is at the core of great leadership. The rate we delegate sets the pace at which we progress.

Let's start by with five initial questions to answer before you even start delegating:

1. Does it need to be done? Organisations are generally great at starting new things and terrible at shutting down old things. So before you even delegate, consider whether you can eliminate the task altogether.

2. Does it need to be done by me? There are some things which you can't fully delegate. This can include financial approval limits or performance management accountabilities. But, truth be told, you can probably delegate more responsibilities than you expect.

3. Does someone else have capacity? If there is no one with capacity to delegate to, then you either need to free up capacity or keep doing it yourself. Rather than just stopping here, I encourage you to work with each of your people to make sure they are focusing on the right things and have the resources they need to be efficient. This might just free up the capacity that you need to delegate.

4. Does someone else have capability? It could be that no one in your team currently has the skills required to take on the accountability you're seeking to delegate. That's not necessarily a reason to stop, but rather speaks to the fifth initial question.

5. Do I have the capacity to develop their capability? You may think you don't have sufficient time to train someone up to your standard. But, by way of example, let's take an accountability that you currently invest 30 minutes a week into. Across a year that is around 24 hours. So, even if it takes you an entire day of concerted effort to train that person up and review their work, you're still a full two days ahead in the first year, and then three days ahead every subsequent year. Delegation is an investment.

So hopefully you've worked through these initial questions and you're still keen to delegate. Here are eight simple steps to follow to make that delegation work as well as possible.

1. Match their interests. Delegation is so much more effective if you match the interests of the person you are delegating to. Help them to answer "why me?" when you delegate. Perhaps the new accountability aligns with their development plan. Or perhaps you've noticed a skill that they can apply in a new way. Whatever it is, help the person to see how this opportunity aligns with their interests.

2. Detail the desired outcomes. It's really helpful for people to see clearly what you're after as an end result. That could mean providing an example of a report or other output. Or, if it's delegating attendance at a meeting, you might invite that person along to a few meetings first with you so they can see what is expected.

3. Outline why this work matters. People really appreciate knowing what their work is contributing to. Understanding the broader purpose of what you are delegating also helps them to make better decisions about their approach to the new accountability.

4. Detail the support available and check-in points. Delegation requires support. One of the traps I fell into when first delegating work was not setting up check-in points. As a result, a week goes by, I haven't heard anything about how things are progressing, so I drop by the person's desk to see how it is going. Then a week later I do the same thing again. The problem being that checking in that way feels a lot like micro-management and a lack of trust. How different it is to establish check-in points up front in consultation with the person you're delegating to. Then the check-ins don't feel like micro-management, rather they feel like support.

5. Outline the constraints. A risk when we delegate is that the person tries to achieve an outcome exactly the same way we did it. Often the person being delegated to feels like there are more constraints on the activity than there actually are. Occasionally people may not recognise an actual constraint and step outside of what is possible. Either way, we need to let people know what limits are in place.

6. Review what has been agreed. When you ask someone "do you have any questions?", 99% of the time they will say "no" even if they do have questions. Why? Because they are concerned that having a question might reflect badly on them or badly on you. Badly on them because they clearly didn't understand, and badly on you because you didn't explain it well enough. So they just say "no - no questions here". Instead, you could ask "what questions to you have?". That sets an expectation that they will have questions. Then ask them to describe what it is that they are delivering in their own words - not as a test, but rather to confirm clarity all round.

7. Provide direction, encouragement and check-in as agreed. Basically, follow through on what you said you would do. A great way to do this is simply to set aside 15 minutes each week at a particular time to catch up about what has been delegated. That way the person can store up any questions or concerns. Maybe you don't need the catch up every time, but it is really helpful for the person when they do need it.

8. Review learnings and celebrate success. People often underestimate just how much they have learned and developed. So when we delegate, it is great to celebrate the person successfully taking on that new responsibility.

I hope you found that approach to delegation helpful. All the steps are detailed in the show notes which you can access at our website Leadership.Today - and while you are there, why not sign up for our upcoming webinar called Delegation Without the Drama on the 27th or 28th of May depending on where you are in the world. There's a link to register in the show notes. Have a great week.

This week we explore how showing the right amount of emotion can improve the impact you have on others and their willingness to invest in your ideas.

