Psychology of Performance – 20 – Early Attachment and Adult Performance Implications

Our early attachments to our primary caregivers may have significant implications for our ability to perform throughout our lives. The good news is that there are mindfulness techniques that can help integrate the information and energy associated with the various attachment categories so that as adults our performance does not have to be limited by the early learning associated with these attachments.

Siegel &  Hartzell, M.Ed., (2003, p.102-112) in their book, Parenting from the Inside Out, describe four patterns of attachment derived from the work of researchers such as Mary Ainsworth, Mary Main, and Erik Hesse, among others. As infants we most likely have one of the following patterns (which can vary by caregiver): Secure, Insecure-Avoidant, Insecure-Anxious/Ambivalent, or Insecure-Disorganized.

Secure attachments are described as having a parental interactive pattern characterized by the parent being emotionally available, perceptive, and responsive. The child sees the parent as being a source of comfort during times of distress, a safe haven, being available, and a secure base. This creates a sense of well being from which the child can go into the world to “explore and make new connections with others” (p.104).

Insecure-Avoidant patterns are associated with parents who are emotionally unavailable, imperceptive, unresponsive, and rejecting. These children avoid closeness and emotional connections to the parent (p.104).

Insecure-Ambivalent patterns are described as having parents who are inconsistently available, perceptive, and responsive and intrusive. The child cannot depend on the parent for attunement and connection. The child develops a sense of anxiety and uncertainty about whether they can depend on their parents (p.105).

Insecure-Disorganization patterns are created by parents who are frightening, frightened, chaotic, disorienting, and alarming to the child. This pattern is often associated with abuse. This creates a situation in which abuse is incompatible with a sense of security. The child develops coping responses that lead to difficulties in regulating emotions, trouble in social communication, difficulties with academic reasoning tasks, a tendency toward interpersonal violence, and a predisposition to dissociation – a process in which normally integrated cognition becomes fragmented (p. 106).

The good news is that for those with insecure attachments there are mindfulness techniques described in Siegel’s book, Mindsight, that can help the individual integrate the insecure attachment memories, patterns, and information in a manner that frees them up from “automatically or habitually” engaging in the pattern in their adult relationships.

The implications of early attachment for the psychology of performance are significant. Secure attachments allow for a base of security which in adulthood can manifest in collaborative interactions in the business environment, for example. The social psychology of group performance is enhanced when members can communicate directly and problem solve from a position of trust. Contrast this with an avoidant attachment pattern in which a team member has a fundamental approach to relationships that is one of distrust and self-reliance. This team member is there in name only and will be perceived as not cooperating, being a maverick, and “not playing well in the sand box.” The anxious attachment style may show up as an accommodating or pleasing style. This person sacrifices their own opinions so as to fit in, may frequently be checking in with the “boss” for approval and reassurance. The group loses this person’s gifts as the person may give in rather than be proactive on a decision point. The disorganized attachment style may contribute to significant disruption in a work group or team’s performance because the person will become overwhelmed during a conflict with either a chaotic or rigid response, either of which can disrupt the flow of energy and information needed for higher performance.

The culture of an organization often is set by the leader of the organization. Part of the definition of culture is the shared set of assumptions as to how we do business. From this, it is possible to see how the impact of the leader’s attachment could influence the culture of the organization. For example, if the leader has an anxious attachment, the organization may have a strong press to accommodate customers, resulting in a high emphasis on customer service which could range from being useful to problematic if taken to a dysfunctional level.

Have a day filled with mindful integration,

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.
CEO & Psychologist

Psychology of Performance – 18

Gina Kolata wrote an outstanding article in the New York Times on the psychological and behavioral aspects of the psychology of performance that I want to pass on to you. She has a number of points that are useful in business as well as personally.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/health/nutrition/19best.html?_r=2&th=&emc

Have a day filled with equanimity

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.

CEO and Psychologist

Psychology of Performance – 17 Mirror Neurons

In his book The Mindful Therapist, Dr. Dan Siegel discusses the role of mirror neurons in actions that have a perceived intention behind them. He stated that the mirror neurons function as a bridge between sensory input and motor output that allows us to mirror the behavior we see someone else enact (p.36).  Practically this means that when we see someone drinking from a glass, the mirror neurons become activated (firing off electrical currents called an action potential). If we were to drink from the same glass, the same specific neurons that fired when we saw someone else drinking also become activated. Dr. Siegel said “We see a behavior and get ready to imitate it,” (p.36).

The implications of this line of research are significant for performance. For example, if you watch a movie with alcohol being consumed and you are in recovery, now you have internal neuronal firing similar to drinking the alcohol yourself. Now you have to override the neuronal firing with “white-knuckling it,” or better yet with mindful awareness, or you will increase your probabilities of a relapse.

