Thursday, August 6, 2009

Housing crisis hits real estate pros' psyches

Housing crisis hits real estate pros' psyches
Monday, April 14, 2008
Joe Rauch - Atlanta Business Chronicle

Last fall, the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association for the first time brought a psychologist to its October membership meeting, to discuss how to mentally cope with stress of the housing collapse.

"The builders laughed at it at first," said Kim Jones, director of the association's Housing Institute. Today psychologists attend regularly.

"They're not laughing now," she says.

The housing collapse has pushed mental health issues to the forefront for companies, trade groups and individuals closely tied to an industry that, for years, only knew good times.

Builders, brokers, bankers and lenders are just beginning to deal with the mental fallout from the city's first prolonged real estate slowdown in two decades.

Jones, educational director for the second-largest home builder association in the nation, said her organization's mental health concern is increasing.

"We haven't had any members commit suicide this year," she said. "But we have had members touched by it. We're trying to ensure our members are dealing with this in a healthy way."

The stress of the seemingly overnight housing collapse is felt in a host of ways, lenders and builders said.

Mortgage lenders who made loans are now out of work, out of the industry or struggling to make ends meet.

Bankers are seeing clients they've worked with for decades going bust, adding to their own businesses' woes.

Builders are struggling to stay afloat, doing whatever they can to keep their doors open. That means layoffs, along with pay and job cuts.

Atlanta has been particularly hard hit, ranking as one of the worst markets in the Southeast for home foreclosures and loan defaults.

For executives running businesses most directly hit by the housing collapse, hard decisions are being made for the first time in years.

"We have members who are down to either choosing to keep their child's college fund intact, or keeping their business open," said Jones.

While the impact of such additional stress can't be fully calculated, mental health professionals said the impact is real, and will only increase as the market continues to drag.

"Stress is cumulative," said psychiatrist Ray Kotwicki, medical director at Atlanta's Skyland Trail treatment facility and an Emory University assistant professor. "Changes like this are destabilizing for people."

During times of extreme stress, Kotwicki said, people search for support that's familiar.

For some, that means seeking solace with family, religion or in their hobbies.

For others, the pressure could drive substance abuse, depression, domestic strife and suicide.

But beyond anecdotal evidence, mental health statistics are lagging.

Recent national statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, don't account for the U.S. housing market's woes in the last year. A 2007 survey by the American Psychological Association found half of all Americans cited rent or mortgage costs as a key stress.

Data are sparse for mental health during Georgia's last real estate downturn in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

But the limited data available indicate how some deal with added pressure.

Atlanta was one of the four-highest-ranked U.S. cities for alcohol abuse from 1991-1993, a CDC report found.

Mental health experts said instances of substance abuse, depression, even suicide are expected to increase during this latest collapse.

Sean Doughtie, president of Mayfield Homes LLC, has seen the collapse's impact firsthand.

Doughtie, 36, began working as an Atlanta home builder at the beginning of the recent boom in the early 1990s.

The son of a builder, he said his lowest point was last October. After paring his 22-person office staff down to five, and nearly a year after stopping his own paycheck, Doughtie let his remaining staff go, including the chief financial officer.

"He sat in my office and I just broke down and cried," Doughtie said. "I told him I was sorry to do it, but I had to, and that I was truly scared about what would happen to my business. It was my lowest moment."

Doughtie now runs bi-weekly support group meetings at the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association focusing on builders' survival.

Mental health professionals said the stress of an industry's collapse may be affecting a group ill-prepared for it.

Financial and home industry executives are predominantly male, and older. That group is more likely, according to CDC data, to abuse substances, commit suicide and suffer depression.

The banking and home-building industries are dotted with entrepreneurs who closely identify themselves with their work and are closely linked to their business. Those are more likely to view any business failure as a personal one, experts said.

"There's the perception that you can just work your way out of it," said Kotwicki. "Their identity is inextricably tied to the business, so there's a sense that if it fails, you've failed."

Bill Blanton, current director at three Atlanta banks, started his career as a builder in the 1970s, during one of the worst U.S. real estate markets.

"You think that you're just the biggest failure in the world," he said.

But organizational behavior experts said organizations can ameliorate employees' stress levels.

