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Does Your Workplace Mental Wellbeing Strategy Focus on Individuals?

Many factors influence how likely we are to stay physically healthy or to become ill. Researchers refer to these as the determinants of health (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2016). Some of these factors relate to us as individuals, such as our:

• biology e.g., genetics, sex, age, medical conditions
• psychology e.g., thinking patterns, how we deal with our emotions, and how we relate to others, and
• lifestyle or health behaviors e.g., alcohol or drug use, smoking, diet and physical activity.

However, research going back over two decades shows that between 30 – 55% of health outcomes relate to drivers that occur beyond the level of the individual (Osmick & Wilson, 2020; Wilkinson & Marmot, 1998; World Health Organization, n.d.). These social determinants of health are our everyday living and working conditions, what the World Health Organization calls “the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life” (World Health Organization, n.d.).

The social determinants of health include:

• employment status and working conditions
• education
• access to affordable health services
• income
• housing
• social connectedness
• adverse life events (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2016; World Health Organization, 2022a, n.d.).

Mental health and wellbeing is about more than individual factors

In recent years there has been a growing awareness that mental health is similarly influenced by both individual factors and social determinants (Compton & Shim, 2015; Jurkowski, 2012; World Health Organization and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2014). Mental health conditions, which include anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorders, are now understood to result from a complex interplay between:

• an individual’s vulnerability based on their biology, psychology and lifestyle behaviors, and
• the stress caused by stressors from their environment (the social determinants) (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Mental health status involves an interplay between individuals and their environment (World Health Organization, 2022c).

Although most of us are sufficiently resilient to cope with stress most of the time, the more our environment exposes us to risk factors (stressors), the greater our likelihood of experiencing a mental health condition (World Health Organization, 2012). Governments, communities and workplaces all have a role to play when it comes to addressing the stressors we are exposed to.

Does your mental wellbeing strategy focus only on individuals? Interventions at the individual level are not enough

The previous point drives home the fact that interventions targeting individuals are inadequate to comprehensively address threats to mental health and wellbeing. It is certainly helpful for all of us to build personal resources that reduce our vulnerability and help us to cope. However, interventions that target the environmental stressor side of the equation, that is, the social determinants of mental health are also essential.

Work is a social determinant health. Australian work health and safety (WHS) laws are focusing on psychosocial hazards is therefore a much-needed mechanism for addressing risks to mental health. The changing regulatory landscape signals an understanding by governments that the onus for mental health should not solely be placed on individuals. Attention must be given to work-related stressors.

Safe Work Australia, the national body responsible for the development of model WHS laws, defines psychosocial hazards as hazards that arise from or in relation to:

• the design or management of work,
• the working environment,
• plant at a workplace (machinery, equipment and tools), or
• workplace interactions or behaviors;

and may cause psychological and physical harm (Safe Work Australia, 2022).

Australian businesses have a legal obligation not just to respond to psychological injuries but to prevent workers being exposed to psychosocial hazards in the first place. As can be seen from the list above, preventing exposure requires good work design and safe work systems. Focusing on individuals without considering the systems in which they exist is no longer enough. In the World Health Organization’s recent publication Guidelines on mental health at work, organizational-level interventions and manager training for mental health, alongside training for workers in mental health literacy and awareness, are recommended (World Health Organization, 2022b). Are you ready to apply systems thinking and develop organizational-level interventions?

If your organization has a mental wellbeing strategy, you’ve made a start. But if your programs emphasize personal responsibility for mental health such as resilience and stress management skills, a paradigm shift is needed. Well Excel’s digital badges on psychological health and safety can be your guide.

Key Takeaways

• Our physical and mental health are determined by both individual factors and social determinants.
• The greater our exposure to stressors, including psychosocial hazards at work, the greater our likelihood of developing a mental health condition.
• Interventions that reduce an individual’s vulnerability, such as stress management and resilience training, are valuable but insufficient to prevent psychological injuries.
• Australian businesses have a legal obligation under WHS laws to prevent workers being exposed to risks to their mental health. It’s time to pivot towards organizational-level approaches that focus on work design and safe systems of work.

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Psychosocial Risk Assessment: Where to Start

In our previous psychological health and safety posts, we considered the changing regulatory landscape of workplace mental health and how to identify psychosocial hazards. In this post we will take a look at a practical, validated tool for conducting psychosocial risk assessments.

JD-R model of burnout

Over the last twenty years, the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model of burnout has become popular amongst organizational psychologists as substantial research has shown it accurately describes how work-related stress develops (Bakker & Demerouti, 2014; Demerouti et al., 2001). In the JD-R model, work characteristics are divided into demands and resources:

• Job demands are physical, psychological, social or organizational aspects of a job that require sustained physical and/or psychological effort. Examples include a high workload, lack of role clarity and exposure to traumatic events or materials.
• Job resources are aspects of the job that reduce job demands, help employees achieve work goals or stimulate personal growth, learning and development. Examples include supervisor support, job control (autonomy), reward and recognition.

According to the JD-R theory, work-related stress occurs when job demands outweigh job resources (Figure 1). Over time this stress can lead to burnout and ill-health, both physically and mentally.