The upside of this research is that seeing others perform a behavior successfully – mentally rehearsing the image – would theoretically strengthen the neuronal firing and increase the probabilities that you will execute the behavior successfully. This concept is foundational to performance coaching. As coaches, therapists, and bosses we need to think about our current training techniques and how they incorporate watching, rehearsing, and doing as part of the sequence.

Have a day filled with Mindfulness,

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.

CEO & Psychologist

MINES and Associates

Psychology of Performance – 16 Accountability and Authority

In our consulting through BizPsych (www.BizPsych.com), organizations ask us to assess and intervene with vertical relationship conflicts as well as  cross-departmental conflicts on a regular basis. These conflicts are often rooted in unclear accountability and authority for the C-level, vice-presidents, managers, supervisors and front line producers. This creates significant performance and execution problems throughout the organization.

Elliot Jacques, in his numerous publications defined accountability and authority for management at all levels. Accountability and authority establishes where people stand with each other.  They determine who is able to say what to whom, and who under given circumstances must say what to whom.  They establish who can tell who to do what, especially, in the managerial hierarchy, if one person is being held accountable for what another person does or for the results of what the other person does.

Accountability and authority define the behaviors that are appropriate and necessary in the vertical relationships between managers and their subordinates, and in the horizontal, cross-functional relationships between people.  The vertical relationships are the means by which the work that needs to get done is assigned, resourced, and evaluated; cross-functional relationships are the means by which the flow of work across functions gets processed and improved through time.

He noted that it is absolutely imperative that organizational leaders be clear not only about their own decision-making accountability, but they must also make it equally clear for each and every manager below them in the organization.  All of these managers must also meet regularly in two-way discussions about major issues with their immediate subordinates, in order to get their help in making decisions for which the manager alone must be accountable.  In discussions between managers and subordinates, it is always the manager that is ultimately accountable for decisions.  Even when the subordinate has more knowledge than his or her manager on a given matter and tells the manager what he or she thinks should be done; if the manager accepts the subordinate’s view then it becomes the manager’s decision. There will be times in an organization’s growth or life span when a manager may have multiple roles/levels that they are accountable for. The manager may be a manager, a supervisor and a front line producer on a given day if the department or work group is small enough or does not have the resources to accommodate separate levels and roles. This is a situation referred to as “down in the weeds”, “wearing many hats”, or “collapsed strata (time span).” This is not ideal; however, at times it may be the best we can do.

How does your organization define accountability and authority at each role? What impact has the clarity or lack of clarity had on your organizations effectiveness and performance?

Have a day filled with equanimity,

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.

CEO & Psychologist

Mines and Associates

Psychology of Performance – 15 Business Unit Effectiveness, Management and Leadership

How effective are your various business units?

What are your performance indicators?

Do each of your employees get held accountable for the results or just the managers?

All businesses and organizations get to address these questions and do their best to implement solutions depending on the answers. Elliot Jacques and Stephen Clement wrote an especially helpful book, Executive Leadership, which addresses these questions and many more. This posting will address a few of the many nuggets in their book.

One of the recurring BizPsych questions we get to answer and intervene on relates to individual differences in performance.  Jacques and Clement argue that role theory accounts for performance more than individual differences such as personality. They add that people perform to their role in very predictable ways. There is a significant amount of social psychology research to support this. Yet in many businesses, individual personality characteristics are looked at for explanatory hypotheses related to performance over clarity of role. Role clarity for a manager – from Jacques and Clements point of view – would include an adequate organizational design, an assumption that the manager has the knowledge, skills, commitment, values of the organization, and cognitive complexity to do the functions of the role. In the role of manager they would  have formal accountability for results and authority to allocate resources including staff, budget, and decision capability related to the complexity of the  tasks in their role. In addition, they have the interpersonal skills to develop a team of people who think they add value as a manager and are enthusiastic about accomplishing the goals of the business unit. The role clarity for a manager includes organizational support to veto an appointment (their manager has the authority to fire the employee if no other suitable position can be found), decide task assignment, decide personal effectiveness and merit awards, and decide to initiate removal from a role.

If the above conditions are satisfied, Jacques and Clements would predict a higher performance level from that business unit versus those that have role confusion. In our BizPsych division we encounter organization after organization that are addressing these topics in their design. If it comes to dealing with human performance, we are all in continuous recalibration mode.

Have a day filled with loving kindness,

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.

CEO & Psychologist

Psychology of Performance – 14 Negative Emotional States

When you allow your mind to focus on negative emotions does your performance improve or deteriorate?

Negative emotional states arise from expectation violations and then get potentiated by adding judgments about the negative feelings. Does “whipping yourself” help you improve? I had the opportunity to play in the DAD’s day (Dollars Against Diabetes) golf tournament sponsored by the Colorado Building Trades today. Golf is a wonderful laboratory in which there is a richness of self-talk, expectations, and emotional states  available to observe in myself and others. A feature of golf is that each shot actually is independent of all of the other shots one makes (much like many aspects of our work). As we let our self-talk build, it can decrease performance; but, the mind has a wonderful ability reset itself in the moment and let go of the thoughts about the previous shot. Practicing a mindfulness meditation technique of just observing the thoughts, feelings, and physical experiences without judging them and then visualizing the shot (performance) you want can go a long way in improving your performance.

