Just a thought about education...In the current economy more and more people are turning back to education to get a step ahead in the work force. After meeting with the Senior Associate Dean & Director of Executive Programs at one of the top ten universities in the nation I learned that MBA enrollment has doubled as well as EMBA enrollment.

So what do you think? Will more education get you promoted? If too many people have advanced degrees will it widen the economic gap?

Another trend that we see is an increase in certificate programs. Do you think Leadership or Human Resource certificates will help individuals in organizations?

Coaching Plateaued Salespeople in a Flat Economy

Dr. Beane and Mr. Lena provide insight into the management and improvement of your sales force in today's struggling economy. They provide several tips of how to increase your sales force efficiency by teaching them how to respond and interact with clients.

To view a replay of the webinar click here.
To view the pdf of the power points click here.

A Challenge for Lent

How often do you set a New Years goal or give up something for Lent but after a couple of days you just can’t commit? I for one have tried some goals that were more difficult than I had imagined at the time. One year I gave up eating after 8pm so I could (lose weight) and be reminded of what God’s sacrificed for us. Another year I attempted to stop biting my nails. I used several techniques for both such as setting small goals, rewarding behaviors after a set time and even tried adverse conditioning methods. In this post I would like to cover some techniques that I believe are the most effectively for shaping behavior. I’ll use ‘nail biting’ as the example throughout.

Small Goals: Work on not performing the behavior for a couple hours. If the behavior is already less frequent (ex. Snapping at a spouse) work on staying calm for three days or a week at a time.

Rewards: Before you start trying to change any behavior determine how you will reward yourself. When I was working on not biting my nails I would set a reward schedule (ex. After week 1 I would get a manicure, after week 2 a new shirt, etc.). You need to pick rewards that matter to YOU, if they aren’t really reinforcing your behavior they will not motivate you to change.

Adverse Conditioning: AC involves the pairing of painful or adverse stimuli with the behavior. I used to put bitter (NO BIT) nail polish on my finger. Whenever I would forget and bit them there would be this really bitter taste that would immediately make me stop biting. When training my dog not to bark at the door I would shack a tin can full of pennies. Pairing the loud noise with his bark quickly stopped the behavior.

I hope you find these helpful as you work toward you New Years or Lent Goals.

Do you really know yourself?

Why does it so often seem that your spouse, mother or friend seem to know you better than you know yourself? In hindsight do you feel that your parents really did know what was right for you? Well recent psychological research indicates they just might know some things about you better than you do.

Simine Vazire, a PhD at Washington University in St. Louis recently illustrated that individual are more accurate in assessing one’s own internal traits, such as anxiety, while friends, spouses and parents are better gauges of intellect-related traits, such as intelligence and creativity. He even found that strangers are equally adept as our friends and ourselves at spotting the extrovert in us all, a psychology domain known as “extroversion.”

We may not be the best experts of our own behavior as researchers originally thought.
Vazire says, “Personality is not who you think you are, it’s who you are. Some people think by definition that we are the experts on our personality because we get to write the story, but personality is not the story – it’s the reality. So, you do get to write your own story about how you think you are, and what you tell people about yourself, but there still is reality out there, and, guess what? Other people are going to see the reality, regardless of what story you believe.”

Vazire’s results could have drastic implications for self report assessments used for selection, development and promotion. To date many of the assessments used in assessment centers ask individuals to rate how they believe they would perform on a task, behave in a given situation or perferr to act at a party/meeting/conference. Although psychologists are well aware of the issues of self-report measures Vazire’s study makes a case for other rated assessments and possibly the increases use of 360 degree surveys that can illustrate the differences between self and other perceptions.

Vazire’s study is published in the February 2010 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

For more information on this study click here.

The Supreme Court Ruling in Ricci v. Destefano

On June 29, 2009 the Supreme Court ruled 4-5 in favor of the New Haven’s Fire Department’s decision to toss out promotional tests because of possible disparate treatment. Sixteen white and one Hispanic firefighter took the New Haven Service Board (CSB) to court for reverse discrimination. The 17 plaintiffs had taken and successfully passed the departments promotional assessment but were later told that the test was no longer going to be considered a factor for promotion because none of the black applicants passed the assessment.

The CSB needed to illustrate that there was legal motive for discarding the exam. I will not go into the details concerning adverse impact cases at this point but you can consult Gaurdians of New York v. Civel Service Commissions, 1980; Gillespis v. Wisconsin, 1985 or US v. City of New York, 2009 for several examples of such cases.
After reversing the lower court ruling Justice Kennedy ruled that the CSB took appropriate action.

This case has been all over the news because of the possible changes from its outcome. As IO psychologists the major take away we should examine is the importance of the validation process in measurement development (Police Officer v. City of Columbus, 1990) and being aware of potential reverse discrimination cases and/or disparate treatment cases in the future.

Career Counseling Youth

I spent the weekend interviewing high school seniors for full ride scholarships to a medium sized private university. Interviewing these students was like a flash back in time; a time when you think you know what you want, where you are going, and that you are awesome. I consistently hear students state they wanted to go into a certain field while describing the contents of another field completely. For example, “I want to go pre-med because I shadowed a doctor in my town and truly enjoyed helping them with the personal aspects of their recovery including their moods, emotions and family life.”

It made me think about pre-college career counseling. Could you imagine if you had someone or a group of people sit down and give you honest feedback about the discrepancy between what you thought you wanted to do and what was sparking your interest in possibly a different area? From our example, it was clear throughout the interview that this student was truly interested in clinical psychology and/or social work but was going to work through medicine to achieve those paths.

I have assisted with several career appraisals for college graduates and executives switching fields but it made me think more and more about the younger generations that we aren’t tapping into. Although I believe assessments may help guild this process, I think a more clinical approach may better identify younger individual’s true interests.

What do you think? Would you have appreciated career feedback in high school? In hindsight would you have gone a different path than you did in college?

Reflections on McCall, M.W. (2010). Recasting Leadership Development. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice

Literature in the area of leadership development is consistently illustrated the benefits of experiential learning verse standard HR systems (McCall, 2010). The authors suggest that true leadership development starts with selection. If leaders are selected who 1) believe leadership is critical to the business, 2) accept that individuals can be taught to lead, 3) believe individuals learn through hands on experience and 4) that they can have a futuristic perspective of the benefits of modeling leadership behavior.

The major factors that may be holding business and executives back from implementing experiential leadership development include possible failures, bottom line focus, and the preserved value of PEOPLE. McCall (2010) plays devil’s advocate for the reader in identifying the counter arguments and suggesting potential solutions. For example, many executives have seem unprepared individuals get tossed into a project only to fail. McCall’s potential solution includes having leadership that identify learning differences in subordinates and cater to their learning needs. Some subordinates many need more modeling than others.

Furthermore, we can see similar suggestions reflected in the popular business literature including Outliers and Good to Great. Good to Great by Jim Collins emphasizes that success full organizations work to get the right people on the bus so together they can move in the right direction. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell stress the importance of practice. The authors illustrate that he most successful individuals have over 10, 000 hours of practice in their area. Imagine what an individual with over 10,000 hours of hands on experience could do by the time they are in a TRUE leadership experience.

The take away:

1) Individuals should be selected from the start that illustrate the potential and motivation to learn to lead and lead others.

2) Organizations should hold current managers accountable for creating experiential leadership development for their high potential employees.

3) EXPERIENCE = Success