Are you tired? Let’s be honest, the answer for most of us sits somewhere between, ‘Yes, quite’ and ‘Could collapse any second’.

In his seminal book Why We Sleep¹, Matthew Walker notes that two-thirds of adults throughout all developed nations fail to obtain the recommended eight hours of nightly sleep. They do so despite the fact that the physical and mental impairments caused by one night of bad sleep are substantially worse than those caused by an equivalent absence of food or exercise. In fact, human beings are the only species on Earth that will deliberately deprive themselves of sleep without legitimate gain. Cutting back on sleep, often in favour of work– and in doing so imbuing our everyday routines with a heavy dose of masochism – has become the norm. And it’s having a seriously negative effect on people’s lives, both personal and professional.

Why don’t we sleep?

Margaret Thatcher famously slept only four hours a night. And this sleep (or lack thereof) came to represent something. A narrative developed around it, one that the iron lady and her team were more than happy to fuel. Thatcher’s lack of sleep, the narrative would have you believe, was yet further proof of her industriousness, her willingness to work hard and make sacrifices, with the obvious implication that people who were less successful (which, given she was the country’s leader, was everyone) were wasting their time with nightly slumbers. If these layabouts traded time sleeping for time working, then they too could soon become titans of their chosen field. Sleep, in other words, was just another form of laziness.

It’s a fallacy that’s permeated modern culture, with billionaire CEOs and lifestyle gurus perennially endorsing wake-up times that would have even cockerels’ eyes watering, all in pursuit of the past decade’s holy grail: productivity.

The 5am club! Seize the day! The early bird gets the worm! Whatever the slogan may be, we’ve been conditioned to believe that time in bed is time misspent, even though every morsel of scientific evidence points to the contrary. Studies show that reducing sleep by as little as 1.5 hours for even a single night could cause a reduction of daytime alertness by as much as 32 percent², while also doubling the person’s risk of sustaining an occupational injury. People who average less than seven hours of sleep are nearly three times more likely to develop a cold³, not to mention suffer dire effects on their mental health⁴.

Business leaders like to offer inspirational quotes about their work ethic, like Ari Onassis’ famous, “Don’t sleep too much or you’ll wake up a failure. If you sleep three hours less each night for a year, you will have an extra month and a half to succeed in.”⁵ Perhaps such advice truly worked for him – he certainly found the requisite levels of success, after all. But the amount of sleep we need varies widely from person to person and is based more on genetics than anything else⁶. Such a quote suggests Mr Onassis was able to function and even thrive on very little. But the truth for most people that if you sleep three hours less each night for a year, all you will have to show for it is an extra month and a half in which to be miserable and incompetent. The early bird may get the worm, but before you test that theory by dragging yourself out from your duvet’s warmth into a cold, dark morning, you best be sure that you’re really a ‘bird’ – because the saying indicates that the early worm gets devoured fast.

Sleep and the black mirror

Screens are a problem. We all know it. We’ve been told enough times. And yet, when bedtime approaches, how many of us truly disconnect? Blue light from our computers, TVs, tablets and smartphones suppresses the sleep-inducing hormone ‘melatonin’⁷, making it harder for us to get to sleep. If this was a problem before the pandemic, it has been infinitely exacerbated with the increased prominence of home and hybrid working. The dividing lines that separate our personal and professional lives grow thinner and more penetrable with each passing year.

Many modern work cultures expect their employees to be “always-on”, whether that’s explicitly said or simply made obvious, with ominous implied consequences for those who dare view non-working hours as a brief window of respite. As such, workers are glued to their screens too late which causes them to sleep less, which in turn causes them to work less productively the following day due to that lack of sleep, which in turn causes them to stay up later and work harder to catch up, until they’re sent spiralling into a Catherine wheel of exhaustion and poor performance. It’s unsustainable, with a hugely negative impact on workers, but on businesses too.

The problem in numbers

A 2007 study⁹ found that fatigue was costing US companies around $136.4 billion dollars a year, $1,967 per employee. Unsurprisingly, with sleep patterns having worsened significantly in the years since, more recent numbers suggest the economic costs of sleep deprivation in 2015 ranged between $280 and $411 billion US dollars¹⁰. Sleep deprivation is also the leading cause of absenteeism and was thought to be responsible for 1.23 million lost working days in the US in the same year¹¹. If such numbers were caused by any other aspect of a business, leaders would work to address it immediately, so why not with this?

As Professor Vicki Culpin, author of The Wake-up Call: The importance of sleep in organizational life, notes¹²:

It is common for managers and colleagues to look at a lack of focus or motivation, irritability, and bad decision making as being caused by poor training, organizational politics or the work environment. The answer could be much simpler – a lack of sleep.

On the employee side, meanwhile, lack of sleep has been shown to lead to worse job performance, productivity, career progression and satisfaction, and to increase job-related accidents, absenteeism, and counterproductive work behaviours¹³. While better sleep has been linked to improved memory and learning, as well as being pivotal for our cardiovascular health and the functioning of our immune system¹⁴.

Sleep hygiene and the role of employers

There are many ways to go about improving your sleep hygiene. You can create a more regular sleep routine, in which you go to bed and wake at the same time every day. You can exercise more (though avoid doing so close to bedtime, as exercising too late can affect sleep negatively). You can avoid nicotine, caffeine and alcohol in the hours before bed, as well as eschewing your phone/TV/tablet for a good book or some other such blue-light-free activity.

Employers have a role to play too. Bad leaders tend to add to their employees’ levels of stress, which can affect their sleep, especially if they’re being asked to work unrealistic hours and given no time to detach. Good employers ensure their staff are happy and engaged because they know that’s how to get the best of them. Ensuring employees are well rested is a huge part of that. It’s the humane thing to do, but it’s also profitable. Before splashing cash on flashy motivational speakers or intensive retraining courses, any leader or worker looking for simple and immediate ways to improve professional performance might want to try starting with something simpler: sleep.

More on Sleep

• The Power of Sleep: Unlocking the Secrets to Success with Elite Sports Sleep Coach Nick Littlehales
• Cracking The Performance Code with Justin Roethlingshoefer
• Performance improvement lessons from leading sleep expert Pat Byrne
• The impact of sleep on performance with Motty Varghese

References

¹ Walker, M. (2018). Why we sleep. Penguin Books.

