This “promoter’s paradox” is a difficult balancing act. It probably explains why corporate communicators tend to take a subtle and implicit approach to promoting their firms’ good deeds, in the hopes of being more persuasive and inhibiting scepticism.

Do they really have to be so timid? Line Schmeltz (Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences) decided to test CSR communication assumptions by studying the attitudes of “Generation Me,” young people aged 18 to 30, figuring this cohort represents the future of consumer attitudes. Schmeltz’s survey was based on 82 Danish students enrolled in higher education.

Generation Me is thought to be more narcissistic than earlier generations; those in this cohort have grown up steeped in a world of choice and possibilities, and spend much of their time connected to the internet, where transparency is taken for granted.

Not surprisingly, Schmeltz’s survey found that respondents favour companies that engage in CSR without thought of financial benefit. The surprise is that only 22.4 percent stated that they are (slightly) skeptical towards companies that engage in CSR merely for financial gain. This finding indicates that, “even though consumers think that the companies are engaging in CSR for self-centred reasons, the overall evaluation of such activities is positive,” Schmeltz writes in the journal Corporate Communications. “This . . . demonstrates that companies should not hesitate to communicate about CSR activities out of fear of being misunderstood, of being perceived to brag or maybe even being accused of greenwashing.”

The study offers CSR communicators additional insights.

• Consumers are interested in and expect more explicit CSR communication than currently assumed by corporations and academics alike.
• Companies should clearly and explicitly illustrate why particular CSR efforts are of importance to consumers. Consider that perceptions of CSR initiatives are not based on morality and society-centred values but more on personal and self-centred values.
• Respondents seem to favour CSR communication that uses facts rather than impressions. In the survey, 42 percent of respondents liked or really liked the vague statement, “We are constantly working actively on reducing our CO2 emissions.” Compare that 72.5 percent who liked or really liked the factual and more committing statement,  “We have reduced our CO2 emissions by 15 percent – 10 years from now it will be reduced by 50 percent.”

The takeaway: “This paper provides empirical evidence that corporations communicating CSR should have a much more externally oriented and explicit approach focusing on competence and self-centred values instead of on morality and society-centred values,” Schmeltz writes. “This will allow them to create a healthy balance between what they can offer and what consumers demand.”

Line Schmeltz, “Consumer-oriented CSR communication: focusing on ability or morality?”; Corporate Communications (Vol. 17, No. 1, 2012, pp. 29-49)

Well, that depends on what side of the Atlantic Ocean you company is based. If you’re with a North American corporation, you’ll likely practise the black arts of “impression management.” If you’re with a European corporation, it’s just the facts, ma’am.

Impression management is defined as the process by which people seek to influence impression others form of them. In the case of CEOs, the stakes are high, since their reputation can make or break a corporation’s reputation.

To examine varying approaches to impression management, Pollach (U Aarhus, Denmark) and Kerbler (U Vienna) performed a content analysis of CEO profiles culled from corporate websites of 200 large North American and European companies.

They found that, overall, 63 percent of American CEO profiles contained specific impression management categories, while only 34 percent of European profiles contained such content.

“Leadership roles in associations, the CEO’s social stance, nominations in the press, and the CEO’s involvement in political activities play a bigger role in the construction of CEO competence in North America,” Pollach and Kerbler write in the Journal of Business Communications. “Whereas CEO profiles of North American companies show CEOs as active participants in social, political, and public life, European CEOs are presented as primarily business-focused.”

In both the North American and European samples, CEO profiles most commonly contained information on the CEO’s previous positions and the year in which he or she joined the company. After job-related information, education was the most frequently used category, found in about 75 percent of all profiles. Awards earned was commonly used as well.

The CEO’s success on the job was mentioned explicitly in more than one quarter of North American profiles and in several European profiles. In these profiles, the researchers report, the company’s success was attributed to the CEO’s competence. Masters of the Universe.

Now the differences:

While the CEO’s age frequently showed up in the Germanic and Latin European profiles, it was significantly less evident in North American and Anglo profiles.

Ditto for nationality, which showed up more often in Germanic and Latin European profiles.

On the other hand, profiles of North American CEOs were much more likely to contain references to political involvement and military service.

Similarly, North American profiles were more likely to include leadership roles in associations, such as nonprofit organizations, professional associations, trusts, think tanks, museums, or university boards.

The researchers write: “When CEO profiles talk about philanthropy and welfare organizations, the CEO is sometimes presented as the causal agent of corporate giving, for example, when voluntary hours contributed by employees are presented as the CEO’s achievement. This only occurs in North American profiles, and European profiles in fact rarely talk about philanthropic activities.”

