Talkin’ Bout Our Generations

August 22, 2013

Every generation seems to believe they had it much harder than the one that follows them. The reality is that each generation has its own set of values and unique circumstances that make it not better or worse, but simply different from others.

Understanding and accepting these differences as well as dealing with them effectively can help you better manage the relationships in your career.

Today’s workplace can include people from four distinct generations. These include: Traditionalists (1927-1945), Baby Boomers (1946-1963), Generation X (1964-1979) and Millennials (1980-1999). The values and work ethic of each can vary immensely.

Traditionalists, having suffered through the Great Depression directly or indirectly, may be risk averse, closed minded and inflexible. On the other hand, traditionalists can also be defined as respectful, disciplined and loyal.

Boomers, born following the end of World War II, are often characterized as egotistical, driven, and power-hungry workaholics. They may also be seen as optimistic, competitive and collaborative.

Generation Xers, who came about when women began entering the workplace on par with men, are often stereotyped as slackers, cold and cynical. Their assets include being independent, creative, entrepreneurial and pragmatic.

Millennials, or Generation Y as they are sometimes called, are often viewed as impatient, entitled and disrespectful. However, they can also be considered hopeful, tech-savvy, fast-paced and collaborative.

What does this mean for today’s workplace environment?

“In order to remain relevant and maintain a leading edge in today’s marketplace, we must start by seeking to improve our intergenerational effectiveness,” says Anna Liotta, author of Unlocking Generational Codes: Understanding what makes the generations tick and what ticks them off. “It’s not personal, it’s generational.”

Liotta, a Seattle-based consultant and speaker, suggests there are five basic elements influencing and shaping decisions, actions and reactions of each generation.

These elements are what she calls Generational CODES representing Communication, Orientation, Discipline, Environment and Success. All of these elements are viewed differently by each generation and to navigate our relationships requires we understand how they differ from us.

Where there was once a traditionalist executive overseeing the work of boomer directors responsible for generation x managers, we now are seeing this ladder of progression turned on its side. Many things have upset the paradigm, including technology, telecommuting and the increasing pace of change in the workplace.

Traditionalists have mostly left the working world, yet still represent nearly 8% of the U.S. workforce. Baby boomers are retiring at an extremely rapid pace and, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2015 there will be more millennials than boomers in the workplace.

What will this influx of millennials mean to our evolving workplace environment? It is likely to influence it in dramatic ways.

Just as the United States has become more racially diverse, so too will the workplace—Hispanics represent 20% of all millennials. As technology innovations have changed every aspect of our lives, these “digital native” millennials will expect technical devices, the internet and social media as necessary pieces for getting their jobs done. Millennials want to revise the career ladder for achieving success into more of a scaffolding approach, which is based less on hierarchy and more on equality.

You can also expect that with more millennials in the workplace, it is likely to become more social and more fun. Many will not see a nine-to-five, Monday through Friday schedule as desirable and instead look for jobs with more flexibility for getting work done. The line between work and free time is much more permeable for them.

Millennials also may not see their jobs as primarily about a paycheck, but about making a difference and making a valuable contribution. They will want to find meaning in their lives and this includes what they do for a living.

There are many differences in perspective between millennials and those who came before them, but perhaps it is their interest in partnership as opposed to ownership that distinguishes them more than anything. This generation was taught to work on group projects in school, exercise teamwork on the soccer field with trophies for all, and generally to think in terms of shared responsibility rather than direct ownership.

The main characteristics that will come to define the management style of millennial managers are collaborative, flexible, transparent, casual and balanced, according to Brad Karsh and Courtney Templin, authors of Manager 3.0: A Millennial’s Guide to Rewriting the Rules of Management. “Millennial managers are not going to do something the way it’s always been done just because it’s always been done that way—especially if it doesn’t make sense to them.”

