organisational psychology « Genesys Australia Psychometrics

Posts Tagged ‘organisational psychology’

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

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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Related Posts:

The Creativity Imperative

King of the Manning River: Creativity & Problem Solving 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.

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 »

Psychopaths at Work

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

For all our recruitment tests and practices in HR, the problem of psychopaths in the workplace remains a problem that’s hard to solve.

Everyone has worked with a psychopath. I’m a lay-person, so I use the term in it’s popular sense, but I’m on their case. Sometimes they are the obvious bullies in the office, sometimes they are your boss, and sometimes they are someone not apparently in charge, but who has everyone running around after them and who manipulates and wreaks havoc on the whole group by subtle disempowerment.

I’ve known a few. The first one was my boss, and he nearly destroyed my health and my career.

Sometimes, psychopaths are so effective at getting their way and destroying everyone around them, that the only way you can detect them is by noticing the destruction around them. Like a Black Hole in the universe, which you can only detect from the glow around it as light gets sucked in, you can tell if there’s an office psychopath around because everything in the office will be going wrong somehow: team spirit will be low, team work and cooperation will have disintegrated, group optimism and company or department vision will have disappeared, everyone will be tense and guarded and resentful, and nobody will really know why. And most likely, the psychopath will be undetected, and worse, they might be the only person that everyone thinks they can trust.

It’s scary.

I’ve been reading the website of one of the more recent psychopaths in my life. Having totally destroyed the morale of the people he worked with, having repeatedly covered up monthly losses by making charismatic and extravagant promises to the people above him and blaming other people, having (in this day and age!) indulged in outrageous and blatant sexist, harassing and upsetting behaviour with his junior staff, having offended clients with his use of bad language and other inappropriate and crass behaviours, he is now the CEO of a company.

I can see how he got there. He got there through deceit, using other people and destroying lives, reputations and health.

His website looks pretty good. In fact, I recognize some of my own words and ideas there. According to his bio, at the company where he used to work, and where he was finally let go because they just couldn’t afford the losses he kept making, he now claims he made huge profits. Not only that, but the bio is misleadingly worded to give the impression he was much higher in the organization than he actually was. From the bio, you get the impression this guy was actually in charge of the whole Australasian operation. You’d think his former employer would make him change it. The website shows he’s even got some of his ex-victims working for him. How does he get away with it? Because it’s the way psychopaths work, that’s how.

Psychopaths have a way of charming people. Psychopaths tell us what they think we want to hear. Psychopaths have a sense of over-entitlement. They manipulate us and destroy our reputations behind our backs. They divide and rule.

The most powerful weapon a psychopath has though, is their total lack of shame, and this is what makes them different from everyone else. The rest of us care what other people think of us, most of us want to genuinely cooperate, and most of us would be embarrassed if we behaved outrageously in public. Not the psychopath. Because of this, they are able to lie and cheat to great effect.

In tandem with their lack of shame is their other secret weapon: they are really great actors. Though they have no remorse, they can pretend. They are very good at mimicking normal (and even empathetic) human behaviour. They don’t feel it, but they copy it. They are very convincing and can be very charming. While if you stand up to a psychopath they’ll eventually yell, scream and in extreme cases even kill you, they don’t usually need to because they’re so adept at manipulating through charming deceit.

The psych tests we apply in HR to job candidates and staff development are not clinical tools and should not be. They won’t pick up a psychopath. In any event, psychopathy, or sociopathy as it’s now called, is a Personality Disorder, not a mental illness as such, and is extremely hard to detect even in a clinical setting (they’re charming right, and they even know what a clinician wants to hear).

If you gave an Emotional Intelligence test to a psychopath, they’d probably blitz it. Some psychologists even argue that giving EI information to a psychopath is like giving them a loaded gun. It gives them more ammunition to use against the rest of us by teaching them how to be even more charming and apparently agreeable.

So what can you do about an office psychopath? Start to look for the human and organizational fall-out around them. And don’t kid yourself that you are immune to their charm and stories.

The only way to slay a psychopath is with rationality. Insist on evidence and measurable outcomes, not their promises and stories. If everything seems to be awry in your team, and you don’t know why, then you’ve most likely got a psychopath in your midst.

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. This is a lay-person’s view and the example in this post should not be construed to be a real person, and examples of behaviour cited here are illustrations of typical behaviour patterns. More posts below.

