Author: Jenny Ebermann (bxljenny)

Multilingual Communication Professional, Mindful Leader and Coach/Consultant. Specialties: - Mindfulness, - Intercultural Communications, - Personal Development - Diversity and Inclusion - Mindful Leadership

Mindful Leadership and the influence of emotions on trust

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Emotion: happyIn preparation of D. Goleman’s presence and presentation in Lausanne at the IMD later this week, I was reading some very interesting articles/research about emotions and their influence on trust.

As more and more leadership publications and organizational excellence discussions talk about emotions and how important these are for successful self-management, people-management and organizational functioning and well-being (for the company as a whole as well as for the people in it), I find their influence on trust highly important. Trust is indeed necessary for effective teamwork, functioning partnerships, management, social life etc. It really is the main ‘ingredient’ for making things happen, able to reduce the complexity that we are confronted at all times so that we can be together, work together, deal together in business matters and other things. Once lost, it is very difficult to re-build trust in whatever context.

Thanks to research conducted in the field of psychology and neuroscience we now slowly begin to better understand and value how our ‘brains’[1] function and why it is so important to listen to both of them. The idea, that certain emotions can influence trust is hence extremely interesting.

So far, I only knew of research identifying links between affective states (moods and emotions) and unrelated judgments[2] and not how specific emotions influence subsequent judgments. “Unlike moods, emotional states are typically shorter in duration (…)”[3] and they are more complex than moods. In their research, Jennifer Dunn and Maurice Schweitzer, found out the following correlation:

“Happiness and gratitude—emotions with positive valence—increase trust, and anger—an emotion with negative valence—decreases trust. Specifically, (…) emotions characterized by other-person control (anger and gratitude) and weak control appraisals (happiness) influence trust significantly more than emotions characterized by personal control (pride and guilt) or situational control (sadness). (…) Emotions do not influence trust when individuals are aware of the source of their emotions or when individuals are very familiar with the trustee.”

Applied to leadership, these findings are of great importance. As we have seen in one of my previous posts, certain mental qualities or attitudes, “(…) provide a rich soil in which the seeds of mindfulness can flourish: [4]

  1. Patience
  2. ‘Letting Go’
  3. Non-Judging
  4. Trust
  5. Generosity

To summarize: Under certain conditions, emotions such as happiness and gratitude thus increase trust whereas a key attitude for being able to plant the ‘seeds’ of mindfulness is also trust. If you thought that mindful leadership is out of your reach, well here’s a place to start!

 

 


[2] See Joseph P. Forgas for example

[3] Jennifer R. Dunn and Maurice E. Schweitzer:  “Feeling and Believing: The Influence of Emotion on Trust”, page 737

[4] Jon Kabat-Zinn: “Wherever you go, there you are”, New York 1994, p. 3.

Managing conflicts – an intercultural approach

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In the intercultural field, we all know about “high-context” and “low-context cultures”, theories defined by anthropologist Edward T. Hall who helps us to understand which powerful effect culture has on routine communication. According to him, “in a high-context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain. Words and word choice become very important in higher-context communication, since a few words can communicate a complex message very effectively to an in-group (…), while in a lower-context culture, the communicator needs to be much more explicit and the value of a single word is less important.”[1]

High-context cultures would include Asia, Africa, South America and much of the Middle East; low-context cultures are more or less found in North America and Western Europe.[2]

Applied to conflicts or simply “dealing with difference” it becomes very obvious how different the negotiation and mediation styles and skills have to be when addressing issues in one context versus the other. “High-context communication tends to be more indirect and more formal.  Flowery language, humility, and elaborate apologies are typical.” Whereas in the low-context culture, “(…) people value logic, facts, and directness.  Solving a problem means lining up the facts and evaluating one after another.  Decisions are based on fact rather than intuition.”