Hello and welcome to episode 114 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how showing the right amount of emotion can improve the impact you have on others and their willingness to invest in your ideas.

A common misunderstanding of Emotional Intelligence is that it's all about holding back our emotions. This is certainly a part of Emotional Intelligence. After all, yelling at someone in the lunch room at work for not putting their cup in the dishwasher is probably not going to win you an employee of the month award. But Emotional Intelligence is not just about holding back emotions that might have a negative impact on others. It's also about harnessing our emotions to have a more positive impact on others. Our ability to understand our own emotional state and how to manage our emotions is crucial, as is being able to empathise with others and build effective relationships. The goal of building Emotional Intelligence isn't to become emotion-less. Rather it's to acknowledge and use our emotions to improve our impact and performance.

However, showing too much emotion can also be off putting to others. We need to be able to read the situation. It ends up being the classic Goldilocks scenario, where we need to demonstrate enough, but not too much, emotion.

This has been backed up by a recent study. Researchers used facial analysis software to scan through around 500 Kickstarter promotional videos. Kickstarter is a platform that allows people to gain funding for their prototype ideas with people committing funds to buy the product, but only being charged once the product is produced and shipped. Sometimes there's enough funding to go ahead, and sometimes there isn't. It was relatively easy for researchers to measure the effectiveness of each Kickstarter campaign through the funding it received. Meanwhile, the facial analysis software examined each frame of every pitch video to determine the emotion being demonstrated.

What the study found was fascinating. The pitches that included facial expressions moving through a range of happiness, anger, sadness and fear ended up being more successful in terms of funding. It seems like the range of facial expressions and the emotions they convey has a positive impact on those choosing to invest or walk away.

Their qualitative analysis showed that effective pitches involved initial signs of happiness as the entrepreneur introduced themselves, followed by anger to demonstrate their determination to overcome a problem, followed then by fear as they talked about the risk and challenge.

Those who were less successful tended to use a more consistent emotional expression - perhaps smiling the whole way through or demonstrating little overt emotion.

There are limits to this approach though. Showing too much of one emotion too often though was associated with less funding received.

So this week, feel free to show a little more emotion at work. Express your hope for the future, your determination to succeed, your excitement at working with your colleagues. Above all though - be yourself and harness your emotions. And while we're talking about improving your leadership, just a reminder that we have an upcoming webinar called Delegation Without the Drama on the 27th or 28th of May depending on where you are in the world. There's a link to register in the show notes. Have a great week.

Benjamin J. Warnick, Blakley C. Davis, Thomas H. Allison, Aaron H. Anglin. Express yourself: Facial expression of happiness, anger, fear, and sadness in funding pitches. Journal of Business Venturing, 2021; 36 (4): 106109 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2021.106109

The use of remote and hybrid teams has accelerated over the past year. But does this way of working actually work? What might be some of the benefits and drawbacks? And how do we best lead remote and hybrid teams? This week we're joined by Gina McCredie, an organisational psychologist who founded Impactful Work - working with individuals, teams and organisations to tackle challenges just like this.

It turns out that smartphone use is associated with shorter-term thinking and a focus on quick wins. The more you use your smartphone, the less likely you are to pursue longer term achievement of bigger goals. So this week we ask the question - Is your smartphone killing your dreams?

Hello and welcome to episode 112 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we're looking at whether your smartphone is killing your dreams. Pretty dramatic.

I've picked up my smartphone 32 times already today. Now, how do I know that? Because pickup number 32 was to check how many pickups I had used today. My average pickups per day is 86. I have no idea if that's good or bad, or how you might compare. Either way, smartphones have become an integral part of how we work, how we socialise and how we relax. There are few parts of our lives that smartphones haven't managed to invade.

You might suspect that all that smartphone use is making us more reactive and impulsive. That 'ding' or vibration from your pocket can easily steal your attention, if only for a split second. Our brains are notoriously bad at handling this. Once something has grabbed our attention, it takes a while to get back to what we were initially focusing on.

Recent research shows that those who spend more time on their smartphones also tend towards chasing smaller and more immediate rewards. They tend to steer away from longer-term rewards that require greater effort. They are more impulsive. This effect is particularly pronounced for those who use gaming and social media apps.

Is smartphone use causing this impulsivity, or is smartphone use a measure of impulsivity? It's hard to say and look it probably goes both ways.

