Work is what YOU make it!  Honestly it’s true – How we approach work isn’t really too different to how we approach life in general.

For the majority of us we spend more time at work than we do at home and more time with our work colleagues than we do with our friends and family.  Maybe it’s not cool to run around telling everyone how much we love to work and how when it comes to Monday we leap out of bed excited and happy about going to work.

In fact it’s far cooler to moan about having to go to work and see it as some compromised drudgery that we had to do to survive and pay our bills.

Work however is fast becoming the way in which we define ourselves.  It is now answering some of the traditional questions like “Who am I?” and “How do I find meaning and purpose?”.  Work is no longer just about economics; it’s about identity.  About fifty years ago, people had many sources of identity: religion, class, nationality, political affiliation, family roots, geographical and cultural origins and more.  Today, many of these, if not all, have been superseded by work.

When you meet someone at a party, what’s one of the first questions that you are typically asked?  “So, what do you do then.”

Work is where we get to employ most of our talents.  It’s where we experience some of our greatest triumphs and failures.  It’s also the basis for our standard of living.  All of this means that, when work is not working for us, we become unproductive and unfulfilled.

YOU have the choice and the opportunity to turn it all around and make it better, so why not turn it around and make every day a positive experience?

How to Work Wonders - The Book

In 2009, I  published my book - How to Work Wonders - the ultimate guide to Workplace Wellness: A holistic approach to  getting the best out of yourself and your workplace.

To order your copy at £9.99 with a special ConsultingTools Blog site offer quote WWCT10 and email me at info@theelarningarchitect.com

Here are some Top Tips extracted from the book on how you can work wonders:

✓  Refuse the snooze on your alarm.
✓  Start the day with hot water and lemon.
✓  Set yourself a priority action plan.
✓  Thoughts feed emotion – think positively.
✓  Keep a bottle of water with you.
✓  Wear a pedometer to work.
✓  Avoid refined carbohydrates and sugar.
✓  Avoid excess caffeine.
✓  Introduce walking meetings.
✓  Read inspirational quotes.
✓  Use SUMO – shut up and move on!
✓  Look after your environment.

…well, not completely.

But I’d question whether it’s really an adequate way to spot the mass-murderer ( or potential sales executive ) . Julie’s posting on body language beer and Facet 5 points out a seeming correlation between body language and personality types and this, like our everyday interpretation of people’s physical behaviour in personality terms makes common sense. If someone talks to us with their arms crossed in front of them, keeps their head down and mumbles, we get the picture.

BUT !

I recently tried to draft a competency framework on body language and re-read ‘ The Definitive Book of Body Language’ by Allan and Barbara Pease. Even in this best-selling basic book there are three crucial statements.

First, you shouldn’t take a gesture in isolation, you should look at clusters.

Second, context is everything. A gesture doesn’t match a state of mind one-to-one: its meaning depends on temperature, culture, environment among other things. Scratching part of the face may signal a lie or boredom; it might mean ‘ throw a curve ball’ in a baseball game. Or, oddly enough, the scratcher might simply have an itch.

Third, how you interpret a gesture depends on your own personality and state of mind.

This reminds me a little bit of a much less respectable form of human analysis: graphology. If you think about it, it makes sense that writing reflects something about what we’re like: how impulsive we are for instance. On this basis, analysis of personality by handwriting is a mini-industry in the UK and a much larger one in France. But research gives no evidence that it works. My handwriting changes from day to day – sometimes hour to hour and seems to reflect temporary mood ( my handwriting gets worse when I write a large cheque for the inland revenue – fortunately not a frequent occurrence). Perhaps there are underlying rules ( I’m skeptical ), but that’s exactly my point. They’re so complex that trying to tease out valid and reliable inferences about a writers’ personality is a bit like an arts graduate trying to understand String Theory. In such cases, people give up on the complexities and trot out a nice simple version which is usually wrong.

While body language has more going for it than graphology, it’s practical application is fraught with problems. We over interpret minimal signs and start seeing people as a collection of tics and gestures which indicate  he’s ‘bored’, ‘she fancies me’ or ‘ Gotcha!’.

In the 1960s Julian Rotter developed a concept called Locus of Control. It describes whether you believe that your own internal thoughts and behaviours or external forces cause things to happen to you. A simple example: you fail to reach a sales target. Do you say ‘ I made a few mistakes, I must try harder ‘ or ‘ the target was stupid, management don’t understand, the market is lousy, it’s fate ’ Whether any one explanation you make is true or not is less important than whether, in general, you think you influence the outside world or it controls you: whether you’re an ‘ internbal’ or an ‘external’

Those with a high ‘internal locus of control’ ( who believe they are in control of events, not driven by external forces ) will tend to have better control of their behavior and are more likely to attempt to influence other people as well as assume that their efforts will be successful. They are more active in seeking information and knowledge. In other words they have high achievement - motivation.

That’s a much simplified version of the idea  but even this should ring some alarm bells in organisations.

Despite media talk that we’ve become a very individualised society, the fact is that we increasingly feel buffeted by external events outside our control. The  economic downturn is just the most recent and vivid example. We may have chosen to save, set up a pension, pay our bills. Decisions made thousands of miles away, of which we knew nothing, may have added 5 years extra working life and long talks with the bank manager to our major life experiences.  The expenses scandal and ebate about the EU reinforces a growing feeling that we have no control over political decisions. Whatever the benefits of CTV in reducing crime, all those camera, together with constant warnings of terroroist threats take away our sense that we make the big decisions.  We’re controlled by others and where we end up is a question of chance and fate.

Organisations amplify this effect. At times like these, sudden announcements of lay offs, increased controls over spend, budgets systems and procedures all take away our sense of achievement, initiative and involvement in achieving goals. We know that having a stake in the ultimate outcomes of our work is a huge motivater – hence the gradual phasing out of piece work and the isolated production line worker in the 50s.

Yet we need motivated, inquisitive people who take charge of their own fate as much, if not more, in times like these as we do when sales are on an upward curve and we’re recruiting.

So, managers need to look at people’s sense of being in control of their own destinies, their ability to make decision and stand by them. 360 is a great way of doing this and personality test results provide an essential basis for discussing the issue with key people in the company.

Blancing control with freedom; encouraging great work while allowing reasonable mistakes are key leadership tasks and the idea  of locus of control can illuminate the area.