"Organizations need to be candid and transparent with their employees," said Frank Merritt, CEO of consultant TalentQuest LLC. "Sometimes they just need to offer employees hope." Unable to cope

Percent reporting depression within the last year, by industry

National average 7 percent Financial 6.7 percent Construction 4.8 percent

Percent reporting heavy alcohol use within the past month

National average 8.3 percent Construction 15.9 percent Financial 6.9 percent

Source: National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2007 reports on 2002 to 2006 data.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Confidence vs. Caution

Our Tendency to Believe Confident People Over Cautious People

People prefer advice from an expert who projects confidence over an expert who shows caution, according to a recent study. That's understandable -- after all, it makes sense to follow the opinion of someone who seems sure of what they're talking about instead of someone who hem, haws, and hedges. But the more surprising finding of the study was that people have a statistically significant tendency to prefer the advice of confident advisers even after those advisers demonstrate themselves to be unreliable.

The researcher, Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University, presented his findings at the Association for Psychological Science Convention in May, in a symposium with the delightful title of "Often in Error, Rarely in Doubt."

In the experiment, volunteers were asked to guess the weight of a person in a photograph. They were allowed to buy advice from volunteer "experts." Some of the experts offered answers as a spread of probabilities for different weight ranges. The more confident experts provided just one weight range. (See table here.) The guessers favored the advice of the confident advisers. After they learned that the confident advisers weren't as accurate as the more cautious advisers, they stopped buying their advice as much as before, but even so, the confident experts were called upon more frequently than they should have been, statistically speaking.

Another interesting finding of the study was that the less confident advisers eventually began to change their advice to be more like that given by the more confident advisers. They made their advice more precise, but not any more accurate.

Unfortunately, cable TV news seems to breed this kind of confident expert who delivers simplistic advice in sound bites. I'm reminded of the pundits who scoffed at Euro Pacific Capital president Peter Schiff when he warned in 2006 and 2007 that our economy was on the verge of collapse.

Here's a bit of expert advice: The next time you see a talking head on TV telling you he is certain about something that's not certain, change the channel.

Mark Frauenfelder – Editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular Boing Boing weblog, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online.

Taken from: http://www.creditbloggers.com

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

What makes work meaningful?

On a Mission
What makes work meaningful? If you think money or prestige, think again.

by Susan Ellingwood
Never before, perhaps, has work been imbued with such significance. Less than a week after the terrorist attacks on September 11, President Bush urged Americans to "go back to work." Since then, resuming one's routine has become an act of defiance, an expression of patriotism and, as a practical matter, America's best hope for averting a severe economic downturn.

Yet measured against the pain and efforts of the past few months, the tasks associated with our jobs can seem trivial. Which prompts a question, important in the days before September 11 but of greater consequence now: What makes work meaningful?

ESPRIT DE CORPS

Since 1996, The Gallup Organization has used a 12-question survey, Q12, to assess employee engagement, or the degree to which workers are involved in their jobs. One of the questions is: Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my job is important? (See "Item 8: My Company's Mission or Purpose" in the "See Also" area on this page.) By mission, Gallup means a company's core values and purpose, says Curt Coffman, global practice leader for Gallup's Workplace Management Practice. Mission does not imply strategy or financial outcomes, says Coffman. Rather, a company's mission statement describes "its spiritual DNA," helping to ensure that values drive goals and not vice versa.

What many executives don't realize, however, is that a company's mission statement can also be a management tool. But it is only useful to the extent that each employee links the mission to his or her job. "It's the second part of the question that's key," says Coffman, "the part that ascertains whether the individual feels that his or her job is an expression of the mission."

When employees make the job-mission connection, the result is a boost in morale and performance, says James K. Harter, senior research director at Gallup. "High scores on the Q12 mission question correlate positively to all desirable business outcomes," he says, but especially to productivity and profitability. That's because employees who share a mission tend to be engaged, and the more engaged employees there are in a company, the better the bottom line. In a recent Gallup sample of U.S. workers 18 and older, 60% of respondents who agreed that their company's mission made them feel their jobs were important were engaged, while none of the respondents who disagreed about the job-mission connection were engaged. A clear sense of mission also appears to enhance employee loyalty and pride: Among those who agree that the company mission made them feel their job was important, 82% planned to be with the company for at least another year, 63% would recommend the company as a place to work and 66% would recommend its products or services.