Interestingly, very often even with people from the ‘same’ context, meaning Western Europe and North America for example (low-context), huge differences appear as to how conflicts and difficult situations are dealt with and managed. It becomes even more tricky, when the people around the table speak one language (English for example) but have in fact different mother tongues and own different passports (or residencies in different countries). Even though these people might be in a similar context, their “(…) communication style difference of intellectual and relational engagement provides a rich area for misinterpretation (…)” and their level of intercultural sensitivity, meaning “(…) the ability to experience cultural difference (…)” might also be a complete different one.[3]

An interesting study from 2008, entitled “Workplace conflict and how businesses can harness it to thrive” whereby workers attitude about conflict were analyzed questioning 5,000 full-time employees in nine countries around Europe and the Americas (Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States), found out that conflict “(…) has a bounty of positive potential, which if harnessed correctly, can stimulate progress in ways harmony often cannot.”

Interesting thoughts indeed… It shows once again how intercultural competence, sensitivity and related skills are necessary in order to address the issues of the 21st century where people are more connected, mobile and dependent on each other than ever!


[2] Compare also with http://www2.pacific.edu/sis/culture/pub/Context_Cultures_High_and_Lo.htm

[3] http://www.idrinstitute.org/allegati/IDRI_t_Pubblicazioni/4/FILE_Documento.pdf

 

Multitasking: An Impediment to Thinking & Behaviour

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Man multitaskingMore and more articles on the web state that multitasking and doing 10 things at a time, not only hamper creativity and innovation as well as reduce people’s ability to behave in an ‘emotionally intelligent’ way; even worse, it can affect your memory and lead to stress, thus illness.

Whereas these facts are more or less known, little action is taken to reduce multitasking in work environments. On the contrary:

  • People spend most of their days in calls
  • At the same time they receive an enormous amount of emails, many of them ‘urgent’
  • Very often, latest findings and messages have to be simultaneously posted on various external social media channels as well as fed into internal communication channels
  • Urgent calls are also coming in which were not scheduled beforehand
  • And: maybe you are even supposed to be in a face-2-face meeting during the day

Fortunately, we cannot clone ourselves (yet); we simply cannot be at different places at a time and do various things at once. In order to cope with the daily workload and demands, we usually try very hard to live up to everybody’s expectations.

For a certain while, we might even be able to handle all the demands and inputs successfully… but then, we normally feel overwhelmed or at least we cannot remember properly what was said in a call (where we were on ‘mute’ doing something else in the meantime) or when our colleague came to our desk to talk to us.

What should we do? We need to learn to scale down and approach tasks, demands and workload in a different, mindful way. Nobody can handle everything at the same time and people – yourself even more – deserve your unbiased attention.

You also might want to try implementing these little tips:

  1. Prioritise your emails: only answer the ones which are of major importance and where you are the direct recipient (not in cc and not in bcc).
  2. Instead of responding to chains of mails, make a quick call. Your issue might be solved in a couple of minutes
  3. When attending phone conferences, ensure that there is an agenda, clear objectives and you have an active part to play. You will find that most calls have no outcome and that very often your attendance is not necessary.
  4. When you do attend a call, switch off your other phone and concentrate solely on what is being said (without writing mails or surfing on the net on the same time); make notes and write down action points to make the most out of it.
  5. When attending face-2 face meetings or speaking with somebody, ensure you have enough time and switch off your various devices so that your attention lies on your discussion partner or the people in your meeting.

If you feel too overwhelmed and would like to speak about it, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I would be happy to coach you (even online) so that over time you can find strategies that work for you and adapt them. Mindful and systemic approaches are very much needed to ensure that your time is spent in an effective and creative way.

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend! Jenny

About Mindlessness and Mindfulness

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Leading the wayWhen reading about mindfulness in the workplace and more “mindful” organizations, have you ever thought about what it meant if somebody is “mindless”?

In her article “A call for mindful leadership” on the HBR Blog Network, Ellen Langer addresses this interesting question. She rightly says:

“When leaders keep everyone in their place with the illusion of knowability and possession of this privileged knowledge[1] the benefit to them is that we ‘obey’ and leaders feel superior. The cost is that they create lemmings. Their mindlessness promotes our own mindlessness which costs us our well being and health. Net result, the leader, the led, and the company all lose.”

