Future of work, a follow up on my previous blog. Key Takeaway of Book "Punching the Clock Adapting to the New Future of Work"

 As a follow up to my previous blog where the news articles were analysed ( it was about automation and future of work), I got hold of this book, sharing the summary.

Punching the Clock

Adapting to the New Future of Work

No matter how work changes, the ways people work remain profoundly tied to social dynamics. The book draws on insights from social psychological research and applies them to the workplace. 

Key Take-Aways

1. Subordinates model themselves after the behaviors and performance expectations leaders indicate.
2. Labels generate real-world consequences.
3. Create a workplace culture that prizes appreciation and respect.
4. Be mindful of how you reward, punish and offer choices to your workforce.
5. Confidence can lead to outstanding successes and astonishing failures.
6. Most people will comply with unethical behavior when pressured by someone in power.
7. Group dynamics affect individual behavior.
8. Direct experience can help change biases.

Subordinates model themselves after the behaviors and performance expectations leaders indicate.

Unhealthy workplace cultures do not develop spontaneously. When Uber, for example, faced accusations of sexual harassment from female employees, the company’s founder, Travis Kalanick, and other senior staff downplayed the charges. Then, in 2017, engineer Susan Fowler went public with her experience of harassment. The subsequent investigation revealed a massive culture problem that stemmed from Kalanick’s behavior. 

Uber’s bro culture didn’t pop out of nowhere. The disruptive, ultra-macho behaviors of its founder created an environment that allowed sexual harassment to flourish.

Observing a role model’s unchecked behavior makes others more likely to behave poorly. As Uber illustrates, employees look to leadership for behavior models. If leaders bully, staff will do likewise. 

Labels generate real-world consequences.

Leaders can shape employee behavior by their biases. When management feels more positively toward an employee, they engage with that worker in ways that boost his or her performance and relationships with fellow employees.

If a manager lacks sound role models, he or she may fall back on stereotypically authoritarian actions. Anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies can help protect employees by establishing behavior boundaries for leadership. Greater diversity within the workplace also undercuts systemic discrimination.

The labels you affix to yourself shape your behavior – leading you to accept or reject others based on whether their views or identities align with yours. A list of the top 20 things that come to mind in response to the question, “Who am I?” offers clear indicators of the social groups, ideologies, preferences, judgments and goals that underlie your actions. The labels you ascribe to yourself draw you toward others who enhance those characteristics and away from those who challenge them. Identifying as a member of a particular workplace increases your loyalty to your employer; freelancers’ lack of connection to a single employer leads them to first identify with the type of work they do. 

Create a workplace culture that prizes appreciation and respect.

Experiences from childhood shape how you relate to others as an adult. In the 1960s, Mary Ainsworth conducted an experiment with infants and their mothers that showed children who experience more connection to their caregivers become self-confident adults who easily provide and receive support from others. Less-securely attached children often become adults who struggle to adapt to change or connect with others in healthy ways. These people may find the ever-evolving contemporary workplace difficult to navigate.

Gottman and his team found a ‘magic ratio’ that, for every negative moment, healthy relationships would be counterbalanced with five positive moments.

If an employee responds defensively to feedback, management can look for alternate ways to help him or her perform better. Leadership must raise issues without blame, be empathetic to the other person’s point of view, accept responsibility for any wrongdoing, and show appreciation and respect. Taking time to cool down when conflicts heat up also helps. 

Be mindful of how you reward, punish and offer choices to your workforce.

People have less control of their reactions and behaviors than most imagine. People can become conditioned to respond to certain cues – in a workplace, those cues typically take the form of rewards or punishments. The ability to earn a bonus for extra work might, for example, prod an employee to put in extra hours. When a person feels they cannot escape punishment regardless of their behavior – as might occur in an abusive employer-employee relationship – they may stop trying altogether.

Having an opportunity to weigh up personal preferences and make a decision has dramatic and long-lasting effects on an individual.

