Posts Tagged ‘trust’
To be a good manager, teacher or psychologist, I must believe in you fully
Posted on: November 15, 2009
I know that learning is social
I teach. I know that people learn dramatically more when they feel part of a common venture.
We understand a little about social learning
Social learning has barely been researched but we know a little.
- We know we can stop people learning very effectively by excluding them – even inadvertently ~by loss of eye contact and they way we tell stories.
- We know the Pymaglion effect is a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy. My students will be as good as I think they are.
But the process of learnin begins when I show deep respect for who my students are and what they bring to my life.
E E Cummings on recognition
American poet E. E. Cummings puts it well:
“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
To be an effective teacher, to be an effective manager, to be an effective psychologist ~ I must believe in you, 100%, without reservation.
I know my institutions and can read their behavior
Many years ago, I friend of mine was negotiating his salary with his employer. To aid his efforts, he paid a friend who was an employment agent to advertise a job just like his and to offer a wonderful package.
My students at the time were all excited. The advertisement vindicated their choice of major. Yes, if they worked hard, they could follow an institutional path and be rich!!
Not even knowing my friend’s devious scheme (I found out later), I dismissed the advertisement with a contemptuous, “It’s a scam”.
See, I knew three things that my students didn’t know:
- The prevailing salary rates, not just in my profession, but in sister professions of accounting, marketing, etc. I knew what the market thought was reasonable.
- Business conditions and the amount of gross profit available for institutional careers (you know the one’s guaranteed by the taxpayer no matter how much you mess up)
- That people run institutions lie.
Before I worked as a work & organizational psychologist, I too thought institutions were honorable
I remember the first time I fell for an institutional scam. It was a painful experience and it took me years to get over it.
We trust institutions
When we are young, we believe that institutional leaders are honorable. Institutional leaders go to great lengths to make us believe that because that is their job. After all an institution is only an institution if it is stable and trusted. So they will tell you anything to have you believe they have done their job.
But we should remember that to check whether they are trustworthy
And that is why we must not trust them. We must ask for evidence. Hard, cold evidence. What are the career paths in the organization? Where are the statistics? What are the future scenarios for the organization? Can you look at them?
An institutional leader cannot use his own spin as evidence
Lord Mandelson is doing the right thing by making universities show students the destinations of graduates An institutional leader cannot hold up his own spin as evidence that he has succeeded in making order and stability for us. He was to show us the evidence.
In the days of the internet, data on the institution’s performance should be freely available
And I am afraid that if that in the days of the internet that if that evidence is not freely available on the internet in slurpable form – meaning that you can download the input data, not the processed data – then they obviously have something to hide.
Harsh words, I know
But remember my friend, and remember how my students were taken in.
Ask questions and the first question is ~ what happens when I ask?
First sign of scoundrels running the organization
If they don’t want to answer, or if they set up a meeting where we are doing all the answering and our questions come after they have made up their minds, then they are frauds. Then they are frauds and and we have found them out.
Disappointing, of course. Doubly disappointing. Trebly disappointing.
- We don’t get what we want.
- Institutions by definition should be honorable. So we don’t get what we want AND we know we have frauds in our midst.
- Institutions are usually paid for by the taxpayer. We don’t get what we want, we know you are trying to cheat us AND we are paying for you.
My priorities when you use public money to cheat me
Hmmph. Well for now, my priority must be to get what I need and want. Then I will participate to clear out the rotten institutions. Then I will think about recovering my money from you.
Is that the right order?
For the young & inexperienced
And if you are young and inexperienced, stop trusting institutions who don’t trust you with hard, cold data. Spin that they have done their job of making a safe, orderly environment for you is not evidence. Ask for the evidence. If they don’t have it, act accordingly ~ warily ~ get what you need and in due course, expose their shenanigans.
Gloom-and-doom is catchy! Ask 3 questions to find a positive spot in the recession
Posted on: October 18, 2009
- Image via Wikipedia
Back on February 6, when it was snowing, I made a list of 5 “recession speeds”. In February, people were angry but not really doing anything constructive about restructuring their businesses.
- I am lucky. My business is OK. People need us no matter what.
- This crisis is outrageous. I take every opportunity to tell decision-makers.
- I have cut out all luxuries. I’ll see this through by keeping my head down.
- I’ll wait and see. I am optimistic that everything will work out all right.
- I am systematically reviewing my business looking for new opportunities and new alliances.
Mid-October, 8 months on, people are much clearer about how the recession will effect them. At least, that uncertainty has resolved.
But few people seem to have any idea how to restructure. They are just “hanging-in” or “working harder”. The odd firm is booming but is not quite clear why!
Social networks affect on our attitude to the recession
In February, I also asked 3 questions about our social networks.
I want to ask these questions again because in the last 8 months, the media have publicized the network effects of happiness. We all now know that we are more likely to be happy or sad, fat or slim, if our friends are.
And if our friends’ friends are -even if we don’t know them!
How much is your attitude to the recession affected by your friends?
- Who are the 3 people on whom you most depend?
- What is their recession speed?
- How much does your recession speed help them, and how much does their recession speed help you?
I know I am positive because the business associates on whom I depend most are thriving. Others are being resolute. And I can avoid negative people with relative ease.
I’d love to know you situation and if these questions help you clarify any of your plans?
