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At The End of a Needle – The Importance of Psychological Capital
In 2012 a strange craze swept Wall Street.
Well, maybe ‘craze’ is the wrong word. ‘Crazy’ might have been a better way of describing it. Anyway, the growing trend which I am referring to was reported upon at that time in the Financial Times and I have just come across it recently. In the said article[1], a Dr Bissoon described the rationale behind the worrying developments I am referring to: “Since the recession started, more guys want to be on top of their game,” he said…”as one patient told me: ‘There’s a whole bunch of whizz-kids beneath me who are ready to take my place’.”
Leadership Lottery!
During a team night out, a group of disgruntled employees decided to exact revenge on their nasty boss. Whilst eating a meal in a restaurant, the said boss went to the bathroom. When he was away from the table, his employees searched through his wallet and found his Lottery ticket; they quickly wrote down his selected numbers.
Shocking Stuff!!
If someone told you to act in a way that you knew would hurt another person, would you do it? No? Absolutely sure about that, are you? Th ink about it. If a recognised authority figure told you to push a button, which you knew would deliver a mild electric shock to another person every time they made a mistake, would you? You might do that, right? I know I probably would. But, if that same authority figure told you to push a diff erent button which they said would severely shock – and perhaps even kill – the person, would you do it then? Absolutely not, you say? Me neither. No one would ever knowingly do something as perverse as that, would they?
Not Just the Score …
Most appraisals are ineffective and today the move is away from an over emphasis on the annual appraisal to more regular feedback and job chats. Feedback really matters to performance so it’s important to get it right.
“It’s WiFi Poisoning …”
For a blogger focusing on topics around work and life ,the hardest thing about lockdowns and social distancing is where to find inspiration for articles. There are very few people out and about, and even when there are some around, you can’t get close enough to eavesdrop on conversations! Okay, I jest about eavesdropping and generally I’m a mind my own business kinda guy, but still inspiration has to come from somewhere.
Thankfully, COVID-19 hasn’t stopped certain individuals from shouting into their mobile phones when out in public. On the bus home from work yesterday there were two people siting downstairs: myself, and a lady about four rows up. She was talking so loudly to the person at the other end of the line that passengers on the bus behind could have heard her, never mind me. So, listening in wasn’t so much a decision taken as an action forced upon me. Having said that, if you heard someone say “It’s WiFi poisoning,” you’d definitely listen in too, right? That’s exactly what I did and here’s what I overheard.
“It’s WiFi poisoning … COVID-19 doesn’t really exist. That’s just what the government is telling us … they don’t want us to know the truth…”
Rebuilding your team in a post-COVID world ...
Now that we are thankfully beginning to think again about a return to work post-COVID-19, along with all the many new realities, restrictions, redesigned work practices etc. that you must consider, you will of course also need to think of your people.
If you had developed a high performing team before the shutdown, you deserve a lot of credit for that, because it is never an easy thing to deliver. Naturally, things will not immediately return to ‘normal’ team-wise once you bring your people back together, because along with the many changes that have happened in recent months, your people too will have changed – and perhaps quite fundamentally in some ways. Undoubtedly, there will be an eagerness amongst most employees to get going again, but don’t assume that this eagerness will automatically translate into a return to previous levels of high performance. It will not. In many ways the teambuilding process starts again and understanding the evolution of teams - and the fluctuations in team performance - should be an important component of your post-COVID-19 action plan.
A useful way to introduce the concept of states of effectiveness of teams is to explore something called the Nut Island Effect.
