Drug Abuse Prevention

I recently attended an annual dinner/forum for a local non-profit group which focused on Drug Abuse Prevention. We’ve all heard, or experienced first-hand, the devastating effects of drug abuse on family, employment, education, and just about every other facet of human life. What we don’t always hear about are the amazing efforts by some making an incredible impact on prevention. By taking small steps to identify risk factors, especially for our youth, we can have a tremendous impact. At the forum, one of the panelists made a great point about how parents and doctors don’t ask the difficult questions, and often times because they are afraid of the answer, or maybe they are suffering themselves. Why do our doctors have no problem asking us about our diets and suggesting cholesterol screenings, but very seldom ask us a simple question like, “How are you feeling emotionally?” or, “Does your child seem to be fitting in, and participating in a healthy way?” When we look at diabetes and heart disease compared to major depression or substance abuse disorders only a small fraction of those suffering from behavioral disorders are actually being diagnosed and treated compared with their medical counterparts.

As the prescription drug epidemic continues to rise we need to do more in the area of prevention. Here are some wonderful resources for prescription drug abuse prevention from our friends at Peer Assistance Services:

http://www.peerassistanceservices.org/prescription/drugabuse_materials.php

Ian Holtz,
Manager, Business Development

Psychology of Performance – 35: Attachment to the Status Quo

In over 35 years of working with people on making change, improving their performance, and living more fully it is still interesting to me how many people persist in doing the same self-defeating actions over and over despite saying they want to improve, grow, or change for the better (whatever that means). So the following are four questions worth asking yourself if you want to improve your performance in some area of your life.

1. Situation Questions – Tell me about your life? How is it working now?
2. Problem Questions – Can we be specific about what is not working? Are you concerned about your current quality of performance?
3. Implication Questions – What happens if you don’t do something different?
4. Need-Payoff Questions – If you act and it improves – how does that impact your life?

Take time to reflect on these questions, write down your answers, and be curious about where this may take you. If you find yourself resisting the questions or process, look more deeply into that instead.

It’s up to you….as they say “no one can do your push-ups for you.”

Exchange love and happiness with everyone you meet today.

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

Psychology of Performance – 32: Nutrition, Depresssion, Alcoholism and Performance

I ran across some interesting information on the role of niacin, depression, and alcoholism in performance at www.doctoryourself.com. It is well documented that depression and/or alcoholism may negatively affect performance across just about any domain one can perform in. In the treatment of depression and alcoholism there are very effective cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy interventions. In addition, exercise and medication may add additional therapeutic effects. The role of nutrition may have further potentiating influence.

According to this site, Bill W., the founder of AA, was successfully treated for depression with 3,000 mg of niacin a day. Unfortunately, this information has not been widely discussed or published in the media. I would be interested to hear from any of you who have used niacin as a means of treating depression or alcoholism and what your results were. Please let us at MINES know.

Have a day filled with mindfulness,

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

Psychology of Performance – 30: Difficult People and Systems

Dan Siegel, M.D., has described a system as an integration of energy and information. In his lectures and recordings, he goes on to say that this is the one time in his life he was able to get 30 academicians to agree on something.

This definition has significant implications for the psychology of performance at the individual as well as the organizational level. If difficult people in our organizations are those whose behavior, cognition, or affect interfere with the integration of information and/or energy, then we now have another schema to interpret the situation and the impact on the system. For example, if someone is depressed, their energy is lower. How does this present itself in the work group and what effect does the lower energy have on the group’s energy as a whole? We know from the social psychology of comparison, emotional contagion, and the neurology of mirror neurons that the other team members’ energy will be lowered and therefore the productivity of the team may be lower. The converse is also true. In this situation, what if there is too much energy going into the system? If there is a workaholic team member, the team will experience stress, potential energy overload, and subsequent burnout or turnover.

How does information affect a system? Information is central to a system self-regulating – whether it’s the pace and flow of patients through a medical facility, financial information, or any set of data incorporated into a dashboard. If the information is late, corrupt, or in any way not accessible performance can suffer significantly. What if there is too much information? In this case, there is an extensive body of research on choices essentially stating that the more choices a person has beyond 3-5; the more inefficient they will be in making a decision – up to and including not deciding at all. In most of the organizations we consult with, the leadership has to make complex decisions regarding ill-structured problems on a regular basis. The quality and quantity of the information just keeps flowing and the decision makers may not have the opportunity to step back and evaluate what they really need to lead the organization while finding themselves in analysis paralysis.

Take the time to step back and evaluate your organization or individual performance from this perspective and see if it provides you with some new insights. Let us know what you discover.

Have a day filled with love and happiness,

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

Psychology of Performance – 29: Clash of Cultures on Transition

When an organization moves from a “Go-Go” phase to the next level, “Adolescence” (Adizes, 1999), the founder is faced with new organizational challenges. In the Go-Go phase the organization was making money, had few administrative departments, had few polices or formalized strategies in place, and had little management structure with defined accountabilities and authority. During the transition it is not uncommon for the founder to disengage then re-engage and disrupt the transition plan and team. This may be due to a number of factors from a need to be in control, disagreement with the policies and procedures being put in place, and regression, to the “that is not how we got where we are” syndrome, anxiety, distrust, and a sense of uncertainty about the future.

