How Can You Be A Better Executive Coach?

Topic: Coaching
Publication: Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice
Article: Hidden in Plain Sight: The Active Ingredients of Executive Coaching
Authors: D.D. McKenna and S.L. Davis
Reviewed by: Samantha Paustian-Underdahl

 Nowadays, executive coaching is a “must-have” for leaders in corporate America and I/O psychologists are not the only professionals filling this need.  With everyone from retired football coaches to former CEOs practicing executive coaching, what is the most effective way to coach?  Is there a single, most effective, way to coach? McKenna and Davis (2009) recommend applying the “active ingredients” commonly seen in effective psychotherapy sessions to executive coaching.  So how can executive coaches, who have little or no training in clinical psychology, apply principles of therapy successfully? The authors believe that the processes of coaching and psychotherapy are quite similar: both attempt to facilitate psychological and behavioral change through the one-on-one relationship between a trained professional and a motivated client.  McKenna and Davis suggest these four factors are the “active ingredients” of successful psychotherapy:

Client/Extra-therapeutic factors - The characteristics of the client and his or her environment outside of therapy account for the greatest differences in therapy outcomes. The authors suggest that clients must be ready and willing to change in order to have a successful coaching experience. The extra-therapeutic factors that affect the quality of development include the client’s work environment (e.g., will he be accountable for making changes?), culture (e.g., will she break unwritten rules by taking a new approach?), and resources. These help the client to apply the changes made in therapy to the workplace. 

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To Monitor or not to Monitor Emails: That is the Question

Topic: Job Performance
Publication: Academy of Management Perspectives
Article: Monitoring employee emails: Is there any room for privacy?
Authors: W.P. Smith and F. Tabak
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

 It’s hard to imagine work without email.  For many employees, email is a necessity.  One potential problem with email, however, is that it can be easily abused by employees (i.e., using email for personal reasons at work).  In response, many organizations have implemented email monitoring software.  But, is email monitoring fair?  Does it illegally infringe on the rights of employees?  And how does it affect employees? 

In a recent review of the email monitoring literature and relevant case law, Smith and Tabak note three basic reasons why organizations may want to monitor employee emails:

(1)           To protect the organization from potentially damaging information being transmitted via email.

(2)           To protect the organization’s assets that may be leaked during email transmission.

(3)           To facilitate productivity that may be cut due to excessive emailing.

The Legal Perspective: Though these are certainly legitimate concerns, the major legal issue is whether email monitoring infringes on employees’ rights to privacy.  Although there are good arguments for and against employee privacy, the courts have predominately ruled in favor of organizations using email monitoring systems.  However, case law in the area of email monitoring is sparse and thus provides little resolution to this issue.    

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Perspectives on Potential

Topic: Potential, Talent Management
Publication: Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice
Article: The Pearls and Perils of Identifying Potential
Authors: R. Silzer and A. Church
Selected commentary authors: Robinson, Fetters, Riester, & Bracco; Dalal & Nolan
Reviewed By: Samantha Paustian-Underdahl

 Identifying and developing talented employees is a human resource strategy that can help many – if not all – companies achieve business success. However, with the multitude of theories and techniques currently being used by practitioners and academics, how do you know the best way to identify talent in your organization? Silzer and Church (2009) introduce a new integrated model of potential that includes theories from previous literature and trends from current practices regarding high potentials which can be applied to a variety of settings and talent pools.

Trends in talent management are shifting from using short-term strategies for selecting employees for positions here and now, to hiring employees who will grow with the organization and eventually become successful in a higher-level organizational role. The authors explain that there are generally two types of potential assessed within organizations—the stable traits and competencies that a person already has, and the ability a person has to develop and learn new competencies. Silzer and Church note that within these two broad categories are three components of potential that should be considered in any talent management strategy: 1) foundational dimensions, 2) growth dimensions and 3) career dimensions.

1.    Foundational Dimensions - stable competencies that a person has throughout their adult career. They include cognitive ability, personality characteristics, and interpersonal abilities.

2.    Growth Dimensions - components that facilitate or obstruct a person’s growth and development. These may include adaptability, flexibility and motivation. These traits may be fairly stable across situations, but if a person has the opportunity to learn more about a particular area of interest in a supportive environment, these components can become stronger.

3.    Career Dimensions -  early indicators of potential for a specific career area. These will be specific to different careers but may include supervisory skill (indicating potential in a management role) or design and implementation skills (indicating potential in project management).

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Emotional Labor & Turnover…Fake It ‘Til You Make It?