Modern-day management and the values of millennials will shift our thinking towards:

  • consensus building and collaboration
  • looking out to find information
  • seeking ideas from anyone or anywhere—including the bottom
  • being a leader people want to follow
  • adjusting management styles to fit different people
  • helping employees grow and develop
  • engaging and empowering
  • listening, understanding, and working together
  • making mistakes is okay
  • thinking differently is encouraged

Everyone needs to be patient and appreciate the different approach each member of the four generations brings to the workplace. The idea of collaboration is shared among baby boomers and millennials, while traditionalists and generation xers can both appreciate pragmatism in getting things done.

But just as it takes different types of personalities to form a strong work team, so too can many different age workers make for a more dynamic and creative workplace.

Low Employee Engagement: The Cost and the Cure

July 19, 2013

An astounding 70% of U.S. workers are either not engaged or are actively disengaged, according to a 2012 survey by Gallup. Further, these actively disengaged employees are emotionally disconnected from their companies and as a result are less productive, more likely to miss work, more likely to steal, may negatively influence coworkers, and will drive customers away.

Employee engagement is strongly connected to business outcomes that are so essential to the organization’s productivity, profitability and customer engagement. And those who are actively disengaged at work (18%) can cost the U.S. $450 billion to $550 billion in lost productivity every year.

Gallup’s State of the American Workplace: 2010-2012 report also revealed that this level of employee engagement differed among generations.

Those at the beginning of their careers and at the end of their careers are most likely to be engaged at work. Traditionalists, representing merely 4% of the workforce, have the highest level of engagement at 41% and Millennials, who represent just 8% of the workforce, are second highest at 33%. The remaining 88% of the workforce has just 28% of Generation Xers and 26% of Baby Boomers likely to be engaged at work.

Clearly employee engagement is critical for every organization and much can be learned by the questions Gallup uses to measure it. They finalized what they call the Q12 in the late 1990s and it has since been administered to more than 25 million employees in 189 countries. These 12 questions represent what Gallup considers actionable workplace elements with proven links to performance outcomes.

  1. I know what is expected of me at work.
  2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
  3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
  4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
  5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
  6. There is someone at work who cares about my development.
  7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
  8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel the job I do is important.
  9. My associates or fellow workers are committed to doing quality work.
  10. I have a best friend at work.
  11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
  12. This last year I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

The answers to these questions are important, but so are the questions themselves. What do they reveal about employee engagement? It seems to me that clarity about the work and focusing on the employee’s strengths is important. Recognition and praise for a job well-done too. Empathy, congeniality and genuine concern are also important.

The order of the questions is also intentional. The first two represent the employee’s primary needs and asks: What do I get out of this role? Questions 3 through 6 have to do with how employees think about their own contribution as well as their connection to the team and the organization. The questions 7 through 10 have to do with: Do I belong? The final two questions have to do with whether or not the employee can learn, grow and input their own ideas.

Increasing employee engagement is not a one-off intervention through an annual team building off-site, but instead it is a continual process of healthy workplace policies and behaviors. These should include:

  • Clear roles and responsibilities for everyone, and ensure that each person is equipped with the right tools and training to do the job they were hired to do.
  • Start at the top. If your managers, directors, vice presidents and CEO are not engaged, you can forget about your frontline employees. Ensure that engagement begins at the top and extends throughout the organization.
  • Live the values in your business plan. Employees join your company because of its reputation and what they believe you stand for. Ensure that these values are more than corporate marketing.
  • Build upon employee strengths. Rather than focusing on fixing weaknesses, companies should focus on building upon each employee’s individual strengths. According to research, Gallup found that people who use their strengths everyday are six times more likely to be engaged at work.
  • Give praise and be friendly. There is no reason why the workplace needs to be a cold and dreary place. Every one of us has the opportunity to show gratitude and genuine concern for others at work. This can go a long way towards making us feel that our contribution matters and that we’re cared about.

Each of these can help raise employee engagement, but they need to be under constant scrutiny because they won’t last simply because they were written down in some policy and procedures manual. These policies and behaviors need to be continually demonstrated and practiced for engagement to last.

