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.
Showing posts with label Articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Articles. Show all posts
Thursday, August 6, 2009
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.
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, April 14, 2009
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.
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
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
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