² https://www.forthealthcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sleep-deprivation-and-work-performance.pdf#:~:text=Sleep%20deprivation%20negatively%20affects%20work,Problem%2Dsolving%20abilities%20decline.

³ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/414701

⁴ https://www.hult.edu/blog/how-sleep-deprivation-affects-work-and-performance/

⁵ https://hbr.org/2020/07/how-much-is-bad-sleep-hurting-your-career?registration=success

⁶ https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/28087/

⁷ https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2018/01/30/is-lack-of-sleep-affecting-your-work/

⁸ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/turning-away-from-always-on-work-culture-avi-z-liran/?trk=pulse-article_more-articles_related-content-card

⁹ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17215708/

¹⁰ https://thesleepdoctor.com/sleep-hygiene/sleep-and-productivity-at-work/

¹¹ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28983434/

¹² https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S108707921200007X

¹³ https://hbr.org/2020/07/how-much-is-bad-sleep-hurting-your-career?registration=success

¹⁴ https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/good-sleep-and-job-performance

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill.

In December, the world watched footballers have their hopes shattered, dreams dashed, and chances of glory snatched away, all on the most public of stages. The World Cup comes around only once every four years. It is the sport’s grand prize, the white whale for players, coaches, and fans alike. But for all but one team in the tournament, failure is inevitable. And though the stakes and the public nature of that failure may be unique to elite sportspeople, professional disappointments more generally are not.

Failure is one of life’s great levellers, crossing boundaries of nationality, class, gender, and identity, landing at everyone’s feet eventually, often many times over. The question, then, is not if we will fail, but how we will react when we inevitably do. For footballers, the course is already chartered. They left Qatar and returned to their domestic leagues, where they have had the chance to lick their wounds with a stellar back half of the season. These seasons will reset again in the summer, providing a blank new page on which they can start to write over the disappointment of this tournament’s already fading ink. Those of a ripe enough age will even have another chance at World Cup glory in four years’ time.

But what about those in other careers, whose path is less obvious, who don’t have clear markers or institutionally mandated resets? How can we use professional failure as a tool for learning, a way to grow resilience and add weapons to our arsenal, rather than letting it hold us back, dragging it around forever like a weight around the ankle?

Have you failed?

In his book In Praise of Failure: The Value of Overcoming Mistakes in Sports and in Life¹, author Mark H. Anshel notes that, “We often misuse the word failure, especially in achievement settings.” In a work context, our idea of failure is more often based on our own internal expectations than anything tangible: the promotion we felt we deserved but didn’t get; the raise that wasn’t as substantial as we had hoped; the client feedback that wasn’t as glowing as we expected.

When assessing such moments, it’s important to have some perspective. It’s impossible to shake off our subjective lenses entirely, but that doesn’t mean we can’t at least try to step back and assess our situation with as much objectivity as we are capable of. Is what’s happened to us a genuine failure or simply a result of external life not living up to our internal narratives? Is what you’re experiencing truly a failure or simply a setback? Pursuing these questions, Anshel concludes that we often ascribe the term failure to undeserving events. “What is often called failure consists of not meeting goals or expectations, or not achieving perfection.”

Perfect is the enemy of good

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic, has waged a war on perfectionism, seeing it as the enemy of creativity and productivity, not to mention satisfaction. “Nothing is less efficient than perfectionism,”² she says. “Done is better than good.” When looking at your own professional disappointment, it’s worth asking yourself whether perfectionism is the true root of your perceived failure. Striving for excellence is all well and good, but perspective is vital. To function at any decent level consistently requires an understanding that all things cannot be well at all times, and that the moments in which we fall short of our own or others’ standards are opportunities for learning. Assess your supposed failures by fair standards, not those of your inner perfectionist, and see if it doesn’t give you some perspective.

But what if you have failed?

Sometimes, of course, we do fail. It’s not about perspective or overly high standards, we just actually made a mistake that had consequences or invested our time and energy in the wrong idea or project. Maybe we lost the company we work for money. Maybe we lost our own company money, or even worse, our company went under. Or maybe whatever company you work for decided they were better off without you and decided to let you go. Any of these things, it would be fair to say, are failures. They also happen all the time, to people at every axis of the talent and success spectrum. So how do we learn from them?

In an article³ in Forbes, sixteen leading businesspeople offered various solutions. The general consensus was that reflection, analysis, acceptance, and a willingness to move onto the next goal were of paramount importance. Chuck Hengel of Marketing Architects recommended, “sitting in the failure just long enough to learn from it.” Jason Van Camp from Mission Six Zero meanwhile advises, “Be willing to try, fail, and try again and again. Failure is fertilizer, and fertilizer is what you need to grow to your full potential…If you don’t have any regrets, you aren’t trying hard enough.”

These are wise words, but it can be easy to dismiss wise words when in a lull. They can seem too engineered, too Hallmark, helpful in the abstract but painfully inadequate in practice. Except, the numbers back them up.

Failing as a numbers game

In their book Building Resiliency: How to Thrive in Times of Change⁴, Mary Lynn Pulley and Michael Wakefield observe that in a 1984 study on the “key events” that contributed to leaders’ development, 20% of respondents “said they learned significant lessons from hardship, such as job loss, career setbacks, mistakes and failures, or personal trauma.” When the experiment was repeated in the late 1990s, that number had risen to 34%. And the smart money would say that in the modern climate of intense self-reflection and analysis, the number will have skyrocketed even further.

Similarly, in a paper⁵ published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers conducted a study on what they termed ‘resilient serial entrepreneurs’, using the term to refer to workers who had undergone “past negative entrepreneurial experience” but chosen to re-enter into entrepreneurial activity all the same. They found that these entrepreneurs who had faced hard times, “benefit from enriched cognitive schemas leading them to greater export propensity.” Or, put more simply, they performed better within the international markets the research was conducted in than those who had not previously experienced such professional hardships.