Actively engaged employees should be the goal because they are directly tied to positive business outcomes. Getting and retaining employees who are actively engaged means better business results and a better place to work. And that’s the cure we all could use.

What will you do for an Encore?

December 22, 2012

“I won’t retire, but I might retread.” – Neil Young

Just as the baby boom generation is entering retirement age, Americans are living much longer lives. For many, the idea of no longer working and retiring from a career simply does not make sense—philosophically or monetarily.

Back when a typical life span reached only into the early 70s, it made sense to stop working at 65 and take time to relax, travel, play golf or Bridge, spend time with the grandkids, and retire from the stress of a long career.

But with lifespans for many expected to reach into the early 90s, many are reconsidering how they will spend these golden years. Part of this decision is necessitated by the need to earn more money in order to pay for these additional years, but another part is the opportunity to perhaps change careers and pursue something beyond what you did for the bulk of your life.

It’s been reported that we often discover our true passion between the ages of 8 and 12, and then many of us try to rediscover what these passions are in career counseling when we find dissatisfaction in our careers. That’s because we chose a career that made economic sense rather than fed our soul.

So what if during these senior years, when the economic need for raising a family, sending the kids to college and building a retirement nest egg no longer outweigh what we are passionate about? What if we decided to pursue doing what we love, giving back, or working for social good rather than individual goods?

In Marc Freedman’s The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife, he says we need to accept the decades opening up between midlife and old age for what they really are: a new stage of life, an encore phase. His organization encore.org wants to help make it easier for millions of people to pursue second acts for the greater good, and provide information so people can transition to jobs in the nonprofit world and the public sector.

“Millions are already in the midst of inventing a new stage of life and work—the encore years—between the end of midlife and anything resembling old-fashioned retirement,” writes Freedman. “We’re envisioning this chapter as a time when we make some of our most important contributions, for ourselves, for our world, for the well-being of future generations.”

A philanthropic organization called Social Venture Partners is built around the venture capital model to provide non-profit organizations with both funding and expertise. In addition to strengthening non-profits, SVP connects and engages individuals to provide greater philanthropic impact and collaborative solutions. Their partners are in various stages of their careers and life, but all are seeking to make a difference in their lives.

Founded in Seattle 15 years ago, SVP has more than 2,000 professionals in 29 cities around the world working to make the world a better place.

Sometimes staying in your chosen career a little longer can also be satisfying, but this may require a different role. Perhaps moving into more of a mentoring or consulting position will enable you to extend your working years. Maybe there could be more flexibility with regard to when and where you do the work. Or maybe it means moving to part-time, so you can pursue other interests and yet still keep involved in the work.

Encore.org’s Freedman has proposed some pretty radical ideas such as enabling those in midlife to quit their jobs and take a year of social security payments in order to go back to school or begin a new and possibly lower paying, but more satisfying, career. You would then delay the time when you begin taking social security payments, and thereby reduce the government’s overall cost.

The idea is to begin thinking about what you’ll want to do in these later years long before you reach them. Retirement planning should take into account that not working at all may no longer be an option or even desirable to you.

Rather than a firm end point to the work life, you may want to consider a transition time when you are free to follow what feeds your soul and eases you into non-working retirement. Your encore years could very well be the crowning achievement to your life.

Getting Along to Get Things Done

November 8, 2012

The election is over and it is time for our elected officials to get to work. The American people have spoken so our leaders can stop campaigning and start governing. And governing means doing what we elected them to do, which is to get things done.

Our politicians need to follow the lead of President Obama and New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie who recently overcame ideological differences to work cooperatively and deal effectively with the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. The so-called looming “fiscal cliff” now has the same immediacy and perhaps greater severity to more people’s lives.

Living in this especially contentious time, we as a people seem unable to have a meaningful and respectful dialogue in order to better understand each other’s position.

