engagement « Genesys Australia Psychometrics

Posts Tagged ‘engagement’

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 5^th 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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Tags: ancient history, Creativity, decision making, engagement, macquarie university, organisational psychology, problem solving, psychology, university of adelaide, university of sydney
Posted in Ancient History & Modern-Day Relevance | No Comments »

The Christmas Card Project

Sunday, December 16th, 2012

With Christmas almost here, and our cards nearly all out in the mail, I thought it would be nice to tell you about our Christmas Card Project, which has been going now for the past eight years.

In 2005, we decided to play our part in encouraging young artists and designers by helping to bring their work to a wider audience.

So, we envisaged a “virtual gallery”, in which Christmas cards, which seemed to be becoming a dying ritual, would be treated like artwork, and sent out every year with a different young artist’s work. The result would then become a virtual exhibition. In the long artistic tradition of limited edition prints, where only a certain number of prints of a particular design are ever made, and each one is personally numbered in pencil, we made this our model.

The first artist we chose was a recently graduated art student, Laura Amos (now working mainly in photography), whose work we discovered at the Graduate Exhibition of Adelaide College of the Arts. I was blown away by her huge black and white abstract painting which dominated the exhibition and had in spades what every gallery curator looks for: wall presence. When Laura agreed to provide an art piece for the cards, she was given a free choice of subject matter, but when I told her of my family tradition of collecting nutcrackers every Christmas, she chose the Nutcracker theme, and we have stuck to it every year since.

The idea is simple: Find a young artist who interests us, vary the style and medium every year, print a limited number of cards and send them out to as wide an audience of family, friends, clients and associates as we can.

The brief is simple too: The cards must be black and white, they must not be “schmaltzy” or sentimental, and they must be an interpretation of the The Nutcracker story by ETA Hoffmann, which was made famous by the Tchaikovsky Ballet of the same name.

Every card is hand numbered and handmade, and every card features the artist’s signature and their biography on the back cover.

Last year we upped the ante by asking a street artist to paint a black and white mural on a wall. It was a hard act to follow!

But this year we think we’ve upped it even more. This year’s artist is Emily Seidel, who has a particular passion for fabric, and her design, based on wood prints of the 1800’s has been painstakingly hand printed on fabric, in a process that has been through three separate printing stages. All up, I estimate that each handmade card has been touched 8 times in different stages of production including by the artist, the printer, and the card designer who is responsible for putting it all together. And this doesn’t include the hand written message!

When we have 10 designs, we plan to hold an actual exhibition of the cards.

In a world where Christmas can often become a tacky, material event of excess or greed, and where most Christmas greetings are now sent electronically, we hope that by holding this building mini exhibition of work, thought and hope that the young artists bring, and that our friends and colleagues can touch, keep and collect, we are keeping alive some of the original meaning of Christmas, which is a story of hope and sharing.

We wish all our clients, friends, associates and partners, in Australia and across the world, a very Happy Christmas, and a wonderful and prosperous 2013!

Stephen Kohl, Lynette Jensen and the other directors & staff at Genesys Australia

Bio for Emily Seidel

Emily Seidel lives in Sydney and has had an interest in design, art and fabric since she was very young. With a particular eye for pattern, shape, line and unusual texture, she brings a wide Australian cultural experience of living in various country and city locations to her work, which seems to be also underpinned by the aesthetic of her German ancestry.

We asked Emily to design our 2012 Nutcracker Christmas card because we like her interesting design eye and her feel for fabric, and we were interested to see how an artist drawn to texture, with a German heritage, would interpret the German Christmas fairytale The Nutcracker by ETA Hoffmann, which was made famous by the Tchaikovsky ballet of the same name.

We are delighted by the result. Emily’s dark, mysterious and layered design is inspired not only by The Nutcracker tale, but also by European woodcuts from the 1800’s. The design, through its layers, mixed media and texture, evokes feelings and dream-like images of deep European winters when families were closed in and longing for the return of the sun, and told each other stories like The Nutcracker to bide their time and express their fear of darkness, while they waited patiently for the return of spring.