Events within your control

Sometimes we may fail as a result of our own shortcomings, other times due to bad luck or timing. Sometimes, we may even fail because of circumstances totally out of our control, which no doubt leads us to feel especially hard done by. However, one must be extremely careful in assigning events as ‘in’ or ‘out’ of our control, as evidenced by a 2009 article⁷ in the Journal of Sports Sciences that found that people perform worse in scenarios where they feel the outcome is out of their control than they do when they feel they can have an impact.

A similar study⁶ was documented in the journal Motivation and Emotion. Researchers conducted an experiment in which one set of participants taking a test were told to try to succeed. The other set of participants was told to avoid failing. Unbeknownst to both sets, some of the questions in the test were unsolvable. The participants told to succeed cottoned onto this insolvability, or at least were so focused on getting answers right that they quickly gave up trying to answer questions that they felt they couldn’t manage, choosing instead to focus their attention on questions they could. The group told to try not to fail, however, “didn’t just get more riled and angrier, they hung in longer” on the impossible questions, leading them to fare worse overall. The researchers concluded, noting the irony, that, “the more people focused on not failing, the more likely they were to fail.”

Risk vs caution, post-failure

The fact that failure is made more likely by a belief that one will fail, or indeed even just that one might, could lead to someone who has experienced failure before taking less risks whenever it is they get back on the horse. But this is the wrong approach. If anything, those who have experienced failure should have a better gauge on their own limits than those who lack such experience, and thus should be prepared to push themselves to their known limits (a far easier and less precarious task than pushing oneself toward limits unknown).

Fear of failure, whether one has experienced it before or not, can only be detrimental. As Anshel notes, “The less we expose ourselves to risk, the greater the chance of failure because we will not grow, mature, develop our skills, and expand our physical, emotional, and mental capacity to stretch our limits and improve.”

Blank pages

Footballers have a clear, pre-defined reset button when they returned from Qatar. For the rest of us, the reset button is ours to press and the blank pages ours to fill. Scary as that prospect may be, if we approach the possibility of failure open-eyed, with a willingness to learn from its teachings, the benefits can be enormous.

References

¹https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=IsZ4CwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=overcoming+professional+failure&ots=7Po3G3futN&sig=XnTaxKnyQnF94FJ4OZh0hcwvtug#v=onepage&q=overcoming%20professional%20failure&f=false

²https://medium.com/illumination/octobers-best-editor-s-choice-elizabeth-gilbert-s-advice-on-perfectionism-12aee4b78d8c

³https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/03/17/16-top-tips-for-bouncing-back-from-failure/?sh=34d2531c5126

⁴https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ReU2DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT7&dq=overcoming+career+disappointment&ots=zqQEACQj05&sig=axQ-40yldbgYSy3PrZjG6JBit6s#v=onepage&q=overcoming%20career%20disappointment&f=false

⁵https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328237160_Bouncing_Back_from_Failure_Entrepreneurial_Resilience_and_the_Internationalisation_of_Subsequent_Ventures_Created_by_Serial_Entrepreneurs

⁶ Lench, Heather C. and Linda J. Levine, “Goals and Responses to Failures: Knowing When to Hold Them and When to Fold Them, “Motivation and Emotion (2008), 32, 127-140.

⁷ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640410903030297

Job satisfaction is something we all strive for but by no means all attain. There are various reasons for us to slip into feelings of apathy around our work. We may feel that we are being overlooked and that our skillsets are not being put to good use; we may feel that we are overworked and burnt out or maybe overwhelmed with stress; perhaps a lack of proper work-life balance is impacting our relationship with our friends and family; maybe we don’t fit in with our colleagues or are not contributing as effectively as those around us; or perhaps we even feel that we followed the wrong career path altogether – that the rung of the ladder is less of the issue than the ladder itself. Dissatisfaction is likely to come to all workers at some point. Oftentimes it passes, proving itself to be no more than a tough project or bad day at the office. But if the problem is consistent and/or stifling, action may need to be taken. For those who don’t think the job itself is the problem so much as how they’re handling it, a potential solution is work crafting.

What is work crafting?

Tims et al. (2012)¹ define crafting as “the changes employees may make to balance their job demands and job resources with their personal abilities and needs.” The ultimate aim of doing this is to inject work with greater meaning and make it more engaging². Essentially, without changing our job in any tangible sense – title, deliverables etc. – we ‘craft’ a new, more personalised version of our existing role to make it one that we can better love and thrive in, one “where we still can satisfy and excel in our functions, but which is simultaneously more aligned with our strengths, motives, and passions.”³

Employers may be reading that and biting their nails, but fear not, job crafting is not a license for employees to entirely reconstruct their role, ignoring the aspects of their job they find tedious and unrewarding and replacing them with exclusively grand and shiny tasks that provoke feelings of fulfilment. While management of tasks does factor into work crafting, the more important aspect is based around meaning. As argued by Berg et al. (2008)⁴, “job crafting theory does not devalue the importance of job designs assigned by managers; it simply values the opportunities employees have to change them.”

Job crafting vs Job design

The CIPD define job design as, “the process of establishing employees’ roles and responsibilities and the systems and procedures that they should use or follow.”⁵ Its purpose revolves around optimising processes in the workplace to create value and maximise performance. So far, so similar to job crafting. The key difference between the two lies in who is doing the decision-making.

In job design, an employer will be setting boundaries and assigning tasks based on their best understanding of their employees, making a conscious effort to give them work that will reward them and suit their skillsets. In job crafting, it is employees taking the reins. Workers are proactive, and the approach places their wellbeing front and centre. Again, that may be ground that employers are nervous to cede, but job crafting has been linked to better performance, motivation, and employee engagement⁶.

The three key forms of job crafting

There are various (and varying) approaches to job crafting, but three approaches are most common.

1. Task crafting

This is the aspect we have focused on so far, with employees taking a more hands-on approach to their workloads. That could refer to work location (opting to work from home or on a hybrid basis, for example), time management (choosing hours that better suit their life commitments or generally working outside of a traditional 9-5 timeframe), or the tasks themselves (adding or removing tasks from their workload).

