#OrganizationalBehavior

Apr 13, 2016

Giving Feedback Is Easy, Much Harder to Accept, Learn From, and Apply It

About 15 years ago, I was enrolled in a counseling psychology Master’s program. It was quite good and I learned a lot back then and continue to use many of the counseling/coaching skills today in the corporate world. As part of the program, we were required to conduct counseling sessions with real clients and film these sessions (after securing the client’s permission) so that our classmates and professors could review these sessions and offer their feedback. One day, during

Jan 1, 2016

Don’t Have to Put Others Down To Feel Better About Ourselves

[Note: This post was updated July 2020 for freshness & clarity.] One consistent and recurring theme keeps appearing over and over again for me. Whether in the workplace or in a social gathering, I often witness people putting others down simply because they want to feel better about themselves. I’m not sure what’s the root cause or causes of this behavior. It might have to do with low self-esteem, being afraid (of failing, of what others might say, etc.), the desire to self-p

Nov 13, 2015

Listening To Music While Working Can Be Distracting

I’ve heard business professionals claim that listening to music while working made them more productive. While it’s true that music can lift your mood and give you a relaxed focus, it can also decrease your performance on cognitively demanding tasks. So when can music improve performance? Annie Murphy Paul, in an article in Time.com, wrote “Music can improve performance when a well-practiced expert needs to achieve the relaxed focus necessary to execute a job he’s done many t

Sep 10, 2015

Talking Too Much and Not Listening

In a previous life and time, I worked as a mental health counselor. I was trained in the art of listening and would periodically have my listening skills evaluated by professors, supervisors, and even peers (on videos and in live sessions). It was stressful and sometimes I felt more like the patient/client than the therapist. After pivoting from the mental health field to the corporate world, I was naïve enough to think that I would no longer need to tap into my counseling sk

Aug 22, 2015

The Pitfalls of Telecommuting

[NOTE: This post was updated January 2017] I was contacted by a TV Producer at BBC News regarding my thoughts about the pitfalls of working at home. I am reposting my responses to her as well as add some additional information which, due to a tight schedule, I was not able to include in my original answers. Question: People often tout home working as being the future – but it isn’t really happening – at least in the UK. Why Not? I wrote about telecommuting (working from home

Jul 7, 2015

Job Crafting: Shape, Mold, and Redefine Your Job

In his book, Drive (2011), Daniel Pink wrote that one of the motivating factors for employees is having the autonomy over four areas of work: what they do, when they do it, how they do it, and with whom they do it. Pink called these the four Ts: employee’s task, time, technique, and team. When I was working for a school system overseas in the Northern Mariana Islands, serving the islands of Saipan, Rota, and Tinian, I came up with the idea of creating a crisis management work

Mar 25, 2015

100 Things You Need to Know: Best People Practices for Manager and HR

Description (from a Lominger flyer): In 100 Things, three internationally-recognized experts in human capital management provide the research behind the best people practices in an easy-to-read and easy-to-reference format. You’ll find research, discussion and a “so what” section (that tells you what best practices to follow as a result of the research) on the full range of HR people issues you deal with all the time—change management, HR effectiveness, measurement, campus re

Feb 23, 2014

Locus of Control and The Zorro Circle

In his book, The Happiness Advantage, author Shawn Achor talks about how by first limiting our focus on small, manageable goals, we can then expand our sphere of power from there. Achor used the movie “The Mask of Zorro” (starring Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins) as an example and describes what he calls The Zorro Circle. For those who have not seen it, there is a scene where young Alejandro (Zorro) is taught how to master the sword and other skills by first training in

Feb 9, 2014

Book Review: Scaling Up Excellence

As owner of the WorkplacePsychology.Net website, which continues to get a high number of visitors daily, I am frequently asked to review books. In fact, publicists and sometimes even authors will ask me to review their books. I rarely need or want to reach out to authors. Robert I. Sutton is one of those authors for whom I make an exception. Back in December 2013, I reached out to him for an advance copy of his new book to review. A few years earlier, I had reviewed professor

Sep 10, 2013

Why Leadership Is Important and Why People Want to Be Followers

[Note: This post was updated July 2022 for freshness & clarity.] I believe leadership is important because, if we examine history, no significant changes or advancement have occurred without some type of leadership. In the United States, we can see how leaders have mobilized followers to accomplish amazing things. Here are a few examples: George Washington → American Revolution Martin Luther King, Jr. → Civil Rights Movement Steve Jobs → Apple Computers (iPhone, iPad, iPod) I

Aug 8, 2013

Would You Work If You Won the Lottery?

