How can you tell who is really in charge in a group? An article in The Wall Street Journal got me thinking about this.  The article talked about the research of James Pennebaker, chair of Department of Psychology, at the University of Texas at Austin. Pennebaker has devoted decades to studying our language patterns, an area called computational linguistics. One of his conclusions: the power of pronouns.

Intrigued by the WSJ article, I ordered Pennebaker’s book, The Secret Life of Pronouns. It won the 2012 Media Book Prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association. When the book arrived, my wife jokingly commented, “Aha, I see you’re studying secret lives now.” Pennebaker’s work is insightful and important (and he is a good writer).

So how can you tell who has higher status in a social group? People of higher social status usually have more influence. Decades of research show pronouns are good predictors of status:

• People of higher social status use “I”, "me", "my" less frequently.
• People lower in status are more likely to use “I”, “me”, or “my”.
• People higher in status use “we”, “us”, or “our” more than those of lower status. 
• People higher in status use “you” or “your” more frequently than those of lower status.

My take-away: Pennebaker’s research seems very sound and revealing.  As he discusses, we use pronouns very frequently in our speech and pronouns reveal our focus. Good leaders focus on others, the group, the organization. “We are doing well.” “We could use more resources.”  “Our success will continue.” But our use of pronouns is not either-or. We use different pronouns in different situations. The research is about frequency, how often we use different pronouns in different situations. People of more influence, people with more confidence, people who are leaders, are more likely to use “we, us, our” in social interactions. 

Pennebaker, J. W. (2011). The secret life of pronouns: What our words say about us. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Image from UT-Austin by Utnomi, retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UT-Austin-Tower.jpg  Used with permission.

© John Ballard, PhD,  2015. All rights reserved.
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I was reminded the other day of a concept that I learned years ago in a cognitive psychology class. Funny how some things stick in your mind. Functional fixedness, Duncker (1945).

The rock concert was over. I found my way to my car, started the engine, and headed toward the exit. One car was in front of me. But the car in front of me could not get into the exiting line. Cars from elsewhere in the parking lot continued to fill the exit line. The car in front of me was stuck.

I noticed the entrance to the parking lot was not being used. Who is going to come into an emptying parking lot after a rock concert? Besides, at some venues patrons are encouraged to exit using both the exit and entrance. So I moved around the car to exit the parking lot using the entrance lane. A policeman stood there. He halted me and the exit lane for a moment and then signaled both of us to move out into the street, directing my car to the outer lane of the street, the exit lane to the inner. I was out of the parking lot and out of the congested area within minutes.

So why did others not seen the parking lot entrance as an exit to the street? Functional fixedness. An entrance is an entrance. An exit is an exit. We see something as being used for one thing and that precludes us from seeing how it could be used in other ways.

In his classic experiments Duncker had people try to mount a candle or candles on a door. Some people had a box of candles, matches, and a box of tacks. Others were given a box of candles, matches, tacks on a table, and an empty box – and they solved the problem more often and more quickly. Why the difference? The first group perceived a box as a box, something that holds items. The second group saw the empty box as something that could be tacked to the wall to hold a candle. Because the empty box was not being used as a box, it was more easily reframed and repurposed.

Anyone who has seen the movie Apollo 13 (based on actual events) has seen the concept of functional fixedness turned on its head. Problems had to be solved. The landing module became the main cabin. Round holes had to take square pegs so carbon dioxide could be removed from the air. Things had to be used for purposes other than those intended.

My take-away: How often do we frame something, someone, some situation in only one way? There are times when if we “let go” of seeing one way, more effective, more efficient ways might be seen. The person who has skills and abilities that do not get used because that is not how we see that person. We do not provide the opportunities. We come at the world and give our experiences meaning. Sometimes we need to think about the meanings we give – and perhaps see things anew.  

Duncker, K. (1945). On problem-solving (L. S. Lees, Trans.). Psychological Monographs, 58 (5, Whole No. 270). 

King, M. J. (1997). Apollo 13 creativity: In-the-box innovation. Journal of Creative Behavior, 31(4), 299-308.

Image by T. Takemoto from http://www.flickr.com/photos/nihonbunka/5817226337/
Used with permission: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en

Active listening is easy to talk about but hard to do. It is a skill everyone should develop and use, especially leaders. My experience is that people who think they are great listeners often are not. Can you really listen to what another is saying? Can you repeat accurately what was said? Can you read the body language and what is not being said? Are you listening or thinking about how you are going to respond? Really listening to another person can be difficult and tiring – but the rewards are immense, both personally and organizationally.

Larry Spears of the Spears Center for Servant Leadership has written about ten characteristics of a servant leader. The first he lists is listening. Leaders need “a deep commitment to listening intently to others  . . . he or she listens receptively to what is being said and unsaid" (2010, p. 27).  Regardless of leadership style or your desire to lead, you should know and practice listening.

You cannot actively listen to every conversation. The key is to actively listen when the conversation is important, if not for you, then for the person speaking. Being an active listener is a skill that comes with practice. It is not natural for us to really listen well. You will meet some people in the workplace who may have this skill. Good if you do. Active listeners see and hear things that others may easily miss. It is a skill worth developing. 

Spears, L. C. (2010). Character and servant leadership: Ten characteristics of effective, caring leaders.  The Journal of Virtues & Leadership, 1 (1), 25-30.

Image by Nestlé  from http://www.flickr.com/photos/nestle/4900876186/
Used with permission: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en

How engaged are your employees with their work, their company? How engaged are you? Engaged employees are motivated, involved in their work, satisfied with their jobs, committed to helping their organizations succeed. Gallup, known widely for its surveys of attitudes and behaviors (and increasingly for consulting analytics), measures employee engagement. Since the late 1990s over 25 million people in nearly 190 countries have completed the 12 items of their employee engagement survey. This year Gallup published “State of the American Workplace: Employee Engagement Insights for U.S. Business Leaders”, which summarizes the findings from 2010-2012. This is latest report in an ongoing series compiling yearly surveys. 

Based on the survey results, Gallup categorizes employees as (1) engaged, (2) not engaged, and (3) actively disengaged. Engaged employees are just that, motivated and positive about their organizations. Not engaged employees show up for work, do what is asked, but do not put passion or energy into their workplace activities. Gallup goes beyond the engaged/not engaged dichotomy with the “actively disengaged”, employees noticeably unhappy, more likely to skip work, are the source of more complaints.

So how engaged are U.S. employees? Over the past ten years the Gallup results have been fairly consistent. Only about 30% of employees are engaged. A little over 50% are not engaged. Slightly less than 20% are actively disengaged.

My take-away:  These Gallup results suggest that there is significant room for improvement in the American workplace. Look around your workplace. Who is engaged? Disengaged? Actively disengaged? Can you tell the difference? The results Gallup reports cry out for leadership and management to step up. It is easy to be so overwhelmed fighting the daily alligators that we fail to be proactive, to understand what is happening in our workplaces, to find ways to elevate the work of those with whom we work. It would be interesting to see these results broken down by leadership style. My bet would be servant-leaders would have the most engaged employees. What is your leadership style? Do you want more engaged employees?


Image by Veronica Therese. Obtained from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OpenPlanRedBalloon1.jpg
Used with permission: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Gallup (2013). State of the America workplace: Employee engagement insights for U.S. business leaders. Gallup Press.