This works in the rest of our life as well

It requires gently returning to this technique each time as the old thought habit patterns return with force until you learn to to redirect and focus on the outcome you want, not the outcome you do not want.

Have a day filled with mindfulness,

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.

CEO & Psychologist

Effects of 2010 Gulf Oil Spill and Mental Health

We’ve begun to see editorials, videos and news stories about the effects of the Gulf Oil Spill on behavioral health.  Most recently I watched an expose about the effects of Exxon-Valdez on alcohol and substance abuse, increases in divorce rates and suicide attempts and how experts warned of the same fallout from the Gulf crisis.  Additionally, mental health experts are warning that the current crisis could dredge up unresolved feelings from Hurricane Katrina.   Here is a link to the story and video:

http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=12548123

We wish the best to all those impacted by the gulf oil spill. 

Posted by Ian Holtz (Sales @ MINES and Associates)

Psychology of Performance -13 Too Many Hats!

In BizPsych we often run into CEO’s, VP’s, Managers, and Supervisors who have performance problems related to “wearing too many hats”.  Elliot Jacques’ work described a variety of systems and organizational design problems that resulted in inefficiencies, interpersonal problems, bottlenecks, and other performance issues. When a person is “collapsed down” or in the weeds, which means they are below their role in a business, higher-priority strategic thinking, decisions or actions can be neglected or result in outright failure. Wearing multiple hats means that none of the roles assigned to that person will get full-time attention. In smaller businesses this may be a “sweat equity” issue, however, the results are still the same. I encourage you to look at your position, how many roles do you have and what is the performance result?

Have a day filled with Equanimity

Bob

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.

CEO & Psychologist

Psychology of Performance – 12 Role and Performance

The social psychology of role has been extensively researched in psychology. Elliot Jacques in his book, Social Power and the CEO, discussed how role in organizations, clarity regarding accountability and authority, and cognitive complexity (Jacques refers to it as strata) account for higher performance more than other constructs such as personality, motivation and so forth. In addition, role is more predictive of behavior than the previously mentioned constructs.  Role is defined in Jacques’ business applications as front line producers, supervisors, managers, vice presidents and CEOs. Those with the budget authority are accountable to the level above them. When roles are collapsed (one person from a higher role also functioning in a lower role) performance can suffer in the organization due to a number of issues that arise such as “being spread too thin”, confusion from subordinates regarding which role, therefore, which authority their boss is operating from, which accountability should be assigned to the person by upper management, having title with no authority (e.g., being a director, an assistant vice president, assistant medical director, captain in a fire department (leads the team, no authority to deselect, veto a new hire, no budget). These problems result in inaction, misallocation of resources, consensus decision making (one of the worst ways to run a business as decisions are political, not informed per se for better business results), poor morale on the part of those who appear to have authority and do not, yet are still held accountable for results. There are many other problems in ill defined vertical accountability and authority. The senior staff in the MINES BizPsych division regularly consult on managerial hierarchy and organization design problems related to the above problems.

 The second area that is associated with numerous referrals relates to cross functional (dysfunctional) communication between departments related to accountability and authority. I will address this topic in my next blog.

Have a day filled with clarity in your role (s)!

Bob

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.

CEO & Psychologist

MINES and Associates

Psychology of Performance – 11 What happens when the C level is impaired?

As a business psychology firm, we get to consult and intervene with top performers in the C-Suite whose performance has dropped. There are many factors related to the performance drop. For this blog I am addressing those at the C level who are using enough alcohol that it affects their performance in overt and subtle ways. More than two drinks a day puts a person at risk for health and behavioral problems. It is not uncommon for one a C level person to get referred to us who is drinking 4-8 oz of alcohol per day and they report that they do not have a problem. How this shows up at work comes in the form of “fuzzy thinking”, just not as sharp as they used to be; missed deadlines (which at this level can be disasterous for the company; health markers deteriorting, which creates succession concerns; interpersonal behavior becomes unskillful or unwholesome such as kissing employees who do not want to be kissed, irritable outbursts, avoidance of difficult decisions; behavioral risks such as driving while under the influence, emabarrassing the organization at public functions. The costs to the company and the individual can be enormous. The good news is that the majority of alcoholics who are employed can get into treatment, return to sobriety and regain their previous level of performance. The motivation to get into recovery is provided by the employer requiring them to get help or lose their job. We have seen many successes. If you think you may fit any of these descriptions please contact your employee assistance program or if you do not have one, call us, we will help you get treatment.

Remember, I like you.

Bob

Robert A. Mines, Ph.D.

CEO & Psychologist

Mines and Associates