Psychosocial hazards are anything in the design or management of work that increases the risk of work-related stress (Safe Work Australia, 2019). Thus, psychosocial hazards are job demands. Psychosocial hazards are risk factors for psychological (mental) health as they increase work-related stress. By contrast, job resources are protective factors as they protect workers from stress.

Figure 1. JD-R model of burnout. Stress occurs when demands outweigh resources and can lead to burnout and ill-health.

Psychosocial risk management

Psychosocial risk management is about preventing psychological harm to workers by eliminating job demands as far as reasonably practicable. Where this is not possible, risk management involves minimizing the impact of job demands through the buffering effect of job resources.

According to Australian work health and safety (WHS) laws, risks to psychological health and safety must be managed like risks to physical health and safety. Because every workplace is different, there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to managing psychosocial risks. Each organization needs to:

1. Identify their particular hazards
2. Assess the risks associated with these hazards by considering the likelihood and the consequences of the hazards
3. Control these risks
4. Review the selected control measures to check they are working as intended

A practical tool

Australian work health and safety regulators in each jurisdiction have heard from employers that they need more support and practical tools to meet their legislative obligations concerning psychosocial hazards. In response the regulators in each state and territory have jointly funded People at Work.

People at Work offers a step-by-step process that workplaces can use to identify and measure risks to psychological health and safety. A key component of the People at Work process is an online survey that measures common psychosocial hazards and job resources found in the research literature.

The five steps in the People at Work process are:

1. Preparing the workplace: gaining commitment, identifying your champions and communicating your plan
2. Conducting the survey: setting up and initiating your survey
3. Understanding your result: accessing your report and analyzing the data to understand your results
4. Taking action: creating an action plan to ensure the benefits of the People at Work process are fully realized
5. Reviewing and improving: monitoring and reviewing the effectiveness by repeating the People at Work process

Why use People at Work to measure psychosocial hazards?

• The tool was developed collaboratively by academic researchers, beyondblue and several WHS regulators. It continues to be funded (and thus endorsed by) all Australian WHS regulators (People at Work, n.d.-a).
• People at Work is available free of charge.
• The survey has been validated meaning that interpretations contained in the reports, derived from the survey results, are justified.
• Under WHS laws it is mandatory to consult with your workers at each stage of the risk management process. Conducting an employee survey is one way to do this for the identification and assessment steps.
• Survey data is strictly confidential and stored on a secure server.
• Workplaces can compare their People at Work results with other Australian organizations. The tool’s benchmarking data shows the prevalence of psychosocial hazards across states and territories, sectors, industries and occupations.
• The People at Work process provides tailored guidance on taking action based on the results.
• If the survey is repeated every 12 – 18 months, trends over time can be established.

Avoid ‘one and done’ thinking

It is recommended that People at Work be used in conjunction with other methods to identify and assess risks as no tool perfectly captures all existing or potential psychosocial hazards in every workplace.

• In the previous post we considered forms of workplace data that could be interrogated.
• The developers of the People at Work survey recommend conducting follow-up focus groups to explore the survey results, understand what psychosocial hazards look like for your workers and to gather information from them about suitable control measures.
• People at Work can only be used for organizations with 20 or more employees.

Action

The first step is to take a look at a sample comprehensive or overview report to see if this tool would be useful in your organization. Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page to locate the downloadable report links.

Key Takeaways

• Work-related stress occurs when job demands outweigh job resources.
• Psychosocial hazards are job demands and represent risk factors in relation to psychological (mental) health.
• Under Australian WHS laws, risks to psychological health and safety must be managed using a risk management approach.
• People at Work is a free, validated, practical tool to identify and measure psychosocial hazards and job resources.

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How Long Does It Take to Form a New Habit?

The idea that habits are formed after a specific timeframe can be traced back to a best-selling book from the 1960s called Psychocybernetics (Maltz, 1960). The author, Dr Maxwell Maltz, was a plastic surgeon who observed it took around 21 days for patients to adjust to their new appearance. Maxwell then reflected on his own experiences and noticed it took him about the same time to form new habits. The notion that you can ‘fix’ your marriage, your body, your financial life, your (fill in the blank) in 21 days has been cited in countless self-help books ever since. But it doesn’t stack up to the research.

How many days does it take to form a new habit?

There is no magic number of days or hours when it comes to forming new habits (Lally et al., 2010). Habits develop as a function of frequency, not time (Clear, 2018). Repeating behaviors in a stable context, that is, establishing a routine, is more important than repeating an action for a set number of days. How long a habit takes to form depends on how long it will it take you to repeat this behavior so much that the structure of your brain changes to become efficient at the activity.

A look at the neuroscience of habits

The human brain contains around 100 billion nerve cells that look and act like miniature electrical cables (Voytek, 2013). Each neuron has thousands of connections to other neurons resulting in an incredibly complex neural network containing trillions of connections (Goldman, 2010). Let’s stop for a moment to really appreciate the scale of these numbers. Our brains are an extraordinary feat of creation!