The sobering news for managers is that, of all the Q12 questions, low scores on the mission question are among the most difficult to improve. The reason: The ability to connect one's job to a larger mission is not primarily a matter of competence, work ethic or other such traits that good workers naturally possess. Instead, the job-mission connection comes about through communication that starts at the executive level and resonates throughout the ranks. For effective communication to occur, top management must first believe in the mission, a process that requires consensus and clarity. That, Gallup has found, occurs when companies include workers from throughout the company in their mission-statement development committees. The best statements, says Coffman, are "short, direct, and set a value system."

Once a mission statement is developed, it must be disseminated in employee manuals and reports, and reinforced by the company's officers in speeches and public pronouncements. A manager also needs to explain to employees how their duties fit with the mission. "It's not just one conversation with the boss," says Don Beck, a Gallup management consultant in Washington, D.C. The role of mission should also be a topic in discussions about performance, promotions and transfers, and even in informal conversations. Indeed, a perfect opportunity to forge the job-mission link is when a manager and an employee discuss the employee's career, says Beck. The manager can urge the employee to evaluate how his or her aims conform to or conflict with the mission. By so doing, the employee will make the job-mission connection, or realize that his or her goals are leading in a different direction. Either way, the exercise is essential for arriving at decisions that are best for the individual and the company.

Mission can also be reinforced when a manager recognizes good performance. At a chain of hospitals where Gallup consulted, for example, some employees said they did not feel that the mission made them feel their jobs were important. As one corrective measure, Adam Pressman, Gallup Q12 program leader in Lincoln, Neb., suggested that managers refer to the mission's emphasis on caring and respect for human life when acknowledging employees. "Thanking a receptionist for making a visitor feel cared for or praising a nurse for helping to save someone's life was a way to make the job-mission connection," says Pressman.

Managers should also be aware that even engaged employees benefit from a focus on mission. At Caterpillar Americas, a unit of Caterpillar Inc. that operates throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, a theme of the mission is "power of people." When the company underwent a Q12 evaluation in 1999, its score on the mission question placed it in the 61st percentile of all the companies in Gallup's database. The Caterpillar managers wanted to do better. So, during follow-up meetings with their workgroups, they discussed questions they had designed to probe elements of the "power of people" mission. For example, they asked whether employees agreed that the company "helps people improve" and whether employees "feel free to speak openly." By 2000 the mission score had risen to the 84th percentile. Don Elder, the Six Sigma champion for Caterpillar Americas, attributes the increase to the company's plans to improve engagement that followed these discussions. After all, by sharing a mission, employees understood not just where they were headed but why.

The Q12 items are protected by copyright of Gallup, Inc., 1993-1998. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

On Recognizing Talent

"There's something rare, something finer far, something much more scarce than ability. It's the ability to recognize ability."

-Elbert Hubbard-

Characteristics of Successful Leaders

Research performed by Kirkpatrick and Locke identified the following characteristics in the most successful leaders:

-Drive
-Honest
-Integrity
-Motivation
-High Cognitive Ability
-Knowledge of the Organization
-Flexibility
-Creativity

Monday, July 27, 2009

Nietzsche on Crisis

I believe we are in one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether we recover from it, whether we become masters of this crisis, is a question of our strength. It is possible...

- Nietzsche -

Friday, July 10, 2009

Executive Coaching

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (or "EQ", short for Emotional Intelligence Quotient) is a much-talked-about if seldom-understood topic. Simply put, EQ is the ability to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups. I like to think about it as applied empathy, the ability to not only put yourself in someone else's shoes, but to react appropriately given your empathic understanding of their situation. The Center for Creative Leadership conducted a study that yielded some interesting findings regarding the usefulness of EQ in the workplace. They found that higher levels of emotional intelligence are associated with better performance in the following areas:

Participative Management
Putting people at ease
Self-awareness
Work-life balance
Composure
Building and mending relationships
Decisiveness
Doing whatever it takes to achieve results
Confronting problem employees
Change management

On the flipside, low EQ was associated with significant career derailers such as difficulty changing and adapting and difficulty forming positive professional relationships. Once again, the research shows that "soft skills" have cold, hard business impact.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Power in the Workplace

94% of leaders surveyed rated themselves as being moderately to extremely powerful at work.

28% of leaders surveyed felt that power is misused by top leaders in their organization.

59% of leaders surveyed agreed that their organization empowers people at all levels.

The top three most leveraged sources of powere are: the power of expertise, the power of information and the power of relationships.

The three sources of power leaders believe will be most important to leverage in the future (next five years) are the power of relationships, the power of information, and the power to reward others.