The examples around location and working hours are increasingly uncontroversial, especially in the wake of the pandemic. It is the third (employees selecting which tasks they wish to take on) that is the most divisive. Though it should be noted that generally task crafting involves taking on additional tasks rather than removing others. For example, a chef may take it upon themselves to not just serve food but to create aesthetically pleasing plates that enhance a customer’s dining experience. Or a bus driver might decide to give helpful sightseeing advice to tourists along his route⁷. Potentially an employee working in an administrative capacity may wish to become more engaged with the business, so learn a new software or sales technique, or become more actively involved with clients.

• Relationship crafting

Relationship crafting, unsurprisingly, is all about relationships. Primarily, relationships in the workplace. Having poor interpersonal relationships with colleagues has been found to be a significant contributor to workplace stress⁸. Conversely, positive work relationships are shown to increase job satisfaction, as well as general mood. By taking a more enthusiastic approach to workplace relationships, whether in or out of office hours, employees are thought to become more engaged with the company and feel more fulfilled in their role.

• Cognitive crafting

Cognitive crafting is all about how we frame the work we do. By assigning meaning to tasks that were conceivably uninspiring or outright deflating before, we can reshape our outlook, instilling our work and lives with a greater sense of purpose, and thus fulfilment. For example, a maid reframing the idea of changing a hotel guest’s bedsheets from a chore to a way to improve someone else’s holiday. Or a customer service worker approaching their clients’ problems like they were a therapist, looking to genuinely make their life better. Framing work tasks in a more positive manner can make work a far more enriching experience, and, unsurprisingly, removing any self-made narratives that what we’re doing is pointless improves mood no end.

Autonomy

The overarching benefit of crafting is the autonomy it affords employees. By giving workers control over how they spend and approach their time, they are able to feel a sense of achievement that might otherwise be lacking. And achievement breeds motivation for more, not to mention the added confidence and sense of worth it affords. A study by Steelcase⁹ found that when people have greater control over their experiences in the workplace, they become more engaged, which naturally results in greater performance.

Tellingly, studies on the happiness of women in the workplace¹⁰ found that there was no difference in mood across participants who worked full-time, part-time or didn’t work at all. Instead, the correlation between the women who were happiest was that they were the ones able to choose their work hours and professions. People have no problem committing to hard work, so long as it’s of their own volition, or offering them a benefit in return, even or especially if that benefit is solely personal fulfilment. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Barbara Ehrenreich, in her book Nickel and Dimed¹¹, found that workers who had little control over the schedules found it disempowering and disabling.

Conclusion

Work-life balance is oft-discussed, and understandably so. We want to be able to enjoy our lives outside of work. This is arguably more important (and harder) now than ever as the lines continue to blur between our homes and workplaces, and our personal and professional devices. Less discussed is how we imbue our work lives with value. A healthy work-life balance should not entail misery during work hours and blissful respite when free. Rather, we should take steps to ensure that our professional days are filled with rewarding moments, whether that be because we’re performing tasks we want to be performing, framing our actions in a healthy, self-loving way, or performing those tasks with people that make it all worthwhile.

Crafting, whether of the task, relationship, or cognitive variety, offers us a way to feel more engaged and fulfilled, to improve our performance, and to take strides towards achieving professional goals we want to conquer. Lost for meaning in your professional life? Give crafting a try.

References

¹ Tims, M., Bakker, A., and Derks, D. (2012). Development and validation of the job crafting scale. J. Vocat. Behav. 80, 173–186. doi: 10.1016/j.jvb.2011.05.009

² https://hbr.org/2020/03/what-job-crafting-looks-like

³ Wrzesniewski, A., Berg, J. M., & Dutton, J. E. (2010). Turn the job you have into the job you

want. Harvard Business Review, June, 114-117.

⁴ Berg, Justin M., et al. “What Is Job Crafting and Why Does It Matter.” Retrieved Form the Website of Positive Organizational Scholarship on April, vol. 15, 2008, p. 2011.

⁵ https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/strategy/organisational-development/job-design-factsheet#gref

⁶ https://positivepsychology.com/job-crafting/

⁷ https://positivepsychology.com/job-crafting/

⁸ https://positivepsychology.com/positive-relationships-workplace/

⁹ https://info.steelcase.com/global-employee-engagement-workplace-comparison#key-finding-2

¹⁰ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2021/02/21/the-power-of-choice-and-what-matters-most-for-the-future-of-work/?sh=1911e3b4c569

¹¹ APA. Ehrenreich, B. (2010). Nickel and dimed. Granta Books.

What if we approached mental fitness the way we approach physical fitness? That is to say, conceiving it as necessary and making it a priority. What would that regime entail if it were a daily act, and what might be gained as a result? What if we resituated emotionality in our profession as a catalytic force, not a disruptive one? Thus, shifting the workplace from a rational environment to a place of outward feeling and engagement. The answer to all these questions is related to the development and implementation of emotional intelligence.

The science of social dynamics

Emotional intelligence is ‘the ability to understand and manage emotions’ (Cavaness et al., 2020). Crucially, within this definition, knowledge and application are linked by awareness. Being self-aware and aware of others’ emotions are similar, albeit different skills. Both are equally valuable, and today’s leaders should use each to their advantage to manage the people they are in charge of and the projects they are tasked with completing.

Research affirms that emotional intelligence and personality are critical factors for achieving organisational goals and adapting to an ever-changing professional landscape (Eby et al., 2000). This outlook is self-explanatory as well as scientific. Emotional intelligence, or emotional quotient (EQ), has been a source of theory since the 1920s. However, it was only in the 1990s that we came to have a broader awareness of it through the work of psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey, who first coined the term. Notably, Daniel Goleman (1995) established a framework for its analysis and posited that EQ is, in fact, a better predictor of success than IQ, which had been the dominant metric of excellence. In truth, standardised tests cannot accurately measure any form of intelligence; therefore, EQ or IQ scores are arbitrary.

Nevertheless, the significance of Goleman’s postulation is that we need emotional intelligence to succeed. He is certainly not alone in reaching this conclusion. For instance, Forbes magazine has written about the topic no less than twenty-seven times since 2019 and deduces, again and again, ‘emotional intelligence has become a prized trait in leadership’ (Santilli, 2022). Seeking marginal gains from every angle, many companies now enlist psychologists to create ‘competency models’ to identify, train and promote employees. 

