10 Challenges for your New Year

How to make 2011 a successful year for you and your employees

Dr. David Javitch wrote a wonderful article published at Entrepreneur.com that I would like to share.  As resolutions/goals are a popular topic at years end, his highlights can give a a great foundation for setting goals relative to your employees.

For example, he mentions that cross training employees can help motivate them and allow them to assist collegues in completing new tasks.  Their value and and responsibility will naturally increase while motivating them.

You can find the entire article and the other tips here.

Posted by Ian Holtz, Manager at MINES and Associates.

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

Police EAP Goes Beyond Call of Duty

A Denver police detective, who also heads up the wellness and employee assistance program for the officers, was visiting with a fellow officer when he learned that the officer’s kidneys were failing.  He started a drive to search for a donor for his fellow officer and the search lead to himself.  What an incredible story of selflessness and compassion.   Thanks to the Denver Post you can read the entire story here:

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16283811

Posted By Ian Holtz, Manager BizDev at MINES and Associates

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

MINES: Weekly Communication

Visit our Blog Visit our Website Past Newsletters How Can My Child Go About Choosing a College? August 16, 2010 In the novel, A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” This quote sums up exactly how I feel about my college experience. I had no idea what I was stepping into. I was the pioneer in my family; my parents never went to college and I was the oldest out of all my siblings. The only mistakes I had to learn from would be my own. Learning to adapt to my new-found freedom while maintaining enough responsibility to make the most out of my education was a juggling act. When I think back on the day my mom dropped me off at my dorm, I remember her sobbing. I now realize it wasn’t saying goodbye that brought her to tears, it was that she knew she wouldn’t be there to protect me from the “worst of times.” Making the transition to adulthood is a pivotal step in everyone’s life that comes with much excitement and many challenges. This week’s communication focuses on making sure your child is prepared and enters the college that best fits their needs. Read more on this topic here… Or check out our Quarterly Magazine… Britney Kirsch Account Manager

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