Topic: Turnover
Publication: Journal of Organizational Behavior
Article: A predictive study of emotional labor and turnover
Authors: S.L. Chau, J.J. Dahling, P.E. Levy, J.M. Diefendorff
Reviewed By: Katie Bachman

 Good customer service may be causing workers to consider leaving their organization. Putting on a smile through a difficult interaction can deplete emotional resources—referred to as emotional labor—particularly when the employee does not fully subscribe to making the interaction positive.

There are two types of acting that employees engage in during these interactions: deep acting and surface acting. Deep acting occurs when employees attempt to change their feelings toward a situation so that their emotions match their behavior. Surface acting, on the other hand, occurs when employees merely mask their feelings and present an outward appearance that does not match their feelings. It is this second form of acting, surface acting, which causes emotional depletion. In this study, emotional depletion was positively related to turnover intentions (i.e. people who are “burnt out” think about leaving). Turnover intentions were then linked to actual turnover rates 6 months later.

Deep acting had the opposite effect. Employees who engaged in deep acting actually had lower levels of turnover intentions. Employees who fully take on their roles when interacting with others expend fewer emotional resources.

For business scenarios, this has some pretty obvious implications. Managers can go beyond encouraging employees to maintain that sunny disposition, and instead promote deep acting over surface acting. By doing so, they may keep those employees happier and with the organization longer – and that’s something to truly be happy about (I mean it!).

Chau, S. L., Dahling, J. J., Levy, P. E., & Diefendorff, J. M. (2009). A predictive

study of emotional labor and turnover. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30,

1151-1163.

Time Spent in Training: Who Stays and Who Goes?

Topic: Training
Publication: Learning and Individual Differences
Article: The influence of goal orientation dimensions on time to train in a self-paced training environment
Authors: K. Ely, T. Sitzmann, and C. Falkiewicz
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

 E-learning refers to computer-mediated training that grants trainees a great deal of control over the learning (e.g., time spent, pace, training location).  These freedoms come along with many potential possibilities and pitfalls.  One major disadvantage of self-paced e-learning is that trainees often stop instruction before mastering the training content.  However, from a financial perspective, decreased training time can save big bucks. 

Recently, Ely, Sitzmann and Falkiewicz (2009) predicted that trainee goal orientation (GO) would impact training time as well as knowledge gained from training in a “real world” self-paced e-learning course.  Specifically, the course was an occupational training course for electrical technicians.  

GO basically refers to the ways in which employees choose, work toward, and interpret the goals that they set.  There are several types of GOs that employees can have.  Employees who set mastery goals (mastery goal orientation) focus on mastering skills whereas employees who have performance-avoid GOs are focused on not failing and avoiding negative judgments of others. 

Ely and colleagues found that trainees who reported high levels of performance-avoid GO spend an average of five days longer in training.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Stress at Work

Topic: Citizenship Behavior, Counterproductive Work Behaviors
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology
Article: Can “good” stressors spark “bad” behaviors? The mediating role of emotions in links of challenge and hindrance stressors with citizenship and counterproductive behaviors
Authors: J.B. Rodell, T.A. Judge
Reviewed By: Katie Bachman

 Research suggests that stress can come from good or bad sources (Cavanaugh, Boswell, Roehling, & Boudreau, 2000).

Challenge Stressors can serve as opportunities for growth, for example:  you can be stressed because of job complexity (“now, WHAT am I supposed to do?”), workload (“I’ve got too much to do!”), and deadlines (Yikes!  It’s due tomorrow!”), which are termed

Hindrance Stressors, on the other hand, can be caused by stress because of bureaucracy (“Just let me do my job”), role ambiguity (“Whose job is this, anyway”), and hassles (“Like I said, just let me do my job!).

While both can lead to negative outcomes like emotional exhaustion, challenge stressors have been linked to positive outcomes such as job satisfaction. Hindrance stressors, on the other hand, are pretty much all bad, being linked to withdrawal behaviors and turnover. 

Knowing that stress exists in these different forms is well and good, but what’s more interesting is looking at how those stressors affect voluntary behavior on the job.

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Do You, You, Feel Like I Do?

Topic: Leadership, Job Performance
Publication: The Leadership Quarterly
Article: Do you feel what I feel? Mood contagion and leadership outcomes
Authors: S.K. Johnson
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

 Everyone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed from time-to-time - and leaders are certainly no exception. 

As a recent example, a study by Johnson (2009) shows that followers’ moods are directly impacted by the expressed moods of leaders.  This phenomenon is known as mood contagion, which in this case refers to the automatic transfer of moods from leaders to followers.  Mood contagion occurs unconsciously and thus employees have little control over it. 

