Working remotely during COVID-19 has led to record levels of stress and burnout, but embracing the principles of mindfulness could help. In the latest episode of the Melbourne Business School Podcast, Professorial Fellow Amanda Sinclair explains why stress levels increase when people are working from home, and offers practical advice for professionals and managers on how to embrace the principles of mindfulness.

People usually assume that silence during a negotiation is an intimidation tactic, but new research shows it can actually lead to more collaborative outcomes.

Melbourne Business School Associate Professor of Management Jennifer Overbeck and MIT Sloan Gordon Kaufman Professor of Management Jared Curhan spoke with Yasmin Rupesinghe about their findings on the latest episode of the Melbourne Business School Podcast.

"When you ask people, 'what's your intuition about what happens when someone goes silent in a negotiation', they report that they think the other person is trying to get into my head, they're trying to wear me down, to play mind games with me," says Associate Professor Overbeck.

"So, almost certainly what would happen if somebody went silent in a negotiation is that the other person would get freaked out and give away a lot of the value in that negotiation.

"Instead, we've done at this point quite a few studies, and repeatedly what we have found is that silence seems to provide the negotiator an opportunity to pause and to sort of tamp down the heat of competition in the negotiation, and just take a little bit of mental space that allows the opportunity for collaboration to move to the fore."

Hostility toward employees from a manager is called "abusive supervision", and it can include actively lying to subordinates, ridiculing them, not giving them the credit they deserve and being overly controlling.

In her latest research, Deshani Ganegoda, an Associate Professor of Management at Melbourne Business School, looked at the psychological effects abuse has on victimised employees and the role of the senior manager in these situations. She spoke with Yasmin Rupisinghe about her findings in the latest episode of the Melbourne Business School Podcast.

"Subordinates can sometimes justify and normalise bad behaviour of their managers," she said.

"For example, when your whole team gets treated badly, you might think that's just how things are done around here. You don't consider it as an anomaly. In fact, subordinates might even justify abusive supervision as tough love or think that's just 'how my manager motivates people'.

"In contrast, senior managers are above the abusive supervisor. They have the vantage point to see the behaviour of many middle level managers. So, they see the difference between abusive supervisors and non-abusive supervisors."

Associate Professor Ganegoda said that senior managers were not just best-placed to spot abusive supervision, but also to intervene.

"If someone were to stop abusive supervision from happening, it's going to be the supervisor's manager."

For a culturally-diverse team to perform exceptionally, leadership needs to be shared among its members, says Associate Professor Carol Gill.

"We're all different in terms of the way we see the world, and culture is one of the lenses in which we see the world differently," she says.

Professors Carol Gill from Melbourne Business School, Nicole Gillespie from University of Queensland and Bart De Jong from the Australian Catholic University spoke with Yasmin Rupesinghe on the latest episode of the Melbourne Business School Podcast about a new way to foster trust to improve performance in culturally diverse teams.

"There are two different types of leadership. One is where there's a nominated leader, who can tell people what to do, and the second type of leadership is collective leadership," she says.

"This is where the individuals step up to leadership or make a leadership intervention in a team and of course it may be multiple interventions that will be made in any single interaction in a team.

"One team member might show the team what direction to go in. Another team member might make an intervention about how the team should proceed. A third team member might talk about social aspects of the team, encouraging others or supporting others.

"We know that there are many different interventions, and the thing is that these interventions will build trust because the conflicts that may occur when things are more chaotic will be addressed by these leadership interventions.

"So, leadership can play a very big role in increasing trust, either by dyadic interactions where they talk one-on-one with others or where they speak to the team as a whole."

Listen to the full episode above or visit our podcasts page for more.

Carol Gill is an Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Melbourne Business School, who has specialised in the fields of executive development, human resource management and organisational development for more than 25 years.

Nicole Gillespie is the KPMG Chair in Organisational Trust and Professor of Management at the University of Queensland Business School, and an International Research Fellow at the Centre for Corporate Reputation, Oxford University.

Bart De Jong is an Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the Australian Catholic University, whose research focuses on trust in teams and has been published in scholarly journals such as Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP), and Organization Science.

Yasmin is a Program Manager on our Executive MBA and Senior Executive MBA programs, and a radio presenter for PBS FM.