In their book You’re Not as Crazy as I Thought, But You’re Still Wrong by Phil Neisser and Jacob Hess, the authors present how a stanch conservative and a die-hard liberal can appropriately converse and agree to disagree.

“We have thus reached a point where conservatives are more interested in what Bill O’Reilly says about liberals than what their own liberal neighbors say about themselves,” write Neisser and Hess. “Likewise, many liberals ‘know’ about conservatives from reading updates on Huffington Post as opposed to getting to know actual conservative acquaintances.”

Rather than seeking to truly understand each other, we look for shortcuts from partisan media, make assumptions based on stereotypes and all too often take as fact what the pundits pontificate about. This leads to further misunderstanding and deeper resentment.

Authors Neisser and Hess explore the notion that despite political differences of people on the left and the right, many share a deep desire to work for the greater good of society. In a divided congress, it is essential that our politicians are able to do this.

It is also necessary for the rest of us to stop thinking in terms of competition between the blue and red teams, and start working together to build bridges of understanding. This understanding should demand that our elected officials no longer persist in simply holding firm to their positions, but instead find ways to compromise for the benefit of all.

Divisiveness cripples our politics, but also the rest of our lives. Only through working together in spite of conflict can we get to a shared place of understanding and growth. This requires being open and trying to really appreciate the other’s perspective. It requires having respect and taking responsibility for maintaining a positive relationship.

These traits of being open, listening for understanding, and working hard to fully appreciate the other’s perspective are vital to all our relationships. At work, assumptions you make about your colleagues will continue to keep you divided and conflicted. If instead you try to find common ground and see others for who they really are, you will be rewarded with a more congenial workplace where things are getting done.

Employees (Engaged or Disengaged) Make or Break Your Business

October 19, 2012

When companies focus first on their employees, customers are likely to be satisfied. This results in profitability, which then makes shareholders happy. Things can go very wrong if employee focus is not at the beginning of this equation.

In a new edition of Managing with a Conscience: How to Improve Performance Through Integrity, Trust, and Commitment, Frank Sonnenberg writes “companies must encourage employees to be passionate about what they do, to remain laser focused on their organization’s mission and goals, and to be obsessed with customer service excellence.”

One of the ways to measure such encouragement and focus is through employee engagement. If employee engagement is high, then you are likely encouraging and focusing on your employees. If it is low, then you are probably not.

Employee engagement can best be described as the level of intellectual and emotional commitment an employee has for accomplishing the work, mission, and vision of the organization. And the level of active engagement or active disengagement can be a game changer in whether an organization succeeds or fails.

According to The Economist, 84% of senior leaders say disengaged employees are considered one of the biggest threats facing their business. However, only 12% of them reported doing anything about this problem.

Though it may be difficult to attribute costs directly to under-performance, Gallup estimated employee disengagement costs the overall US economy as much as $350 billion every year! This can break down to more than $2,200 per disengaged employee.

Just what do disengaged employees do or not do to cost companies so much and how can you identify them? Disengaged employees:

  • Take more sick days and are late to work more often.
  • Undermine the work of their more engaged colleagues by constantly complaining.
  • Produce less. According to Gallup research, this can be $3,400 to $10,000 in annual salary.
  • Miss deadlines and lose sales opportunities.
  • Use cynicism, which is often passed on to other employees and customers.
  • May be very talented, but leave to join another company.

In many cases, disengaged workers may need to be removed because they cannot be turned around. However, most of your employees are neither engaged nor disengaged, and this is something you can influence.

To increase employee engagement, a leader must (1) continually demonstrate integrity and trust, (2) clearly communicate their vision, and (3) encourage the inner work lives of employees.

Consistently Demonstrate Trust and Integrity
Perhaps the single most important element attributable to active employee engagement or disengagement is directly related to the level of trust within the organization. In the same way a marriage requires complete trust in order to flourish, so too do the relationships in the rest of our lives, including at work. Leaders must be honest with their employees and keep them in the loop, especially when times are tough. Showing vulnerabilities during tough times mean employees can see you more fully as a human being and just like them.  They are then more likely to want to follow your lead and do their best.

