WIO

When I was about 14 years old, I lost one of my best friends and basketball sparring palls, Jan. He had to change schools. Bad school results. He had failed all languages. Given that in those years we were studying five different languages, that was a fatal hit, especially for his self-esteem. He said: “I am a zero”. Four years later, I crossed paths with him again, and what a surprise. He had passed the highly selective entrance exams for civil engineering at one of the best universities in the country, and he was top of his class. Mats had never been his problem. According to Sternberg, a very influential scholar of human intelligence, "intelligent behavior involves adapting to your environment, changing your environment, or selecting a better environment” (*). Since my re-encounter with Jan, I have always carried in mind that definition. 

Now that I am studying NeuroLeadership, the same concept has come back to haunt me. In his “Process Model of Emotional Regulation”, James Gross of Stanford University differentiates a series of stages during the generation of emotions, and the strategies that individuals can apply at each stage to regulate their emotions (Gross, 1998a, 2002): 1. (S) SELECTION - Individuals select in which situations they choose to work and live, 2. (M) MODIFICATION – they can change something in the situation, 3. (A) ATTENTION - they can shift their attention to specific objects and neglect other stimuli, 4. (R) REAPPRAISAL - individuals can modify their appraisal of some situation, and 5. (RS) RESPONSE - individuals can select and modulate their responses to these events.

I content that especially what Gross calls “antecedent focused strategies” (1-4) are of paramount importance for leaders, as these strategies are instituted before the emotion is elicited (1998a, 2002; Gross & John, 2003). More specifically leaders can prevent work conflicts, stress, harassment and other unhealthy or counterproductive behavior, by fitting job requirements and talent (S), and flexibly redesign work responsibilities in function of changing needs (M).

My friend Jan has shown great self-governance in his adolescence. Hit hard, he could have come to accept he was just “dumb” (R), or recurred to drug consumption (negative RS). Yet he reinvented himself, from high school drop-out to mathematics wiz. He told me he was happy. That mats were for him what meditation would be for monks (A, R, positive RS). From Zero to Zen …

References           

Gross, J. J. (1998a). Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 224-237.

Gross, J.J., 2002, Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39, 281–291.

Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 348-362.

(*) Quote found Robert J. Sternberg's views on Intelligence and The Triarchic Mind. Wilson's Newer Views of Learning, http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/learning/STERNB1.htm.

Dr. Steven Poelmans is co-founder and former academic director of the International Centre of Work and Family (ICWF) and partner-director of WorkItOut, dedicated to human potential development. His research, teaching and consulting mainly focuses on employee wellbeing and flexible work arrangements, cultural intelligence and coaching, mostly with a cross-cultural perspective.

He published numerous articles in peer reviewed journals like the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Human Resource Management Review, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Academy of Management Journal, the International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, and Personnel Psychology. His research was nominated twice (2005; 2009) for the prestigious Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for the best paper in the multi-disciplinary field of work and family. He is editor and co-author of three academic volumes: “Work and Family. An International Research Perspective” (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), “Harmonizing Work, Family, and Personal Life: From Policy to Practice” (Cambridge University Press) and “Workplace Psychological Health: Current Research and Practice” (Edward Elgar). He is book review editor and guest-editor of the International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management (Sage Publications).

Read more.

When asked about their experiences with combining work and family, most parents will automatically refer to conflicts between these two realms in their lives. In a similar way, for many years researchers studying the work-family interface have primarily focused on how to avoid or alleviate work-family conflict.

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Organizations can no longer afford to assume that the ideal employee is male, full-time, and free from responsibilities outside work. As the percentage of women in the active work population rises, and the number of dual-income families grows, there is an ever greater demand for more flexible patterns of employment. Harmonizing Work, Family, and Personal Life examines the organizational challenges of introducing work-life policies and practices from both an individual and a managerial perspective. Drawing on a broad range of international case studies of companies where such policies have both succeeded and failed, it acts as a practical guide for policy design and implementation. Harmonizing Work, Family, and Personal Life will be essential reading for human resource practitioners, advanced students and academic researchers in the field of human resource management, organizational behavior, or career management.

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- Concrete experience,
- Observation of and reflection on that experience,
- Formation of abstract concepts based upon the reflection,
- Testing the new concepts,
- (repeat)
These four elements are the essence of a spiral of learning that can begin with any one of the four elements, but typically begins with a concrete experience. He named his model to emphasize its links to ideas from John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Kurt Lewin, and others writers of the experiential learning paradigm. His model was developed predominantly for use with adult education, but has found widespread pedagogical implications in higher education.

Kolb is renowned in educational circles for his Learning Style Inventory (LSI). His model is built upon the idea that learning preferences can be described using two continuums: active experimentation-reflective observation and abstract conceptualization-concrete experience.

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Es nuestro ultimo trabajo, a día de hoy aun se esta elaborando. Esperamos tenerlo acabado para mediados de 2010 para su lanzamiento en medios televisivos y circuitos de festivales.

