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It’s Ancient History

Saturday, August 8th, 2015

Lately, I’ve been reconnecting with my past. I’ve been revisiting my training in Ancient History and connecting with former teachers, colleagues and old school friends.

And I’ve been asking the obvious question, “What does Ancient History have to do with us today?”. In common language usage, when we say, “Its ancient history”, we mean its old news and it doesn’t matter any more. In psychology, we might apply the phrase to mean someone should stop dwelling so much on past wounds and become more resilient. In business psychology, we might mean that we should be using initiative and innovation to develop new ideas and practices, rather than harking back to the way we’ve always done things.

Yet in schools  and universities across Australia, and especially in NSW, Ancient History is flourishing. Why do students like it so much, and what does it mean? What can it teach us about ourselves?

Ancient History is a subject that shows us that though we are different, we are essentially all the same, across time and place. It shows us that people care, and cared about, the same things. It gives us empathy and perspective. Ancient writers like Aristophanes show us that in 5th Century BC Athens, people were laughing at slapstick jokes, mocking their politicians, and accusing each other of drinking too much or taking themselves too seriously, just like we do.  In the ancient world, as today, people challenged themselves through sport and intellectual pursuit. Modern Western culture is founded on Greece and Rome, through language, institutions, and conventions. Our alphabets are from the ancient world, our systems of finance and money stretch back to ancient times, and our art is based on ancient art. We write stories, make films and play video games based on the ancient world. It’s in our psyche and our social DNA. In modern Western culture, we have built a way of life on the shared foundations of the ancient world. As the internet and other technologies drive us closer and closer to a global community, so our shared (and differing) foundations become more important to understand.

In a “new world” country like Australia, historically made up of so many migrants and superimposed on an ancient culture, an understanding of how everything fits together and where we all come from is particularly important to make sense of who we are, how we fit in, and how we can take ourselves forward.

Why does it matter? It matters because whether our lives are based in the Western tradition or not, we are all part of a continuum. In the East or West or anywhere else, we have cultures that didn’t spring up from nowhere, they had causes and we live the effects, and we create new ones for the people who come after us. Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, humour is common to us all, wars always start because of similar reasons, and human nature is the same, no matter where or when. Ancient History teaches us that. And if we learn the lessons, then perhaps we don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.

The ancient Athenian philosopher Socrates was told by the Delphic Oracle more than two thousand years ago,”Know Thyself”, and the advice is just as relevant today. Societies and individuals know themselves when they know where they come from and why they do things.

Why do Australian students like Ancient History so much? It shows them we are not alone. It shows them that there are interesting people from the past who helped to build the world they live in. It shows them that they can do that too. It gives them hope, and it gives them meaning and a sense of themselves.

We all need that.

 

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

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Baroness Susan Greenfield, Creative Innovation 2012, Mind, Consciousness, Working Life and is 100 the New 70?

Saturday, November 24th, 2012

Baroness Susan Greenfield, renowned British scientist and broadcaster, will be a keynote speaker at Australia’s cutting edge Creative Innovation Conference in Melbourne this week. According to the Weekend Australian, the baroness has come to Australia especially for the conference, in partnership with Melbourne University’s Neuroscience Institute, and her work in mind and consciousness, and most recently how technology impacts on brain development, will provide a challenging and thought provoking perspective at the conference that has quickly become a leading forum in Australian and international thought leadership.

Susan Greenfield’s work encompasses neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, and her observations and enquiries have wide-ranging social, scientific and technological ramifications. Her research into consciousness and how it is affected by cognitive degenerating diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, leads to considerations about what consciousness is, and how society might be affected by longer and more productive lives if these diseases can be understood and conquered. Recently, she has been turning her attention to the possible effects of technology and social media on brain development, human culture and social functioning.

With increased understanding of, and defences against, aging diseases of the brain, the working life of human beings could well be extended, especially as science and medicine continue to increase human health and fitness, leading to longer life expectancy as well.