First, Johnson demonstrated the mood contagion effect, such that when participants (university students) saw a video of a leader expressing a positive mood, they tended to report positive moods.  Similarly, when participants saw a video of a leader expressing a negative mood, they too tended to report negative moods. 

More importantly, participants reporting positive moods outperformed those reporting negative moods on a relevant task (a mock hiring task which related to the content of the videos shown to participants).  Johnson demonstrated that mood contagion was partially responsible for the performance outcomes.  Additionally, leaders who exhibited positive moods in the videos were rated as more charismatic, which was also found to affect follower performance on the task.

Because we are all subject to mood changes, leaders must be aware of how their moods can affect their followers’ performance.  Johnson’s study shows that moods can be highly contagious and can either enhance or damage employee performance. 

Johnson, S.K. (2009). Do you feel what I feel? Mood contagion and leadership outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 20, 814-827.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Invigorating Leadership/Job Performance Chain

Topic: Leadership, Job Performance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology
Article: How leaders cultivate social capital and nurture employee vigor: Implications for job performance
Authors: A. Carmeli, B. Ben-Hador, D.A., Waldman, and D.E. Rupp
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

 One important characteristic of effective leaders is the ability to build relationships and encourage communication and collaboration among their employees (i.e., leader relational behaviors).  Although we can probably all agree that leader relational behaviors should have a positive impact on employee and organizational performance, Carmeli and colleagues recently showed that the relationship between leader relational behaviors and job performance is a complex process.

Importantly, Carmeli et al. placed a heavy focus on the role of employee vigor (energetic feeling about work) in this process linking leader relational behaviors to employee job performance.  The authors collected data from 209 employees and 15 managers of several Israeli community centers. 

Not surprisingly, employees with managers who exhibit more leader relational behaviors tend to have more high-quality relationships with others in the workplace.

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How Employees Really Feel about Workplace Romances

Topic: Organizational Justice, Sexual Harassment
Publication: Journal of Business and Psychology
Article: Workplace romance: A justice perspective
Authors: N. Cole
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

 Workplace Romances (WRs) are a fact of life.  Some statistics suggest that as many as 40% of employees report having had a WR at some point in their careers.  Though organizations are often concerned about the potential performance and legal ramifications of in-house WRs, general attitudes toward WRs appear to be changing; employees are much less secretive about WRs than they have been in the past. 

Cole (2009) interviewed 100 employees who reported witnessing a WR in their workplace.  In general, study participants reported that the fairest managerial action was to treat WRs as inevitable and take little or no action against the employees.  However, managerial action was considered fair if the WRs have a negative impact on the work environment and/or job performance.  In fact, under these conditions, coworkers may find too little managerial action unfair.

Additionally, employees find managerial action against WRs fair when the parties work in the same department and when the organization has a formal written WR policy.  Although positive effects of WRs are sometimes discussed in the literature, Cole notes that none of the participants mentioned potential positive effects of WRs.  When participants discussed effects on performance and the work environment, they were always negative.  Thus, if positive outcomes are present, coworkers may not perceive them. 

Although organizations may have little control over the existence of WRs, Cole’s results highlight the importance of having formal, written WR policies.  Surprisingly, most organizations do not have written WR policies, but probably should (see review of Pierce & Aguinis, 2009 for WR policy recommendations).  Written policies legitimize managerial action in response to WRs and improve coworker perceptions of such action.  Overall, employees seem accepting of WRs, so long as they do not negatively impact the work environment or performance.

Cole, N. (2009). Workplace romance: A justice perspective. Journal of Business and Psychology, 24, 363-372.

Mentoring: A Win-Win-Win Situation

Topic: Mentoring, Job Performance
Publication: Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology
Article: What can I gain as a mentor? The effect of mentoring on the job performance and social status of mentors in China
Authors: D. Liu, J. Liu, H.K. Kwan, and Y. Mao
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

  Generally, mentoring relationships are intended to develop younger and/or less experienced employees.  However, research has shown that mentoring relationships benefit mentors as well as their protégés.  In a recent investigation, Liu and colleagues (2009) found that mentoring relationships relate favorably to mentors’ job performance ratings and social status within the organization. 

Using a large sample of mentors from a Chinese manufacturing firm, Liu et al. found that mentors who engage in more mentoring activities tend to have higher job performance ratings.  This relationship appears to be due the increased learning opportunities made available to mentors through the mentoring process.  Thus, mentoring activities offer mentors additional opportunities to learn which may influence their job performance.

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