Conducting later research for the Harvard Business Review, Goleman studied two hundred large global companies to decipher the role of emotional intelligence in the workplace. His data suggested that those traits traditionally associated with leadership—e.g., mental intelligence, determination, fortitude, and vision—were insufficient diagnostics of success. He concluded, ‘To be sure, intellect was a driver of outstanding performance. Cognitive skills such as big-picture thinking and long-term vision were particularly important. But when I calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels’ (Goleman, 2004).

Signs of emotional intelligence

Granting that emotional intelligence is ostensibly incalculable or more substantive than measurable. Some tests can give us a baseline for where we stand. The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) is one example and can be taken online by answering prompts for around 30–40 minutes. For some, this may be a useful starting point.

More fundamentally, a point of sincere reflection is the primary means to begin. The commitment to do so, and follow through with filling your gaps, will positively impact your professional and personal life. Some characteristics that may reiterate one’s emotional intelligence include (but are not limited to):

• Knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses and being able to identify and express emotions.
• The ability to regulate and utilise a full spectrum of emotions.
• Self-motivation to achieve goals while filtering out negative self-talk.
• Having empathy for and comprehending other peoples’ emotions.
• Effective communication skills.
• Being curious about the feelings of others.
• Managing relationships and responding appropriately to conflicts.

Goleman’s framework for evaluating emotional intelligence lists the first five bullet points as core metrics that reveal a truer EQ. The last two are subsidiary qualities. It can be argued that the others constitute investment and follow-through and gesture to a sense of emotional credibility that is indispensable.

Maybe the most surprising finding in Goleman’s research is the value of emotional intelligence at the highest leadership levels. In a subset of the data, he compared star performers against average ones within senior leadership positions. The numbers revealed that almost 90% of the differences between those who stood out and those who did not trace back to deficiencies in emotional intelligence and not cognitive abilities. Hence, not only is emotional intelligence relevant to performance at all levels of the corporate sphere—it is one of the most significant ways that strong leaders distinguish themselves. 

Social awareness and authenticity

Embedded into any serious discussion of emotional intelligence is a secondary conversation regarding social awareness, which is ‘your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on with them’ (Bradberry et al., 2009). In practice, it is the ability to read people around you and respond with empathy. Accordingly, it combines components of Goleman’s framework but emphasises the relationship of the self to others; and, critically, deprioritises the first and prioritises the latter.

Some industry leaders profess social awareness is the most significant facet of emotional intelligence (Golis, 2012). It is invaluable insofar as it is instrumental toward the ability to positively effect change in the emotional drives of others, leading to improved performance. Others avow that social awareness contributes to authentic leadership and is communicated through:

• Intonation allows us to reconcile the grey spaces that exist in digital communication. Through tone, we leave little room for interpretation and can project confidence in and consideration for others.
• Checking in may seem like inconsequential small talk, but connecting with your team displays concern, if not empathy, and potentially builds trust in cooperative situations.
• Active listening means pausing the monologue in your head to listen to others with your body and brain. If your mind is preoccupied with constructing your reply, you cannot hear what is being said. Nor are you able to pick up minor verbal signals or diction that may reveal concerns, doubts, or any emotions beneath the surface.

These skills may seem basic, and they are, yet many of us fail to realise how we may appear or come across to those around us. In this regard, empathy is not performative. Paying greater attention to these granular social details provides the foundation for communicating genuine concern for others.

At the top, social awareness relative to emotional intelligence equates to efficacy. That is a statistical and intuitive fact. Those with social awareness are likely to have the other fundamental skills that make up a strong EQ and will be more able to execute essential leadership tasks such as dissecting groups and interpreting how individual personalities work (or do not work) together, delivering feedback and conveying personal investment to those who play a part in determining whether you succeed as a leader. Remember, their success is your own. In this regard, social awareness is ultimately relationship management.

Conclusion

The importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace—and especially in leadership circles—cannot be overemphasised. It is vital. Without it, the power of cognitive intelligence risks dilution if you are less able to communicate your ideas and coordinate their execution. In daily social situations, it is everything. ‘A high IQ, coupled with high EQ, is an optimum combination for individuals to excel in meeting organisational objectives’ (Cavaness et al., 2020).

Transformational leaders are credited with high emotional intelligence, while those who do not display it perform worse on evaluative metrics. Although EQ’s impact on personality and leadership is widely accepted, it is less certain whether emotional intelligence can be learned or is innate. Scientific research points to a genetic component involved; be that as it may, psychological development research contends that nurture is a factor. Ergo, emotional intelligence is indeed something that can be acquired with time and effort. What is more, it may even increase with age.

As an intangible, emotional intelligence encompasses communication skills, conflict resolution, and successful collaboration. As a tool, it provides a range of methods through which we can better manage our behaviour and the behaviour of others. It should inform our words and decisions and help us to bridge across disparate personalities to foster a collective social climate. The benefits are readily apparent, and relatedly, harmonious workplaces notably have fewer conflicts and decreased absenteeism (ibid).

Building relationships across an organisation is intrinsic to success, but knowing how to do this is increasingly difficult within a corporate landscape that is continually changing due to globalisation, diversity, generational shits, innovation and evolution. Against this backdrop, the interpersonal skills associated with emotional intelligence are not new age. They are a necessity. 

Reflecting on his observations, Goleman (2004) surmises that ‘to enhance emotional intelligence, organisations must […] help people break old behavioural habits and establish new ones. That not only takes much more time than conventional training programs, it also requires an individualised approach.’ EQ cannot be learned or boosted in seminars or training courses alone. It is experiential and requires a personal commitment. The power, then, is well and truly within us.

References

  Bradberry, T., Greaves, J., & Lencioni, P. M. (2009). Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (31565th edition). TalentSmart.

  Cavaness, Keith, et al. “Linking Emotional Intelligence to Successful Health Care Leadership: The Five of Personality.” Clinics in Colon and Rectal Surgery, vol. 33, no. 4, July 2020, pp. 195–203, https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0040-1709435.

  Eby, Lillian T., et al. “Perceptions of Organizational Readiness for Change: Factors Related to Employees’ Reactions to the Implementation of Team-Based Selling.” Human Relations, vol. 53, no. 3, Mar. 2000, pp. 419–42, https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726700533006.

  Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. 10th Anniversary edition, Random House Publishing Group, 1995.

  Goleman, Daniel (2004, January 1). What Makes a Leader? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2004/01/what-makes-a-leader

  Golis, Christopher. (n.d.). Emotional Intelligence For Managers.

  Grandey, Alicia A. “Emotional Regulation in the Workplace: A New Way to Conceptualize Emotional Labor.” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, vol. 5, 2000, pp. 95–110, https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.5.1.95.

  Santilli, M. (2022, March 24). What Is Emotional Intelligence? Forbes Health. https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/what-is-emotional-intelligence/

  Ugwu, L. I. (2011). Emotional and general intelligence: Characteristics, meeting points and missing links. Asian Social Science, 7(7), 137-140.

2023 has arrived. The New Year brings with it a sense of renewal – a collective reset, often accompanied by grand ideas and promises we make to ourselves about what the next twelve months will entail. We’re going to run a marathon, lose ten kilos, get a promotion, find love, start our own business, become the world’s first trillionaire, and probably cure cancer as a side hustle. There’s something endearing in the lofty aspirations we wheel out each January, unkeepable promises that our poor future selves are made to feel slovenly for not fulfilling until we get the chance to do it all over again this time next year. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are more reasonable targets we can set ourselves – and more practical ways we can go about achieving them – so that when the chiming bells usher us into 2024, we can look back at our year and say we really did something worthwhile with it.

Our promises in numbers

The figures vary but tell a similar story: as many as 80% of New Year’s resolutions are given up on by February¹. And only 8% of people are thought to stick with them the entire year. But don’t take that as a reason to discount resolutions entirely. One study² found that people who set New Year’s resolutions – whether they achieve them or not – are ten times more likely to change their behaviour than people who don’t make any yearly goals. YouGov also found that people who make New Year’s resolutions were more optimistic about the future than those who don’t³.

So, where are the people who fail to achieve their goals potentially going wrong? Two big mistakes that one should look to avoid are setting targets that are plainly unachievable or trying to do too many things at once. For example, let’s say your goal is to start your own business. That’s great. But if your goal is to start your own business and end the year one million pounds in profit, you’re probably reaching for something unattainable. On a smaller scale, let’s say your goal is to learn French. With commitment, reaching a decent standard over the course of a year is certainly attainable. But if your goal is to learn French, Spanish, Cantonese, and Ancient Greek, chances are you’ve cast your net too wide and will end up not getting started on any of them. The goal can be challenging, but make sure it’s within reach. And if you really want to achieve it, you’re best off not hampering its progress by getting distracted with a litany of additional ambitions on the side. Better for your targets to be SMART⁴. As first noted in the Journal of Management Review in 1981, a SMART goal is one that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. If you’ve set targets for the year ahead, it’s worth checking that they meet that criteria before you set yourself up for disappointment.

Practical advice: Writing down your goals

It may sound oversimplistic, but studies show that physically writing down your goals as opposed to holding them in your head as keepsakes makes you more likely to achieve them. A study⁵ in the Journal of Applied Psychology tested this theory with university students, with resounding success. Over a four-month period, students who wrote down their goals were found to display “significant improvements in academic performance” compared with those who did not. Similarly, Sheldon and Lyubormirsky (2006)⁶, writing in the Journal of Positive Psychology, found that writing down one’s life goals was likely to “improve self-regulation because it allows an opportunity to learn about oneself, to illuminate and restructure one’s priorities, and to gain better insight into one’s motives and emotions.” While a separate study⁷ showed that doing so also induces an immediate enhancement of positive mood.

Practical advice: Setting deadlines

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams famously said he loved deadlines because of “the whooshing noise they make as they go by”⁸. But utilising deadlines should not be underestimated as a tool for achieving whatever goal you’ve set yourself for the coming year. Parkinson’s law⁸ dictates that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” In other words, without a deadline looming, chances are you will put off whatever it is you’re trying to achieve until it seems more pressing. It’s a foible of the human race to which none of us are immune. To fight it, set yourself a deadline and be strict with it. Better still, write it down or make it public so you feel that you will be held accountable if you miss it.

Practical advice: Forming habits

Research suggests it takes between 18 and 66 days to change a habit or form a new one¹⁰. James Clear – author of Atomic Habits¹¹, probably the definitive book on habit forming – notes that building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward¹². The cue is essentially something we want (money, love, satisfaction, whatever it may be); the craving is the motivation (you do not want to turn on the TV; you want to be entertained); the response is the habit itself and usually comes in the form of a thought or an action; the response delivers the reward, that thing we are ultimately chasing.

Clear posits that just as we can (and often naturally do) form bad habits, so too can we form good ones. His suggestions for doing so involve making the cue for whatever you want to achieve obvious, making its craving attractive, making its response easy, and making its reward satisfying. For example, you could say that when you close your laptop for lunch (cue), in order to get fit (craving), you perform 10 push-ups (response), and then have your lunch break (reward). That’s specifically fitness related, but for pretty much all goals, if the habit you form is simply setting aside a certain amount of time to do it each day (ideally at a certain time, in a certain place each day, as this helps the habit stick) then you will make progress.

In conclusion

The only thing easier than making goals is breaking them. To not fall into the trap this year, focus on tangible steps you can take. Pay particular attention to the process rather than outcome. “I will work on this project for 20 minutes every day” will get you further than “I will finish this project by the end of the year”. The finish line will come when it comes; better to think instead about the step ahead of you.

Build a SMART system, write down your goals, set deadlines, and form the right habits. Do that and there’s every chance 2023 might just be your year yet.

References

¹ https://time.com/6243642/how-to-keep-new-years-resolutions-2/

² https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jclp.1151

³ https://today.yougov.com/topics/society/articles-reports/2021/12/23/americans-who-plan-make-new-years-resolutions

⁴ https://www.nytimes.com/guides/smarterliving/resolution-ideas

⁵ https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0018478

⁶ Sheldon KM, Lyubomirsky S (2006) How to increase and sustain positive emotions: The effects of expressing gratitude and visualizing best possible selves. Journal of Positive Psychology 1: 73–82.

⁷ King LA (2001) The health benefits of writing about life goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27: 798–807.