Clearly Communicate a Vision
According to Mercer’s 2002 People at Work Survey, when senior management communicated a clear vision and direction of the organization, fewer employees were dissatisfied than when senior management did not communicate its vision effectively (7% versus 39%); fewer employees said they did not feel a strong sense of commitment to the organization (6% versus 32%); and fewer employees said they were seriously thinking about leaving the organization (16% versus 40%). If your employees clearly understand where you want the organization to go, they will do their best to help get there.

Encourage Employee Inner Work Lives
As I wrote in a previous post, steady and continual progress toward goals is easily the most effective way to motivate employees. According to Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, authors of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, the best leaders focus on helping employees lead satisfying inner work lives that include consistently positive emotions, strong motivation and favorable perceptions of the organization, the work and their colleagues. Celebrating milestones and small victories can keep workers on track and motivated to continue.

By focusing on these three things you can raise employee engagement in your organization. And nothing can more directly influence your productivity and profitability, regardless of the size of your business.

Negative Emotions Impede Organizational Productivity

July 12, 2012

In your workplace you probably know a Debbie Downer or someone who is always able point out what is wrong and how the glass is really half empty.

Such a constant negative perspective can have a contagious effect on others and should be monitored so it doesn’t impede productivity throughout the organization.

Emotions, both positive and negative, can and do play a role at work even though we may think we are effectively holding them in check. This is because emotions impact our behavior—whether we want to admit it or not—and others see this behavior.

I grew up in a family where sarcasm was considered a high comedic art form. In reality, sarcasm is typically ridicule or mockery and usually used for destructive purposes. Sarcasm usually has some underlying and unexpressed emotion attached to it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky considered sarcasm a cry of pain when he said it is “usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.”

In a recent Harvard Business Review post by Tony Schwartz, he wrote how the negative emotions of a new executive at his company altered the corporate culture such that the entire organization was more negative. It wasn’t that this leader was only being critical, but he was so “singularly focused on what was wrong that he lost sight of the bigger picture, including his own negative impact on others.”

This emotional contagion resulted in others taking on these same negative feelings and sapping the vital energy from the organization. Ultimately, this leader had to be let go because of the ramifications his negative outlook had on the leadership team and overall employees.

I am not advocating wearing blinders to what is wrong within an organization. Instead, it’s important to seek out what is indeed wrong and then have an optimistic vision on how to improve things in order to get to a sustainable change.

We also need to keep in mind how our behavior and attitude can impact those around us. Even though we may not feel we are being overly critical when pointing out flaws in a product design or service procedure, others may feel it is. Sometimes this is only a matter of being more tactful in our delivery.

And this is not to say I mean avoid being authentic at work. Authenticity is vital to your emotional well-being, and emotional intelligence can help you understand and regulate your emotions as well as be aware of the emotions of other people. Then you can choose how to appropriately respond to any given situation.

Negativity is a powerful force and can spread quickly throughout an organization, especially if it is the predominant emotion witnessed in leaders. Many leaders will defend this perspective as they believe it is a powerful motivator, and it may very well be for some employees and for some period of time.

But in the long run and for the majority of people, a negative perspective will suck the energy and productivity from an organization. It will reduce employee engagement and it will harm the bottom line.

Is there someone in your organization draining it of energy? Does the leader exhibit generally positive or negative emotions and how have these influenced his or her management team and the entire organization?

Increased Productivity Through Mindfulness

May 24, 2012

In this global economy with virtual meetings, social networking, and hyper-competitiveness, it is encouraging to see a large corporation choosing to embrace mindfulness. This mindfulness training is seen as a means to increase productivity as well as employee happiness.

