The Mental Well-Being of Colleagues and Continuous Improvement Culture -- Are They Intertwined and Mutually Reinforcing?

At the beginning of June, Chris Butterworth published a new book entitled Why Care? How Thriving Individuals Create Thriving Cultures of Continuous Improvement Within Organizations, which contends that to create a sustainable culture of continuous improvement there must be an organization-wide focus on mental well-being at the individual level. A culture of continuous improvement nurtured in the right way, however, will indeed support mental well-being and help create a thriving organization.

When I recently spoke with Chris about his book, I asked him: "How are mental well-being and a culture of continuous improvement intertwined and mutually reinforcing with an organization?" Here is his complete answer:

Today’s ever-increasing VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) environment means that organizations must be more adaptable and flexible than ever.  Organizational performance depends on the collective psychological capacity (emotional and cognitive energy) of everyone in the organization.  Without high levels of mental, or psychological, well-being individuals suffer, organizational performance is stifled and continuous improvement (CI) is throttled.

Creating high levels of mental, or psychological, well-being means starting with an inside-out perspective focused on mental well-being at an individual level.  Like the nucleus of an atom, high levels of individual psychological well-being unleash psychological capacity. This precious resource is critical for people to be able to do their work effectively and continuously improve their work. It provides the organization with the energy and agility to prosper. 

However, individual psychological well-being is not enough on its own.  High levels of psychological well-being without a robust CI system limit people’s potential to fully utilize their psychological capacity. Both systems are essential to a thriving organization. Psychological well-being and CI working together create a thriving high-performance environment, where individuals feel they matter, are cared for, and can grow and develop.  Together they create environments where teams can solve problems, innovate, adapt, and grow generating sustainable organizational success. In our book Why Care? we explore how to do this at different levels – individual, team, leader, and organizational and the foundations needed, such as diversity, equality, inclusion, belonging, and an understanding of the brain.

The CI system must be co-designed to leverage the available psychological capacity of everyone in the organization.  In Why Care? we illustrate how the CI system and tools can be reorientated to engender and maximize psychological well-being and how continuously improving work also increases levels of psychological well-being.  Not only are the two intertwined but they are mutually reinforcing.  We believe this is not just a nice thing to do. It is critical to the future of every organization and its people.

Do you agree with Chris' statements? Does your continuous improvement initiative include the psychological capacity of colleagues? 

Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence -- What is Their Role in Coaching and Training?

In February, Matteo Zaralli published a new book -- entitled Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence: Risks and Opportunities for Your Business -- which focuses on how virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping the way we learn and coach. 

When I spoke with Matteo this past week, I asked him: “What are some of the ways virtual reality and artficial intelligence are being incorporated into coaching and training?” Here is his complete answer:

Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are revolutionary technologies with the potential to radically transform the landscape of learning and coaching, significantly accelerating, enriching, and enhancing the process.

Exploring the domain of artificial intelligence, we see how the accessibility to information and the speed of its acquisition highlight the transformative power of AI. However, its application extends far beyond this. Recently, Open AI introduced a groundbreaking development with the launch of a vocal feature for ChatGPT, offering users the opportunity to interact with an advanced virtual assistant, further expanding the horizons of digital learning.

In parallel, virtual reality is opening new frontiers in education and coaching, thanks to the introduction of cutting-edge devices from Oculus and Apple. Studies conducted on these platforms demonstrate that learning can be up to four times faster, with improved performance and optimal concentration, thanks to an immersive environment that minimizes distractions.

By combining the strengths of VR and AI, we can envision innovative scenarios such as public speaking, healthcare procedures (such as surgical room preparation and intricate surgeries), work safety certifications alongside standards compliance, construction projects, engineering challenges, and energy and plant maintenance represent areas where advanced tools significantly enhance learning and execution of specialized skills; where users can practice in a safe, interactive, and emotionally engaging context. This environment is enriched by the presence of a virtual assistant, with whom users can discuss specific topics, offering an unprecedented learning experience. For coaches and instructors, often constrained by limited time, this synergy provides a valuable simulation tool, allowing them to efficiently support every individual and ensure a high level of continuous learning.

The benefit of having a tool to train and exercise our skills is needed today more than ever. Technology runs, companies run, and more and more skills and abilities developed quickly are demanded at work, but like everyone, the day consists of 24 hours. So it required a tool that allows us to learn faster, with an impact on our recollection and memory, and above all that untied from space and time.

What do you think of Matteo's perspective? Has VR and AI been incorporated into your organization's learning and coaching processes? Have the results been successful? 

"Green" Workspaces = Healthier Workspaces!

Just this month, Steve Famulari published an important new book entitled Ways of Greening: Using Plants and Gardens for Healthy Work and Living Surroundings. This book focuses on rethinking working and living spaces and understanding how "greening" can make them healthier and their occupants happier. It teaches how to see unique ideas for spaces and some of the materials needed to create the designs. In addition, it gives readers a way to not only understand greening but to understand how to see greening applied to their place. 

When I spoke with Stevie this month, I asked her: "What are some of the ways in which ‘greening’ makes working spaces healthier?" Here is her complete answer:

Work spaces as well as home spaces are where people spend much of their time. These are spaces where people need healthy surroundings to be inspired, be safe, be creative, grow, and move forward toward their dreams and goals. Greening these spaces can help people in this. 

Having a space with at least 10% of the surface space of the room with living thriving plants improves air quality allowing people to be healthier with each breath. There are also studies that have found that being in green spaces improves people’s memory while studying, improves productivity, reduces the amount of time for people to heal, and reduces stress.