This is the underlying historical origin of Christmas – a winter’s tale, and a story of hope.

Lynette Jensen

St. Nicholas & The Christmas Season

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Tags: business etiquette, christmas, Creativity, engagement, GeneSys Assessment, GeneSys Austral, Happy Christmas, leadership, Nutcrack, organisational psychology, Psychometric Assessment, Tchaikovsky
Posted in symbolism & celebration | No Comments »

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

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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 and his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

Tags: Bill Taylor, business etiquette, communications, decision making, engagement, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, leadership, organisational psychology, positive psychology, psychology, psychometric testing, Sales & Marketing, social networking, team work
Posted in Business Relationships | No Comments »

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) & Why it Helps to Be Human

Saturday, August 18th, 2012

Here’s the good news:

Every organisation or individual can achieve a high rating on Google and the other search engines.

Here’s the other news:

You’ve got to be a good writer and like people, language and communication. You’ve got to work intelligently and consistently.

If the second point sounds like bad news to you, here’s why it is this way:

Whether on the Internet, in magazines and newspapers, in advertising, in literature, and for TV and movies, writing is about communication. Communication is about human beings sharing information with each other in order to understand and share experience. And you can’t understand if you don’t get what’s being communicated.

Though, like Coca-Cola’s and KFC’s secret recipes, Google’s algorithms are a bit mysterious, the secret to writing for the Internet is essentially no secret at all. Just write to communicate.

You would think that this would be advice that everyone would intuitively understand, but we all know that many businesses struggle with the simple concept. Very many organisational and business sites look impressive and slick, yet their copy and information feels cynical, wooden, trite, empty or ingenuine. That means that their audience will read a sentence, or a paragraph if they’re lucky, and leave the site.

Recently, an article in Harvard Business Review, by Kyle Wiens, explains why an understanding of language and good grammar is important for writing computer programming. Wiens says, “…programming should be easily understood by real human beings – not just computers”. Clearly, if an understanding of language matters for computer programming, it matters even more for writing for the Internet.

Human beings require that writing is engaging, authentic, sounds and feels honest, flows well and rings true. While there are different styles of writing and different contexts that call for different approaches, formats and tone, essentially, we read because we want to find out things. If we have to work too hard, we’ll stop and find something else. Good writing starts with engagement, whether its advertising copy, high literature, academic or scientific writing, or your Sunday magazine.

Search engines pick up key words and phrases, but they also pick up organic style. This means that if you work too hard to fit in key words or phrases, at the expense of real communication, you’ll lose both your human and your computer audience. Language and writing is about being and sounding genuine and authentic. Just as we can spot a con-man in real life, we’ll instantly stop reading copy that sounds contrived, cynical and self-serving.

Dale Carnegie taught us years ago in his famous self-help bible How to Win Friends and Influence People that to be effective communicators, we have to think about our audience and stop thinking about ourselves. So just because computer-based writing is a relatively new medium, we have no excuse.

This means don’t lecture, don’t be gratuitous or cynical and don’t think you can bully or brow beat your audience or clients into trying or buying your product or services. They are people like you are. You need to have something to say that’s worth saying, and that they want to hear. (Here’s an example of a recruitment website with simple artwork but effective, honest, straightforward writing). And don’t think it’s just luck or magic: there is a reason why some organisations or people have a high Google profile and some don’t, and it doesn’t just come down to how much money they spend.

There is not as much mystery to Search Engine Optimisation as you might think. Mostly, just learn to be a good writer. And how do you do that? Empathise with your audience, tell them what they want to know, have something worth saying and learn to be genuinely yourself.

Good writing is good writing – in any medium.

Lynette Jensen

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Related posts:

Engagement & Empathy

Art Imitates Life, Life Imitates LinkedIn: Online Citizenship

Grass Roots Sales Tip: Body Shapers & David Jones

A Room With a View

* With thanks to Paul for inspiring this post

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.

