Developing Engagement, Wellbeing and Performance of Leaders and People at Work

Paul Atkins & Robert Styles

Centre for Career Development ANU

Aims for Today

• Briefly discuss current context for ANU developing a unique approach to staff development.

• Discuss the nature of psychological flexibility and why it is increasingly being seen as critical.

• Present research method and results.

A unique approach to staff development• Centred on developing a bigger, more

flexible repertoire of chosen responses to all situations.

• Targeting the following core capabilities:– self-awareness– self-regulatory capability – perspective taking capability, and – dialogue skills.

This is unique because ...

• Psychological flexibility (PF) is at the core of all our work.• How can we respond flexibly and more effectively to life

situations?• Answer:

– a) by being aware of our own automatic sense-making and emotional reactivity,

– b) being able to self-regulate to choose from a range of possible responses, and

– c) choosing to act in the direction of that which is most helpful in the moment to realise chosen values.

We emphasise the importance of qualities of receptivity, not just agency

• BEING – not only DOING – (although DOING is still important).

open aware engaged

Psychological Flexibility is ...

• the capacity to be aware of one’s own automatic reactions to the present moment (whether positive, negative or neutral) and being able to act in a way that will bring about what is good for you in the long run.

open aware engaged

mindfulness

values directed action

Some examples ...

• Decision Making - Choosing what to do each moment of each day.

• Conflict – stepping back from assumptions and perspective to listen to the other.

• Persistence on Difficult Tasks – writing a paper even when judgmental.

• Leading with courage, presence and authenticity rather than defensively and reactively.

Evidence that psychological flexibility is important ...

There is considerable evidence for the positive impacts of psychological flexibility upon work-related dependent variables such as: mental health (Flaxman & Bond, 2010a, 2010b; Kashdan & Rottenberg, 2010), performance (Bond & Bunce, 2003), physical well-being (Donaldson-Feilder & Bond, 2004), a propensity to innovate (Bond & Bunce, 2000), social and emotional functioning (McCracken & Yang, 2008), and a capacity to thrive under conditions of greater autonomy (Bond et al., 2008).

... mindfulness is important ...

There is also strong evidence that mindfulness interventions can have positive consequences for individuals, including: increased empathy (Block-Lerner, Adair, Plumb, Rhatigan, & Orsillo, 2007; Shapiro, Schwartz, & Bonner, 1998), reduced burnout and increased life satisfaction (Mackenzie, Poulin, & Seidman-Carlson, 2006), improved mental health (Williams, 2006), greater attentional performance and cognitive flexibility (Moore & Malinowski, 2009), improved performance (Shao & Skarlicki, 2009), and higher autonomous motivation and vitality (Brown & Ryan, 2003).

There has also been increasing research demonstrating that mindfulness improves:decision making, reduces likelihood of errors, enhances resilience to stress at work and improves concentration and attention (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007; Glomb, Duffy, Bono, & Yang, 2012; Ortner, 2007; Shapiro, Astin, Bishop, & Cordova, 2005; Shapiro et al., 1998; Walach et al., 2007).

The benefits of mindfulness include...

• Improved physical health• Reduced psychological illness• Enhanced well-being• Changed brain structures• Changed brain activity, and …• Improved Cognition and Motivation

– Creativity, Performance and Engagement

and identifying and acting in line with values is important ...• The entire empowerment movement within management

is based upon the idea of helping people act in a way that is self-determining.

• There is a huge and growing literature showing the power of intrinsic motivation for improving performance in workplaces requiring discretionary effort.

• And there is a huge and growing literature on the power of goal setting for enhancing direction, effort and persistence.

Now psychological flexibility does not develop by talking about it ...• It needs practice!• Noticing one’s own meaning making and

cognitive/emotional reactivity.• Practicing suspending reactivity and more

consciously choosing.• Identifying, prioritising and repeatedly

asking “What is most important here?”

Our programs emphasise practice in different ways... • Mindfulness: emphasises core capabilities of

awareness and openness (non-defensive curiosity) situated in the person’s whole of life, without an explicit work outcome.

• CDP’s: emphasise improving performance through values clarification and skill building.

• Leadership: emphasise improving leadership through self-regulatory capability and relationship skills.

So what are we researching ...

Work Engagement

WellbeingSelf-Determination/ Intrinsic Motivation

Work Performance

Psychological Flexibility

Managerial Autonomy Support

Managerial autonomy support assesses the degree to which a person feels empowered by their line manager.

Psychological flexibility consists of scales designed to measure aspects of mindfulness, values clarity and capacity to act in a valued direction.

“Self-determination” is the degree to which people endorse their actions as freely chosen. It is equivalent to being ‘intrinsically motivated’.