Neurons ‘talk’ with each other at a cellular level. This communication begins when a small electrical current travels down the length of one nerve. However, when it reaches the end, there is a problem. The next neuron is a short distance away and there is no bridge. The most complex organ on the planet has devised an ingenious solution. The electrical signal reaching the end of the line triggers the release of a chemical called a neurotransmitter. The chemical makes the journey across the gap, known as a synapse. When the neurotransmitter reaches the next neuron, a new electrical signal is activated and the communication process continues.

In 1949 Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb proposed a neural mechanism to explain learning and memory (Hebb, 1949). His theory, which came to be known as Hebb’s Rule, was neurons that “fire together wire together”. The more often a particular circuit in the brain is activated (the firing), the stronger the circuit (the wiring) becomes.

Habits and long-term potentiation: Repetition is key

Nearly two decades later, experimental evidence for Hebb’s rule was finally gathered. Terje Lømo discovered that with repeated firing, synapses between neurons are strengthened, a phenomenon known as long-term potentiation (Lømo, 2003).

Therefore, to form a new habit, repetition is the key because it’s what drives the brain to rewire. Eventually this rewiring leads to ‘automaticity’ and we no longer have to think about what we’re doing. This is the point at which we can say we have truly formed a habit.

But, you’re probably still after a ballpark (we see you!), so let’s take a look at some research. One study asked people to record on charts how easy it was to carry out a new routine once each day (Gardner et al., 2012). By plotting this data on a graph, the researchers were able to figure out exactly when automaticity develops. They discovered that it increases sharply at first and then starts to level off, or plateau, over time. Gardner and colleagues’ study reported it takes an average of 66 days for automaticity to develop leading many experts to say habits take about 10 weeks to form.

But this is a mistake! There is a subtlety in the data from this 66 days study. While the average length of time for a new habit to become automatic was 66 days, the range was an astonishing 18 – 254 days! This means that there is enormous variation in how long a habit takes to become established depending on the difficulty of the routine. Something as simple as drinking a glass of water with lunch each day takes less time to become a habit compared with a daily exercise routine (Gardner et al., 2012).

Habit change requires a bit of patience and a focus on the “long game”. It’s important to know that habits develop slowly as unrealistic expectations may cause you to give up. Stay the course and focus on the reps!

Takeaways

• It doesn’t take 21 days to form a habit, nor does it take 66. Because habits develop as a function of frequency, not time, it’s impossible to assign a number.
• How long a habit takes to develop depends on both the complexity of the task and how often it is repeated.
• To form a new habit more quickly focus on developing a routine and repeating it frequently.
• Automaticity is the hallmark of a habit. Repetition causes the rewiring in the brain necessary for automaticity.

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How to Identify Psychosocial Hazards

In a previous post we discussed the shifting regulatory landscape in Australia when it comes to workplace mental health. The key change is that businesses are now or soon will be (depending on the jurisdiction) required to apply a risk management approach to psychological health and safety. The first step in this process is to identify reasonably foreseeable psychosocial hazards (Safe Work Australia, 2022b).

Examples of psychosocial hazards

Recall that psychosocial hazards are aspects of work such as the design or management of work, the environment, plant (equipment and tools), and workplace behaviors that can cause psychological and/or physical harm. Fourteen common psychosocial hazards are listed in the model Code of Practice developed by Safe Work Australia (2022a):

• Job demands
• Low job control
• Poor support
• Lack of role clarity
• Poor organizational change management
• Inadequate reward and recognition
• Poor organizational justice
• Traumatic events or material
• Remote or isolated work
• Poor physical environment
• Violence and aggression
• Bullying
• Harassment including sexual harassment
• Conflict or poor workplace relationships and interactions

Methods to identify psychosocial hazards

Section 3.2 of the Model Code of Practice outlines a variety of methods that can be used to identify psychosocial hazards.

In this post we will consider: (1) ways workers might talk about their exposure to psychosocial hazards during consultation, and (2) sources of workplace data that may help HR staff, HSRs, WHS (workplace health and safety) managers, supervisors and leaders to identify potential psychosocial hazards.

Really listening to workers

Employees may or may not be familiar with the language used in WHS legislation or by WHS practitioners. Therefore, all staff involved in identifying psychosocial hazards need to be alert to the kinds of phrases workers might use to describe hazards to their psychological health and safety (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Recognizing the signs of psychosocial hazards (Safe Work Australia, n.d.).

Let’s consider specific examples of worker language and what psychosocial hazards they might relate to.

Sources of workplace data

Data can be particularly helpful for identifying psychosocial hazards. If your business keeps the following records, review the information and look for trends (Workplace Health and Safety Queensland, n.d.). If you are a medium to large organization and this information is not readily available, the list may prompt you to introduce new record keeping processes. If you don’t yet have a system for reporting psychosocial hazards, start there as it is a recommendation rather than option in the model Code of Practice.