Irene Pollach and Eva Kerbler, “Appearing Competent: A Study of Impression Management in U.S. and European CEO Profiles.” Journal of Business Communication (2011 48: 355)

Respondents in all five countries reported that lack of time and money were the biggest challenges to being more creative. Other barriers to creativity included self doubt, other personal or work obligations, and age.

Here are additional findings that I found noteworthy:

• Only one in four people feel they are living up to their creative potential (high: U.S. at 39%; low: UK at 15%).
• There is increasing pressure to be productive rather than creative at work (high: France at 85%; low: Japan at 58%).
• There’s universal concern that the education system is stifling creativity (high: U.S. and France at 62%; low: Japan at 51%).

I think this last point is the most telling.

Notwithstanding the mayhem we may see around us, the world is getting “smarter.” Various measures of intelligence show rising IQs. In recent years, average scores on the Scholastic Assessment Test, which measures aptitude for verbal and mathematical reasoning, have increased as well. These are the happy dividends of improved nutrition, reduced inbreeding, and increased affluence.

But intelligence doesn’t make for creativity. Indeed, judging from test scores in the U.S. over the past decades, creative thinking is plummeting. Researcher Kyung Hee Kim (College of William and Mary) mined the scores from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The TTCT was developed in the mid-1960s and is now considered the best predictor of creative or divergent thinking. Kim studied samples from almost 275,000 kindergarten through grade 12 students and adults, going back to 1974.

Reporting in Creativity Research Journal, Kim found that creative thinking scores remained static or decreased, starting at sixth grade. The TTCT results also indicated that since 1990, even as IQ scores rose, creative thinking scores significantly decreased, particularly among those in kindergarten through third grade.

The decline among young children “is especially concerning as it stunts abilities which are supposed to mature over a lifetime,” Kim wrote. “The decrease of creative thinking for younger children probably arises at home rather than in schools, because kindergarteners and first graders tend to be influenced more by home than school, or possibly both environments contribute to the effect.”

Whatever the root cause, this does suggest that the decline in creativity goes deeper than the lack of time or money at our disposal.

Kyung Hee Kim, “The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.” Creativity Research Journal (23(4), 285–295, 2011)

Then you went back to work. Did anything really change?

By all accounts, it seems that “fun at work” has become an established movement aimed at boosting worker engagement and the bottom line. But does “packaged” fun, dictated by management, make work more enjoyable, increase motivation, or improve organizational performance? I doubt it.

Intuitively, planned fun time doesn’t seem to hold a candle to planning a work environment where fun happens naturally. Empirically, the link between packaged fun and better performance has not been established.  In an article published a couple of years ago in the journal Employee Relations, Bolten (Strathclyde U) and Houlihan (University Colleage Dublin) expressed their own reservations. They pointed out that, “The pursuit of productivity inspired by the loose belief that happy workers make productive workers appears to invoke an equally loose assumption that workplace fun delivers happy workers – and so the cycle moves on.”

What does organic workplace fun look like? In the same journal, Stromberg and Karlsson (Karlstad U) reported on their study of two groups of meat packing workers — the largely female “slicers” and “preparers” — at a Swedish food preparation company.

The researchers described a continuum of “pure” to “applied” workplace humour: jokes, physical joking practices, clowning, nicknaming, and satire. Pure humour reflects the pleasure of social interaction, while applied humour offers an alternative to serious efficiency-obsessed management practices.

To an outsider, the meat packers’ work may seem greasy, monotonous, and even dangerous. But, the researchers reported, some of the workers saw it differently. The workers told them, “It’s not that bad. We have each other, you know”; “I’ve been in worse places. Here, you’re at least allowed to laugh”; and “Time passes quickly when you’re having fun and laugh . . . and when you’re being a bit mischievous”.

“There is no question that humour plays an important role in the everyday work of the meat packers,” the researchers wrote. “Laughter was often heard and the warm and supportive atmospheres within the groups seemed to create a natural setting for jokes to be told and pranks to be played.”

But as their study progressed, another side of workplace humour was revealed: a more subversive form of fun such as ironic jokes and belittling comments about what was going on within the company. Men and managers were prime targets for meat packers’ satire.

“In these cases these subversive humour rituals accentuate the differences between managers and meatpackers, in similar ways as coded jokes. Repeating words once said by managers, in-group expressions, gestures and mimicry behind someone’s back takes the applied humour one step further.”

This is a far cry from what managers would expect out of their fun days.

For those wishing to use fun as an engagement tactic, an honest size-up of workplace demographics would be wise. After all, there are clear differences in how people of different ages and backgrounds respond to fun in the workplace. Researchers such as Lamm and Meeks  (San Francisco State U) have shown that baby boomers are a lot more negative about workplace fun than millenials. Baby boomers tend to be competitive and searching for optimal work environments; fun is seen as counterproductive to their competitive edge. Generation Xers, who embrace balance in their lives, are more open to organized fun activities. On the other end of the spectrum, millennials are likely to regard fun in the workplace as a requirement, not a benefit, of employment.