In the Weekend Australian article, in answer to the question, “Will 100 be the new 70?”, Greenfield says, “Yes, and the question then becomes: what are we going to do with the second 50 years of life? We should be re-thinking old age in positive ways, rather than just killing time with golf and Sudoko.”

So if 100 becomes the new 70, as a society we need to be ready to view age differently, and to find effective ways of maximizing and applying the wealth of knowledge and experience that will become a huge social resource if people can live longer and have a longer intellectually and physically useful and productive life. And this clearly has huge ramifications for how we view the workforce and think about our career spans and older workers and what they might and could provide. It has far-reaching effect for all of us.

This kind of thought-provoking research and discussion is the hallmark of the Creative Innovation Conference, now in it’s third year. The brain-child of Melbourne’s Tania de Jong, and sponsored by the Commonwealth Bank, the conference brings together intellectuals, business leaders and innovators from around the world and provides an opportunity to meet, challenge, think and envisage the way the future is shaped.

Creative Innovation 2012 will be held at the Sofitel in Melbourne from 28th – 30th November, where Baroness Greenfield will be joined by a host of international and local speakers including CSIRO’s Dr. Megan Clark, and UCLA strategist, Professor Richard Rumelt.

As it has before in it’s short and influential history, Creative Innovation 2012 promises to provide challenge, insight, debate and inspiration and we very glad to be a part of it.

 

You can read our Creativity Psych Report for the conference here, or on the conference website, or find a summary in the Conference Program

 

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on heading to leave a comment. More posts below.


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The Currency of Relationships

Friday, August 24th, 2012

Our Managing Director and Chief Psychologist, Stephen Kohl, believes that since the Global Financial Crisis, people have been demanding more genuine engagement and service in business.

In the boom climate prior to late 2009, companies and organisations were prepared to spend much more on out-sourced services like recruitment, training, conferences and “extras”. Following the GFC, things have been leaner and meaner, as organisations have learnt to cut costs by bringing many things we had previously paid others to provide, in-house. And even though the Australian economy has improved, we seem to have got used to this, just like Australian householders have got used to building savings.

At the same time this has been going on, there has been a burgeoning of social media and internet networking, to the extent that these have been increasingly integrated into most companies’ marketing and business strategies.

The result is that people expect much more from their business relationships. We expect real relationships. The GFC forced us to conserve and maximize our spending, and we’ve grown used to only paying for excellent quality, service and value. Post GFC we expect more. And through social media and other traditional advertising and networking, there is no shortage of individual consultants and companies vying for our attention and business connection.

So how do we differentiate? What can we do to stand out from the crowd, and forge real relationships with our clients, potential clients, connections and associates?

The answer is clear: be genuine and provide real and friendly, authentic service. Make genuine human connection.

In his article, It’s More Important to be Kind than Clever in Harvard Business Review this week, Fast Company magazine co-founder Bill Taylor, writes that small acts of genuine human kindness and engagement are the most powerful form of connection, and can be accidentally the most powerful marketing tool we have. Why? Because we are all people, and we all respond to genuine interaction. It makes us feel good, feel trust and it stands out in a world that can seem to be dominated by cynical self-serving and arrogance. All of us want to do business with people we can trust.

To illustrate his point, Taylor recounts the story of an American food franchise, which received huge publicity as a result of a simple and genuine act of kindness by the management and staff of one of their outlets. Though they only produced their clam chowder on Fridays, when a dying grandmother craved the soup on a different day, they made it just for her. This small act of kindness was repaid by thousands of “likes” on Facebook, where the grandmother’s daughter and grandson posted their gratitude.

It’s word-of-mouth advertising on a grand scale, and anyone in business knows that word-of-mouth recommendation is our most powerful tool. But to be powerful, it has to be genuine.  You really have to mean it. To be good at what you do is to want to share your knowledge and service with other people, and everyone responds to honest enthusiasm and care. In her most recent post, Penelope Trunk says, Networking means making real friends.