Offering employees choice and control helps them remain engaged and productive – as long as the number of choices offered does not prove overwhelming. Providing too many options leads to information overload and impedes effective decision-making. Providing too few chances for employees to take control of their work can result in diminished performance and engagement. Business leaders must strike a balance: offering workers independence in some areas, and taking choice out of the job in others – such as routine administrative tasks or procedures where too many choices might lead to burnout. Management must take care not to punish employees for outcomes due to factors outside their control.

Confidence can lead to outstanding successes and astonishing failures.

In the aftermath of Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III’s remarkable landing of an incapacitated passenger jet on the Hudson River, numerous individuals, from air traffic controllers to the New York Deputy Secretary for Public Safety remarked on the US Airways pilot’s composure in the midst of crisis. Capt. Sullenberger knew the situation was dire, yet he did not panic. When researchers put other senior pilots through a simulation of the event, they found the pilot’s mind-set determined whether he or she could handle the emergency. If the pilot felt confident in his or her abilities, he or she saw the situation as a challenge – not a threat – and performed well under pressure. If the pilot felt anxious, the simulated flight was more likely to end disastrously. 

Confidence is not enough; individuals need the ability to master their own fate.

Confidence fuels superior performance only when that confidence aligns with ability. Futures trader Nick Leeson’s irrational confidence, for example, led him to lose over a billion dollars to bad market bets, bankrupting Barings Bank in the process. High performers may struggle, in spite of their abilities, if something threatens their ego. Salary disputes, for example, can undermine star athletes’ performances. Too much negative feedback leads top workers to perform poorly – hence, the importance of framing feedback in constructive terms and reminding workers of their successes as well as how they might improve.

Most people will comply with unethical behavior when pressured by someone in power.

Pressure to obey authority can prompt people to go against their self-proclaimed ethical standards. 

The pressure to toe the line is higher than the ethical discomfort caused by what the organization is doing.

Workers become subject to this pressure from the time they join an organization or accept work from a client: The boss or client controls their paycheck, and thus, exerts the pressure of an authority figure. By accepting the job, a person makes a commitment that makes them less likely to deviate from whatever the company deems normal behavior. The stress a worker faces affects his or her moral reasoning: With no time to question the ethics of their actions, workers are more likely to go along with misguided orders from above. 

Group dynamics affect individual behavior.

Individuals placed in larger groups are less likely to recognize and act quickly – or at all – in response to an emergency situation than those placed in small-group or solo settings. In the workplace, those who need help are unlikely to get it unless they explicitly state that they need assistance, thus removing ambiguity from the situation. Asking for help in a public forum is more likely to prompt action, as it creates social pressure.

Social pressure can cause people to act in contradiction to their personal beliefs or preferences. The less something seems to make sense, the harder a person forced to conform to that choice or action will work to convince themselves, and others, of its justification. To prevent groupthink within the workplace, management must encourage team members to voice criticisms and concerns. 

Direct experience can help change biases. 

In 1930, a young Chinese couple traveling the United States became the unwitting participants in an early social psychology experiment. The couple’s friend, researcher Richard LaPiere, traveled with them and used the opportunity to observe how white hotel owners’ behavior toward the pair aligned or differed from their stated opinions of how they would treat potential Chinese guests. In almost every case, LaPiere found the hotel owners received his friends with the utmost politeness – in marked contrast to their stated intentions that they would not accept Chinese guests. Biases strengthen or weaken over time in direct response to experience. Having people directly encounter the subjects of their prejudice, or hearing about their experiences in an emotionally compelling way can prompt people to reevaluate biases. In the workplace, this might mean bringing employees from different age cohorts together to prevent generation-based assumptions from forming.

It would follow that more deep-rooted opinions would require repeated exposure to overcome the cognitive scripts already in place.

The same logic holds true when trying to diffuse conflicts between groups. Violence in Northern Ireland stems, in large part, from the fact that those who support Irish nationalism live segregated from those who oppose it. Living in more integrated neighborhoods tends to create opportunities for positive exposure to members of opposing groups. For positive contact to counteract antipathy, those coming together must regard one another as equals; share common goals toward which they can work together; and receive encouragement from official institutions. Within the workplace, collaborative teams, spanning a given enterprise, can help prevent an us-versus-them mentality from forming.