Tags: creativity in business, engagement, How to write a blog, leadership, organisational psychology, positive psychology, problem solving, psychology, psychometric testing, rules, Search Engine Optimisation, social networking, teams, workplace creativity
Posted in Writing for the Internet & SEO | 2 Comments »

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

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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

Tags: decision making, empathy, engagement, HR Consulting, leadership, organisational psychology, positive psychology, problem solving, psychology, Psychometric Assessment, psychometric testing, recruiting, team work, The world of work, work engagement
Posted in Work Engagement | No Comments »

How to Spot an Original Thinker

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

Original thinkers who drive innovation, adaptability and problem solving are highly valuable and sought-after, so if organisations were able to identify and encourage original thinkers they would have a huge advantage in the marketplace.

Can you spot an original thinker? Dr Mark Batey of Manchester University’s Manchester Business School believes you can.

In a recently produced MBS video interview, Original Thinkers, Dr Mark Batey, a world-leading psychology of creativity researcher, outlines the four dimensions he believes make up an original thinker and that organisations can look out for to identify original thinking in their current or potential employees:

Ideas generation

Original thinkers are highly fluent, which means they produce lots of ideas. Even though sometimes their ideas might not be practical, and it might be hard for other people to see how these solutions might be used, the key is the volume of ideas they are able to produce.

As well as the number of ideas they produce, original thinkers tend to produce different or unusual ideas.

In their approach to thinking, original thinkers often like to incubate, or let their thoughts percolate for while. This period will often be followed by a “eureka” experience, what Dr. Batey calls “Illuminative Moments”.

Personality traits

Original thinkers are inclined to be very curious. They ask lots of questions, and want to know how things work the way they do, and why.

The other personality trait that stands out in original thinkers is that they are comfortable with a high level of ambiguity and uncertainty. Original thinkers tend not to see things in black and white, and are quite happy with contradiction, competing evidence and shades of grey.

Motivation

Original thinkers tend to be motivated intrinsically. This means that they have a strong drive that comes from within them. They will be very self-motivated.

In addition, Dr. Batey believes these people are quite competitive, and they will quite likely want to “beat” other people with their ideas. Although they may work well in a collaborative team environment and be willing to share their ideas with colleagues, they will want the team to do better than it’s competitors.

Confidence

Original thinkers tend to be very confident about their ideas. This applies to having ideas, believing in the quality of their ideas, sharing them, and being able to confidently implement them.

In September 2009, Olivier Serrat wrote in a paper for the Asian Development Bank, “Creativity plays a critical role in the innovation process, and innovation that markets value is a creator and sustainer of change. In organisations, stimulants and obstacles to creativity drive or impede enterprise.”

The ability to identify original thinkers would clearly provide huge advantages to organisations faced with the fast changing pace of a developing national and world economy.

As Mark Batey says, “It’s not just being an original thinker, it’s being an original applier as well”.

Watch Video: Original Thinkers: Dr. Mark Batey

Lynette Jensen

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

Related Posts:

The Creativity Imperative

King of the Manning River: Creativity & Problem Solving in the Workplace

Tags: Creativity, decision making, engagement, leadership, organisational psychology, original thinking, positive psychology, problem solving, team work, workplace assessment
Posted in Creativity in the Workplace | No Comments »

Slam Dunk

Sunday, August 21st, 2011

In the novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany by Amercian novelist John Irving, famous for writing The World According to Garp, the central character Owen Meany spends his whole life preparing for one defining moment.

In Owen’s case, it’s achieving a perfect basketball slam-dunk in a way that no one, including the god-like Owen himself, could foresee. Owen’s slam-dunk was his pivotal and enduring achievement. It was the moment when everything he had worked for all his life came together.

I think that this slam-dunk moment must come in everyone’s career, and lately I’ve been thinking it’s come for me.

For Owen Meany, because his creator is a master of black humour, his pivotal and defining moment was his last moment. But for those of us in real life, a pivotal moment should be a beginning, not an end.