Acts of kindness make us feel better about ourselves and the world, and this is enough reward. But if we are in business for the long-term, relationships are far more important than quick deals. Good service and kindness should be the basis of everything we provide, because the real currency of business is people.

 

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on heading to leave a comment. More posts below.

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl and his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

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Human Resources & Innovation

Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

Innovation and Creativity articles dominate the July issue of HR Monthly, the official magazine of AHRI, Australia’s peak Human Resources body.

Like businesses and organisations the world over, who are increasingly recognising that innovation and creativity allow them to stay afloat and even get ahead of the game in a world changed by difficult and volatile global economic forces, HR Monthly asks how creative thinking and innovative practices are relevant and can be integrated into Human Resources.

Janine Mace begins her Switched On article with, “ It’s a war out there as companies battle to just keep up, let alone get ahead of the game … and innovation is increasingly being touted as essential for an organisation’s success.”

Mace interviewed innovation think-tank Hargraves Institute’s CEO Allan Ryan, Queensland University of Technology’s Dr. Judy Matthews, and Coca-Cola’s Derek O’Donnell to discover how they believe innovation is an essential ingredient in the success of all organisations, particularly those which will grow and flourish into the future. All three experts refer to studies and programs in place that identify the importance of innovation, and all believe that Human Resources has an important part to play in innovation.

Mace says, “Given the close ties between internal culture and innovation, it is unsurprising HR is viewed as a significant player in this area – both at the strategic and practical level.”

This understanding of the practical role HR can play in innovation is echoed in both By Design, in which Brad Howarth considers how organisations need to re-think the way they manage, engage with and develop their staff because “recession may just mean a new opportunity to rethink your workforce”, and in Core Values in which Jacqueline Blondell talks about creativity, innovation and good education with Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak.

To some extent so far, Australia has been sheltered from the more severe effects of the Global Economic Crisis, but as time goes on, even in Australia the economy seems to be flat, and it’s clear that we need to play the long game. That means that permanent changes need to be made.

Individuals and organisations need to hone their creativity in order to survive, and apply it to innovation, adaptability, problem-solving, team-work and leadership. It’s about playing smart, being lean and mean, rolling with the punches and seeing and exploiting opportunities.

And as the world takes on inevitable on-going challenges, Human Resources not only can’t afford to ignore the importance of creativity and innovation, but has a crucial role to play in helping smooth the way.

Human Resources is about people, and people need to be adaptive to survive.  By understanding how to find staff who are creative, and recognising, understanding and developing the creativity styles of the people they already have, HR can play a leading part in going forward into a world of increased skill, adaptability and creative problem solving and understanding.

And organisational success.

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on the heading to leave a comment. More posts below.

Related posts:

The Secret Ingredient of Creativity

How to Spot an Original Thinker

Creative Innovation 2011 Conference

A Room With a View (Creativity in the Workplace)

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

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Engagement & Empathy

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

Human beings belong to a gregarious species. We live in groups, we organise ourselves in communities, we develop language, rules and technology to communicate and co-operate with each other, and usually, we work in teams.

In short, we engage with each other and with our environment. Our engagement keeps us safe and happy. By co-operating together, in every form of work and endeavour, we support each other, harness the power of multiple skills, talents and intellectual points of view, and we create outcomes that would be impossible if we lived and worked alone.

Of recent years there has been a lot of interest in the subject of engagement at work. It is recognised that people are happier, more fulfilled and are likely to be more productive if they are engaged with their jobs. In many ways, this is fairly obvious, since you only have to look to your own experience of life to know that you have a better time and feel better about yourself and other people if you feel connected – connected with an activity, connected with other people, connected with your surroundings or connected with an idea.