• Sick leave and absenteeism records. Different rates of sick leave across your organization can identify issues in particular work groups.
• Recreation/annual leave. Workers taking small amounts of time off frequently can be a sign of unpleasant working conditions or work-related stress.
• Timesheets and payroll data. Frequent additional hours can signal high job demands or under-resourcing of certain teams.
• Workers’ compensation claims. Psychological harms include anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and work-related stress. Workers’ compensation claims can be interrogated for trends relating to these harms.
• Grievances. Worker complaints and investigations can provide information about harassment, discrimination, violence and bullying.
• Employee assistance program (EAP) records. Summary data such as the number of staff using the service as well as the types of issues addressed may be available.
• Staff turnover and exit interviews. Higher than normal staff turnover may be an indicator of psychosocial issues. Exit interviews can uncover problems that have not been formally documented elsewhere. When employees are fearful about the repercussions of reporting issues such as bullying, conflict, poor workplace relationships, lack of support or poor organizational justice, exit interviews may be the only way to capture this data.
• Incident and injury records. Reviewing small and large incidents, including dates and times, can provide insight into possible sources of workplace stress.
• Reports from workplace inspections. HSR or safety officer walk arounds may identify psychosocial hazards.
• Minutes of WHS meetings, toolbox talks and staff meetings. Minutes may reveal unresolved or recurring workload and other workplace health and safety concerns.
• Policies and procedures. Psychosocial hazards can arise from the design and management of work. Therefore, work systems and governance arrangements should be reviewed including onboarding/induction, training and supervision.
• Position descriptions. A lack of role clarity may be evident from vague or nonexistent PDs.
• Industry associations. Workers may report incidents and hazards to outside parties including industry associations and labor unions.
• Employer reviews. Sites such as glassdoor.com and seek.com can provide insights into how workers are experiencing your workplace.

In a subsequent post we take a look at a validated tool for conducting psychosocial risk assessments.

Key Takeaways

• Changes to the way workplace mental health is regulated in Australia mean businesses will now (or soon) be required to apply a risk management approach.
• The first step in this process is to identify reasonably foreseeable psychosocial hazards.
• Under WHS laws, workplaces are legally required to consult workers. Staff with HR, WHS, management or leadership responsibilities should be familiar with the various ways employees may describe psychosocial hazards.
• Workplace data is a further rich source of information that can be used to identify psychosocial hazards.

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Workplace Mental Health: The Changing Regulatory Landscape

Is your organization adapting to the changing regulatory landscape of workplace mental health in Australia? Read on (and check out our subsequent blog posts) to learn more.

Work Health and Safety

Safe Work Australia is the national body responsible for the development of model work health and safety (WHS) legislation. These model laws are comprised of the model WHS Act, model WHS Regulations and model Codes of Practice (Safe Work Australia, n.d.). WHS model laws are designed to provide a harmonized approach across states and territories. However, Australia’s system of government means these laws do not apply unless they are implemented by a jurisdiction. To date, all state and territories except Victoria have implemented the model laws or a version of them.

Safe Work Australia published significant amendments to the model WHS regulations in April this year to clarify employers’ obligations regarding psychological health and safety (workplace mental health). These changes were followed by the release of a model Code of Practice providing guidance on managing psychosocial hazards at work in July.

What are psychosocial hazards?

Safe Work Australia (2022a) defines psychosocial hazards as hazards that:

• arise from or in relation to:
  • the design or management of work
  • the working environment
  • plant at a workplace (machinery, equipment, tools, etc.)
  • workplace interactions or behaviors; and
• may cause psychological harm such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and sleep disorders; and
• may cause physical harm such as musculoskeletal injury, chronic disease, and physical injury following fatigue-related workplace incidents.

In other words, psychosocial hazards are aspects of work that can cause psychological and/or physical harm.

What has changed?

The model WHS Act, developed more than a decade ago, placed the onus on employers to address the risks to workers’ physical AND psychological (mental) health. Physical health and safety were required to be managed using a risk assessment approach. However, it was much less clear what was expected in relation to psychological health.

The recent amendments (regulation 55) now outline specific duties for businesses in relation to psychosocial hazards. The key change is that risks to psychological health now also need to be managed using a risk assessment approach. This means organizations have a duty to:

• identify psychosocial hazards
• assess psychosocial risks
• take appropriate measures to control these risks, and
• review the control measures to determine if they are working as intended.

When it comes to controlling risks, businesses must eliminate psychosocial risks in the workplace, or if that is not reasonably practicable, minimize these risks so far as is reasonably practicable. These changes mean that the psychological health and safety of workers must be protected in the same way that their physical health is protected and that psychosocial risks are now a clearly defined WHS issue.

Despite the wording around psychological health being in the model Act since its inception, responsibility for mental health (or ill health) in many organizations has been unfairly placed on individual workers. The amendments strengthen the existing regulatory framework by making it clear that organizations are responsible for fostering mentally healthy workplaces. Furthermore, businesses must not just respond to hazards as they arise but take active steps to prevent psychosocial risks in the first place. These legislative changes signal a shift in focus by the WHS regulators in each jurisdiction towards mental health. The question is: are you (the employer) ready?