Google’s popular course called “Search Inside Yourself” was designed to teach emotional intelligence through practical, real-world meditation. But this is not about sitting in the lotus position reciting “Ommmmm.” Instead it is a pragmatic approach for raising awareness in order to be more productive and happy.

Based on curriculum from his popular class which has been offered to Google engineers for the past five years, Chade-Meng Tan wrote a funny and practical book titled, Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace).

What I find particularly compelling about Chade-Meng’s book and course is that he applies these ancient principles in the 21st century workplace. He believes that we can all achieve inner peace (and ultimately world peace) as well as become more productive in the workplace setting.

According to Chade-Meng, the course has been able to provide the knowledge and practices that can increase creativity, productivity and happiness. The book promises readers will learn to:

  • Calm your mind on demand
  • Improve your concentration and creativity
  • Perceive mental and emotional processes with increased clarity
  • Discover that increased confidence is something that can arise naturally in a trained mind
  • Develop optimism and resilience necessary to thrive
  • Deliberately improve empathy with practice
  • Learn that social skills are highly trainable

This mindfulness is developed through learning the skills of emotional intelligence, which I’ve written about in previous posts. Based on the neuroplasticity of the brain, what we pay attention to gets done. What we think, do and pay attention to actually changes the structure and function of our brains. And like any training, practice is required for this to take full effect.

Mindfulness, according to Jon Cabat-Zinn, means to pay attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally. This enables you not only to become calm, but also more and creative.

A successful practice supports reflection over reactivity, encourages feeling your feelings rather than acting on them, and opens awareness to what is really going on. This means slowing down to notice. Any mindfulness is good mindfulness.

If Google has seen fit to offer this free course to its employees for more than five years, they certainly must have vetted its overall effectiveness. Analyzing qualitative data such as happiness is extremely difficult, but I suspect Google has found that those who have completed the course are in fact more productive.

And I strongly believe happy employees are indeed more productive employees.

You can see an hour-long presentation about this by Chade-Meng in this YouTube video.

Mindfulness in Leadership Development

January 12, 2012

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
–Shunryu Suzuki

In a recent Harvard Business Review blog, Polly LaBarre wrote about the wisdom of developing mindful leaders.

Much of the billions of dollars companies invest in leadership development fall short of success because the programs are so heavily focused on data/assessment gathering and so little on people and processes.

“What if, instead of stuffing people with curricula, models, and competencies, we focused on deepening their sense of purpose, expanding their capability to navigate difficulty and complexity, and enriching their emotional resilience?” ponders LaBarre.

“What if, instead of trying to fix people, we assumed that they were already full of potential and created an environment that promoted their long-term well-being?”

LaBarre cites the Personal Excellence Program (PEP) developed at biotechnology company Genentech in 2002 by CIO Todd Pierce and his coach, Pamella Weiss.

PEP begins with the premise that people are whole, not broken. By fully integrating the intellectual (head), emotional (heart) and somatic (body) intelligence, PEP is able to tap into people’s wholehearted engagement, helps them cultivate self-awareness, and supports them to develop mastery through embodied practice.

More than 800 Genentech employees have so far completed this program (primarily in the IT department) and it has dramatically improved employee engagement.

This includes:

• 10-20% increase in employee satisfaction;

• 12% increase in customer satisfaction;

• 50% percent improvement in employee communication, collaboration, conflict management and coaching; and

• 77% of PEP participants reported “significant measurable business impact” as a result of participating in PEP. This is almost three times the norm (25–30%), compared to dozens of similar programs studied.

In terms of a return on investment, evaluators found the program conservatively produced an estimated $1.50 to $2 for every dollar spent to deliver PEP.

“I thought PEP might be a strategy for people to develop a skill or quality,” said Pierce. “But what I see is that it is a strategy to help them be life-long learners and to increase their capacity for personal development and personal satisfaction in every area of their life.”

The PEP program takes place over a ten month period and includes three large group workshops, eight facilitated small group meetings, three individual coaching sessions and monthly peer coaching.