Underlying this ability to connect or engage is what is probably our species’ highest, most prized skill: the ability to empathise. Empathy helps us connect with the world and people outside our own skins. It makes us understand. It allows us to see and feel beyond ourselves. And by doing this, we keep the group, and the individuals within it, safer and more effective.

Empathy drives our fascination with each other and this underlies almost every form of human expression and drives culture (from reality TV to fine art and literature), commerce and research & education. In every culture and across time, religion, age, gender, and geography, humans are fascinated with each other because we are fascinated with ourselves. Other people are like a mirror. To study other human beings is to understand ourselves better, and to understand better is to increase the likelihood of our success.

Really successful human beings have a high level of empathy, which imbues them with many advantages. Empathy allows us to read signals, understand situations, foresee problems quickly and connect subtle clues. Empathy allows us to see beneath the surface and operate with a sophisticated level of interaction.

People with low empathy struggle greatly. They can’t read social or facial cues, or discern more sophisticated relationships or patterns. They have a hard time “joining the dots”, understanding what other people understand, reading non-verbal language, and picking up on higher order social rules or patterns like metaphor and tone.  How things connect is often a mystery to them. People with low empathy have many difficulties with other people and their environment because they can’t read the signals and warning signs. Sometimes people like this are stigmatised with popular culture labels like “nerd” and lack of empathy characterizes autism spectrum conditions like Asperger’s Syndrome. Without the ability to exercise empathy, human beings have a hard time in life.

Engagement is not just a Human Resources term. All managers and employers should be developing an engaged workforce and an engaging work environment. But it goes much further and deeper than that. There is not a divide between work and the rest of life, and we are ourselves whether at home or in the workplace. Being engaged is what enlivens us, and underlying engagement, is our ability to empathise.

In the world of work, as in the rest of life, higher level empathy allows you to see effectively and well, and to achieve better and more sophisticated and seamless results. Understanding other people helps you understand yourself, and makes your path in life more smooth, and gives you respect and influence because you understand how other people tick.

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on the heading to leave a comment

Related posts:

Psychopaths at Work

Building Real Relationships

Who Are You? “Know Thyself”

Work Life Balance (And How to Preserve Olives)

Murder in the Village: Teamwork & Community

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

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The Secret Ingredient of Creativity for Profit & Productivity

Friday, July 13th, 2012

I’ve noticed, as I go around talking to organisations about diagnosing, understanding and harnessing their creativity to improve their business practices, that there is one crucial ingredient of creativity that most people don’t know about. This makes me think that idea Incubation might be the secret ingredient of innovation and problem solving.

Some people, like Steve Jobs, know the secret automatically, but you can learn to use it too.

What is Incubation, and how does it work?

Incubation is what we do when we stop thinking intensely and deliberately about something, and allow our brains and thoughts to flow. Incubation is the process of allowing yourself to think about things at an unconscious level, and using it results in “Eureka”, or “light-bulb” moments and break-through ideas.  All “creatives” know how it works, and they use it deliberately to help them solve problems, create innovations and exploit opportunities.

Incubation should be factored in to any problem solving process, whether it’s developing new products, improving teamwork, knowing how to lead effectively or generally adapting effectively and well to change. Incubation is the secret ingredient for staying ahead of the game.

So how can you make it work for you?

The process of creative problem solving requires a number of elements coming together, and all human beings have an inbuilt ability to do it.  When we use Incubation, whether deliberately or not, we allow ourselves to percolate ideas from deep inside, without directly thinking about them.

This process involves a change of scenery or activity. It explains why sometimes we have breakthrough ideas or find solutions in our sleep or when we are in the shower. By changing the way your thought patterns operate, you can allow your brain to “free-range” and this change allows your brain to see patterns, put pieces together and join the dots.

While some people know how to deliberately use Incubation, everyone can learn how to do it. You can learn how to deliberately factor in Incubation time to your personal or organisational processes. Companies like Google and Pixar are famous for using various Incubation techniques, like allowing free time for employees and having free-form work places that provide various activities like talking, playing sports and walking around the grounds, and they have reaped the rewards by becoming dominating players in their fields.