I don’t know about you but I have seen many “mindless” people throughout my career. Many are scared of change, scared to look inside themselves and listen to their gut feeling, scared to loose their jobs, in sum: scared of uncertainty and not-knowing what will happen next.

Mindfulness in turn, allows you to live day by day and to deal with threats/take up opportunities as they arise; you are confident and positive as you know yourself and your abilities. As Margaret Wheatley puts it:

“Leaders are so afraid of paradox, so afraid of uncertainty. It takes a lot of bravery even to consider that uncertainty is not a threat, that in fact it’s creative and powerful. “

Or in the words of Ellen Langer:

“By learning how to exploit the power of uncertainty maybe all of us will wake up.”

Are you ready to take up the challenge?


[1] In fact being mindless as they cannot predict the future.

Storytelling – A powerful tool for changing organisations

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Storytelling

Earlier this week I posted “Strengthen and Sustain Culture with Storytelling” from Nancy Duarte on LinkedIn. It instantly sparked reactions, also on other social media channels.

Storytelling in communications and marketing is not new but the fact that it can and should be applied to organizational culture is very relevant. As an organization you certainly want to live up to your mission/vision and attain your objectives. If you do it by retaining talent, motivating people intrinsically and  making them feel ‘part of the game’, even better.

In line with the ongoing discussions about emotional intelligence and its importance for modern businesses, a story is an emotionally  – and from a communication perspective very important  – ‘tool’ that:

  • bonds people together (not only the ones featuring in the story itself)
  • conveys values and culture
  • motivates intrinsically as people feel concerned
  • visualizes objectives, measures etc. in a powerful way
  • makes people remember what you were talking about
  • etc.

As Ms. Duarte points out correctly in her TEDxEAST talk, “if you communicate and idea in a way that resonates, change will happen”.

Now, let me ask you: is your organization investing money into making people communicate more effectively with each other?

Have an excellent rest of the week,

Jenny

Podcast: The Power of Mindful e-mailing

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I hope you are having a wonderful weekend! Here is my second podcast in the Mindfulness Series, entitled “The Power of Mindful e-mailing“.

Podcast 2 | Jenny EbermannPodcasts are a very practical way to take me with you when you are at work, at home or on the road. Remember: You are the Architect of your Life! Everybody can start being mindful: TODAY!

Enjoy listening,

Jenny

Intercultural Competence – Can it be measured?

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While in Tallinn I had the pleasure of attending Dr. Milton Bennett’s speech: “Culture is not like an Iceberg, and Competence is not like Intelligence: The Ravages of Reification in Intercultural Theory & Research”[1]. As expected the temperature in the room directly rose and animated discussions followed the presentation. What sparked so many reactions was the fact that Dr. Bennett pointed towards the idea that intercultural competence is not a ‘thing’  – and therefore cannot be measured and/or ranked – as one cannot assume that it is normally distributed within a given population.

In his recent Blog post: “The Mismeasure of Intercultural Competence” he even goes a little further drawing a parallel between intelligence (IQ) and Intercultural Competence (IC). He says: “IQ was (…) devised as a system to rank people in terms of how much g[2] they had, and it is still with us today. The point here is that g (and consequently IQ) has no identifiable existence outside of our measurement.” When originally observing Intercultural Competence in behavior, whereby some people obviously had more of it than others, we directly assumed that the ones “(…) more competent had some set of measurable inherent qualities and characteristics that accounted for their competence”, hence something that could be measured.

One can easily understand why these statements cause so many reactions… it leaves HR professionals, trainers, coaches, consultants etc. with a big ‘question mark’, meaning a gap where the traditional measurement tools normally would have been situated. Exactly as in other domains – like communications for example – if you cannot prove in numbers how the situation was before your intervention and where it stands after, how can you show the ROI and show your value to the organization?

