by Charles Plant | Sep 21, 2012 | Research
What? A second blog today? I actually wrote the last one on Wednesday but got distracted and forgot to promote it until today. So much for focus.
You might have noticed that women are taking over the world. From university enrolment to the professions and now to politics, women are coming to dominate men in almost every field. You might have wondered why. (Or you might not have, but I’ll tell you why anyway.)
It’s because of focus. Men don’t focus as well as women. In order to advance mankind’s understanding of the human condition I have penned this blog so here it is, 5 reasons why men can’t focus.
- The Hunter Instinct – Men are evolutionarily designed to be hunters. From the earliest days of mankind, men were responsible for killing game. To do that requires that men be highly aware of the smallest movement in case it means there is something out there to kill and eat. Nowadays when men are in meetings, they still carry this evolutionary trait and are easily distracted by the smallest things.
- Superior Intelligence – Men are the more intelligent of the sexes as they have so many important things to think about. Who can focus on doing dishes or putting the toilet seat down whene there is world hunger to solve or hockey games to think about? Perhaps men will become more focussed this year as a result of the hockey lockout.
- Emotional Attunement – Men are so emotionally attuned that it hurts. They notice each and every change in emotions, especially in women. With such emotional attunement men are constantly distracted by even the slightest display of emotion. In order to focus, they have had to block these messages out and as a result, they have blocked them so successfully that many men deny having any emotions whatsoever.
- Sex – Yes, sex. Did you know that studies have shown that men think of sex on an average, every 8 seconds. If you’re thinking about sex that often, how could you focus any anything else effectively?
by Charles Plant | Sep 4, 2012 | Research
No, you’re probably not going back to school but for many, the day after Labour Day means the start to a new year. Despite the fact that the year doesn’t actually start for another four months, this is as good as a time as any to start afresh and improve the way you work.
To start your new year off well, for the next three weeks I’m going to focus on a few tips to make you more productive. To get started on this, I thought there would be nothing better than to tackle the one thing that seems to bog people down most. And what is that? Email of course.
The Email Grind
First some stats on email so that you don’t feel so all alone. According to statistics from a few email studies done by AOL.
- 15% of Americans say they are addicted to email.
- 59% of those using portable devices check email as it arrives.
- 43% of users sleep near their email unit to hear incoming messages.
- 40% consider email accessibility when they plan a trip.
- 83% check their email once a day while on vacation.
- 43% check their email first thing every morning.
Email Volume May be Overwhelming You
Statistics published by the Radacati group state that the typical corporate email user sends and receives about 110 emails per day. This breaks down into 74 email messages received, 61 of which are legitimate and 13 of which are spam. The average number of emails sent is about 36.
Oddly enough 110 emails per day does not sound like all that much. Could you imagine though if you got 110 letters in the mail each day or you got 110 phone calls in a day. You would be absolutely swamped. And guess what? Many of you are actually swamped by email.
So for a great New Year’s resolution, why not try to get more efficient about how you handle email. Over the next few days I’ll try to give you a few tips for making email less of a drain on your life.
by Charles Plant | Aug 21, 2012 | Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Development, Research
Lest you think I’m making up some of this stuff on Intrapersonal Intelligence, I want to introduce you to Howard Earl Gardner, an American developmental psychologist who is a fancy professor at Harvard. The author of over 20 books he is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences.
Gardner’s theory is that intelligence is not generalized but that people have eight different types of intelligence, all independent of each other. These intelligences are different ways of learning and processing information, Gardner has identified eight intelligences:
- Linguistic
- Logic-mathematical
- Musical
- Spatial
- Bodily/kinesthetic
- Interpersonal
- Intrapersonal
- Naturalistic.
As a leader, you’ll need to use many of these types of intelligence but the foundation of your success is to be able to understand yourself, thus Intrapersonal Intelligence.
Intrapersonal Intelligence has to do with introspective and self-reflective capacities. Understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are, what makes you unique, being able to predict your own reactions or emotions are elements of Intrapersonal Intelligence. Philosophical and critical thinking is common with this intelligence.