But you don’t need to invest in new buildings or huge organisational change. It’s easy to learn how to increase and exercise Incubation. There are a number of exercises you can do (and which we can help you with) or you can do it yourself. On a personal level, you can go for walks, do crossword puzzles, look at the sea, play a game of squash, or doodle. Any activity that takes your mind off the problem at hand and that allows your thoughts to either roam freely or be focussed on an entirely different activity will do the trick. On an organisational level, you can introduce the deliberate use of Incubation into your decision-making processes.

The key is to understand that Incubation is crucial and necessary to the creativity process, and that with a small investment in time, and learning to understand how it works, you can maximise the production of all innovative solutions.

Working creatively and smart maximises individual and organisational out-put, productivity, ideas and innovation, problem solving, time management and ultimately financial and every other sort of profit.

Make Incubation your friend, and put it to good use.

 

To her surprise, she found the great detective, engaged in building card houses. 

“It is not, Mademoiselle, that I have become childish in my old age. No. But the building of card houses, I have always found it most stimulating to the mind.”

Hercule Poirot, Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie

 

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on the heading to leave a comment

Related posts:

Creativity in the Workplace

How to Spot an Original Thinker

Why IBM found Creativity = Business Success

Creativity: The Essence of Being Australian

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

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Social Trends: The New Conservatism?

Friday, July 6th, 2012

Social change and trends relate intimately to the world of work and work life balance, and understanding social changes, mores and norms is an important tool for leaders and employers, and anyone who has an interest in understanding how human nature works. Hopefully, that’s all of us.

The increasing focus on gay marriage in Australia and across the western world brings movements in social change into close focus.

At first glance, the call for allowing gay marriage looks like a move to increased social liberality and equality. Homosexuality has increasingly, and rightly, lost its stigma in modern society and most people in Australia currently believe that the gay community, like anyone else, should have the right to marriage.

But if we look beyond the gay question, it seems that the thing that no-one is questioning anymore is the institution of marriage itself.

In the 1960’s and 70’s the institution of marriage came under serious philosophical and social attack. As a result of the general social disillusionment resulting from the Second World War, marriage became a central target in the rise of liberalism and new social tolerance with the rise of Second-wave Feminism, general social liberality, the Anti-War Movement, the Sexual Revolution largely brought about by the introduction of the Pill, the Hippie Movement, and the tearing down of the influence of the Church and general conservatism.

To social reformers, and the generation who are now referred to as Baby Boomers, there was no place in an enlightened, socially tolerant society for the institution of marriage. Marriage symbolised social conservatism, slavery and ownership of women by men, and religious, sexual and social tyranny. In a huge wave of change, a generation began to foreswear the dominance of marriage, and its role in a modern, tolerant society began to be over-turned.

There were various ways that this was enacted: women stopped changing their names and wearing wedding rings when they married, the practice of calling women by the titles of “Miss” or “Mrs” which defined them by their marital status (and thus whether they were “available” or not) when men were not labelled in this way became largely redundant, and very many people refused to be married at all.

Some of the effects of this huge social change have remained, most notably that now most couples don’t think twice about living together without being married, and most people wouldn’t think to disapprove of this. Children born to parents who are not married are no longer stigmatised and we refer to couples as “partners” now, whether they are married or not, heterosexual or gay.

But many of the effects have disappeared, and I think this indicates a New Conservatism that most of us are not aware of. There seems to be a growing trend for young women to change their names when they marry, for girls and young women to fantasise about weddings and associated paraphernalia without any apparent social guilt or embarrassment, and for wedding rings to have returned without a thought. You can even buy Bride Dolls again! These seem to be a part of a general and growing conservatism, evidenced by things like increasing hero-worship of soldiers and the new reverence for Anzac Day, and the return of blatant sexism to all sorts of advertising (is it just me, or have you noticed that TV and print ads are looking just like the 1950’s?) and other forms of social culture.