Be creative in designing your workspace and allow it to change over time as the interior garden grows and responds to the light and objects in the space. You can design your own green wall to fit your space which includes plants with colors, shapes, and scents that you enjoy. Using scented plants such as lavender or mint can enhance your space. Some scents such as lavender are helpful for relaxing, while others such as mint are helpful for reducing headaches. Scents have a close correlation with memory. A scent can help people recall a memory from their recent past or from a distant past. Using plants with scents while studying or preparing for presentations, and then having the same scent at the presentation can help people recall what they studied or researched for presentations.

By creating designs that are unique to the space, using green walls, and having plants that have bloomed randomly throughout the year, the site you create with your unique living garden changes and grows with colors and forms daily. Seeing change and growth happen naturally on a daily basis in green office surroundings encourages people to accept change in their lives with more ease and grace.

What do you think of Stevie Famulari's perspective on how "greening" affects workspaces and their occupants? Has your company incorporated these types of improvements in their office locations? How have employees reacted?

Does Your Organization Suffer from Leadership Without Leaders?

In December, John Varney published an important book entitled Leadership as Meaning-Making Take the Hero's Journey to Transformation, which takes a fresh look at leadership as a systemic shared phenomenon. It is one aspect of the evolutionary principle of bringing people to maturity as human beings – transforming the immature through purposeful adventure. 

I spoke with John this month and asked him: “What are the most common misconceptions about leadership and its meaning?” Here is his complete answer:

Leadership without leaders. 

We are conditioned to think of leadership as what leaders do – and hence to look around for leaders to help solve the great issues of the day.  But this is leadership only as it manifests through control and command hierarchies of power. Such leadership consigns the rest of us to be followers – subservient and powerless. Followers are there only to do the work and sustain the status of those who presume to lead. Followership is disempowering and often demeaning. As a follower, you do what is expected of you (your so-called "duty") and take the blame for any shortfall. 

This kind of leadership sustains a whole industry of leadership training and development. This, we might cynically observe, teaches managers the manipulative techniques that get the followers to do their bidding, willingly and unquestioningly. Leaders are sometimes popular because they do our thinking for us and absolve us of feelings of responsibility. 

A very different kind of leadership is latent in the relationships between us and comes to the fore when we come together in common cause. This is leadership as a flow of energy and resources directed by our sense of purpose. It engages all of us and all our talents and potential. It is leadership in which all participate, stepping into and out of the flow of energy and resources (the value-adding stream) as we intuitively respond to our calling. 

Both modes of leadership have their place and their value but only one leads to freedom and wholeness. In self-organising communities of practice, individuals grow inwardly as they realise their potential in service to their elective mission. Nobody is pulling their strings as they discover and pursue their freely chosen purpose in life. This is leadership as meaning-making. As I say in the book, “Perhaps the hiatus of the pandemic will enable us to show that a more organic and holistic way of being is not only possible but is more wholesome and fulfilling."

How do you define "leadership" in your organization? How has it affected workplace culture? Has it evolved past "command and control"? 

Developing Your Employees While Achieving Business Results -- Is it Possible?

Just this month, Lisa J. Koss published an engaging book entitled Leading for Learning: How Managers Can Get Business Results through Developmental Coaching and Inspire Deep Employee Commitment, which addresses a universal problem for many managers -- With so much "real work" to do every day, how can they also carve out time to learn, engage, build relationships, tap motivation, encourage development, and inspire?

When I spoke with Lisa a few weeks ago, I asked her: "What causes the barriers that block the concurrent development of employees and business results?" Here is her complete answer:

I personally don’t know of any manager who doesn’t want to get results – both in business and in leading others.  Managers care about both.  No one wants to feel unsuccessful in either realm.  Making a difference is the stuff of positive self-regard and feelings of self-worth, whether regarding the work product itself, or developing more capable leaders. 

What gets in the way of people managers doing both -- getting business results while developing people?  In my view, with 25 years in the field of leadership development, there are numerous reasons.  Here are three: 

First, people managers often don’t want to be.  Often promoted for their technical or business acumen, people managers often know little about people management.  They think they can gain status but ultimately stay committed to getting their own work done, emphasizing management of the business versus leading people.  Despite accepting a position with the word “people” embedded, most managers I’ve known don’t seem to contemplate the implications.  “People management” simply becomes another task, or set of problems to solve, instead of considering the role as an entirely different way to impact the business.  Consider, for example, that workplaces are actually schools… for everyone.  People managers have the great opportunity -- and responsibility -- to support others to stay relevant, to innovate, and to maximize their potential.  Whether the manager’s people learn slowly or quickly will depend, in large part, on the manager’s orientation to her role. 

Second, some people managers assume that spending time to develop others really doesn’t pay off.  The research in the social sciences say otherwise.  What’s lost in the discussion is the focus on what really matters – engagement.  Engagement is important because it can be measured with the phenomenon called “discretionary effort”.  Discretionary effort is the 15-25% more effort that employees (including you) devote to their work when feeling engaged.  These gifts to the workplace often come in difficult-to-quantify packages – like arriving to work 10 minutes earlier, reviewing one’s work again, or taking the time to recognize a colleague – but constitute a substantial increase of value and productivity in the business. 

Finally, people managers might think achieving business results and people development are incompatible has nothing to do with mindset but relates to skills.  Humans are messy…and results can be hard to measure.  The thought of “developing others” can evoke unpleasant thoughts such as:  risk-taking, the lowering of standards, or wading into unpredictable, emotional conversations. Managers can, however, can learn the skills which release these kinds of anxieties. 

When life gets overly busy and complex, embracing a more holistic approach to leadership may seem counterintuitive.  Instead of managers thinking “either-or,” people managers can do both at the same time and experience double the success.

What do you think of Lisa's perspective? Are these the types of problems and mindsets held by many mangers in your organization? Lisa clearly and directly addresses these issues in her new book.