How to be more creative, according to psychology

Posted on

 

 

By Emily Reynolds

 

Engaging in creative activities has significant benefits. Creative forms of therapy can have a positive impact on those with depression, dementia, and bipolar disorder, for example. Outside of therapeutic settings, too, creativity has numerous upsides: it has been associated with greater innovation, for instance, and may even increase mental clarity.

Creativity, then, can make our lives better in a multitude of ways, as well as being an end in itself. But how do we increase our levels of creativity?

From keeping dream diaries to using particular emotional regulation strategies, here’s the research on how to boost creativity, digested.

Consciously push yourself to be creative
We often view creativity as something we have to let ourselves express naturally rather than something that can be forced. But one study found that receiving an instruction to be creative can, perhaps counter to this assumption, actually boost our creativity.

The team asked a number of jazz pianists to improvise a piano track as they would normally. They were then instructed to play three more times, and before one of these performances were told to “improvise even more creatively than your past performance(s)”. For participants who were relatively inexperienced, this instruction seemed to work: independent judges described their improvisations as “more proficient, aesthetically appealing, and creative” than their previous attempts.

The team suggests that the command to be more creative led these pianists to put conscious effort into trying new ways of playing. However, participants with more experience didn’t get the same benefit from this instruction, perhaps because they were already such expert improvisers that their technique couldn’t improve with greater conscious control.

So if you’re looking to boost creativity, especially if you’re an amateur, making a conscious effort may help. Continue reading →

A Flexi-Work World Needs New Performance Appraisals

Posted on

 

 

 

by Chengyi Lin

 

Adopting the right metrics could help align objectives and encourage more companies to embrace flexible work arrangements. 

Although the days of full remote work may be over, many employees have expressed a desire for flexible work arrangements. But with Covid-19 no longer a global health emergency, more organisations could demand that people return to the office – setting the scene for an inevitable tug-of-war.

Some organisations including Google, Meta and EY have continued to allow teleworking in some capacity, but others have followed the lead of Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk and insisted on calling employees back to the office full-time. Some of the downsides of flexi-work that often come up are onboarding difficulties, the logistical challenges of asynchronous work, the erosion of team cohesion, culture and collaboration, and the risk that employees may become demotivated.

There have always been inherent tensions and misalignments between employer and employee goals. Many of them are now amplified by flexi-work. Managers may prefer an in-person work environment for reasons of control and ease of coordination. Employees tend to prioritise convenience and efficiency, as well as meaningful collaboration. Organisations value performance, culture and talent development.

An unlikely solution lies in tweaking the performance appraisal system. Doing so could help align priorities, build common ground and create an organisational culture in which flexible work arrangements help people and businesses thrive.

Managing the tensions

Performance appraisals have long been a critical aspect of business performance and talent management. Besides marrying individual and organisational goals, they help move the organisation forward collectively during periods of change. Continue reading →

How to motivate employees when their priorities have changed

Posted on

 

 

 

 

 

by Kristi Hedges

 

 

Get into a conversation with a company leader these days, and you’ll likely hear some version of “no one wants to work hard anymore.” Those companies who are hiring still seek hungry, ambitious hard-chargers who will do what it takes to succeed. But new hires come in negotiating like seasoned executives, leaving managers flummoxed. Even with recent rounds of layoffs, employee expectations are staying high, as job ads emphasizing flexibility and other benefits attest. There’s also a truism that transcends economic situations: Companies want to hire and retain the best people, which gives the best people leverage. I see my C-suite clients grasping for more control to get back to “normal” by pushing for longer hours in the office, tightening metrics, and hoping that economic headwinds will return their power.

I tell them not to count on it.

Human nature hasn’t fundamentally changed. People want to be engaged at work and apply themselves to big things. But just like a camera lens zooming out, we now see there’s more to the story. Feeling passionate about our working life — liking what we do and how we do it — is as important as ever, but what creates that passion has broadened and deepened. We no longer see a singular pursuit of a corporate goal in a bustling office as the only way to a purposeful career. Leaders need to catch up or they’ll be operating frustratingly empty hybrid offices with quiet-quitters and short-timers. Continue reading →

Beyond Salary and Benefits: Why Career Conversations Matter

Posted on

 

 

 

 

by Winne Jiang, Claire Harbour, Antoine Tirard

 

 

 

Meaningful discussions between managers and employees build stronger individuals and organisations.

A simultaneous surge of mass layoffs and unprecedented job growth in the United States has created a confusing, complex climate for companies. In such a paradoxical environment, organisations should seize the opportunity to retain talent instead of falling into a cycle of continuous turnover. By holding onto valuable employees and building on their skills and abilities, companies can create an environment of mutual success, leading to enhanced value for the organisation.

Having career conversations with managers, in addition to formal performance reviews, is an effective way to ensure that employees feel valued, motivated and committed. A study from Right Management found that almost 90 percent of employees believe that they are, or should be, responsible for their career development, and two-thirds of individual performance drivers are tied to career conversations.

Regular, meaningful discussions between employees and their managers or mentors can help foster a fulfilling work experience for both parties. Through these conversations, leaders can gain a better understanding of their employees’ core aspirations and help them plan their career and life trajectories more effectively. Managers can also derive a strong sense of fulfilment from understanding and developing others.

Career conversations are seldom incorporated into the mandatory talent management cycle. Non-HR executives may find the constant demand for formal evaluations and salary reviews to be burdensome enough. But a well-handled conversation is a powerful tool that benefits not only the company in terms of engagement and retention, but also the individual’s overall development and transformation. A single conversation can change an entire career path. Continue reading →

HR’s problem isn’t capability—it’s capacity

Posted on

 

 

 

 

by Mark Stelzner

 

 

 

The past eight months have been brutal for layoffs, particularly in the tech sector. Every day brings another announcement, with thousands of workers facing unemployment under the dark cloud of economic uncertainty. Threaded within these announcements are stories of companies behaving badly, whether it’s the methodology of the layoff or leadership taunting the recently unemployed. We can all agree that it’s hard enough to find out you’re losing your job, let alone compound the pain by removing dignity from the process.

While layoffs often appear to come out of the blue, the reality is that, for most organizations, there have been weeks of planning behind the scenes. This is particularly true if the organization falls under the jurisdiction of the WARN Act, Works Councils, collective bargaining agreements, or other legislative and regulatory requirements. Much of the layoff preparatory work falls on the shoulders of the thinly stretched HR function, which is often targeted by headcount reductions itself.

Despite what people might think, HR’s role in the decision-making process can be more administrative than strategic. HR professionals are often brought into the fold only by signing specific non-disclosure agreements, and this usually happens well after the business leaders have made their key choices. HR then typically scrambles to validate that the process was appropriate, often finding a litany of late-stage issues impacting the targeted employees. HR may then cull through performance and potential data, but bad input can certainly lead to equally bad outcomes. And when it’s time to share the difficult realities with your people, managers and leadership often cede accountability out of risk mitigation, electing language within the termination notice such as, “You’ll hear from your HR partner in the next [hours/days] to explain the process and answer any questions.” This is likely to funnel all the angst, shock, anger and outright distress of the displaced directly into the overworked and unstaffed arms of the people function.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Unlike nearly every article that’s been published in this industry, I firmly believe HR business partners (HRBPs) are, in fact, strategic. From my vantage point, the issue at hand has much more to do with capacity than capability. I recently presented to the HR business partnering community at the one of the largest sportswear brands in the world, and here’s what I told them.

HR in the spotlight Continue reading →