The status of changes around Australia

At the time of publishing (October 2022):

• Victoria was the only state or territory not to adopt the model WHS laws when they were introduced. In May 2021 WorkSafe Victoria published a draft of proposed amendments to the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations. The new regulations are expected to commence sometime this year.
• New South Wales introduced a Code of Practice on managing psychosocial hazards at work in May 2021. A Work Health and Safety Amendment Regulation came into effect on 1 October 2022.
• Australian Capital Territory released a strategy for managing work-related psychosocial hazards in October 2021.
• Western Australia introduced three mentally healthy workplace Codes of Practice in February 2022: Psychosocial hazards in the workplace, Violence and aggression at work and Workplace Behavior.
• Queensland introduced a Work Health and Safety (Psychosocial Risks) Amendment Regulation in October 2022 that will come into effect on 1 April 2023. A Code of Practice is expected to be implemented shortly.

In a subsequent blog post we will explore how organizations can identify psychosocial hazards.

Key Takeaways

• The Australian regulatory landscape around workplace mental health is changing.
• Psychological health and safety must be managed in the same way as physical safety using a risk management approach.
• These changes represent a significant change in thinking around who is responsible for mental health at work and a transition from a reactive response model to a proactive risk prevention model.

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When Should Managers Decide to Form a Team?

In their influential review article titled “Enhancing the Effectiveness of Work Groups and Teams”, organizational psychologists Steve Kozlowski and Daniel Ilgen comprehensively defined a team as:

• “two or more individuals who
• socially interact (face-to-face or, increasingly, virtually)
• possess one or more common goals
• are brought together to perform organizationally relevant tasks
• exhibit interdependencies with respect to workflow, goals, and outcomes
• have different roles and responsibilities, and
• are together embedded in an encompassing organizational system, with boundaries and linkages to the broader system context and task environment” (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006).

It is true that much modern-day work cannot be done without teams, and that a collective can be more effective than the sum of work from individuals (Salas et al., 2018). However, former business school professor Scott Tannenbaum and industrial organizational psychologist Eduardo Salas, authors of Teams That Work: The Seven Drivers of Team Effectiveness (2020a), say “let’s be really clear – teams are not a panacea. Not all work should be performed in teams… When a team is asked to do something that would be better handled by an individual, the experience is likely to be bad, the results are likely to be suboptimal, and people will incorrectly assume that teams don’t work” (Tannenbaum & Salas, 2020b).

Forming a team: Our recommendations for action

Before forming a new team, ask yourself:

• Could the work be completed by one person with appropriate expertise or even two people working independently?
• If the task requires two people, could their contributions be completed sequentially?

If the answer to these questions is yes, a formal team is not required. The work would be better performed individually or by loose associations of individuals rather than a formal team. The critical consideration is interdependence. A team only makes sense when the people involved need to work together simultaneously or rely on each other’s input and resources to perform their own tasks effectively.

A word of caution: poor team experiences can sour employees’ opinions about teamwork in general and affect their willingness to participate in future teams (Tannenbaum & Salas, 2020b). This makes sense as psychological research shows that shared experiences are amplified (Boothby et al., 2014). In a group, good feels better and bad feels worse. So, use teams only when they’re genuinely needed, and if you are willing to give them the time, autonomy and resources needed to succeed (Tannenbaum & Salas, 2020b).

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How Leaders Help Their Teams Build Trust

Research consistently shows team trust positively impacts team satisfaction and performance (Breuer et al., 2016; De Jong et al., 2016). Trust is the shared belief that all members will contribute according to their role and act in ways that protect the team (Bandow, 2001; Salas et al., 2005). Scott Tannenbaum, co-author of Teams That Work: The Seven Drivers of Team Effectiveness (2020), says trust boils down to “judgments of capability and character – do I think you can and will do the right thing” (Duncan, 2020).

Components of trust

Trust has both affective and cognitive components; affective trust relates to the intuitive feelings we have when we interact with people, whereas cognitive trust is based on our thoughts (Erdem & Ozen, 2003).

Cognitive trust is built through consistently demonstrating competence, benevolence and dependability. This form of trust takes a long time to develop and is easily broken (Hugander, 2022).

On the other hand, affective trust (or distrust) is often based on fairly immediate judgments (Duncan, 2020). These may not be fair or accurate as we are all subject to implicit biases that operate almost entirely on an unconscious level (Cherry, 2020). Social identity theory and social categorization research have shown that we intuitively trust people who appear to be similar to us (Brewer, 1979; Brewer & Kramer, 1986; Kramer & Brewer, 1984). We tend to feel distrust when we perceive differences (Hugander, 2022). This is clearly problematic because our feelings do not always accurately reflect the other person’s capability and character.

Building team trust as a leader: Our recommendations for action

Trust begins with you. According to Tannenbaum, you can’t make someone trust you, but you can behave in ways that make trusting you more likely (Duncan, 2020). You can demonstrate your competence by owning your mistakes, benevolence by taking an action that is not in your self-interest, and dependability by following through on your commitments (Tannenbaum suggests saying “I’ll look into that” instead of “I’ll take care of that” if you’re unsure you can deliver) (Duncan, 2020).

Leadership styles, unsurprisingly, have an impact. If you want to build high-performing teams, authentic and shared leadership have been shown to encourage team trust (Guenter et al., 2017; Hirst et al., 2016). Leader emotional intelligence (EI) is also positively associated with team trust (Chang et al., 2011).