The question is simple: If you were to win the lottery (also known as the lottery question), would you continue to work? The answer might surprise you because most people say yes. In fact, a survey of lottery winners showed that even those who won the lottery continued to work! The General Population Responses from 7,871 men and 7,549 women to the General Social Surveys conducted by the NORC for 1980, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1987-1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, and

Jul 24, 2013

Workplace Bullying Is Not Employee Dissatisfaction and Is Different from School Bullying

This post is in response to an article titled “Thou Shalt Not Bully” that was posted on HCOnline, Australia’s online magazine for senior human resource professionals and corporate decision-makers. In the article, the author said: “[D]espite the best intentions of the [anti-bullying] legislation [in Australia], employers are faced with the prospect of an avalanche of complaints based on perceptions. Bullying has become the catch-all term for employee dissatisfaction.” The auth

Jun 19, 2013

Leadership and Management: Are They Different?

[Note: This post was updated March 2021 for freshness & clarity.] Northouse (2013) wrote that leadership and management are similar in many ways. Both involve influencing, achieving goals, and working with people. However, while they may share some similarities, there are distinct and important differences. Northouse said the study of leadership goes as far back as the times of Aristotle, while the concept of management came about “around the turn of the 20th century with the

Jun 5, 2013

Locus of Control: Stop Making Excuses and Start Taking Responsibility

[NOTE: This post was updated June 2020 for freshness & accuracy] In my former career as a mental health counselor, I encountered many clients who struggled with taking charge of their own lives. While their struggles might have differed, the idea behind helping them was almost always the same, and quite basic. We’re taught to guide clients from seeing themselves as being victims of life’s circumstances to being movers of those life events. In other words, help clients reach d

May 26, 2013

Organizational Diversity Initiatives

[Note: This post was updated March 2021 for freshness & clarity.] Diversity initiatives usually sound great on paper and on an organization’s website. However, upon closer inspection, it is easy to see that there often exists a huge gap between rhetoric and practice. Jayne and Dipboye (2004) stated that simply having a diverse workforce “does not . . . produce the positive outcomes that are often claimed” (pp. 411-412). Increasing diversity, in and of itself, will not improve

Nov 19, 2012

Silly Job Titles Are Not Funny

[NOTE: This post was updated February 2021 for freshness & clarity.] In a Forbes article, Goudreau (2012) wrote about silly job titles that some top executives hold (e.g., Chief Listening Officer). A related listing on Forbes showed other silly titles, such as Chief Internet Evangelist, Chief Observance Officer, and Chief Happiness Officer (Forbes, 2012). Please understand that I am not commenting on the skills and competencies of the individuals who hold these titles, only i

Sep 30, 2012

Good Liars: Their Characteristics and Why They are So Hard to Detect

[NOTE: This post was updated December 2017] Politicians and car salesmen are notorious for being dishonest. But what’s often overlooked are skilled liars who might be a coworker, a supervisor, a top executive, a family member, or even a neighbor. It isn’t until a major scandal, like the ones involving Ponzi schemers Allen Stanford and Bernie Madoff, that people take note that lying is more pervasive and much more difficult to detect than we think. The scandal in 2009 involved

Aug 22, 2012

Book Review-The Orange Revolution

I’m a very picky book reader. Prior to reading “The Orange Revolution: How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization,” I had actually started and given up reading several other business books. But “The Orange Revolution” restored my belief that business books can be entertaining, researched-based, and instructive. Culling research from a 350,000-person database (employees from 28 industries) by the Best Companies Group, as well as from their own interviews with exce

Aug 19, 2011

The Three Burnout Subtypes

[NOTE: This post was updated November 2016] Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, and is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion (overwhelming exhaustion), cynicism (cynicism and detachment), and inefficacy (a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment) (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Maslach, Leiter, & Schaufeli, 2009). More broadly, Maslach and Leiter (2005) said burnout includes losing three things:

Feb 14, 2011

Creating an Ethical Organizational Culture

[NOTE: This post was updated October 2016] “Having an organizational culture that emphasizes ethical behavior can cut down on misbehavior of organizations. Research shows that whether an organization develops a culture that emphasizes doing the right thing even when it is costly comes down to whether leaders, starting with the CEO, consider the ethical consequences of their actions. Leaders with a moral compass set the tone when it comes to ethical dilemmas” (Truxillo, Bauer,