Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Productivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Productivity. Show all posts

Sunday, October 22, 2023

What Is Psychological Safety?

Amy Gallo
Harvard Business Review
Originally posted 15 FEB 23

Here are two excerpts:

Why is psychological safety important?

First, psychological safety leads to team members feeling more engaged and motivated, because they feel that their contributions matter and that they’re able to speak up without fear of retribution. Second, it can lead to better decision-making, as people feel more comfortable voicing their opinions and concerns, which often leads to a more diverse range of perspectives being heard and considered. Third, it can foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement, as team members feel comfortable sharing their mistakes and learning from them. (This is what my boss was doing in the opening story.)

All of these benefits — the impact on a team’s performance, innovation, creativity, resilience, and learning — have been proven in research over the years, most notably in Edmondson’s original research and in a study done at Google. That research, known as Project Aristotle, aimed to understand the factors that impacted team effectiveness across Google. Using over 30 statistical models and hundreds of variables, that project concluded that who was on a team mattered less than how the team worked together. And the most important factor was psychological safety.

Further research has shown the incredible downsides of not having psychological safety, including negative impacts on employee well-being, including stress, burnout, and turnover, as well as on the overall performance of the organization.

(cut)

How do you create psychological safety?

Edmondson is quick to point out that “it’s more magic than science” and it’s important for managers to remember this is “a climate that we co-create, sometimes in mysterious ways.”

Anyone who has worked on a team marked by silence and the inability to speak up, knows how hard it is to reverse that.

A lot of what goes into creating a psychologically safe environment are good management practices — things like establishing clear norms and expectations so there is a sense of predictability and fairness; encouraging open communication and actively listening to employees; making sure team members feel supported; and showing appreciation and humility when people do speak up.

There are a few additional tactics that Edmondson points to as well.


Here are some of my thoughts about psychological safety:
  • It is not the same as comfort. It is okay to feel uncomfortable sometimes, as long as you feel safe to take risks and speak up.
  • It is not about being friends with everyone on your team. It is about creating a respectful and inclusive environment where everyone feels like they can belong.
  • It takes time and effort to build psychological safety. It is not something that happens overnight.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Stressed Out at the Office? Therapy Can Come to You

Rachel Feintzeig
The Wall Street Journal
Originally published 31 Jan 20

Here is an excerpt:

In the past, discussion of mental-health issues at the office was uncommon. Workers were largely expected to leave their personal struggles at home. Crying was confined to the bathroom stall.

Today, that’s changing. One reason is a broadening of the popular understanding of “mental health” to encompass anxiety, stress and other widespread issues.

It’s also a reflection of a changing workplace. Younger workers are more comfortable talking about their struggles and expect their employers to take emotional distress seriously, says Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Senior leaders are responding, rolling out mental-health services and sometimes speaking about their own experiences. Lloyds Banking Group Plc chief executive António Horta-Osório has said publicly in recent years that the pressure he felt around the bank’s financial situation in 2011 dominated his thoughts, leaving him unable to sleep and exhausted. He took eight weeks off from the company to recover, working with a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist later helped him devise a mental-health program for Lloyds employees.

Brynn Brichet, a lead product manager at Cerner Corp., a maker of electronic medical-records systems, said she sometimes returns from her counseling appointments with an on-site therapist red-faced from crying. (The therapist sits a few floors down.) If colleagues ask, she tells them that she just got out of an intense therapy session. Some are taken aback when she mentions her therapy, she said. But she thinks it’s important to be open.

“We all are terrified. We all are struggling,” she said. “If we don’t talk about it, it can run our lives.”

The info is here.

Thursday, October 3, 2019

Empathy in the Age of the EMR

Danielle Ofri
The Lancet

Here is an excerpt:

Keeping the doctor-patient connection from eroding in the age of the EMR is an uphill battle. We all know that the eye contact that Fildes depicts is a critical ingredient for communication and connection, but when the computer screen is so demanding of focus that the patient becomes a distraction, even an impediment—this is hopelessly elusive.

Recently, I was battling the EMR during a visit with a patient who had particularly complicated medical conditions. We hadn’t seen each other in more than a year, so there was much to catch up on. Each time she raised an issue, I turned to the computer to complete the requisite documentation for that concern. In that pause, however, my patient intuited a natural turn of conversation. Thinking that it was now her turn to talk, she would bring up the next thing on her mind. But of course I wasn’t finished with the last thing, so I would say, “Would you mind holding that thought for a second? I just need to finish this one thing…”

I’d turn back to the computer and fall silent to finish documenting. After a polite minute, she would apparently sense that it was again her turn in the conversation and thus begin her next thought. I was torn because I didn’t want to stop her in her tracks, but we’ve been so admonished about the risks inherent in distracted multitasking that I wanted to focus fully on the thought I was entering into the computer. I know it’s rude to cut someone off, but preserving a clinical train of thought is crucial for avoiding medical error.