Now, you might say, I've heard social media apps are addictive, so maybe it's not my fault. It's definitely a mixed picture when you look at the research, but the most recent articles suggest it's unlikely that social media apps are addictive. They are distracting, absolutely. They fight for your attention, for sure. But they're not truly addictive in the way that cigarettes might be, or gambling or drinking might be for some.

Instead, this research suggests that smartphone use and impulsive decision making go hand in hand. When we take a short-term focus we can end up missing out. Our smartphone can be a diversion for our time, but it can also be a diversion from our goals.

You can use the screen time data on your smartphone as a measure of your impulsiveness. Take a look now - see what you have been up to over the past week. Greater discipline with your smartphone use could well extend into other areas of your life. Even if the smartphone isn't making you more impulsive, it's a great way to tackle your impulsiveness.

Part of the value we bring as leaders is a long-term focus. It's our ability to look beyond what's immediately in front of us to the emerging opportunities and threats that helps us to add value to those we lead. In order to take a longer-term view, we really need to understand what an impulse is and how we can fight it. An impulse is effectively an urge - something in the moment that compels us to do something. An impulse can be physical, mental or emotional, or a combination of all three. Here are a few tips for dealing with those impulses:

1. Be aware of the impulse - acknowledge it. It's the classic "name it to tame it" approach. Acknowledge that you're really tempted to pick up your phone and dive into whatever distracting app is your preference. That will help you to avoid the impulse.

2. Ride it out. This applies to many psychological challenges that we face. If you've tried to quit smoking, no doubt you were taught this technique. And why not? It works really well. In the moment it feels like an impulse is just going to build and build and build, so we may as well just give in. But there will come a point where any impulse passes. Ride that wave with a confidence that it will become less of a challenge over time.

3. Fix it at the source. Use screen time and other apps to limit phone usage. Turn off notifications that distract. Use the technology to help you.

4. Be more intentional. I've spoken before about planning for self-control. Will power in the moment is notoriously bad. Instead, we need to plan for the times when these impulsive time wasters tempt us the most. So, for example, in the evening I read books on a Kindle rather than on my iPad. Not only is it far easier on my eyes, there's absolutely nothing on that Kindle to distract me, except perhaps another book.

5. Change your mindset. It can often feel that avoiding an impulse is losing or missing out. Instead, it is something you should reward yourself for. Watch how your ability think longer-term increases, and as those distractions become less distracting - reward yourself for the progress you're making.

So this week, take a quick look at your smartphone screen time, and the extent to which your goals and dreams have become smaller.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201118141844.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain%2Fsocial_psychology+%28Social+Psychology+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

K. Thomson, S. C. Hunter, S. H. Butler, D. J. Robertson. Social media 'addiction': The absence of an attentional bias to social media stimuli. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 2021; DOI: 10.1556/2006.2021.00011

Is becoming more mindful automatically better for us and our well-being? And does being more mindful help those around us? The research is really clear - more mindfulness is not always better. Thankfully we also know how to avoid these mindfulness downsides.

Hello and welcome to episode 111 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore whether it's possible to overdose on mindfulness.

Mindfulness has seen dramatically increased popularity in recent years, particularly within Western organisations. And why not? Mindfulness has repeatedly demonstrated lots of personal benefits for individuals. As a result, mindfulness almost automatically appears in leadership development training with the typical recommendation being that people should just do more.

But can you have too much of a good thing? Let's take optimism and curiosity as an example. Both are generally positive. However the research shows us that you can absolutely be too optimistic and you can also be too curious. Not only can having too much optimism and curiosity have negative impacts for the individual, it can also have negative impacts on those around them. Does mindfulness demonstrate a similar pattern? And does mindfulness encourage people to help others more?

It's important to appreciate that mindfulness is not one thing, so let's take a look at some of the research around specific types of mindfulness.

There's mindful attention which focuses on mind–body awareness and perception of what is going on for us mentally and physically in the moment. The research shows that mindful attention is positive up to a point, but too much can lead to worse mental health outcomes. As the researcher Amit Bernstein highlights, this includes increased rates of depression, anxiety, dissociation, and substance abuse, along with decreased ability to tolerate pain. These negative outcomes can be somewhat decreased when the individual is being non-judgemental and non-reactive. Mindful attention works best when we are observing rather than responding. But that's easier said than done.

