Category: Wellbeing

Focus on Strengths

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man in front of blackboard showing strong arms clenching muscles

So you’ve done a SWOT analysis and you’ve got a snapshot of where you are now – your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And that should be giving you ideas of where you want to go and how to get there.

But beware!  We know that the brain has a negativity bias.  I’ve already explained that the brain’s threat response is stronger than the reward response.  We tend to focus on the bad and overlook the good.  (That’s why bad news dominates TV and newspapers – we’re drawn to focus on the negative.)

So when we’re thinking about our own personal development, or we get feedback from others, we often pay more attention to our weaknesses or the gaps in our knowledge, and focus all our energy on fixing them.  (I’m sure you’ve experienced this when doing tests.  When you get the result, you soon forget that you got an amazing 90%, and you focus on the few bits you got wrong.)

But rather than using a deficit approach and trying to fix your weaknesses, you may gain more from discovering and focussing on your strengths. 

Our strengths energise us

Gallup has done a lot of research into this and developed its own character strengths assessment.  They have found that you’ll grow more and be more productive and engaged by focussing on your strengths than by improving your weaknesses.

It’s important to say that a strength is not necessarily the same thing as something you’re good at.  A strength energises you.  You might be good at something (admin, for example) but feel totally drained doing it, so that it is not really a strength for you.

So focussing on strengths with this definition makes sense – you’ll be more positive and energised if you get more opportunity to use your strengths in work and life. 

Marcus Buckingham explains this idea in this video:

That’s not to say if there’s a glaring gap in your knowledge or skills that is holding you back, you shouldn’t do something about it. This is not about ignoring your weaknesses completely. But you will be more inspired to do the work to get to where you want to go if you’re able to use your strengths.

So don’t rush past the ‘strengths’ section of your SWOT analysis. Take the time to dig deep and consider how you can build on your unique strengths.

Resources:

Try a free online questionnaire to discover your strengths:

The need to belong

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three giraffes

I mentioned in the previous post that humans are social creatures – belonging to a group was necessary for our survival as a species. And our survival mechanism – the threat and reward response – is therefore also triggered by social interactions.

You may have been taught Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at some point.  It’s usually shown as a pyramid, with basic needs such as food and shelter at the bottom, and higher needs such as esteem nearer the top.  The suggestion is that the lower needs must be satisfied before you can attend to the needs further up the pyramid.

maslow's needs pyramid
©SimplyPsychology.org

In the pyramid, ‘belonging’ and social needs comes half way up, after physiological needs and safety needs.  However, neuroscience is telling us that ‘belonging’ is a fundamental human need.  When people feel excluded, the same activity in the brain is seen as when people experience physical pain.  It hurts. As David Rock (2009) notes:

 “…people who feel betrayed or unrecognized at work — for example, when they are reprimanded, given an assignment that seems unworthy, or told to take a pay cut — experience it as a neural impulse, as powerful and painful as a blow to the head.”

Organisations are social systems – we belong to teams, departments, branches, professions and whole organisations. If your manager thumped you, you’d rightly demand compensation!  Yet, the way we treat each other can also cause pain. (Or, of course, make us feel good.) We need to be more mindful of that. 

References:

Rock, D. (2009) “Managing with the Brain in Mind”, Strategy+Business, Issue 56, Autumn 2009

Uncertainty is scary

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binoculars

Our brain is trying to protect us and it likes to be able to predict things.  If it can predict what will happen, it can help us avoid harm. 

Being able to predict things is also efficient – we can make decisions quicker without having to think every situation through. We can do things on autopilot and save mental energy.

In times of uncertainty, our brains cannot predict what will happen and we feel uncomfortable.  Our brain uses energy trying to go through all the possible futures there may be.  The Covid19 pandemic has raised the threat/stress levels for most people, not just because of the real physical dangers, but because of the uncertainty it brings.  Will I still have a job next month?  Can I survive financially? When can things get back to normal?

Studies have shown we feel better having a certain negative future than an uncertain one. For example, a study by Wiggins et al (1992) showed that people with parents who had Huntingdon’s disease, and who therefore might have inherited it themselves, were better off having the test and finding out for sure, one way or the other, rather than live with the uncertainty of not knowing.

And this is one of the main reasons organisational change can be so threatening. When a change is announced our expected future is disrupted, our brains become unable to predict, and this sends us into the threat response.  In times of change you need people to be working at their best, making good decisions and finding the best way forward, but the threat response means their minds are distracted and their thinking is impaired.  Scarlett (2019) describes it like this:

“The adult brain in a threat response is much like that of a teenager – quick to get angry and emotional, hard to reason with.  So an organization going through change is like an organization being run by a group of teenagers.”

Organisations can counter this by creating as much certainty as possible. Give a clear timeline for what you’re planning to do and when, for example, and stick to it.  And make the process quick, to lessen the time people are in this uncertain state.

So if you’re a leader, be empathetic to the problems uncertainty causes for the human brain and do what you can do to create more certainty for those around you.

References

Scarlett, H. (2019) Neuroscience for Organizational Change: An Evidence based Practical Guide to Managing Change, 2nd ed., London: Kogan Page Ltd

Wiggins, S et al (1992) “The psychological consequence of predictive testing for Huntington’s disease”, New England Journal of Medicine, 327 (20), pp 1401–05

Why change is stressful

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two frightened people

To understand why change can be stressful, I first need to give a brief biology lesson about how the brain works.