The info is here.

Friday, June 29, 2018

Business Class

John Benjamin
The New Republic
Originally posted May 14, 2018

Students in the country’s top MBA programs pride themselves on their open-mindedness. This is, after all, what they’ve been sold: American business schools market their ability to train the kinds of broadly competent, intellectually receptive people that will help solve the problems of a global economy.

But in truth, MBA programs are not the open forums advertised in admissions brochures. Behind this façade, they are ideological institutions committed to a strict blend of social liberalism and economic conservatism. Though this fusion may be the favorite of American elites—the kinds of people who might repeat that tired line “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative”—it takes a strange form in business school. Elite business schooling is tailored to promote two types of solutions to the big problems that arise in society: either greater innovation or freer markets. Proposals other than what’s essentially more business are brushed aside, or else patched over with a type of liberal politics that’s heavy on rhetorical flair but light on relevance outside privileged circles.

It is in this closed ideological loop that we wannabe masters of the universe often struggle to think clearly about the common good or what it takes to achieve it.

The information is here.

Friday, April 27, 2018

Why We Don’t Let Coworkers Help Us, Even When We Need It

Mark Bolino and Phillip S. Thompson
Harvard Business Review
Originally published March 15, 2018

Here is the conclusion:

Taken together, our studies suggest that employees who are unwilling to accept help when they need it may undermine their own performance and the effectiveness of their team or unit. In light of those potential costs, managers should directly address the negative beliefs that people are harboring. For instance, research shows that employees tend to look to their leaders to determine who is trustworthy and who isn’t. So, to build people’s trust in their coworkers’ motives and competence, managers can demonstrate their faith in those employees by giving them challenging assignments, ownership of certain decisions, direct access to sensitive information or valuable stakeholders, and so on. Further, since giving help and receiving it go hand in hand, managers should create an environment where assisting one another is encouraged and recognized. They can do this by calling attention to successful collaborations and explaining how they’ve contributed to the organization’s larger goals and mission. And they should show their own willingness to help and be helped, since employees are more likely to see the merits of citizenship behaviors when they observe their leaders engaging in such behaviors themselves.

Finally, it’s important not to send mixed messages. If employees who go it alone get ahead more quickly than those who give and receive support, people will pick up on that discrepancy — and they’ll go back to looking out for number one, to their detriment and the organization’s.

The article is here.

Monday, February 12, 2018

Can we please discuss ethics in the future of work?

Sylvia Vorhauser-Smith
Forbes
Originally published

Here is an excerpt:

Our brains have a very distinct and subliminal way of normalizing just about anything we are exposed to if we experience it long enough – even if we don’t like it. Look at how social norms have evolved over the past fifty years: back then a teenager would instinctively forego a seat on a bus for the elderly, men in suits wore ties, women never touched up their makeup in public and no one swore at policemen. Today, these aspects of social etiquette have changed significantly. Some for better, some for worse. New norms apply.

Equally, the workplace is a very different environment to what it used to be. Much of it better – safer, more engaging, more stimulating, more collaborative. But there have been trade-offs. Our working days are longer, technology has dissolved many of the boundaries between home and work and we are expected to be more self-sufficient and productive than ever before. And that’s before the next wave of innovations.

The information is here.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Leadership Takes Self-Control. Here’s What We Know About It

Kai Chi (Sam) Yam, Huiwen Lian, D. Lance Ferris, Douglas Brown
Harvard Business Review
Originally published June 5, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Our review identified a few consequences that are consistently linked to having lower self-control at work:
  1. Increased unethical/deviant behavior: Studies have found that when self-control resources are low, nurses are more likely to be rude to patients, tax accountants are more likely to engage in fraud, and employees in general engage in various forms of unethical behavior, such as lying to their supervisors, stealing office supplies, and so on.
  2. Decreased prosocial behavior: Depleted self-control makes employees less likely to speak up if they see problems at work, less likely to help fellow employees, and less likely to engage in corporate volunteerism.
  3. Reduced job performance: Lower self-control can lead employees to spend less time on difficult tasks, exert less effort at work, be more distracted (e.g., surfing the internet in working time), and generally perform worse than they would had their self-control been normal.
  4. Negative leadership styles: Perhaps what’s most concerning is that leaders with lower self-control often exhibit counter-productive leadership styles. They are more likely to verbally abuse their followers (rather than using positive means to motivate them), more likely to build weak relationships with their followers, and they are less charismatic. Scholars have estimated that the cost to corporations in the United States for such a negative and abusive behavior is at $23.8 billion annually.
Our review makes clear that helping employees maintain self-control is an important task if organizations want to be more effective and ethical. Fortunately, we identified three key factors that can help leaders foster self-control among employees and mitigate the negative effects of losing self-control.