I am 99% persuaded by positive psychology, largely because I thought like a positive psychologist long before it was invented. I never took to clinical psychology so I had nothing to discard, so to speak.
But it is the darker side of life where I think positive psychology has its limits. Maybe the typical positive psychologist does not feel that because they have the skills to deal with people who are deeply unhappy.
My reservations come at many levels. As a practitioner, though, I want to know what to do when we are in a dark place.
What does it mean to be resilient when times are terrible? What are the critical processes that we are trying to leverage?
If I succeed at exercising leadership when times are miserable, if I show resilience and help others to be resilient, what might these processes be?
Here are 5 processes underlying resilience
I would be interested in your thoughts.
Active listening
The key to listening to angry people, among which I include people who are deeply insulted, humiliated, frightened, defeated and generally gibbering wrecks, is to acknowledge their emotion. We don’t have to agree with their emotion. We don’t have to copy their emotion. We don’t have to make any comment about the circumstances.
We simply have to acknowledge the emotion, and show, through our acknowledgement, that we still respect the person, in spite their emotional display, and in spite the circumstances that led to these humiliating circumstances.
Generally, that leads to slight embarrassment on their part but that is a much more comfortable emotion than the anger and hurt.
Developing a group
We are often angry and humiliated when we have lost status and losing status usually means losing status in a group or being ejected from a group. Referring to a group to which we are both a part helps restore status.
Additionally, when people have been humiliated in front of their nearest and dearest, particularly the partners, children and parents, we should restore their status in their eyes too.
Identify small actions
Anger comes from loss of status and be implication, loss of control. When we look for small things we can do now, and we do them, we feel better.
Be grateful ourselves for having the opportunity to help
While we are doing all three above, we are active. We take the initiative. We are in control. We belong.
Be grateful, and allow our gratitude to show to the other person. They will be grateful in turn.
Gratitude is a great mood-lifter.
Enjoy the results
As the other person lifts from utter dejection to a willingness to try, enjoy. And be grateful again. That way we share the ‘positive feedback’ with the other. Let them share the way our mood has improved.
And watch the entire group become more buoyant
If we have done our job well, collective efficacy and trust should have risen. And we all know that collective efficacy – our belief that our colleagues are competent – is the most powerful factor in raising school quality. It is bound to have the same impact in other circumstances.
Trust also creates upward positive feedback spirals. Though, we may need a lot when we start from a dark place.
What do you think?
- Are these the effective mechanisms for regaining resilience in desperate places?
- Are these effective mechanisms for encouraging people who really have few ways forward and little to push off from?
- Would these questions even help you in the day-to-day dispiriting trials of the western world – like getting stranded in an overcrowded airport?
- Are you able to try them out in the less-than-terrible conditions so that one day you can use them when life is truly terrible?
To recap:
L – Listen
G – Group
A – Act
G – Gratitude
E – Enjoy
The first steps together?
Posted on: February 17, 2009
Ideas whose time has come
I had an email today from someone I worked with a long time ago. It was interesting. Though we have barely been in touch, many of us who worked together ten years’ ago have pursued similar interests in different corners of the globe.
Great minds think alike?
The loneliness of the corporation executive
I don’t think my old friend reads my blog, but we were thinking alike yesterday too.
Yesterday, I wrote:
What do we trust each other absolutely and entirely to do?
His brief note on Facebook said that he feels optimistic about the future of the world economy but depressed by the ‘ostriches’ around him
Are we agreed?
There is plenty of opportunity. Our task is to find the ‘sweet spots’ where people feel they can take the first step together?
Yesterday, January 20 2009, was an exciting day, an astounding day. I watched almost the entire inauguration, from about 11.30 EST, on Sky’s brilliant HD service, thanks to the tipoff from @stewbagz. At about 10 o’clock American time, I rang up BT to connect my local deli, the famed MuchADo, owned by Brooklyn-lite, Matt, and with a long phone call, they successfully connected us to WiFi. So if you are driving up (or down) the M1, plan to exit on J14 near Milton Keynes and drop in for brunch, lunch or tea! The best deli between London and Edinburgh!
Up-and-running, I apologized to other coffee drinkers and offered to turn down the sound, but they elected to watch too! I later reconnected at home to Sky’s brilliant HD service and watched through to the end of transmission at midnight British time.
For me, I watched the crowd, which was enormous, and seemingly ‘relieved’ and in a gentle mood. I watched the organization which leaves me gob-smacked in its size, intricacy and well-oiled machinery. I listed out for the poetry, and of course, for the speech.
When it was all over, I asked myself what did I really feel under this tidal wave of emotion. What was the key image?
For me, the key image was undoubtedly the dignitaries coming down to the podium, mostly two-by-two and interspersed nicely to give the commentators a chance to do their thing.
Like so many people, for the first time, I felt that the corridors of power were mine, that I was represented there, and that I could be there just as easily as people I was watching.
For the first time, I feel that if I have a complaint, I can do something about it. Just do something about it. Not wait and not beg permission. Simply raise it to the attention of people who need to know and organize a solution.
For the first time, I feel that if I have a plan, I should just lay it out, discuss it with people who care, and do something about it.
And of course, now the corridors of power are ours, the future is entirely what we make of it.
As a non-American, of course, the corridors of power that I saw are not mine in a literal sense. But what America achieved today was a sense that democracy belongs to us. Thank you.
flowing motion 
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