Leadership & Good Manners

Tags: business etiquette, communications, decision making, Emotional Intelligence, leadership, organisational psychology, problem solving, psych tests, psychological testing, psychology, psychometric testing, recruitment, team work, workplace assessment, workplace bullies
Posted in Workplace Psychopaths | 1 Comment »

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 »

Genesis Means Create: The Creativity & Innovation Imperative

Sunday, August 7th, 2011

The word “genesis” means create or come into being. Creating things is what human beings can’t help but do. We are driven to it.

Creativity is at the heart of what it means to be human. Creativity informs everything we do and as a species it’s our overwhelming imperative. We invent, produce, have ideas and think of solutions. And never stop.

Everything we do is based on our essential creativity and nothing would happen if we had no creativity.

In the modern world of business and organizations, innovation and adaptability are both highly praised and greatly desired. Especially in uncertain economic and fast changing times, the need for innovation and adaptability is becoming one of our highest priorities, because if we have access to and control of these then we can adapt quickly, stay afloat or ahead of the game and be ready for all challenges.

Creativity is the raw material of innovation. Innovation is simply creativity put into action. Creativity is necessary not only for innovation but also for critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, teamwork and almost every area of life we most highly value.

In business and the workplace, creativity is the most powerful tool an individual or organization can have and across the world there is a growing recognition that we must muster our individual and collective creativity and learn to innovate or perish. An IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs cited in the Newsweek article, The Creativity Crisis in July 2010, identified creativity as the number 1 “leadership compentency” of the future.

If we want to be lean and mean, if we want to continue to find successful and elegant solutions, if we want to continue and increase technological development, if we want to make good decisions and think clearly and well, if we want to re-define and re-invent the way we use natural resources, if we want to feed the world’s expanding population, then we need to recognise and apply our creativity as expediently, intentionally and intelligently as we can.

There is no more time to play silly games with our creativity: no more time to pretend that it only belongs in the arts, that it is not rational or scientific, that it’s what other people have and not us. Creativity has to be recognized, embraced and applied universally and well.

The organisations and individuals who have recognized this are already ahead of the game. There is nothing tricky or mysterious about creativity. It’s what’s inside us all.

We can all generate more good ideas and good decisions that invent the future.

Lynette Jensen

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Tags: challenges, communications, Creativity, creativity & innovation, decision making, leadership, organisational psychology, problem solving, psychology, team work, workplace assessment
Posted in Creativity & innovation | 1 Comment »

Art Imitates Life, Life Imitates LinkedIn: Online Citizenship

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

Most of us in business or other organisations belong to LinkedIn, and many of us participate in discussion groups related to our fields and areas of specialisation and interest. Furthermore, marketing and promotions professionals these days tell us that it is extremely important to have an online presence and profile, and though there are other alternatives like Brazen Careerist, LinkedIn is the professional social networking standard.

Accordingly, like most people I know, I belong to many LinkedIn groups, which in my case cover areas like organisational psychology, psychometrics, creativity, arts, advertising and HR. Like most people, I subscribe to a few good professional blogs, and through these come upon many links to other blogs and articles. It’s an expanding world, and I’m both personally and professionally grateful to be exposed daily to so much information and food for thought.

I have always been interested in many different areas, and so my professional interests and reading reflect this. Lately, because I’ve started to notice some patterns in myself and others, I’ve begun to realise that my online life is very similar to my real life.

Online, the contacts I collect seem to be like my friends and associates in real life: they are interesting, varied, creative, mostly outspoken, confident, leaders and thought influencers, and from many walks of life and professional areas. The things they say to me are starting to be like things people in real life say to me.

More importantly though, I’ve started to realise that the virtual, online professional world needs to maintain standards and etiquette, just like in the real world. Just as I do in real life, I seem to spend a lot of my time being on guard for and smoothing over potential conflicts. The online world of professional social net-working is a place where all cultures come together and connect instantly, where the nuance of the written word is often difficult to understand and subtleties are sometimes misunderstood, and the different time zones across the world make the time of day an ingredient in the way we communicate and what we say.

Online, even in the professional sphere of LinkedIn (as opposed to Facebook for instance) there are bullies, cranks, show-offs, posers, extraverts, introverts, casual people, funny people, serious people, formal people and many, many others. Just like real life. In real life though, you can look someone in the eye and hear the tone in their voice and judge their body language.

So I’m beginning to think that we need to proactively think of ourselves as online citizens, with responsibilities to be civil and not too dominating in discussions but to have something to say and keep discussions going, aware and empathetic of differences like race and culture, and to be particularly careful to try to pick up verbal nuance and humour, and not to over-react to apparent slights but to publicly object to online dominance, bullying or impoliteness.

A year or so ago my sons made a short film called Art Imitates Life, Life Imitates Facebook for Kino, Sydney. It should come as no surprise to me to find that the same principle applies to LinkedIn.