Our brain’s purpose is to keep us alive. To do that, it predominantly relies on two systems: seek reward and avoid threat.

You probably already know about these. The reward system makes us feel good, and includes the release of chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin.  A mild change can be rewarding.  We like a bit of novelty – to explore and learn new things. 

Our threat or stress response is known as the ‘fight-flight-freeze’ response.  Adrenalin and cortisol are released, triggering physiological changes such as increased heart rate and focussed vision.  Take a look at this video for more.

Threat is more powerful than reward

The threat response is far more powerful than the reward response.  This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view.  We can survive without finding food for a while, but it just takes one threat to kill us.  

So in order to avoid threats and gain rewards, the brain is constantly on the lookout for changes in our environment.  If things are as expected, we feel calm.  But if our brain detects change, we are wired to go on alert and assume the worst until proven otherwise.

So it’s frustrating when leaders say their employees should be more resilient when faced with change.  They’re human, and our brains are hardwired to see change as threatening.  We need to remember and be empathetic to that.

All change is not created equal

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board game pieces with different facial expressions

In the last post I talked about change load and change fatigue when there’s just too much change in a short period of time. Following on from this, it’s clear that change is experienced at the individual level – a small change might mean a minor adjustment for you but might be overwhelming for someone else.

Britt Andreatta in her book ‘Wired to Resist’ takes up this point.  I love her ideas as she has developed some visual tools to help you really think about the effect of changes on you and your team/organisation. You can listen to her explaining some of her ideas in this 10-minute video:

To start, she states that the effect of the change on any individual depends on four factors:

  • The time it takes for that person to get used to the change
  • The amount of disruption it causes them
  • The total number of changes they’re managing
  • How fast the changes are coming

Bringing the first two factors together gives you the ‘change matrix’.

2x2 matrix

So if the disruption the change causes is small, and the time it takes to get used to the change is small (‘time to acclimation’), then you can consider this to be ‘green’ – the effect will probably be small.

But if disruption is high and it takes a lot of time to get used to the change, the change can be classed as ‘red’.  

Individuals can then place whatever change is planned on this matrix.

mapping changes onto the change matrix

But as Andreatta outlines, there are other factors in play here. You’re going to react differently depending on whether you chose the change and if you want the change. 

And we also have to consider our earlier idea of change load.  When changes come together and start overlapping, their effect changes.  Two ‘orange’ changes may become a darker orange, and eventually a red. If you stack lots of changes on top of each other, you may meet or exceed your limits.

change matrix and max bandwidth

And we need to remember as individuals that organisational change overlaps with life changes. If your employee is going through a big life change at the moment, organisational changes are going to have a bigger effect (and vice versa).

Planning with the effects of change in mind

The book goes on to outline a new model to help managers plan changes in their organisation.  But for now, what I love about this is that it shows managers in the organisation that they have some tools and some control, indeed some responsibility, for managing changes so their staff aren’t overloaded.

In recent years, we have seen high and increasing stress levels at work and the response has often seemed to push the responsibility onto the individual employee – resilience training, yoga classes, meditation classes, and so on.  But companies can be more aware of all the changes across their organisation and track them.  Is someone noticing the fact that a massive IT rollout is happening at the same time as an office move and restructuring for one particular department?  Is an individual manager noticing that a team member is moving house at the same time as her role changes?

Organisations are made up of people. As humans we can adapt, but we also have to work within the limitations of the technology we’re built with – our brains. I’ll talk more about the brain in the next few posts.

References:

Andreatta, B. (2017), Wired to Resist: The Brain Science of Why Change Fails and a New Model for Driving Success

If you’re interested in learning more about the ideas in Britt Andreatta’s book, she is currently offering the ‘Change Quest model’ online course for free until June 30th 2020.

Change load and fatigue

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Change can be stressful. While a change may be as good as a rest, our brains can be threatened by the uncertainty, and it takes mental energy to shift habits, unlearn old ways and learn new ways.

How much change is too much?

You may have read or heard something like: ‘moving house is more stressful than divorce’.  This is usually based on research that asks people to rank the stress of various life events.  The best-known is probably the Holmes-Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale.  Holmes and Rahe (1967) developed a unit score for a list of 43 stressful life events.  If you add up the scores of all the events you’ve experienced in the previous year, you can predict how likely you’ll become ill from the stress.

Have a go – you can try the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory here.

I’ve just done it and I’m over 300, even though I haven’t experienced any of the top stressors!  (And note how even supposedly positive events, like holidays, have an associated readjustment score.)

Although the research can be critiqued, the idea that there is a stress load – that stressful life events on their own may be manageable, but when they come together, the cumulative effect can push us over the edge – is an important one.  Although there will be some changes we can’t control, as individuals we may have more control than we think on the timing of some of these events.  You might choose to avoid or delay changing job if you’ve just had a child, for example. 

And of course, this has implications for change events in organisations too.  A lot of the changes they impose on their employees are choices (upgrade of IT systems, moving offices, restructuring and downsizing etc) and therefore the timing can be adjusted.  So if you’re going through something exceptional like the Covid19 pandemic, which is causing widespread disruption for everybody, you have to stop and think:  is now really the right time to insist everyone change their passwords? 

It might be something really small that finally pushes people over the edge…

See the next post for more on this idea.

References:

Holmes, T.H. and Rahe, R.H., “The Social Readjustment Rating Scale“, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Vol 11, Issue 2, August 1967, pp 213-218.