It’s an interesting turn of events.

The question of gay marriage should make us re-visit what we think the role of marriage should be in modern life. Is it a religious ritual? Is it a secular rite and right? Is it to ensure the stable upbringing of children? Is it a public statement of personal commitment? Is it a financial contract? Is it between two people regardless of gender? Or even, as was often said in the past, is it to protect women when they “lose their looks”?!

I make no judgements about marriage, and am married myself. But I can’t help noticing certain shifts in social trends and I know a ship is steered more safely if we know what lies beneath the surface. We can manage our staff, our roles, our relationships and ourselves better if we recognise and understand underlying social trends and structures.

Human beings should never be judged by their sexuality, but what does the return of the unquestioning of the institution of marriage mean in a society that clearly regards itself as liberal, sophisticated and enlightened? Are we really being more inclusive and tolerant, or are we just homogenising apparent “difference”? Have we become more enlightened, or just more conservative? And has anyone noticed?

“Curiouser and Curiouser”, said Alice.

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on the heading to leave a comment. More posts below.

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.


 

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Play to Your Strengths

Saturday, February 18th, 2012

When I was a child growing up in the middle suburbs of Sydney, every household seemed to religiously read The Australian Women’s Weekly. It was a cultural and social mainstay: both a barometer and a bible.

One of the main things I learned from the Women’s Weekly is to play to your strengths. Over and over again, and in various ways, The Weekly published articles about how to emphasize your good points and disguise or compensate for your bad ones. (What shape is your face? How do you disguise a pear-shaped body? How do you make narrow shoulders look wider? What is your best colour?) From these articles I grew up learning how to look for my good features and compensate for the ones I didn’t like so much.

Though the lesson was generally intended to apply to your appearance, the regularity of these articles over many years became deeply entrenched in me, and I expect all the other young readers, and it soon became such second nature that it wasn’t hard to apply the principle to my whole life, not just to the way I looked.

I came to understand that the same principles are taught in sport, business, advertising, graphic art, leadership and coaching, and that they apply to every area of successful life management. In graphic art for instance, we are taught to quickly grab the attention of the viewer and convey the message instantly and effectively, and you need to understand the best points of something to be able to do that. In sport, we play our best players and team combination, put them in the right positions for their talents, teach them to compensate for each others flaws, and we understand to “never change a winning team”.

Yesterday, our Genesys Australia team examined our creativity & problem-solving profile. We have assessed many other teams and groups recently, and we decided it was time we “put our money where our mouth is” and looked at our selves.

Looking at our collective strengths and weaknesses, and examining how these fit with our aims, practice and style as an organization, I was reminded of the Women’s Weekly and it’s lesson to know yourself, and I was extremely gratified to have the opportunity to see how we all looked as a team and to see where our strengths and weaknesses lie.

We combined our individual results from the me2 Diagnostic, and examined our team in terms of the dimensions, which include idea generation, personality, motivation and confidence. We charted these on graphs, so that we could clearly see how we all fit together.

Our over-all score is well above average, which is reassuring in a post GFC world, where organizations need to be ready to constantly change and adapt.  As a group, we are high on fluency, idea generation and confidence in sharing ideas. We performed well on achievement and incubating ideas, and can see how we can increase these areas further. Though still in the average range, our lower score was in competiveness, which, after some discussion, we believe is consistent with our strong service-based ethic to help our clients solve their problems. It also reflects that we are both a psychology practice and a very cohesive collaborative team whose members work closely and well together. But we will keep our eye on this – perhaps we need to develop ourselves a bit more in this area and we will introduce some exercises and measures to help us.

The graphs showed a very creative team that has many healthy elements of diversity, and yes, strengths and weaknesses.