The article is here.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

A new breed of scientist, with brains of silicon

John Bohannon
Science Magazine
Originally published July 5, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

But here’s the key difference: When the robots do finally discover the genetic changes that boost chemical output, they don’t have a clue about the biochemistry behind their effects.

Is it really science, then, if the experiments don’t deepen our understanding of how biology works? To Kimball, that philosophical point may not matter. “We get paid because it works, not because we understand why.”

So far, Hoffman says, Zymergen’s robotic lab has boosted the efficiency of chemical-producing microbes by more than 10%. That increase may not sound like much, but in the $160-billion-per-year sector of the chemical industry that relies on microbial fermentation, a fractional improvement could translate to more money than the entire $7 billion annual budget of the National Science Foundation. And the advantageous genetic changes that the robots find represent real discoveries, ones that human scientists probably wouldn’t have identified. Most of the output-boosting genes are not directly related to synthesizing the desired chemical, for instance, and half have no known function. “I’ve seen this pattern now in several different microbes,” Dean says. Finding the right genetic combinations without machine learning would be like trying to crack a safe with thousands of numbers on its dial. “Our intuitions are easily overwhelmed by the complexity,” he says.

The article is here.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Has capitalism has turned us into narcissists?

Terry Eagleton
The Guardian
Originally published August 3, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

In our own time, the concept of happiness has moved from the private sphere to the public one. As William Davies reports in this fascinating study, a growing number of corporations employ chief happiness officers, while Google has a “jolly good fellow” to keep the company’s spirits up. Maybe the Bank of England should consider hiring a jester. Specialist happiness consultants advise those who have been forcibly displaced from their homes on how to move on emotionally. Two years ago, British Airways trialled a “happiness blanket”, which turns from red to blue as the passenger becomes more relaxed so that your level of contentment is visible to the flight attendants. A new drug, Wellbutrin, promises to alleviate major depressive symptoms occurring after the loss of a loved one. It is supposed to work so effectively that the American Psychiatric Association has ruled that to be unhappy for more than two weeks after the death of another human being can be considered a mental illness. Bereavement is a risk to one’s psychological wellbeing.

It is no wonder that the notion of happiness has been taken into public ownership, given the remarkable spread of spiritual malaise around the globe. Around a third of American adults and close to half in Britain believe that they are sometimes depressed. Even so, more than half a century after the discovery of antidepressants, nobody really knows how they function.

The article is here.

Friday, June 14, 2013

How Danish Work Design Creates Productivity and Life Quality

Copenhagen Balance
By Camilla Kring, Vivi Bach Pedersen, and Andres Raastrup Kristensen

The future can be found in Denmark. In this report we show how some of the most successful companies in Denmark developed their business through an innovative, results-oriented focus on balancing employees’ work and private lives.

Denmark has a unique position in the world when it comes to balancing work and private life.

  • Denmark has one of the highest participation rates for women in the workforce. (75% of women are in the workforce).
  • Among all EU countries, Danish employees have the highest degree of influence over their work. (85% of employees indicate that they have an influence on their work situation).
  • Danish employees have some of the world’s most flexible work conditions. (43% of employees can regulate their work hours to meet their private needs).
  • Danish employees have some of the best maternity/paternity leaves in the world (combined one year leave per child).

The Danish model is known as ‘flexicurity’. In this model, it is easy for organizations to hire and lay off employees, while government subsidies assure a safety net if people cannot find jobs. Denmark is also known for a variety of public initiatives that make it easier to have children. For example, the state subsidizes parental leave for a year after childbirth. After the leave, parents can go back to work, while the children are cared for in subsidized nurseries and preschools. 92% of Danish children in the age group 3-5 years are in preschool. Thus, having a family can be combined with holding down a job.

(cut)

Introduction

In this report we discuss how six leading Danish companies innovate with work-life balance as an integrated part of their strategy. We provide you with a variety of concrete ideas and inspiration that work with Balance. These case examples demonstrate unique versions of the concept, and show how to implement such initiatives in order to simultaneously improve employee well-being and productivity. The report describes not only the current and new innovative best practices in the field, but also points to the new directions in which work-life balance is most likely to progress.

Balance is about Business

All the companies described in this report have worked with balance between work and private life for many years. In this process they have left the traditional understanding of Balance behind. This was an understanding built on the sharp dichotomy of the industrial era, during which work and private life were seen as conflicting entities in two distinct spheres that were to be balanced as if on a scale.

The entire work-life balance report is here.