At least with these sorts of insights, fun initiatives can be better planned and delivered, with less chance of blow-back.

Sharon C. Bolton and Maeve Houlihan, “Are we having fun yet? A consideration of workplace fun and engagement”; Employee Relations (Vol. 31 No. 6, 2009 pp. 556-568)

Susanne Stromberg and Jan Ch. Karlsson, “Rituals of fun and mischief: the case of the Swedish meatpackers”; Employee Relations (Vol. 31 No. 6, 2009 pp. 632-647)

Eric Lamm and Michael D. Meeks, “Workplace fun: the moderating effects of generational differences”;  Employee Relations Vol. 31 No. 6, 2009 pp. 613-631)

In the next post, I’ll highlight a few studies on fun. In this post, let’s see what Heiss (U Vermont) and Carmack (Missouri State U) learned about the use of humor when new employees first enter a work setting. In this case, humor is particularly important in helping individuals make sense of rules and processes  and in giving veterans a chance to socialize newbies and show them the ropes.

The findings by Heiss and Carmack are largely based on observations and interviews of staffers at a university vocational counselling centre. One of the researchers observed the office for two-hour periods three times a week for eight weeks and volunteered at a career fair for 10 hours, resulting in 58 hours of observation.

She found that veterans used humor both aggressively and empathetically. They used humor in aggressive ways to assert power, maintain cultural stability, and preserve group cohesiveness. While aggressive humor was not “we-oriented,” they write in Management Communication Quarterly, its ambiguity allowed employees to avoid some of the negative consequences of addressing problems.

“In essence, the use of aggressive humor created a ‘humor gauntlet’ that newcomers had to complete in order to be part of the group,” they write.

Once newcomers were accepted by the group, they were usually met with what they considered to be friendly and empathetic humor: amusing stories and good-natured practical jokes. By using empathic, humorous storytelling, veterans avoided positioning themselves as superior.

Humor was useful to newcomers as well. It greased the wheels for them to learn about organizational culture and expectations while not embarrassing themselves. Employees “often had to learn through trial and error, observations, and/or asking questions,” the researchers report. “Newcomers were encouraged to ask questions. However, because organizational members were busy, newcomers often felt burdensome or incompetent. Newcomers often asked questions in a joking manner so as to make light of their lack of knowledge or reduce others’ perceptions of the amount of help needed.”

Does this sound like what goes on in organizations you’re a part of?

Sarah N. Heiss and Heather J. Carmack, “Knock, Knock; Who’s There? Making Sense of Organizational Entrance Through Humor.” Management Communication Quarterly (26[1] 106–132)

So I was pleased to see the spring book releases include a timely executive guidebook, Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All, from consultant Bernard T. Ferrari.

Ferrari has an interesting perspective: the man has been a surgeon, corporate executive, and business consultant. The great listeners he’s observed share three traits:

1. They show respect.

Great listeners honestly believe that everyone around them has something unique to contribute. They are able to help their reports draw out critical information without spoon-feeding them with immediate solutions. That involves listening and asking pointed questions in a respectful manner.

2. They keep quiet.

Ferrari’s personal rule of thumb is that a conversation partner should be speaking 80 percent of the time while he speaks only 20 percent of the time. This is a tough one for many of us but with practice we can certainly hone our ability to hold back and weigh in at the right time. Using silence has the added benefit of encouraging others to fill in the dead air with deeper insights, and giving the leader a chance to pick up on nonverbal cues.

3. They challenge assumptions.

Good listeners try to understand — and challenge — the assumptions that lie below the surface of every conversation. “Many executives struggle as listeners because they never think to relax their assumptions and open themselves to the possibilities that can be drawn from conversations with others,” Ferari writes. In other words, Mr./Ms Know-It-All, embrace ambiguity.

I interviewed Raver for an article in Queen’s School of Business Magazine. We talked about her research into “destructive criticism,” the withering, disrespectful feedback that attributes poor performance to a person’s character. Raver and her colleagues focused on trait competitiveness — the degree to which people define themselves as being superior to others and strive to maintain superiority. This is a key factor that influences how people interpret criticism.

They found highly competitive people on the receiving end of destructive criticism are indeed motivated and say they will work even harder to prove themselves and maintain their superiority. But they actually perform worse. They perceive the criticism as an attack on their self-identity, so their performance suffers as they obsess over the criticism rather than bear down and perform the task at hand.