Research demonstrates that mindful meditation can help increase the amount and depth of sleep up to a point. But once people get beyond around 30 minutes of mindful meditation a day, people actually demonstrated decreased quality of sleep in both depth and amount.

Then there's mindful emotion regulation where we seek to gain greater control over our emotions, increase our emotional regulation and accept what we are experiencing. Again, this can have lots of positive impacts, but in excess research demonstrates it can lead to emotional blunting - where people experience fewer positive and fewer negative emotions. As a results life can become flat and dull.

It is better to think of mindfulness like many other things in psychology as having an inverted U relationship to well-being. Up to a point mindfulness can absolutely increase wellbeing. But as someone continues to increase the amount of mindfulness, there will be a point where well-being actually declines.

So for the individual you can have too much of a good thing. But what about the impact on others? What's the impact of mindfulness on what us psychologists call 'pro-social behaviour' - effectively, doing good things for other people.

Research about to be published in the journal of Psychological Science shows that mindfulness can make some people more selfish - that is, they do fewer good things for others than they otherwise would have as a result of mindfulness. This is the case for those participants who had more of an independent outlook to start with. Increased mindfulness for those who tend to be more independent resulted in them undertaking fewer prosocial behaviours than a control group - mindfulness resulted in them becoming even more independent in their actions. However, for those who viewed themselves as interdependent, mindfulness increased prosocial behaviour. When it comes to mindfulness, it's important to recognise where you start and the outlook you bring.

Let's put all of this in a cultural context. Most mindfulness practices that are being used in organisational settings have been derived from East Asian and particularly Buddhist traditions. In East Asian cultures people tend to be more interdependent in their outlook - on average, people tend to focus more on others and their contribution to a broader society rather than on themselves. The recent research we just explored suggests that in these cultures mindfulness will increase this focus on others, and lead to greater prosocial behaviours. In Western countries however people tend to be more independent in their outlook. Mindfulness may increase that independent focus and reduce the amount of prosocial behaviour that otherwise would have been demonstrated. There is a risk when we rip a practice like mindfulness out of its cultural and spiritual context hoping to just get the upside impact. So in our Western business context should we abandon mindfulness altogether?

It's true that becoming more mindful is not automatically better for individuals and those around them. It depends both how the mindfulness is set up and how self-aware and mindful the individual already is. It's perhaps better to think of mindfulness in the way we think about exercise and sleep. Clearly exercise and sleep are both helpful and necessary for wellbeing and health. But just telling everyone to do an hour more exercise a day, or to sleep two hours longer every night is not great advice. You can end up having too much exercise and too much sleep. It all depends on what they the individual is currently doing.

The research by Poulin, Ministero, Gabriel, Morrison and Naidu that I quoted earlier shows that you can vary the outcomes of mindfulness by initially increasing people's interest in others. When the researchers primed people for interdependence, they saw a 40% increase in the likelihood of volunteering for a not for profit organisation following mindfulness. When people were primed for independence, they were 33% less likely to volunteer after some mindfulness practice.

At work, we can help people appreciate the role they play in building an interdependent culture. As leaders, we can help our people to think of the role they and the organisation play in their community. If we do this, practices such as mindfulness are more likely to then lead to greater individual and social outcomes.

When it comes to mindfulness, it's important to recognise we all start from a different base. More is not always better. When we are being mindful, we need to not just focus on ourselves, but also on how we can be a benefit to others.

As always, the research I have referred to is in the show notes with a big thanks to ScienceDaily who continue to serve up great research in my email inbox each day. Have a great week as you look after yourself and others.

Michael Poulin, Lauren Ministero, Shira Gabriel, Carrie Morrison, Esha Naidu. Minding your own business? Mindfulness decreases prosocial behavior for those with independent self-construals. Psychological Science (forthcoming), 2021 DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/xhyua

University at Buffalo. "Mindfulness can make you selfish: A pioneering new study examines the social effects of mindfulness." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 April 2021. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210414100147.htm

Willoughby B Britton Can mindfulness be too much of a good thing? The value of a middle way. Current Opinion in Psychology 2019, 28:159–165 https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/britton/sites/britton-lab/files/images/Britton_2019_Can%20mindfulness%20be%20too%20much%20of%20a%20good%20thing.pdf