For work engagement - Vigour reflects high levels of energy. Dedication reflects a strong sense of involvement, meaning, enthusiasm and pride. Absorption reflects a state of concentration, and positive preoccupation with the task.

Wellbeing can be either about ...

• Positive or negative emotions (hedonic)• Meaningfulness and life satisfaction

(eudaimonic)• We measure both

Performance measurement ...

• At the moment we only assess self-ratings of performance in different work domains (research, teaching etc) and overall.

RESULTS SO FAR

These are the people starting the research...

Program N Age % Female % Doctorate

% Academic

Mean SDCareer Development Program

42 39.0 8.0 48% 88% 100%

Mindfulness for Living and Working Well

63 44.5 11.6 77% 15% 27%

Leadership 12 44.2 10.8 58% 50% 58%

We frequently have up to a 50% dropout rate by time 3.

There are two main ways to analyse the data ...

• Cross-sectionally at time 1 to look at existing relationships between variables.

• Longitudinally to look at effects of programs.

Recall the overall model ...

Work Engagement

WellbeingSelf-Determination/ Intrinsic Motivation

Work Performance

Psychological Flexibility

Managerial Autonomy Support

UWES: All

PANAS: Negative

IMI:ALL

Self-rated Performance

FFMQ: Awareness

Managerial Autonomy Support

For academics, these are significant relationships

FFMQ: Non-React

FFMQ: Non-Judge

AAQ: Experiential Acceptance

IMI: Research Only

IMI: Teaching Only

UWES: Vigour

UWES: Dedication

UWES: Absorption

SWLS

PANAS: Positive

PANAS: Overall

UWES: Overall

IMI: Primary Role

FFMQ: Awareness

Managerial Autonomy Support

And for professional staff...

FFMQ: Non-React

FFMQ: Non-Judge

AAQ: Experiential Acceptance

IMI: Overall

UWES: Vigour

UWES: Dedication

UWES: Absorption

PANAS: Negative

Self-rated Performance

SWLS

PANAS: Positive

PANAS: Overall

So what? • The overall model receives broad support!

– This provides justification for this as a training strategy– Building work engagement and overall wellbeing does affect at least self-rated performance– And if we improve management, self-awareness and self-regulatory capability we are likely

to positive impact work engagement, intrinsic motivation, wellbeing and performance.– And we are most likely the only university in the world to have shown this.

• Within that, the model demonstrates that there are two very different populations with different drivers.– Perhaps our training needs to take those drivers more into account.– Where should resources be targeted?

• Managerial autonomy support appears not to be important for academics. Why? Should it be important?

• Flexible responding in the face of difficulties is an important determinant of work engagement for academics, again providing strong support for our approach.

However ...

• Analysis is ongoing• Data collection is ongoing – we are

restricted in the forms of analysis we can do at the moment due to inadequate sample size.

• We need better measures of performance.

Now lets look at the effects of the programs ...

We appear to be impacting that which we want to impact ... e.g. mindfulness

T1 T2 T3 'Rarely true' 2

2.2

2.4

2.6

2.8

3

3.2

3.4

3.6

3.8

'Often true' 4

Career Development Program

Mindfulness

Leadership

Time

Min

dfu

lnes

s S

core

And not that which we might not expect to be impacted ...

T1 T2 T34.0

4.5

5.0

5.5

6.0

Career developmnent program

Mindfulness

Leadership

Time

Man

ager

ial

Au

ton

om

y S

up

po

rt

We are positively impacting work engagement, particularly vigour and dedication ...

T1 T2 T3 Sometimes' 4

4.2

4.4

4.6

4.8

5

5.2

5.4

5.6

5.8

'Very often' 6

Career Development Program

Mindfulness

Leadership

Time

Wo

rk E

ng

agem

ent

- V

igo

ur

And our programs are helping people to have more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions ... Long term!

T1 T2 T33

3.2

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

Career development program

Mindfulness

Leadership

Time

Aff

ect

(Po

s -

Neg

)

As well as being more satisfied with their lives ...

T1 T2 T3 'Agree slightly' 4

4.2

4.4

4.6

4.8

5

5.2

5.4

5.6

5.8

'Strongly agree' 6

Career development program

Mindfulness

Leadership

Time

Sat

isfa

ctio

n W

ith

Lif

e

But the impact upon how well staff feel they are performing is mixed ...

T1 T2 T37

7.2

7.4

7.6

7.8

8

Career developmnent program

Mindfulness

Leadership

Time

Ove

rall

Sel

f-ra

ted

Per

form

ance

So what?

• Mindfulness program is situated in the participants own life. It involves continuous contextually relevant practice.

• This may well be an important part of ongoing practice.

• There is room to increase the impacts of all the programs. We now have baseline data that allows us to do that.

Paul Atkins and Robert Styles

Centre for Career Development ANU

Thank you