Synopsis

“El Derecho de Jugar” es un documental que combina el genero del documental científico y el documental antropológico-cultural, con una línea narrativa que nos permite ver dos mundos muy distintos a través de los ojos de unos niños. El documental introduce la tesis que el juego es vital para el desarrollo psicológico y el bienestar de un niño, y que por tanto es un derecho humano básico. El documental aporta datos a esta tesis, basados en investigaciones en los campos de la neurociencia, la psicología, y la pedagogía. Se argumenta que la importancia del juego para el desarrollo de un niño es más que un imperativo ético universal, sino también una condición para un desarrollo sostenible de una nueva generación de africanos con un espíritu innovador y emprendedor. Demostramos que promover el juego en países en desarrollo es factible a través de los proyectos de la ONG Global Play, cuya misión es incrementar la asistencia escolar de niños y niñas en países en desarrollo a través de programas escolares asociados a la práctica del deporte, la lectura y el juego. El documental contiene entrevistas con expertos académicos, colaboradores de la ONG Global Play, niños y niñas, maestros y políticos de Mali.

Increased anger and loss of humour amongst people in the workplace are just two of the knock-on effects that businesses now have to deal with due to poor workplace health, according to new research (published April 2006).
The 'Quality of Working Life' report published by the Chartered Management Institute and Workplace Health Connect uncovers a high number of physical and psychological symptoms and highlights the impact these have on business performance.
The survey questioned 1,541 managers in the UK revealing a poor picture of health, with only half (50%) believing they are currently in 'good' health.
Key findings of the report were:
Anger and mood: 43% admitted to feeling or becoming angry with others too easily and one third (31%) confessed to a loss of humour creating workplace pressures.
Muscle tension and headaches: More than half of those questioned (55%) complained of muscular tension or physical aches and pains. 44% said they experienced frequent headaches.
Tiredness and insomnia: Asked about psychological symptoms, 55% experienced feelings of constant tiredness at work. 57% complained of insomnia.
The report also shows that ill-health is having an impact on morale and performance. One-third (30%) admit they are irritable 'sometimes or often' towards colleagues. Some managers also want to avoid contact with other people (26%) and many (21%) have difficulty making decisions due to ill health.
Mary Chapman (no relation), chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, says: "With the impact of ill-health being keenly felt in the workplace, managers need a better understanding of the consequences of letting relatively minor symptoms escalate. They need to take more personal responsibility for improving their health because inaction is clearly having an effect on colleagues and the knock-on effect is that customer relationships will suffer, too."
Elizabeth Gyngell, programme director at Workplace Health Connect, says: "Health activities should not be driven by a concern over legislation, but by the understanding that improved well-being can generate significant benefits to morale and performance. This means organisations should ensure their employees are well versed in identifying and addressing symptoms before they escalate."

The above article 'Poor workplace health is no laughing matter for uk managers' is ©CMI 2006, and used with permission.
The Chartered Management Institute helps set and raise standards in management, encouraging development to improve performance. Moreover, with in-depth research and regular policy surveys of its 71,000 individual members and 450 corporate members, the Institute has a deep understanding of the key issues. The Chartered Management Institute came into being on 1 April 2002, as a result of the Institute of Management being granted a Royal Charter.
As regards health in the workplace, Workplace Health Connect (a partnership between the CMI and the Health and Safety Executive) provides free, confidential, impartial and practical advice and support on health, safety and return-to-work issues.
Small businesses, which employ less than 250 workers and are based in England and Wales, can access the service via an Adviceline (0845 609 6006). Where needed, this will be followed up by workplace visits from qualified Workplace Health Connect advisers. These visits are available in London, the North East, the North West, South Wales and the West Midlands.
Workplace Health Connect advisers are able to advise on a range of issues that can affect workplace health including: poor manual handling technique, incorrect use of chemicals, poor hygiene in the workplace, working in dusty or noisy environments and working at a badly set up workstation.

Employers should provide a stress-free work environment, recognise where stress is becoming a problem for staff, and take action to reduce stress. Stress in the workplace reduces productivity, increases management pressures, and makes people ill in many ways, evidence of which is still increasing. Workplace stress affects the performance of the brain, including functions of work performance; memory, concentration, and learning. In the UK over 13 million working days are lost every year because of stress. Stress is believed to trigger 70% of visits to doctors, and 85% of serious illnesses (UK HSE stress statistics). Stress at work also provides a serious risk of litigation for all employers and organisations, carrying significant liabilities for damages, bad publicity and loss of reputation. Dealing with stress-related claims also consumes vast amounts of management time. So, there are clearly strong economic and financial reasons for organisations to manage and reduce stress at work, aside from the obvious humanitarian and ethical considerations. If you are suffering from stress yourself the stress management guidelines here are just as relevant.

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