Lynette Jensen

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Tags: business etiquette, communications, Creativity, leadership, manners, organisational psychology, problem solving, social networking, team work
Posted in Online Citizenship | 3 Comments »

More Cheating on Psych Tests

Saturday, June 11th, 2011

There has been an interesting discussion lately on a Psychometrics Linked In Group. The discussion was begun by Prue Laurence, Director at Psylutions, a workplace psychology consultancy in Melbourne where they are currently conducting a survey about cheating in workplace psychometric tests and people’s attitudes to psych testing.

Cheating on psych tests is a subject that comes up a lot, and I have fairly recently written about it myself.

In general, I would say that there’s very little point in even attempting to cheat, not because I make a moral judgement, but because potential employees just don’t know what an employer might be looking for. There’s a common perception that every employer is looking for extravert personalities, and put simply, that’s just wrong. There’s also a perception that extraverts are somehow “better” than introverts and that’s just silly. (For an explanation, please read my previous post, link above).

But Prue’s call for subjects to do her survey has engendered a discussion that has begun to develop the idea of cheating in a much deeper way, and to consider the phenomenon of psych tests and the way they can be used and abused from a different perspective.

One of the commenters, a UK Director of a Human Resources and Business consultancy, related the story of a group of young graduates gathering together to complete online unsupervised ability tests for their friends. He says, “…There seems to be no shame in this (they see it) as a fair way of outwitting the tedious, repetitious and time-consuming automated selection processes so many businesses put in the way of bright graduates applying for jobs.”

I think this is really sad. Psychometric tests, or any other form of employee selection should never be used to get in the way of anyone applying for jobs, or getting them. All our staff selection processes, including psych tests, should be used to get the clearest picture possible of not only who will be the best person for the job, but also whether the job is the best fit for the applicant. It’s a two-way street, and all our selection processes should be applied well, carefully and humanely, in order to achieve the best decision possible, and the best outcome for everyone.

The idea of a conveyor belt, one-size-fits-all, psychometric testing (most especially ability testing!) also really concerns me. You would hope that ability tests would be carefully conducted, and the idea that we are becoming a society where we are so concerned with churning through processes for expedience, rather than doing things well and carefully, is frankly repugnant. If tests are conducted coldly and blithely, then can we be surprised that people might treat them blithely? Psych tests most certainly can be used for screening, but that doesn’t mean we should forget that candidates are people, or that we should do it cruelly, coldly, or cynically.

But another comment in the discussion is even more concerning. The Director of a Leadership and Human Resources and Development consultancy in the USA says, “Have you ever applied for a job online lately? … No feedback, no contact, no personal touch … No real opportunity to tell your story…”.

Further, he says that he has built and used tests for many years, but finds himself “…embarrassed by what passes for professional practice these days” And tellingly, he says, “ We say people are our most valuable resource but then treat them like cattle being led to the slaughter.”

I say it’s a call to arms! It doesn’t have to be this way, and shouldn’t be.

All of us who are involved in Human Resources, staff selection and development, recruiting, and test development and delivery need to be constantly aware that we are in the business of dealing with people’s lives. If we don’t treat people well and fairly, then we can’t expect them to treat our processes well and fairly.

You don’t need to cheat on psych tests. Lets make sure we deliver psych tests and our other processes so well, that we’re not cheating on candidates.

For all of us, our job and work life is one of the most important things we have in life. We need to keep remembering that.

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: ability tests, business etiquette, Cheating on Psych Tests, leadership, organisational psychology, personality tests, psych tests, psychological testing, psychology, Psychometric Assessment, psychometric testing, workplace assessment
Posted in Cheating on Psych Tests | 1 Comment »

Creativity: The Essence of Being Australian

Sunday, May 29th, 2011

Creativity is at the core of all human endeavour. It’s what makes us keep searching for new ideas and innovations, and is what got us standing up and leaving our cave dwelling existence in the first place.

Creativity in the workplace is essential. At a macro level creativity drives innovation, and it’s innovation that drives expansion and development of industry and economy. At a micro level, every individual in the workplace can be more productive, happy and effective if they apply creativity to problem solving, team dynamics and management, and their general work and work/life balance.

There has been a tendency in Australia to marginalise the word “creativity”. As a society, we have been guilty, I think, of using it almost as a pejorative term, and to see it as something outside the mainstream. We have tended to think of it as being associated only with the arts, or with advertising, or with people who wear “funny clothes” and are generally not quite “like us”. But this is to trivialise creativity, and not understand what it really is, and to miss the point as a growing and dynamic society, to our detriment.