By understanding your strengths you can obviously use them to your best advantage, and you do this by minimising or reducing weaknesses and by using, fine-tuning and developing strengths. Many people waste a lot of time concentrating on weaknesses but they are only part of the picture. The key is to play to your strengths which means know your weaknesses and minimise them, but focus on and hone your strengths.

The Australian Women’s Weekly taught me that you can’t play to your strengths unless you know what they are. Yesterday, using the me2 Diagnostic, our team gained a clearer and more focused idea of how to do that. And it gave us a reassuring sense of understanding and self-confidence.

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on heading to leave a comment. More posts below.

Related Posts:

How to Spot an Original Thinker

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

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When I Grow Up : Career Guidance

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Yesterday I met an old school friend for the first time since we were very young adults. Now that we are much older and our careers are well and truly established, it was interesting to talk about how our lives have turned out, and how we both got to where we are now.

My friend David McCaughan is at the top of his game. He is a senior executive for a major, world-wide advertising & marketing agency. At high school, we both studied Ancient History, and were in the school debating team, and when David left school, the first decade of his working life was spent working as a childrens’ story-teller in a public library. At school, David had a clear intelligence and a sophisticated wit, but back then, nobody thought to tell him that advertising was a career choice he could or should pursue, let alone excel at. Looking back though, I can see that advertising was a natural fit for him. But he came to it circuitously.

Finding a natural fit is what career guidance is all about. A natural career fit will almost certainly ensure a successful career and happy life.

As we retold our stories and recounted our lives since school, one thing David and I have in common was very clear: we’ve both had interesting lives in which we’ve been prepared to explore and meander. We’ve been willing to go out and see. I’ve noticed this before in the lives of other successful and happy people. One of the advantages of middle age is that you get to see how things turned out, and over and over again I’ve seen that the most successful and apparently satisfied and happy of my old friends are the ones who were prepared to see new places and try new things.

Here are some of the things that seem to produce a successful career and life:

Do what you are good at

Even at school, David was always good at talking and story telling. He’s also intelligent and good at joining dots, which led him to study Political Science. He says that story-telling in the library for 10 years and studying Ancient History at school underlie his work in advertising & marketing. It makes sense: advertising is about telling a story and joining dots (seeing connections & solving problems).

If you are good at maths, then you should pursue that, if you cook really well then you should cook. If you are good at sport, then follow that.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll end up in your first, perhaps most obvious job choice, but it sets you on a path that is natural and more effortless for you to pursue.

Do what you like to do

This should closely follow the previous point. It makes sense that most people automatically like what they are good at, because they receive positive feedback both from the task and other people.

But don’t do something only because you are good at it. If you are good at maths, but hate it, don’t become an accountant just because everyone tells you how good you are with numbers.

If you are engaged by your work, then you are more than halfway there to a successful career. You’ve got to love what you do if you want a successful career and happy life.

Don’t be afraid to go out and try things

How will you know what’s out there unless you go and have a look? How will you know what you are good at? Experiment, try new things, meet people, explore, discover and follow your nose.

Be prepared to play the long game

In life, as in theatre and sport, it’s all about the timing. Trying new jobs, exploring and building up experience takes time. Be prepared for that. You need to develop tenacity and a long-term focus.

Your career will be measured by where you find yourself at 50 and 60, and what you have achieved and what you have passed on to other people. Nobody will care or remember if you drove a fancy car when you were thirty, or got a promotion, and the history books or the company records certainly won’t record it.

Time your run.

 

My friend David and I are still the same people we were at school, although older and wiser. And this is the point. Our career and life choices followed who we already were, and our experience heightened and informed that. It’s no surprise to me that David is a very successful human being – he always was. He had the sense to follow his talents and his instincts, and to go out and see.

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

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NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

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Why IBM Found Creativity = Business Success

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

In 2010, IBM published the Global Survey of CEOs 2010 and found that,

“More than rigour, management, discipline, integrity or even vision – successfully navigating an increasingly complex world will require creativity”.