In my case, all my professional and personal areas of interest seem to have allied themselves seamlessly, in a way that makes me feel as though, like Owen, I’ve been practicing for this moment all my life. And I have.

Sportspeople know this feeling of recognition as being in the zone. Psychologists and artists know it as flow. Teachers, performers and public speakers feel it as being in unison with their audience. It’s the ordinary yet transcendent feeling of satisfaction, empathy, elation & connection we feel as part of a crowd at a football match when our team scores a goal. It’s the feeling of rightness, when everything falls into place. Slam-dunk.

Throughout the years I have treated my life and my career as though it was a painting. Two generations of “creatives” before me taught me to lay down strong foundations, to build up layers, to balance the composition and colour, to have a careful observant eye and to go with the medium not against it. When you make any creative piece (whether it’s a painting or a life) you have to trust that your knowledge and technique will lead to a successful outcome.

So I’ve spent decades trusting that, just like in a painting, a successful outcome would be built from accumulating knowledge, steadfastly laying down foundations, exploring widely and observing closely. In painting, there’s a defining moment when everything suddenly comes together and you know it’s a finished piece. And at that point, instantly, the painting becomes greater than the sum of its parts and has an independent existence that you’ve created.

It’s the slam-dunk moment. The moment of revelation: the moment when action achieves a guaranteed outcome. That’s why slam-dunk has come to mean a sure thing. It’s the moment I hope everyone has in their career and life.

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

Work Life Balance (And How to Preserve Olives)

Staying Afloat: Boats & Analogies

A Room with a View

Tags: achieving outcomes, careers, Creativity, decision making, engagement, HR Consulting, leadership, organisational psychology, problem solving
Posted in Career Achievement | No Comments »

Work Life Balance (And How to Preserve Olives)

Sunday, May 15th, 2011

I planted an olive grove for my old age. I imagined friends and family gathering under the dense shade of the silver trees, sitting at antique wooden trestle tables spread with white tablecloths and wine and cheese, as we watched children play on rugs laid under the trees and run through the gnarled trunks, playing hide and seek and discovering secret worlds.

But, despite the Mediterranean climate of South Australia, where I planted my little olive grove in the garden of our white-washed “poet’s cottage” in Kapunda, and despite olives being so tough they grow in impoverished soil and last for a thousand years, growing an olive grove is hard.

To begin with, I dug up self-seeded plants I found in the streets around my house, and replanted them in my garden. Though they stayed alive, they didn’t grow for about five years. It seems self-seeded olives, though they will come up anywhere, don’t like being moved. Then, I decided to buy some trees from a nursery and put in five trees of different varieties. All but one died.

So I watered and worried for years, and wandered through my imagined olive grove, wondering if I’d get to old age before it grew. Then one by one, each tree had a growth spurt, and now, after 15 years, my grove consists of two almost adult trees, two that are halfway grown and one that’s still not much bigger than when I put it in.

This week, and well before my old age, I harvested my first olives.

Last year, one tree produced three olives, and this year it was bedecked with large black fruit. You can imagine how it felt to have a huge bowl of olives that I had grown myself. It felt triumphant and humbling.

In Greece, I watched old men and women harvest olives in the fields around Ancient Sparta. Mt. Taygetus, snow covered and shining in morning light, hovered over the fields, and you could hear the Eurotas River, just a stream really, gently bubbling over the rocks and sounding like a playing child. The peasants and the olive trees looked the same: aged, gnarled with weather and life, serene, accustomed, accepting and endless. From my position as a spectator and a foreigner, the harvesting looked like life, not work.

That day was an epiphany. I made a promise to my future, then and there, that I would turn work into life. From that day on, I’ve tried to solve the work-life balance by wiping it out completely, by blurring the edges of both work and leisure, and paradoxically reversing the way I think about each.

This is not as hard to do as it sounds. You just have to love work so much that it doesn’t seem like work, and integrate a sense of the joy of work into every part of your life. The result is that everything has meaning, that you feel a sense of having enough time, and that you feel satisfied, contented and fulfilled. It’s a pretty good aim!