The power of relationships was the type of power most often cited as being used to promote one's own personal agenda.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Stress and Leadership

88% of leaders report that work is a primary source of stress in their lives and that having a leadership role increases their level of stress.

Over 60% of leaders surveyed felt as though their work fails to provide them with the appropriate tools to manage stress.

More than 2/3 of leaders surveyed believe their stress level has increased over the past five years.

Nearly 80% state they would benefit from a coach to help them manage stress.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus

Above is a crude example of mindfulness in everyday life. While Louis CK may lack the gravitas, of say, a Dalai Lama, he does make some excellent points about how we overlook amazing things every day. Our collective failure to be content, to be excited with the mundane, and appreciate the little things has led to many of the problems fueling our current recession. Silly as this little diatribe is, there's a lot of truth in there.

Basic Mindfulness Theory

Mindfulness is a practice gaining greater and greater popularity in the field of clinical(see Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy) and corporate psychology. Originally sprung from Buddhist thought, mindfulness has a simplicity and ease that makes it applicable to a variety of settings, including the workplace. Simply put, mindfulness is a mental state, characterized by calm awareness of one's body, feelings, and consciousness. Mindfulness, as I understand it and apply it, rests on four basic principles that I will include below. Later posts will deal with the "how" of mindfulness, but I thought that an introduction to the "why" would be an appropriate starting point. My very simple understanding of these concepts is this: There is a world of beauty that we miss every day in our drive to be doing. There is a pervasive sense of "always seeking never finding" in corporate America, and this is one simple way to stop and appreciate the greatness we've been ignoring all along. Far from the robes and other trappings traditionally associated with Buddhism, mindfulness provides a practical way to slow life down in a way that has observable, positive impact on our decision-making as well as our quality of life. Without any further editorializing:

Basic Theory:

Excessive rumination – We cannot control the past or the future, only the present. Worrying about things out of our control decreases our sense of empowerment and contributes to feelings of depression, anxiety and helplessness. Keeping life present-focused gives us a sense of control and autonomy.

Impoverished lived experience – Life is full of pleasures that we are not aware of, given the frenetic pace of modern life. Each day is filled with myriad opportunities to be mindful and find goodness, often in places we race past on our way to the next event. A fuller consideration of day-to-day wonders increases our sense of fulfillment and enriches our life experience.

Thought fusion – Our internal process of thinking and experiencing often occurs outside of our awareness, but contributes greatly to the way we view the world. Too often, we fuse our thoughts to our selves, creating a reality and a value system that has not been consciously chosen or thoroughly examined. Mindfulness allows us to become more fully aware of our internal processes, en route to more conscious choices regarding our actions and our worldview.

Physiological Implications – Often, we are unaware of the way our breath, posture, and other bodily considerations impact our mental state. Mindfulness promotes closer consideration of bodily sensations, which can have the effect of returning our bodies and our breath to a state more conducive to calm.

Mindfulness Quotes

Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life. – Thich Nhat Hanh

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now. – Thich Nhat Hanh

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Quote of the Day

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

-Soren Kierkegaard-

Personality Decided at Birth?

www.nzherald.co.nz/health/news/article.cfm?c_id=204&objectid=10566320

The article is a little too long to post in its' entirety. An interesting read to be sure, I'll have to chew on some of this.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Multi-tasking or multi-ignoring?

By Steven T. Hunt

I’m not sure if it is true, but someone told me that the most dangerous group of drivers recently changed. It used to be teenage boys. Putting young men into overpowered cars is a good formula for creating accidents and high insurance premiums. But another group of drivers has become even more frightening behind the wheel than impulsive, testosterone-laden, inexperienced young males recreating Grand Theft Auto in the family sedan (when I was a teenager, we did the same thing, only we imitated James Garner driving his gold Camaro in the TV show “Rockford Files”).

So what is the new “most dangerous driver”?

Teenage girls, and in particular teenage girls driving while texting on cell phones. This confirms something most of us have known for a long time: driving while talking or texting on a cell phone is not a good idea. But the larger question is, if we all know how dangerous this is then why do so many people do it? I would argue that it is due in part to a mythical belief in our ability to “multi-task.”

If you remember one thing from this post, remember this:

When it comes to processing information, whether in the context of listening to someone, driving, reading, or any other task that involves some level of thinking and awareness, WE DO NOT MULTI-TASK, WE DIVIDE OUR ATTENTION!