IBM and the more than 1500 CEOs they interviewed from 60 different countries are not alone are in this view. Ernst & Young in their Connecting Innovation to Profit Report, 2010 said,

“The ability to manage, organise, cultivate and nurture creative thinking is directly linked to growth and achievement.”

Why is creativity so important?

Creativity underpins everything we do. It’s hard-wired into our DNA. We can’t help but be creative. Creativity is the ability to solve problems and exploit opportunities. It’s what got us out of the caves and experimenting and discovering. As a species, we have an insatiable desire to make new things, to see what we can do with what we’ve got, to invent and discover, to play with ideas and to see if we can push things to the limit.

Creativity is the raw material of innovation, or in other words, innovation is creativity put into action.

This means that to change and adapt, to invent and develop, to find solutions, to lead well, to get and stay ahead of the pack, to grow and flourish and ultimately to succeed financially, we need creativity. And it follows that the individuals and organisations who can harness their creativity the most will do the best, especially in the post GFC world of constant rapid change.

Creativity applies to everyone.

It’s a myth that only some people are creative, like artists or designers, or that creativity applies to the arts and innovation applies to science or engineering.

We believe and perpetuate these myths to our individual and organisational peril. Everyone left alone on a dessert island would display creativity because they would find that necessity is the mother of invention. They’d look for food, build shelter, cloth themselves in ways they might never have thought of before in order to survive.  They’d use their natural, innate creativity.

Why not get as smart as we can and learn to harness our creativity in business?

During the GFC, in our workplace psychology practice, we noticed that the old ways of doing business, finding staff and operating organisations were fast becoming less relevant. Organisations were “stripping fat”, and cutting back spending on things like recruitment and non-essential training, and looking for new and expedient and cost-effective ways of doing things, and expecting more value for the money they did spend. This attitude seems to have remained.

So we started researching products and theories that would help identify and develop the new imperative to think smart and to change and adapt.

Earlier this year, we discovered that from research at Manchester Business School, a new tool for the workplace had just been developed that identified underlying creativity. If you could assess creativity, and work out in what ways individuals were creative and how they applied their innate creativity, then you could use this information to understand, develop and train individuals and organisations to apply creativity more effectively. Impressively simple idea!

It was what we were looking for, and we knew it was what was so widely needed in the world of business and organisations.

So, we have just launched the new me2 Creativity Diagnostic Tool after a three-month Australian validity study in which we assessed hundreds of people from across the country from many different areas and levels of the workplace. The more we trialled it, the more accuracy we saw, and as a psychology practice, the data really impressed us. Having been used in 41 countries by over 3,500 people so far, it is showing no bias for age, ethnicity or language and the research suggests it is predicting 86% variance for creativity compared to the 3-14% that other tools like Myers-Briggs (MBTI), the Big Five and Hogan Development Survey predict.

The me2 Diagnostic Tool by E-METRIXX is based on years of solid research and development into the psychology of creativity by Dr. Mark Batey and the Psychometrics at Work Research Group from Manchester University. We like it because of the credible research, because it works so well and because it is extremely user friendly.

One of our clients described it the other day as “the sexiest new HR tool” and I think he’s right. It’s very exciting, and also quite humbling, to know that you are introducing a new way of understanding and doing things into the workplace.

Can everyone be creative? You bet!

What has creativity got to do with business? Everything! It underpins innovation, problem-solving, team work and leadership and has unlimited potential to apply to profit as well.

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on heading to leave a comment. More posts below.

* We were asked to conduct a study on creativity using the me2 Creativity Diagnostic for the forthcoming Creative Innovation 2011 Conference in Melbourne featuring Edward De Bono & sponsored by ANZ, the Financial Review & Business Review Weekly. The report will be published in the conference program and is available on the conference website

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

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