People scoring low on competitiveness don’t have such issues. They may not like experiencing destructive criticism, but their jobs are not as central to their identity. As a result, when faced with such harsh feedback, they are better able to focus on doing what’s necessary to better perform the task. Perversely, destructive criticism may even motivate them.

One of Raver’s other research projects looks at the impact of highly agreeable and disagreeable people on overall team performance. Raver and her colleagues found that students who were abrasive and didn’t care what others felt had a particularly strong and corrosive impact on team collaboration, which eventually rubbed off on others and created dysfunctional dynamics. Not even adding “good egg” workers to a team is enough to overcome the effects of a “bad apple.”

Read more about these studies in the QSB Magazine article

Of late, Wheatley has been writing about how to persevere in the face of adversity and how to shift thinking in the midst of difficult circumstances, both timely skills.

So I was eager to read the transcript of the conversation between Wheatley and the sharp-thinking Art Kleiner, editor-in-chief of strategy+business. They don’t disappoint.

Wheatley says that it is a difficult time for leaders to be innovative, and that there is little time in modern organizations for reflection and learning what works and doesn’t work.

“For me, community — people working together and knowing that others are there to support them — is a critically important but largely invisible resource. . . But community is hard to find in most organizations. Not only do many leaders deny that this capacity is important, but they’re actually destroying it through their current management approaches.”

Such as? Wheatley says many forward-thinking business leaders are being driven by their boards and bosses to implement continuous cutbacks and produce more results with fewer resources.

“Too many leaders fail to realize that the old ways, their mental maps, aren’t giving them the information they need. But instead of acknowledging that, they push on more frantically, desperate to have the old ways work. When human beings work from fear and panic, we lose nearly all of our best reasoning capacities. We can’t see patterns, think about the future, or make moral judgments.”

When you’re lost, Wheatley says, the solution is to admit it and call together everyone who might have information that’s needed to construct a new map, people from all levels of the organization.

Kleiner pushes Wheatley to explain her view that the only leaders who succeed are those who practise a spiritual discipline. Wheatly doesn’t back down, though she makes clear that, by “spiritual discipline,” she doesn’t mean a religious practice per se but rather “some regular activity that leads you to reflect on your struggles and challenges in a larger context.” That might be meditation, time in a natural space, or even Alcoholics Anonymous. Her point is that leaders must engage in some practice that pushes them out of the perception that they are the centre of the universe.

You can find the original article here (registration may be required)

Photograph by Joshua Heath

She says that individuals can perpetrate fraud without necessarily realizing it, and that, at times, it is difficult to distinguish between fraudulent and non-fraudulent activity. Often, the tipping point is how we rationalize our behaviour. We can explain away just about anything to ourselves.

Prof. Murphy says that, typically, there are six ways people talk away unethical behaviour to avoid guilt or self-condemnation.

Shifting The Blame: “Everyone does it.”
Pleading Ignorance: “I can’t see that it hurts anyone.”
Moral Justification: “I’m protecting the company… the employees…my family…”
Advantageous Comparison: “This is nothing compared to…”
Letting Victim Take the Fall: “They had it coming.”
Euphemistic Labeling: “I am trying to level the playing field.”

Do these sound familiar?

Read the entire article in QSB Magazine

On the other hand, the benefits of jointly training managers and shop stewards are tantalizing. The promise lies in increasing boundary-spanning knowledge, reducing the friction that can lead to high grievance costs or work stoppages, and finding shared ways of meeting change head on.

Here’s what union members and managers at ENMAX Power Corporation, based in Calgary, Alberta, learned from their experience with joint training:

Find ways to build trust
You don’t have to have perfect labour relations, but you do require mutual respect.

Respect boundaries
Joint training is an extreme “relationship management” challenge. Each side has to be aware and respectful of boundaries, particularly the other side’s boundaries. That means giving your union or management partner room to manage their own stakeholders.

Stay true to the process of authentic collaboration
Don’t pay lip service—put yourselves in the shoes of the participants and consider their needs. Good ideas need to win out, regardless of who came up with them. Don’t keep score.

Be open and honest
One ENMAX manager explains: “We’re honest about what we do. On day one we talk about the continuum of labour relations and where we are on the spectrum. We peg ourselves mid-way and say we probably don’t want to be harmonious. We have a strong union and strong management and through creativity and open and honest dialogue we can come up with better solutions. So we have to be realistic around where you are.”

Bring energy to the room
Adult learners do best in a safe and engaging environment. Simulated negotiations offer excellent insights that stick.

Build the business case
What’s the cost of the status quo versus moving to a mutual gains perspective? You can spend money on lawyers or spend money on training your people in open communications. At ENMAX, the operational practices committee last year, working with the union, found more than $1 million in efficiencies.

Read the article I wrote for Queen’s University IRC on joint union-management training at ENMAX Power Corporation