Concerning IQ, it is generally assumed that it is not the only factor determining how well a person will function in international or national teams, with employees or as a manager/supervisor. Whereas technical skills are important, different ways are found nowadays to express a persons’ skill levels; emotional intelligence with its different aspects for instance, well described by Daniel Goleman, is one example of a ‘new’ way of analyzing people’s competences when working together.

I guess in the case of Intercultural Competence, new ways have to be found to express how well a person adapts and others don’t. Certainly interesting new ground for research!

 

 

 


[1] You can find his slides here

[2] General Intelligence Factor

Forum Theatre – A powerful tool

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Intercultural CommunicationsWhile attending the SIETAR Conference in Tallinn, Estonia last week, I came in contact with a very interesting form of expression: the “Forum Theatre“. Originally created by Augusto Boal, the Forum Theatre or ‘Theatre of the oppressed” proposes a way of teaching people how to change the situation they are in.

In fact, real life situations in which participants have observed some form of oppression are re-played and discussed within the group under the guidance of an experienced trainer or coach. Whereas this particular form of theatre does not propose direct solutions, it however allows participants and observers to directly intervene in the play, change the course of action and thus experience first hand how situations can evolve and what this feels like. Many emotions are set free and subsequently discussed and debriefed within the group.

Introduced to us by a SIETAR colleage from Poland, I found it to be a powerful way deal with difficult situations! Do you know this particular form of theatre and what are your experiences with it? Looking forward to your reactions!

Jenny

 

Research Findings: The Value of Intercultural Skills in the Workplace

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See on Scoop.it – Mindful Leadership & Intercultural Communication
Culture at Work: The value of intercultural skills in the workplace —A survey conducted by the British Council, Booz Allen Hamilton and Ipsos Public Affairs, of HR managers at 367 large employers i…

Jenny Ebermann‘s insight:

Not new but very relevant and interesting! Thanks Dianne for posting this!

See on blog.culturaldetective.com

Did you know that you actually have two brains?

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Human brainOn my way to Tallinn where I am attending the 2013 SIETAR Congress, I read some interesting articles related to intercultural research, mindfulness and leadership. It always strikes me, how much everything is interrelated!

For example I read that leadership is not about controlling others and the environment we live/work in but to accept and treat others as ‘human beings’ who as such are capable of compassion, creativity and generosity. All it needs is somebody to bring out these qualities and skills, hence to work with collective emotional intelligence rather than with individual intellects only.

Whereas this would appear obvious to a mindful leader, another article expanding these thoughts by Amnon Buchbinder on Philip Shepherd’s ‘Out of our heads’ retained my attention. The latter explores the implications of the fact that there are two brains (yes!) within us: the cranial one which we know and the so-called ‘enteric brain’ located in our bellies (in the gut).

From my understanding of neuroscience, I know that there is a web of neurons in the belly allowing us to listen to the outside world through our bodies; what I did not know though, was how we as humans in our Western culture historically ended up putting so much emphasis on our ‘cranial brain’ and the intellect thus moving our ‘thinking’ self to the head.

We live in a ‘head-centered’ society and of course this has multiple consequences in our lives, on our organisational cultures, our education etc.etc. Interestingly, the idea of an integrated mind and body (i.e. the harmony we need to achieve in order to align our ‘two brains’), “the embodied feeling and lived experience” (Bennett, Castiglioni) also lies at the center of intercultural adaptation: the intuitive feeling of a culture is as important as cultural awareness and knowledge of a foreign culture to be able to effectively deal with difference.

Food for thought! During the next days here in Tallinn, I will certainly be learning many more new aspects of intercultural research, training and education. I can only say that listening to my gut feeling has brought me here and the practice of mindfulness is certainly one way of being in touch with myself again.

If you haven’t done so already, please follow my blog to learn more about Mindful Leadership & Intercultural Communications. I will be offering some free 20 minutes coaching sessions very soon for those of you who don’t really know what it is, want to try it out or simply are in need of coaching. Sign up here!