⁸ https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015/apr/20/the-power-of-deadlines-voter-registration-election

⁹ https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191107-the-law-that-explains-why-you-cant-get-anything-done

¹⁰ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.674

¹¹ https://www.hive.co.uk/Search/Keyword?keyword=Atomic%20Habits&productType=0

¹² https://jamesclear.com/three-steps-habit-change

A modish topic, but sometimes less emphasised, facet of success is company culture. Culture is a catchall term, but it comes down to how organisation systems are formed and maintained. It is social in origin and totalising in dissemination. That matters because humans are not innate; we produce and reproduce these systems through learned behaviour, mirroring, and various institutions. Our institutionality may be the most significant in this regard and comprises hierarchal and horizontal models within which mores, norms and values spread. Whether through family, friends, school, religion, creative arts, hobbies, sports, government, society, or work, we spend most of our lives practising and passing on culture.

A parallax view

Defining company culture (also known as corporate or organisational culture) can be equally ambiguous. According to the Harvard Business Review, culture encompasses an entity’s collective attitudes, beliefs, logic, mission, ethics and values, plus the actions and behaviours that result. Because companies tend to function from the top down—i.e., from superiors to subordinates—company culture should equally emphasise how employees relate to the above.

At the executive level, culture leans toward leadership style, management and order. Although these facets relate directly to company culture, they have more to do with the structure of the entity rather than its employees. Shifting the view from bottom to top makes it possible to locate unseen or underutilised areas for improvement. This perspective emphasises an entity’s ‘feel’ and ‘philosophy.’ As a phenomenon, parallax is the change in an object’s position due to a change in the observer’s line of sight. Since we are using this term conceptually, it is a gap that may appear between strategic design and unexamined effects when altering the angle of observation.

To ascertain and harness what are, in essence, intangibles, we must therefore understand that company culture is potentially a limitless category. It entails compensation and safety, first and foremost. However, other factors include buy-in, intensity, morale, professionalism, the physical space, and employees’ responses to their quotidian conditions and your core principles.

Management’s ability to check the ‘temperature of the room’ and its reflexivity is essential. Every employee (to some degree) impacts functionality, planning, and overall performance. What is more, many intangible qualities do have material effects. For instance, research shows that companies with high-pressure work environments spend up to 50% more on health care than other organisations. We are talking about people as well as the bottom line.

Ecologies of communication

Company Culture is rooted in its social ecosystems and transmitted vis-à-vis the organisation and practices of a workplace. Every dialogical and structural component—e.g., discourse, the frequency and quality of communication, the chain of command, incentives, sanctions, etc.—augments or detracts from a sense of value. The refrain, ‘am I valued,’ is at the heart of many conversations, and employees communicate with each other directly and indirectly throughout the day. They communicate with clients and customers even more. What underpins these conversations—ultimately, meaning.

Operationally, company culture is ‘how tasks are executed’ and ‘how a workplace is managed.’ Meaning, however, has more to do with ‘how a workplace self-manages,’ which reflects the employees’ experiences, and ‘how management’s actions and ideals are received below.’ Critically, the former has much to do with a belief in the task at hand, that this or this role is vital, and the latter is affected by their experience by seeing things in practice, not just hearing them in rhetoric.  

Company culture is felt most acutely at the bottom and may be sensed even by those outside a company’s walls. Clients and customers can also check the dial. To map or measure culture requires then formal and informal metrics. Besides reading the numbers, which can conceal certain aspects, the most direct way to get a feel for the workplace experience is to ask the employees themselves. Surveys can be a highly effective tool if written well and delivered in a way that communicates this is a priority.

Do not be fooled by shortcuts or rely only on incentives. Perks like extra vacation time do not matter if it entails burnout. Look at things long-term. Innovative policies that expand points of teamwork can create camaraderie. While offering merit-based leadership opportunities promotes ownership. These experiential elements contribute directly to company culture and help concretise a healthier workplace. There is no substitute for employees who believes in what they are doing, which begins during the hiring process, or their positive daily experience after that. If this criterion is missing, they must believe that change is possible. That belief comes from above.

Interpreting the numbers

Company culture affects performance on metrics such as finances, retention, innovation and customer service. Data compiled by Great Place To Work and FTSE Russell distills that the annual returns for the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For have made a cumulative return of 1,709% since 1998, compared to a 526% return for the Russell 3000 Index. The ‘100 Best index’ outperformed the broader market by 16.5%, returning 37.4% compared to a 20.9% return for the Russell 3000 Index in 2020.

Gallup polls indicate that only 34% (and falling) of American workers are actively engaged with their work, a part of a longer decline since Covid. It seems unwise to assume that such levels of disengagement would not translate to client experience or customer service. It does. Related polls predict that customer slumps are likely to represent the next turn in a cycle defined by a record number of resignations and vacancies.

Among younger generations, retention figures centre around three key predictors: an organisation’s reputation, a sense of purpose, and a connection to one’s job. Further research by Great Place to Work reveals that Millennials are eleven times more likely to leave a company than Gen Xers if their needs are not met. Currently, those needs relate to wider experience and meaning. People want to be valued and feel engaged with what they are doing and, reciprocally, value wealth and lifestyle less enthusiastically.

Help your team stay invested in what they are doing. To this end, inclusive leadership behaviours and systems, enlarged platforms for sharing ideas, and receptiveness to change communicates meaning and engender a sense of ownership in what is at stake. Refrain from equating dissatisfaction purely with a lack of material gains. Although this Deloitte survey imparts that 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe that company culture is decisive for success, there was a noticeable deviation regarding what factors are most important. Financial performance and competitive compensation took precedence at the executive level, but these were the poorest scoring factors below. For those looking up, healthy or candid communication, recognition, and access to leadership/management scored highest. What can we infer from this data? Feel matters. Philosophy matters. Possibility matters.

Conclusion

Company culture is the personality of a workplace. It is what someone would say regarding what it is like to work here, not in principle, but in actuality. That has lots to do with consistency and norms, but do not lose sight of the role of ethics and values. An organisation’s chief asset is talent. Constantly reiterate purpose and recognise people through company culture.

