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Organizational Change

By Madison Hanscom, PhD Changing how we think can have a profound impact on our life at home and work. Growth mindset is the notion that who we are as a person (e.g., our character, abilities, intelligence) is malleable and capable of being developed with effort. At the opposite end of the spectrum is a fixed mindset, which describes when an individual feels their talents and abilities are predetermined and not flexible. Those with a more fixed mindset might feel some people “have it” and others “don’t”. Research on this topic began in education, where it was observed that students with

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By KyoungHee Choi While culture is widely recognized as an important lever to grow brands, increase productivity, improve revenue while improving safety and customer experience outcomes, many organizations still find to drive and manage something that feels intangible. In challenging times, it may seem hard to invest time and resources into something that can’t easily be measured, like “company culture”. Especially when the very survival of your company itself is at stake. However, culture is far more than an abstraction. It is critical to bringing your values to life and to driving business success. In challenging times it’s even more important

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD Attitudes influence behavior. There are a host of reasons why justice perceptions should be of concern to companies. They influence the employee experience, the brand, the reputation of the company, and the customer experience. Justice perceptions are also related to important organizational outcomes like job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, citizenship behavior, trust, turnover intentions, health and stress (1,2). This begs the question — Researchers were interested in this question. In order to examine these relationships, they collected data from over 300 mine and factory workers (e.g., textiles, food processing, breweries, timber and sawmill plants) (3). The researchers were interested

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD Let’s say you are about to start your workday. Imagine two scenarios: • A day in which you will be doing the same task repeatedly for 8 hours• A day in which you will rotate between a variety of tasks for 8 hours Which would you prefer? Although it feels great to get really good at a particular task, over time this can take a toll on motivation. Research has shown that individuals with variety in their work tasks are more satisfied with their jobs (1). Repetitive tasks with little variation can also contribute to complacency and attentional issues,

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD The extent to which individuals can “bounce back” to how things were pre-crisis describes their resiliency. It is beneficial to have a workforce of resilient employees who can recover quickly from difficult times. Not only is this better for the company (e.g., financially), it is better for the people (e.g., psychologically). We often place onus on the individual to be resilient. We might think, “they just need to get over it”. But researchers have shown that others in our environment can have an impact on our resiliency, and this includes leadership. After or during a hard event, employees

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By Madison Hanscom, PhD There are a great deal of conflicting perspectives when it comes to leadership training. Many individuals do not think it is worth the time because they believe leaders are born and not made – that genetics and personality are more influential in determining a great leader than the knowledge, skills, and abilities someone can build and sharpen during training. Others think training is a valuable tool that leads to a better workforce. But what does the research say? A group of researchers (1) decided to dig deep into questions about leadership training by conducting a meta analysis on

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