In terms of the team, trust can be fast-tracked through “checking in” practices before the team gets to work (Dinh & Salas, 2017). Checking in involves discussing relevant prior experiences and allows team members to learn about each other’s abilities, an important prerequisite for cognitive trust (Mayer et al., 1995). Checking in also allows the team to identify similarities which is important for affective trust. Trust can be further fast-tracked through team building interventions that focus on interpersonal relationship management (Klein et al., 2009).

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Personal Productivity Tools You’re (Probably) Not Using

In this post we explore two powerful, yet underutilized productivity tools: Timeboxing and Prioritization. Read on to take your productivity to the next level.

Productivity Tool #1: Timeboxing

Personal productivity is all about goal setting and taming our To Do list, right? Wrong. Psychologists have found, in countless peer-reviewed scientific studies, that implementation intentions are far more likely to get us to follow through than goals (Brandstätter et al., 2001; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Moshontz & Hoyle, 2021). Implementation intentions are concrete plans that specify what we will do and when.

Time blocking and timeboxing are methods that use implementation intentions to plan our days. They involve transferring tasks from our to-do list to our calendars by estimating how long they will each take and identifying the best time to work on them (Figure 1). Time blocking refers to scheduling time for tasks in our calendar, whereas timeboxing, a term borrowed from agile project management, also means imposing a limit on the time for each task (Scroggs, n.d.; Zao-Sanders, 2018). For example, ‘Write’ scheduled from 9 – 11 am today is an example of time blocking. ‘Write 500 words’ in the same calendar timeslot constitutes timeboxing.

Figure 1. An example of time blocking (Scroggs, n.d.).

Management consultant Daniel Markovitz describes these techniques as “making a production plan for your work” because “to-do lists don’t work” (Markovitz, 2012). Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable (2019), calls timeboxing “the most powerful time management technique you’re probably not using” (Eyal, n.d.).  Computer science professor at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work, Cal Newport, concurs:

“Sometimes people ask why I bother with such a detailed level of planning. My answer is simple: it generates a massive amount of productivity. A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure” (Newport, 2016).

Parkinson’s Law, time constraints and utility

In a 1955 essay published in The Economist, British naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson wrote:

“It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” (Parkinson, 1955).

In the decades since this observation, researchers have shown that ‘Parkinson’s Law’ does indeed have merit (Wen, 2020). For example, in one study, some subjects were “accidentally” allowed fifteen minutes to complete an activity which could be performed in five. These individuals spent significantly more time working on the task than those allowed the minimum time (Aronson & Landy, 1967).

Such research confirms that a lack of constraints makes us less productive. Timeboxing is the antidote to Parkinson’s Law; it forces us to work efficiently as we have limited time allocated to tasks. But you may be wondering, what about the impact of time constraints on quality?

The relationship between time pressure, performance and productivity has been studied extensively. Management researchers Don Moore and Elizabeth Tenney refer to the quantity and quality of an output as ‘performance’, and ‘productivity’ as performance per unit time (Moore & Tenney, 2012). After surveying the extensive literature on these topics, they concluded:

“…time pressure generally impairs performance because it places constraints on the capacity for thought and action that limit exploration…Thus, time pressure increases speed at the expense of quality. However, performance is different from productivity. Giving people more time is not always better for productivity because time spent on a task yields marginal returns to performance” (Moore & Tenney, 2012).

What this really points to is that there is a ‘Goldilocks’ phenomenon at play here. We need to find the ‘just right’ point. Too little time on a task and the quality and quantity suffer – rushing causes us to make errors and be less creative (Moore & Tenney, 2012). Too much and we are simply wasting time as there is limited improvement in the overall outcome. Overly generous deadlines make room for overthinking and distractions (Moore & Tenney, 2012). Moore and Tenney argue that what we should really be aiming for is neither performance, nor productivity, but a measure that combines the two called utility (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Performance, Productivity and Utility of Work as a Function of Time (Moore & Tenney, 2012).

As we spend more time on a task, our performance increases. For example, if we have one hour to write, we can produce a certain number of words. If we have twice the time, we will produce more words or better words (or both). But, as we can see from the graph, the increase in performance is not linear. “When people sit down to do a task, they’ll put in a lot of effort initially. [But] At some point there’s going to be diminishing returns on extra effort”, says Tenney (Wen, 2020). The reason we achieve less in the tenth hour than in the first hour is that there are limits to our mental bandwidth – our memory, attention and fatigue – according to Princeton professor Eldar Shafir (Wen, 2020).

Because additional time translates into lower productivity, productivity is highest initially. The “just right” point, “sweet spot” or what Moore and Tenney (2012) call the “inflection point” is where utility is at the maximum, and what we should base our deadlines on.

Productivity Tool #2: Prioritization and effectiveness

Where do efficiency and effectiveness fit into the performance – productivity – utility story? Utility is about producing high quality work with maximum efficiency. However, we must always remember that it’s possible to focus on the wrong tasks. We can fill out a form with no mistakes (high quality) quickly (maximum efficiency), and therefore achieve utility.