Participants choose a topic to focus on that is important to them, observe them selves in real time to gain insight and self-awareness, and then practice new behaviors to establish new habits and develop mastery.

Deliberate practice is the most significant indicator of success and this requires steady, consistent repetition over time, until new behaviors take root in the body as a new habit.

Mindfulness is about paying attention. It is about learning to observe one self in the context of day-to-day life to enable new insights and begin seeing yourself more clearly. The result is you can then make wiser choices. Increasing this self-awareness helps you cultivate the ability to act rather than react, enabling you to become response-able—even in the midst of high-stress situations.

“I think what makes PEP so successful is less about what we do than it is about the attitude we bring to how we do it,” says Weiss. “When we start from a place of beginner’s mind, and add a big dose of curiosity, patience and appreciation, learning happens because as human beings we are wired to learn and grow. In many ways, it comes down to doing less and trusting more in our innate capacities and vast potential.”

Leadership development programs should provide tangible, long lasting results and a program like PEP that engages the heart, mind and body is an example of one that appears to work.

Rather than seek a one-off, one-day solution for developing leaders in your organization, look for a longer term program with dynamic involvement that includes mindfulness and disciplined practice for changing behavior. Only then will you have a significant return on investment measured not only in dollars, but also in more engaged human capital.

Better Communication with a Direct Approach

November 17, 2011

An angry boss of an internet start-up firm is repeatedly coercing his employees to work long hours with the threat of losing jobs and the potential for vast riches if the company succeeds. If this man were to express his needs in a more respectful manner rather than through mandates, would he get more from his employees?

A recent report on NPR revealed that two-thirds of doctors say they do not discuss losing weight with their patients, even though the vast majority of Americans are obese or overweight. If doctors were clear and more direct about the dangers of being overweight, would this help their patients lose pounds and avoid diabetes?

A middle-manager in a major pharmaceutical company is talking behind another manager’s back with derogatory statements about her character, which undermines advancement opportunities for both. If this middle-manager were to speak directly to the other manager about the character concerns, would it help build a more honest relationship between the two and improve their advancement chances?

Communication that is aggressive, passive, or passive-aggressive cripples our ability to understand each other and work together well. And poor workplace communication results in conflict that can create uncertainty, resource hoarding, ineffective teamwork, and spreading rumors and gossip.

There are many descriptors for communication styles, but they typically fall into four categories: aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive and assertive. Rarely do any of us stay in one style all the time, but instead move in and out of them continually, though we may remain in one longer than the others.

When using an aggressive style there is manipulation involved. This often means hurting others through guilt or anger, and using intimidation and other control tactics. Though this style may be effective in the short term like when playing sports or fighting in a war, it will fail if used repeatedly in relationships in or out of the workplace.

The passive style of communication is one of compliance with the hope of avoiding confrontation at all costs. Using the passive style means speaking very little and questioning even less. With this style of communication very little is accomplished and needs are unlikely to get met. In the workplace, this can stifle understanding and get in the way of moving forward.

Those in a passive-aggressive style avoid direct confrontation by remaining passive, but then use aggression—often behind someone’s back—in order to get even. This harmful communication style also uses manipulation and may lead to office politics and spreading negative rumors. It is also the most difficult to detect and deal with because it switches back and forth so often.

The most effective and healthiest form of communication is the assertive style. We all naturally communicate in this way when our self-esteem is intact because we have confidence. When using the assertive style we are able to communicate our needs with clarity and often look for win/win solutions with others.

Surprisingly, assertive communication is the style people use least often. This is unfortunate because when using assertive communication you:

  • express your wants, needs, and feelings clearly, appropriately, and respectfully
  • use “I” statements
  • listen well without interrupting
  • feel in control of yourself
  • have good eye contact
  • speak in a calm and clear tone of voice
  • have a relaxed body posture
  • feel connected to others
  • feel competent and in control

You may notice that many of these are associated with being emotionally intelligent and thereby being able to navigate your relationships with self-reflection, self-regulation and empathy.