There is a lot of psychological research that supports this. When you try to do more than one mental activity at a time, you do not actually pay attention to several things simultaneously in a literal sense. What you do is rapidly switch attention between tasks, doing one task for a short period of time before moving to the next task. This leads to a lot of wasted mental energy since every time you switch activities your brain has to re-orient to the new task. You end up paying less attention to every task and often do the tasks at much poorer levels than if you did each task by itself. Although people may perform at a high level on different tasks, this basic process of switching between tasks and the problems it creates applies to all people. Attempting to multi-task hurts task performance regardless of how good people may think they are at doing several things at once.

Despite popular beliefs about the “next generation” having the ability to text while talking on the phone while surfing the Web while driving, people are not getting better at multi-tasking. What people are getting better at is ignoring how poorly they are doing certain tasks while they focus their attention on something else. For example, the teenage girl on the cell phone may think she is driving well while texting her friend. But this is because she didn’t even notice running through the red light in the last intersection! If she put down the phone and actually paid attention to her driving then she might notice just how bad a job she is doing.

I frequently see the same thing in meetings. As soon as the meeting starts everyone opens up their laptops and starts answering e-mails while supposedly “multi-tasking” to the conversation. People wrongly assume that since they are in the room they are paying attention to what is being said in the meeting. In reality, they are totally unaware of many verbal and non-verbal cues that they would notice if they were fully listening to the person doing the talking. They participate in the meeting with a false sense of comfort that they are hearing what is being said, when in reality they are only hearing a small portion of the conversation.

Next time you are talking to someone and have the urge to check your e-mail, remember that teenage girl happily texting her friend while driving through a stop light. This could be you. There is no such thing as multi-tasking, there is only choosing not to pay full attention to what you are doing. Now excuse me while I get back to the conference call I’ve been participating in while writing this blog.

Steven T. Hunt, Ph.D., SPHR is Director of Business Transformation for SuccessFactors Inc. Dr. Hunt is an industrial-organizational psychologist with over 15 years of talent management experience assisting companies in leveraging systematic tools and technologies to assess, develop, manage, and retain talent. He is author of multiple articles as well as the book “Hiring Success” (Pfeiffer, June 2007) which provides guidance on the use of workforce assessment and staffing selection tools.

Source: http://siopexchange.typepad.com

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Frankl Quote (first of many)

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.

-Viktor Frankl-

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Most Admired Companies

Companies with strong leadership development programs are 1.5 times as likely to be found atop Fortune's "Most Admired Companies" list.

Source: Bridging the Leadership Gap (1997), L. Csoka

Character-based leadership



I know, I know, Stephen Covey is so 1989. Covey-esque buzzwords ("Sharpen the saw" anyone?) have become ubiquitous enough to have lost some of their initial punch. But, there's a reason he gave rise to an entire industry and remains one of the most respected people in management psychology to this day. His reaction against shallow behavioral change and advocacy of deep personal commitment to timeless principles remains a powerful and vibrant message. Go ahead, shut your door, and see what the old guy has to say, I won't tell.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoZ3rXjbbWM


Quote of the Day

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

-Theodore Roosevelt-

Outliers



Not only does he have awesome hair, Malcolm Gladwell knows a thing or two about what makes people successful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSRu6CaJd_g&NR=1


Survey Says...

A 2007 study in Harvard Business Review showed a strong link between leadership skills and the bottom line. The study examined the stock prices of 11 publicly-traded financial services firms. Companies with high scores for their investments in human capital delivered stock market returns that were five times higher than that of companies with less emphasis on human capital.

Source: http://www.ccl.org/

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (sort of)

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people see the world and make decisions. Extrapolated from the typological theories put forth by Carl Jung, the MBTI is meant for use in non-clinical populations and emphasizes the value of naturally occuring differences. The MBTI is used in a number of setting including team building, executive coaching, personnel selection, career counseling and leadership development. The test yields results expressed as a four letter "type" that touches on preferences in lifestyle, attitudes and decision-making style. I'm including a link below to an assessment that approximates the MBTI. While it is not the "genuine article" it does provide a decent ballpark guess as to your type (and it's free). Explanations of the various types are plentiful on the internet, and I'd also welcome any "type" questions you may have at doctordanielcrosby@gmail.com.

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

Quote of the Day

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.

-John Quincy Adams-