The impact on organizational performance and individual performance can be significant. First, the organization will be less profitable as it moves into adolescence almost by definition. The reason is that administrative staff such as HR, mid-level management, and other support staff are being added to move to the next level, and therefore, profitability percentages will drop. Second, the organization may drop in other areas of performance such as customer service and responsiveness because this value and behavior now needs to be systemized and made scalable where before it used to reside in individual staff and in the group norms as a smaller organization. Productivity definitions may change during this transition. When the organization was smaller, productivity could be measured by a few variables rather than a multivariate approach. As the organization gets larger, a multivariate model may emerge.

Individual performance can also be negatively impacted during this transition. Staff who had the skills to perform successfully in a smaller organization may not have the skills to perform in the larger organization. Changing them out or redefining their roles may result in stress for all involved as they were valued employees and now they may not be perceived that way by the new management. New employees may start under-performing as well because they came in full of hope and high expectations and then experience an organization that is giving mixed messages. The psychological impact of this is that these employees may start to be discouraged; feel helpless, angry, anxious, or depressed; lose focus; or engage in counterproductive communication and behavior, among many other negative psychological states.

As your organization goes through transitions like this, it will be helpful to keep these elements in mind when you encounter performance problems. Having a testable hypothesis is the first step to managing the changes.

Have a day filled with equanimity,

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

Reference
Adizes, Ichak. (1999). Managing Corporate Lifecycles. Santa Barbara, CA: Adizes Institute.

Psychology of Performance – 28: When the Leader Becomes Ill

I had the opportunity to observe an organization as its leader became seriously ill, recovered, then got ill again (different problem, serious again). While this was going on the organization was at a standstill on the strategic and executive level. Operationally, it still delivered what it was supposed to. But in the meantime, the board kept waiting for the CEO to get well. Strategic marketing initiatives were put on hold, revenue was diminishing, cash reserves were being used at an unprecedented rate, and the organization was eventually on the brink of extinction. This organization had been in existence for over 40 years. The board was long-standing. Staff had been with the organization for extended periods exceeding 8 plus years. So how did it get to this point? What were the psychological factors that could account for this? Could something have been done sooner?

Psychological Considerations:

Wait until so and so gets better. We will get back on track then…. (This did not happen).

Diffusion of responsibility. Staff did not have the authority or accountability, and as the Board of Directors was volunteers, they had no day-to-day authority. Everyone kept waiting for someone else to do something. Finally the President of the Board did step in.

Misinformation to the Board. The Board received information that key reports were completed and that action was being taken. This information was incorrect. Nothing had been done and the board had not done “truth through verification.”

Negative momentum in the community. The community resources were being compromised by rumors that the organization was going out of business which then created more momentum for it to go out of business. Damage control was started months after it could have been.

Not my problem. Ultimately, many individuals said, “It’s not my problem.”  They quit the Board to allegedly avoid liability, did not roll their shirt sleeves up to help raise revenue, and became indifferent or apathetic.

Could this have been avoided? Absolutely. Hindsight is always 20/20. What is useful about this case study is for all of us to start pressing earlier for the plan B, C, or D when a leader becomes ill. It is important to have sufficient bench strength for staff to step up when a leader is ill, even if they are coming back. How does your staff and organization measure up?

Have a day filled with kindness,

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

Psychology of Performance – 24 Suffering, Attachment, and Business Performance

This month’s blog theme has been on addictions. This post will focus on a related theme of how suffering comes from attachment in business performance. In our consultations through BizPsych (www.bizpsych.com), we have the opportunity to observe how businesses underperform due to attachments (beliefs) that no longer serve the business. These attachments can be rigidly or compulsively (similar to an addiction, but not the same) held on to or may range from a subtle “this is how we do business,” to “they are loyal employees and I don’t care if they do cause trouble or do not perform as well as the others do.”

So how does suffering occur in a business when an unexamined belief is allowed to operate because it is a “sacred cow” in the organization or because of some other psychological phenomena in the mind of leadership? In one example, the organization (belief 1) had a large contract that was supposed to start in 6 months; the leadership (belief 2) made a decision to borrow money to increase the staffing (belief 3) in the production arena. This occurred and the contract did not materialize. The contract implementation was delayed a year. In the meantime, the organization was overstaffed and now the staffing level was viewed by some as necessary (belief 4). What actually was happening was that the net profit performance was not only compromised, the organization was losing money due to carrying too much overhead without corresponding productivity.

The suffering was occurring on many levels. The organization was suffering from inadequate cash, too much debt, and staff morale problems. The leadership was suffering because of a “sacred cow” belief that they had invested too much in the staff to let some of them go. The staff was suffering because they were fielding complaints from vendors who were not being paid in a timely manner. All of which could be traced to unexamined core beliefs that lead to the behavior observed by us.

The solution was to examine the core beliefs, challenge them, and for leadership to make the hard business decisions they had to in order to keep the organization viable even if it meant giving up the beliefs that they were going to get bigger and more profitable if only the big account would start.

What suffering is occurring in your organization because of attachments to a belief or set of assumptions that do not have data to support them?

Have a day filled with love and happiness,

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

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 – 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