To find out more about studying at Melbourne Business School, visit mbs.edu

In large organisations, cliques at all levels are excluding people regardless of their talent, which is highly regarded in such business environments, says Professor Isabel Metz.

"The problem of cliques arises when those groups become powerful, too cohesive and exclude others," she says.

"When this occurs, members in these groups tend to over value their own characteristics and almost unconsciously sometimes devalue the characteristics of members in the outside group."

Professor Metz spoke with Yasmin Rupesinghe on the latest episode of the Melbourne Business School Podcast about her research into what she calls the "dark side" of human capital, which creates multi-faceted challenges for everyone involved, including a lack of diversity and opening the door to negative emotions entering professional relationships.

Isabel Metz is a Professor of Organisational Behaviour whose research in human resource management has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Human Resource Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management and elsewhere. Visit her faculty profile for more information.

Yasmin is a Program Manager on our Executive MBA and Senior Executive MBA programs, and a radio presenter for PBS FM.

To find out more about studying at Melbourne Business School, visit our Degree Programs and Short Courses pages, or learn about how we design Custom Solutions with organisations.

Leaders who display humility can improve their team's confidence and make them feel safe in the workplace, says Melbourne Business School Associate Professor Burak Oc.

"Irrespective of whether or not you're a humble person, if you do at least three things in an organisation, people will perceive you as a humble leader," he says.

"What are those three things? It's acknowledging that you're only human and you can make mistakes too, recognising other people's strengths and achievements, and basically putting in effort to learn and grow as an individual."

Professor Oc was speaking on the latest episode of the Melbourne Business School Podcast, joining host Yasmin Rupesinghe to discuss his research into the benefits of displaying humility as a leader in the workplace.

"There are some natural responses to the difficulties of 2020 that perhaps have us thinking about the future as being substantively different to the past, and while that may be true to a degree, there are some things that remain the same," says Vivek Chaudhri.

"Looking through the pandemic looking glass, we've perhaps magnified certain aspects of what leadership calls on but also distorted to some degree some of the natural tendencies that we've talked about for a long time around leadership.

"It's important to just situate 2021 in the context of leadership more generally, and I think one of the things that we need to be aware of is, even before this pandemic hit, that organisations and leaders have been challenged by having to deal with a volatile, uncertain and complex and ambiguous world."

Vivek is an Associate Professor of Strategy and the Academic Director of Executive MBA Programs at Melbourne Business School. He spoke with Yasmin Rupesinghe in the latest episode of the Melbourne Business School Podcast on what leadership will mean moving forward in a post-COVID world.

Ethical purchases are not entirely altruistic, they provide value to the consumer in the form of a self-esteem boost, says Jill Klein, Professor of Marketing at Melbourne Business School.

"One piece of advice that I would have for consumers is don't feel bad that it makes you feel good to buy an ethical product and that making yourself feel good is one of your motivations," Professor Klein says.

"If what makes you feel good is helping someone else, that suggests you're an altruistic person and you should be proud of that and if it gives you a boost of self-esteem."

Jill's latest research looks at how products that are marketed with a social benefit can increase the chance of customers buying them because of the self-esteem boost they get from ethical purchases.

She spoke with Yasmin Rupesinghe in the latest episode of the Melbourne Business School Podcast.

With the dramatic changes to organisational life in recent years, the idea that leaders need to have all the answers is no longer the case, says Amanda Sinclair.

Find out why in this latest episode of the Melbourne Business School podcast.

When CEOs have a lot to lose from a fall in their company's share price, they may be tempted to make adverse decisions, says Professor of Business Strategy Geoff Martin.

Professor Martin's research focuses on strategic decision-making by CEOs and the effect their decisions can have on organisations and the community. In the latest Melbourne Business School Podcast, he speaks with Yasmin Rupesinghe about his work in the area of product recalls.

Professor Martin teaches Business Strategy, Corporate Strategy and the Social Entrepreneurs units on our MBA programs. Visit his faculty profile for more information.

Yasmin is a Program Manager on our Executive MBA and Senior Executive MBA programs, and a radio presenter for PBS FM.

Find out more at mbs.edu