If you want to read more on this subject I would recommend Gardner’s book “Intelligence Reframed” (1999).
by Charles Plant | Aug 8, 2012 | Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Development, Research
Research into the subject of resilience has shown that while for some, it is innate, for the rest of us, it can be acquired.
Emmy Werner was a sociologist who followed nearly 700 children from Kauai, Hawaii growing up with risk factors (one-third of whom had multiple risk factors) from birth to adulthood. Kauai was quite poor and many of the children in the study grew up with unemployed, alcoholic or mentally ill parents.
Approximately two thirds of these children became troubled teens and turned to petty crime. However, about one third of the children in the exact same situation had no adverse affect—in fact some of them thrived. Even those two thirds who had a tougher time usually managed to pull themselves together by age 30-40 and live happy and productive lives. In fact, only one out of six of the adult subjects at either age 32 or 40 was doing poorly — struggling with chronic financial problems, domestic conflict, violence, substance abuse, serious mental health problems, and/or low self-esteem.
What’s the difference here? It comes down to what researchers call Protective Factors. For the one third of children who did not act out as teens, the protective factors are innate. These children are born with characteristics such as not being distressed easily, being active, sociable, easy-going and having the ability to help themselves. Impulse control and several other key factors are in play here as well.
For the individuals who became resilient, they acquired protective factors later in life and were able to turn a negative situation into a positive one.
by Charles Plant | Aug 1, 2012 | Leadership Development, Research
If you could choose to have one outstanding attribute, what would it be? Would you choose intelligence or creativity. Perhaps charisma, self-confidence or emotional intelligence. Maybe even physical attractiveness or extroversion? Come on, think about it, what one would you choose?
While certain traits may be important in certain occupations, research is showing that there is one trait or attribute that is important in all of them. And that trait, shared by leaders in all fields is grit.
True grit is perseverance and the passion passion for long-term goals.
Michael D. Matthews and Dennis R. Kelly in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology have determined that:
- grit accounted for an average of 4% of the variance in success outcomes, including educational attainment among 2 samples of adults,
- grade point average among Ivy League undergraduates,
- retention in 2 classes of United States Military Academy, West Point, cadets, and
- ranking in the National Spelling Bee.
“Grit did not relate positively to IQ but was highly correlated with Big Five Conscientiousness. Grit nonetheless demonstrated incremental predictive validity of success measures over and beyond IQ and conscientiousness. Collectively, these findings suggest that the achievement of difficult goals entails not only talent but also the sustained and focused application of talent over time.”
So there you have it. It is better to persevere than to be good looking, creative, intelligent etc. So stop frittering away your time reading this blog and get down to work.
by Charles Plant | Jul 24, 2012 | Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Development, Research
There is more to this staying calm stuff than you might realize. Research is showing that it may be possible to train yourself (or at least train mice) to remain calm in stressful situations. Yesterday’s blog elicited some feedback which took me to a piece of research published by Psych Central.
“In the new Neuron study, Pollak and Kandel sought to tease out the behavioral and molecular characteristics of learned safety in mice.
“In their experiments, mice were trained to associate safety or fear with specific auditory stimuli (tones). For fear conditioning, the auditory stimulus was paired with a mild shock to the mouse’s foot. For safety conditioning, the auditory stimulus was not followed by a shock.
“The experiments showed that the safety-conditioned mice learned to associate the tone with the absence of danger and displayed less anxiety in the presence of this safety signal.
“Moving to a stress test, Kandel’s team placed the safety-conditioned mice into a pool of water for a swim test. The forced-swim test is commonly used by researchers to measure how antidepressant drugs affect the behavior of mice.
“In this seemingly desperate situation – where the mice have no option to escape from the water — they start to show signs of behavioral despair that are ameliorated by antidepressant medications. We found that the mice trained for safety could overcome their sense of hopelessness in the swim test,” Kandel explained.”
I have been trying to think how this might fit in at work and think that perhaps the use of some object that calms you down might have the same effect. Think of a place that you find very calming, home, the outdoors, wherever it is. Now find some very small object that you associate with that environment. The next time you feel you might be entering a stressful situation at work, hold the object and think of the location from which it comes. I’m going to try this as a technique to see if it actually calms me down.