However, our guiding principle as knowledge workers should always be “Am I being effective? Am I doing the work that matters?” We need to remember the principles of prioritization: “Should I be the person filling out the form? Should I outsource this task or drop it completely?”

The take home message here is: Timebox the right tasks.

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Three Myths and Truths About Habits and Goals

When it comes to habits and goals, have you come across conflicting advice? Are you unsure what to believe? This fact-checking blog post sets the record straight by revealing three truths and three common misconceptions.

Truth #1: Habits can be invisible

Habits are routines we carry out often and without conscious thought, that is, automatically. We most often associate habits with our behaviors, physical actions such as making a cup of coffee first thing each morning, driving the same route to work, checking email in response to that familiar ‘ding’, or flicking on the television during dinner. Action habits are visible.

But habits can also be invisible. Our thought patterns are mental habits that are hidden from view. The critical self-talk when we realize we’ve made a mistake. The snap judgment we make about a new co-worker based on first impressions. Or, if we’re lucky, the self-congratulatory inner dialogue when we tick something off our to-do list. These thinking patterns can develop in both childhood and adulthood and often emerge without our conscious awareness.

Emotional habits are also invisible. These are our ‘go-to’ feelings that get triggered automatically, like the anxious pit-of-the-stomach sensation when our boss asks us to give a presentation, the burning anger when someone is rude to us or the feeling of calm (or not) when we walk through our front door after a tough day. Many of our emotional habits formed during childhood and can feel like automatic reactions.

So, habits are what we do, how we think and how we feel when we are on autopilot. Habits are our second nature.

Truth #2: Habits are not restricted to individuals

Families and couples develop interpersonal dynamics; patterns of acting, thinking and feeling together. Groups have traditions, rituals, customs, mores and practices. These are our collective social, cultural and societal habits. Organizations develop habits too; the often-unspoken conventions that invisibly shape how we operate at work.

Truth #3: Habits matter more than goals

How much of your daily activity is the result of conscious decision-making? 70%? More? The answer might surprise you. Professor Wendy Wood’s team at Texas A&M University conducted research exploring the relationship between people’s thoughts and actions (Wood et al., 2002). They found that a stunning 43% of all behaviors are repeated in the same context without conscious awareness, that is, are habitual. What this means is that we are ‘asleep at the wheel’ much of the time. If you think this doesn’t ring true, can you remember exactly how you got dressed this morning, ate your breakfast, brushed your teeth? Do you remember every detail of how you got to work? Our intentions and goals are far less important in shaping our lives than we think.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a successful life depends on setting goals about the ‘big’ decisions. What career to pursue, where to live, which company to work for, who to partner with, whether to have kids. And while it is undeniable that these choices matter, habits are the ‘sleeping giants’ of our lives, the often-overlooked origin of our results. What we eat for dinner tonight doesn’t matter a great deal. But what we eat for dinner every night undoubtedly influences our long-term health. How we organize our workday today might be of minimal consequence. But how we do it every day affects our overall productivity. What we said to our loved ones when we left the house this morning may have felt unimportant. But what we say to them daily over the course of years means the difference between satisfying relationships and those that feel disconnected.

The author Will Durant expressed this principle as: “We are what we repeatedly do…therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit” (Durant, 1926). Habits matter not just because they help us get better results. They matter because they help us become the person we want to be. Habits help shape our identity.

Myth #1: Successful people have more self-control

Temptation is all around us. Storefronts filled with shiny objects on our walk to the office. Sugary donuts at meetings. Cigarette smoke wafting our way on a break. And so begins a David and Goliath battle of willpower vs temptation. The problem is this isn’t a fair fight. Studies have shown that self-control is a limited resource (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000) and that the effort involved in wielding self-control depletes willpower (Neal et al., 2013). What happens when willpower is low, such as when we are distracted, tired or overwhelmed? Our higher order thinking centers in the brain go offline, and we revert back to our automatic actions, that is, our habits. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; if we have good habits, these become our default such as a daily exercise routine (Neal et al., 2013).

Why, then, do some people, especially successful individuals, seem to have so much self-control? Why can they do what they said they were going to do when the rest of us mere mortals struggle? Recall that almost half of our actions are habitual. People who appear to be temptation-busters are simply good at forming productive habits so they don’t have to think too much about eating a healthy lunch, going for a run after work and paying their bills on time. And they have modified their environment so they’re not overly reliant on willpower.

Myth #2: I can’t change my habits because my genes are in control

A common reason for thinking we can’t change is the belief that our genes or our DNA is the master controller of our lives. The “nature versus nurture” debate has been around for a long time. The nature side of the argument says that our genes are destiny. The nurture side claims that environment controls human development.

Which idea is true? The answer is “both” and their influence is about “50-50” according to neuroscientist Ian Robertson (Storr, 2015). He says “we should be very positive about that 50% that’s environmental”. This nurture side of the equation is where our ability to change our habits lies. Our belief that it’s “nature vs nurture” needs to be updated to it’s “nature AND nurture”.