Australians are probably known for loving sport and straight-talking, and for being suspicious of the more “airy fairy” which we’ve historically associated with a perceived pretention in arts, culture and intellectualism. We pride ourselves on a straightforward and egalitarian approach. And we are proud we’ll “have a go” with a minimum of fuss (No worries, Mate!).

“Having a go” is at the heart of what creativity is. Creativity allows you to make something from nothing, to look at something in a different way, to make the most of limited resources, to try something new and to solve problems. I would have thought that Australians, with our “No worries, Mate” attitude, unconsciously apply creativity very well, and fundamentally.

Surely it was this attitude, and it’s underlying basis in creativity, that recently got us through the Global Financial Crisis so well, that allowed us to stage such an inspiring, beautiful and deeply touching Sydney Olympic Games, that underlies our worship and reverence of the physical poetry of Don Bradman’s game, and that’s enabled us to have created (against all odds!) a dynamic, culturally diverse and sophisticated society from a convict settlement in just over 200 years.

Surely, creativity is at the heart of what it means to be Australian? To be prepared to “have a go” is to be creative.

In Australia, visitors tell us this all the time. While they expect the geographical, physical beauty of Australia, they don’t expect our joy, our sophisticated society, our straight-forwardness, and they are surprised that we’ve made something so complex yet unpretentious from very little and in such a short time. Isn’t this why Oprah Winfrey was so shocked and so over-come recently by the surprise and wonder of Australia? And isn’t this why we can say, “We created this – we made it with our own hands and our own thoughts”?

So if Australians, and the Australian culture generally, harness the essence of creativity without even knowing it, how much more could be achieved, individually and as a society, if we started to recognise it properly, and to apply it intentionally?

What a society we could be, and what an economy we could create!

Lynette Jensen

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Tags: Creativity, innovation, organisational psychology, positive psychology, psychology of creativity, workplace creativity
Posted in Creativity in the Workplace | 8 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 »

Inspired Workplaces: Sydney Trapeze School

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

Since writing recently about the oyster farmers of the Manning River and their magnificent workplace, I’ve been thinking about other equally inspiring workplaces.

Our launch was held at Sydney Trapeze School a number of years ago, with a metaphorical wish to help our clients “fly”, and though on the surface, a trapeze school seems very different from a workplace psychology practice, we have had a close psychological connection to the school and have used it as a source of inspiration since we began.

Sydney Trapeze School operates from an historical, edgy and extremely stylish old factory, which still retains its enormous original gantry crane, in the grungy inner-city suburb of St Peters in Sydney. In an industrial and old working class suburb, STS is located in an old factory complex next to the train tracks, where these days a number of adventure and arts enterprises share the space with operating factories, workshops and industrial businesses.

The environment of Sydney Trapeze School is the first thing that makes it special, and inspirational. It is huge, lofty, and cathedral-like, and of course the flying trapeze rig and other circus apparatus makes it seem exotic and colourful. The juxtaposition of colourful circus paraphernalia with the industrial atmosphere of the original building makes you feel as though you are somewhere special and enthralling.

But in addition to the physical impact of STS, there is much more that makes it a very special place. Sydney Trapeze School was begun nearly three years ago by twin brothers Frank and Rob Taylor, whose enduring laid-back and casually friendly demeanour belies the inspiration and drive that must have been required to bring their dream to fruition, and make it the successful operation it is.

Flying Trapeze is a growing sport, recreation and fitness activity, because it combines a number of physical and mental challenges, including gymnastic skill, careful timing, tenacity, trust, teamwork, and personal mental and physical courage. Learning to fly on the flying trapeze is the kind of activity that helps people realise and generalise skills that are needed for all other aspects of a successful life. Because these skills, especially over-coming personal challenges and fears, are extremely relevant to the workplace, Sydney Trapeze School offers corporate workshops to work teams and organisations among its services.

At the end of every term, Sydney Trapeze School stages a performance, which showcases its students’ hard work. At the most recent show, based on a pirate theme, the completion of a huge mural was also celebrated. Local street artists, Tom McDonald and Peter Lloyd Jones were commissioned to paint a mural along almost the entire length of one wall, and the project took a year to complete.

With a teaching staff now of over a dozen, students from across Sydney, a secondary out-door rig for use in summer, and an Australia-wide reputation, the Taylor brothers have developed their business from the ground up into an impressively successful operation which still retains the friendly and inclusive atmosphere it began with.

It’s success and continuing growth is a testament to what can happen when you have clear vision, faith and tenacity.

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: decision making, organisational psychology, problem solving, psychological testing, sydney trapeze school, team work
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