In order to love your work, you need to be doing what you are good at, and what gives you a sense of control and community. It’s what is commonly called good ‘job fit’. You also need to have enough challenge to keep you interested and motivated. You need enough reinforcement to feel satisfied, useful and appreciated. You need to work for an organisation or in an endeavour that you approve of and agree with.

When you come home, you need the same things. You need to be and feel engaged.

The olive grove is my plan for old age, because it is symbolic. It symbolises life, work, productivity, longevity and tenacity. It symbolises success. In reality, it will provide both leisure and work. Olive groves produce shade, and a place to eat, think and play, but they also produce olives. Because I have finally harvested my first olives, I had to find out how to preserve them, and this is how you do it:

Prick, bruise, pit or otherwise break the skin of the olives and put them in brine (1 part salt: 10 parts water) and change the brine every day for ten days. This will change the consistency of the flesh and remove the bitterness. After 10 days, if the olives are still bitter, keep going with the process until they’re not any more.

This sounds like a recipe for people and life to me, not just for olives!

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

Tags: engagement, job fit, organisational psychology, preserving olives, psychology, work life balance
Posted in Work Life Balance | 2 Comments »

Happiness: Is an Interesting Life More Important than a Happy Life?

Sunday, May 1st, 2011

I’ve been reading Penelope Trunk’s blog, and it fills me with so much food for thought that I don’t know quite what to think or where to start or how to proceed.

I like this a lot in life. I like to have so much to think about that it makes me feel as though the future is endless with possibilities. It gives me hope, and hope is one of the main things that keep us alive. And thoughts are like friends. When I was at university, I missed a lot of lectures, even though I was there in the room, because they were so interesting that they got me thinking!* Like a lot of my favourite bloggers, Sean Carmody, Penelope Trunk and Greg Savage for instance, I think I must be a fairly “promiscuous” thinker, since so many things seem so interesting and seem to have such relevance to the way we work and live our lives.

So, having got so much food for thought, I thought I’d just write about happiness (as if people haven’t been trying to define and understand the nature of happiness since writing and presumably conversation began!).

This is because of a number of reasons: I’ve been thinking about happiness and the role it plays in creativity, I’ve joined an optimism-based LinkedIn Group this week, which has got me thinking from a philosophical point of view, where one draws the line between an unrealistic, silly and superficial desire for un-relentless wishful thinking and positive thought and actual happiness and what it means (and whether I’m a negative thinker for thinking that wishful thinking might be silly – so vexed and such fun!), and, because since I majored in philosophy at university, I’m always trying to be a part of a philosophical tradition of understanding and attaining happiness anyway, especially the Platonic idea of seeking The Good.

I’ve just this minute read on an old post from Penelope’s blog that “New Yorkers think an interesting life is more important than a happy life”. More to think about like: Is there a difference between interesting and happy? Can you have a happy life without interest? Are contentment and serenity the same as happiness? Is happiness possible?

Philosophers have been studying happiness for thousands of years, and there is a whole branch of the more modern discipline of psychology which deals with the psychology of happiness, which indicates that the desire for happiness is at the core of human existence and drives.

In the workplace, much store has been placed lately on the engagement we feel with our jobs, and I suspect that engagement may well be central to happiness generally, not just in the workplace. Certainly, to be a part of something, the moment, a group, society, nature, a team, an intellectual position, or a family, is essential for me to be happy.

Writing a blog and thinking makes me happy. It makes me feel part of something larger, and less alone. It makes me feel engaged with other people and the world of work and ideas. And it makes me feel grateful that so many other people want to share their lives and experiences to help me shape mine.

* I defy you, for instance, to even read the chapter titles from my old teacher Professor Raoul Mortley’s publication From Word to Silence without getting totally lost in the possibilities before you even read anything!

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

Tags: blogging, engagement, happiness, organisational psychology, philosophy, positive psychology, psychology, team work
Posted in Happiness | 3 Comments »