Myth #3: To form new habits I need to “go big or go home”

In the self-improvement industry, and wellness circles in particular, it’s common to see advice recommending big lifestyle overhauls like bootcamps and cleanses. But what happens afterwards? Failure, typically, as reflected in the saying “biting off more than you can chew”. Going big introduces a lot of risk.

Author James Clear became interested in habits after a sporting injury put him in a medically induced coma. He slowly recovered and became an all-star athlete and successful student. What was his secret? He discovered that small, incremental changes are remarkably effective in the long-term, and developed a system for behavior change that he wrote about in his book “Atomic Habits” (Clear, 2018). Former Stanford University professor BJ Fogg has studied habits for 20 years and taught over 60,000 people how to change their behavior. He has developed a comprehensive behavior design program around this same idea called “Tiny Habits” (Fogg, 2020).

Even small behavior change achievements increase what psychologists call “self-efficacy”, the belief that we have the capacity to accomplish tasks (Gardner et al, 2012). Forming one ‘small’ habit often creates a momentum for further changes that snowballs over time. Success begets success. Tiny can be transformative (Fogg, 2020).

Discover surprising truths about how you make decisions.

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Three Surprising Truths About Decision Making

Are smarter people more rational? Do perfect decisions exist? Do good decisions always involve luck? Read on to learn three surprising truths about decision making.

Surprising truth #1: Even if you’re smart, you’re irrational and make stupid decisions all the time

“The map is not the territory” – Alfred Korzybski (Farnam Street, n.d.)

Are you more, less or about the same as other people when it comes to being impartial? Insightful? Biased? We’ll see how this is relevant shortly.

As we navigate through life we develop mental models, or beliefs, about how the world works. However, these models are only approximations, a sentiment captured in the quote above. Lurking within our mental models are thinking errors called cognitive biases which cause inconsistencies between our beliefs and reality. This matters because it leads to bad decisions.

In his bestselling book Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel prize-winner Daniel Kahneman summarizes a large body of scientific research that conclusively demonstrates we are less rational than we believe (Kahneman, 2011). Psychologists call the tendency to view ourselves as more impartial, more insightful and less biased than others the objectivity illusion (APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2020)

What do your answers to the questions above reveal about your objectivity? Do you ever make dumb decisions? Would this feel difficult to admit in case it means you’re not smart? The surprising truth, according to Kahneman, is that smart people make stupid decisions all the time. So, let’s differentiate between our intelligence and our decision-making capability. They’re not the same thing.

Surprising truth #2: Perfect decisions don’t exist as certainty is an illusion

“Instead of altering our beliefs to fit new information, we do the opposite, altering our interpretation of that information to fit our beliefs” – Annie Duke (2018)

It’s time to bust a common myth that interferes with our ability to make sound choices: that we can make perfect decisions. This idea is pernicious because it leads us down rabbit holes in search of ever more information or options in the hope that we will be able to control the outcome of a decision. Even if we could overcome the resultant analysis paralysis and make a choice, certainty is not guaranteed. Let’s explore why.

First, we never have perfect information. Since we don’t have unlimited research time, our information is always incomplete. And we have to make trade-offs between time and accuracy, so time restrictions equate to inaccurate information.

But even if we did have unlimited time, our information would continue to be inaccurate. Our many cognitive biases conspire to make it so. What we label an information problem is actually a thinking problem. For example, the spotlight bias (thinking what we see is all there is) and the confirmation bias (the tendency to avoid evidence that doesn’t support our beliefs) lead to a phenomenon called motivated reasoning (Psychology Today, n.d.). We have a dog in the fight, so we overlook obvious and important facts. Motivated reasoning happens outside of our conscious awareness. Because we aren’t aware of it, we don’t think that it affects us, but it certainly affects our conclusions.

Surprising truth #3: Luck and chance play a role in almost every decision

There is a second reason we need to let go of the idea we can control everything that happens to us: there are very few situations in life that don’t involve luck. We can stack the odds in our favor by having a robust decision-making process, but there will almost always be some element of chance.

To make great decisions we have to be able to think probabilistically, that is, be able to estimate the likelihood of particular outcomes from each choice. Cognitive psychologists have studied our ability to predict the future and what will make us happy; it’s not as good as we think. We also overestimate our ability to make good things happen. There are multiple cognitive biases at play here including the representativeness heuristic, availability heuristic, overconfidence bias, optimism bias and impact bias.

What underpins our desire for certainty is that we experience gains and losses differently. Yep, it’s another cognitive bias called loss aversion. It’s estimated the psychological pain of losing is twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining (The Decision Lab, n.d.). So, when we imagine a decision turning out badly, the feeling of regret is stronger than any positive feeling we get from predicting a favorable outcome. The same is true for past decisions; the sting of regret looms larger than happier memories.

So, what are we to do? We can’t do anything about luck, but we can improve the quality of our decisions: (1) through developing a system, (2) by training ourselves to make probabilistic predictions, and (3) by expanding our comfort zone regarding uncertainty through “satisficing”; instead of aiming for a perfect decision, we can choose options that satisfy and suffice so are ‘good enough’.

Do you know how your habits impact your goals, and vice-versa? Explore these Three Myths and Truths About Habits and Goals.