Assertiveness is based on mutual respect, and it’s an effective and diplomatic communication style. When you are assertive, you’re willing to stand up for your interests and easily express your thoughts and feelings. It also demonstrates that you are aware of the rights of others and are willing to work on resolving conflicts.

With assertive communication, a boss’s urgency could be better communicated to motivate his employees in a healthy manner, doctors could make a clear and compelling case for overweight patients at risk of getting diabetes, and middle-managers could stop sabbotaging careers by being more straight-forward with each other.

If you’re in conflict with someone at work, notice what kind of communication style you are using as well as the other person. See if you can make a conscious effort to change your style to be assertive. You may find that the other person will begin to reflect that same direct approach back to you and help resolve the conflict.

Using this direct assertive communication style more often in the workplace can dramatically improve engagement, teamwork and productivity.

Increased Happiness Begins at Middle-Age

April 1, 2011

With my birthday on the horizon, it is the time of year when I reflect on what I’ve done with my life so far and what I still want to do.

I try to take pride in what I have accomplished. I celebrate my good fortune at having a loving family, strong friendships, and continued good health. I also evaluate my overall well-being or happiness.

In an Economist magazine article back in December, I read that life may not be only a long, slow decline from vitality to incapacity. Instead, it is a U-Bend, which suggests that our happiness quotient actually declines until we are in our mid-forties whereupon it begins to rise again well into old age.

This is good news for those of us who have passed that point and are now growing older, wiser and, quite possibly, happier.

David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College, and Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at Warwick Business School, looked at data for 72 countries. They found that the nadir varies among countries with Ukrainians at their most miserable at 62, while the Swiss at 35. The great majority of countries find people at their unhappiest in their 40s and early 50s. The global average is 46 years of age.

In theory, when people start their adult lives, they are pretty cheerful on average. However, things often go south from youth to middle age. This could be explained by the fact that when we are in our mid-forties we are very often dealing with many stressors, including demanding careers, teenagers in the home, and aging parents.

Some characteristics determine our happiness more than others. For instance, those who are married are often more happy, but those with children in the home are less happy than those without. Education makes people happy because this often enables them to make more money. And, in general, richer people are happier than poorer people.

The growing happiness that follows middle-aged misery is not the result of external circumstances, however, but internal changes.

Older people have fewer arguments and find better solutions to conflict. They are better at controlling their emotions and accepting misfortune. They are also less likely to get angry. In a study where subjects were asked to listen to recordings of people supposedly saying disparaging things about them, older and younger people were similarly saddened, but older people got less angry and were less inclined to pass judgment.

Older people also know they are closer to death and they grow better at living in the present, argues Laura Carstensen, professor of psychology at Stanford University. They come to focus on things that matter now like feelings and less on long-term goals.

Neurotic people who are prone to guilt, anger and anxiety tend to be less happy. And studies have found that neuroticism is a stable personality trait and a good predictor of levels of happiness. Neurotic people also are likely to have low emotional intelligence, which makes it hard to develop healthy relationships, and that can make them unhappy.

Extroverted people, on the other hand, appear to be happier. People who thrive by working in teams, for example, are happier than those who would rather work independently.

Oswald and two colleagues, Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi, cheered up a bunch of volunteers by showing them a funny film. Then he had them perform a series of mental tests and compared their performance to groups that had seen a neutral film or no film at all. Those who had seen the funny film performed 12% better.

Should we conclude that happier employees are more productive employees? Would a group of extraverts make for a stronger team than a group of introverts? I don’t think there is any conclusive evidence for these conclusions at this point.

There are many things we can do to raise our happiness. These include strengthening important relationships, maintaining good health through diet and exercise, managing our stress level, and making time for things that bring us joy. And it’s nice to know that an important benefit of the aging process is that it may also raise our level of happiness.