Remember, culture is shared. Employees who do not believe in what they or those above them are doing, who do not think that they—and not just their performance—matters, or worse, that they are locked into an unchanging situation have a hidden drag effect. The usual metrics do not easily show what potential productivity looks like under the right conditions. They show what is there, not what is possible. To that end, company culture, in particular, is prone to misinterpretation. It is not just about what is there. Equally, it is about what is missing. Find ways to gauge the situation as it stands and foster conditions that are more beneficial on a professional and personal basis.

Looking beyond the numbers, in Conscious Capitalism (2013), John Mackey, a cofounder of Whole Foods, and Raj Sisodia of Babson College point out that purpose-based workplaces are on the rise in the corporate world and society at large because they generate productivity as well as because customers increasingly gravitate to them. If all stakeholders matter, a company that values its employees is more likely to value its customers. Thus, meaning translates to inside performance as well as outside pull.

In The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant (1926/1991: 98) intuits from the work of Aristotle, ‘we are what we repeatedly do.’ If his postulate is correct, and I believe it is, should that not have meaning? We can think of company culture similarly. We spend much of our lives at work. For that time to feel like a journey rather than a grind, our environment should feel responsive to our needs. Above all else, what you are doing has to have meaning.

References

  Azagba, Sunday, and Mesbah F. Sharaf. “Psychosocial Working Conditions and the Utilization of Health Care Services.” BMC Public Health, vol. 11, no. 1, Aug. 2011, p. 642, https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-642.

  Deloitte. Core Beliefs and Culture: Chairman’s Survey Findings. 2012, https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/About-Deloitte/gx-core-beliefs-and-culture.pdf.

  Durant, Will. The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers. Pocket Books, 1991.

  Gallup. “Is a Great Customer Resignation Next?” Gallup.Com, 20 May 2022, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/392537/great-customer-resignation-next.aspx.

  —. “The ‘Great Resignation’ Is Really the ‘Great Discontent.’” Gallup.Com, 22 July 2021, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/351545/great-resignation-really-great-discontent.aspx.

  Great Place to Work. Best Companies to Work For – Top Workplaces in the US | Great Place To Work. https://www.greatplacetowork.com/best-companies-to-work-for.

  Hastwell, Claire. “The 3 Biggest Predictors of Employee Retention (Especially Millennials).” Great Place To Work®, https://www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/blog/3-keys-to-millennial-employee-retention?utm_campaign=2021.08.seo&utm_medium=blog&utm_source=gptw-website&utm_content=text-link&utm_term=80943&utm_audience=prospect.

  Mackey, John, and Rajendra Sisodia. Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Harvard Business Press, 2012.

  Seppälä, Emma, and Kim Cameron. “Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive.” Harvard Business Review, 1 Dec. 2015, https://hbr.org/2015/12/proof-that-positive-work-cultures-are-more-productive.

  Watkins, Michael D. “What Is Organizational Culture? And Why Should We Care?” Harvard Business Review, 15 May 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/05/what-is-organizational-culture.

  Yoshimoto, Catherine, and Marcus Erb. “Treating Employees Well Led to Higher Stock Prices During the Pandemic.” Great Place To Work®, 5 Aug. 2001, https://www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/blog/treating-employees-well-led-to-higher-stock-prices-during-the-pandemic?utm_campaign=2021.08.seo&utm_medium=blog&utm_source=gptw-website&utm_content=text-link&utm_term=80943&utm_audience=prospect.

When asked how he went bankrupt, a character in Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises responds, “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” This description encapsulates so many of the changes that emerged as a result of the pandemic, most especially within the workplace. Plenty of the shifts we saw to working practices—such as introducing some form of home or hybrid working as standard—have already become accepted¹ as part of the much-touted “new normal”. Others are still evolving, not least when it comes to the relationship between businesses and their employees’ health and wellbeing. One practice that has emerged as potentially pivotal in bridging the gap between personal welfare and workplace performance is that of mindfulness.

Mindfulness

The Oxford Mindfulness Center² defines mindfulness as “moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience, without judgment.” Dan Harris, author of 10 Percent Happier³, describes it even more plainly. “I think of mindfulness as the ability not to be yanked around by your own emotions”. Whatever definition you use, the consensus is that mindfulness offers an array of benefits on a personal and professional level. Which is why it’s no wonder business innovators—some before the pandemic, many after— have chosen to bring it into the workplace.

Tipping point

A 2019 survey by LinkedIn⁴ found that nearly half of workers feel stress in their jobs, with 70% of them feeling it as a result of their workload and their work-life balance. Meanwhile Gallup⁵ found that 23% of employees feel burnout at work very often or always, and a further 44% reported feeling it sometimes. The fact that these findings are from before the pandemic makes clear that businesses had been dancing on cracks for a long time before the ultimate disaster struck, and that the system (or at least a stark number of the employees within it) were teetering on the brink. To call the pandemic the straw that broke the camel’s back would be to minimize its devastation. But let’s face it, the camel was staggering and stumbling for a long while before whispers started emerging from Wuhan.

Some businesses could see that. It’s why many of the leading corporate innovators had been incrementally introducing mindfulness techniques to their work environment through the late 2000s and 2010s⁶. Apple, Google, Twitter, and a whole host of other Silicon Valley movers and shakers were championing everything from meditation rooms to in-office yoga and mindfulness classes through mindful lunches. That was Hemmingway’s gradually. Then, in March 2020, came the suddenly. Worker welfare became unignorable. Mindfulness emerged as a clear solution.

Mindfulness productivity gains and profit

Reducing burnout and caring for worker well-being are some of the benefits mindfulness offers businesses. But to put the major tech players’ adoption of such techniques down purely to concern for their personnel may be to give them undeserved credit. While worker welfare likely did factor into their reasoning, they were no doubt also influenced by the numbers surrounding mindfulness’ productivity gains.

Aetna, a US health insurer that trained 13,000 employees in mindfulness practices, estimated an annual productivity improvement of around $3,000 per employee, as well as a reported reduction in stress levels of 28%⁷. Meanwhile SAP, a leading German software company, saw a 200%⁸ return on investment, based on data from a survey undertaken with the help of 650 SAP employees who underwent mindfulness training through the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute⁹ (SIYLI). Awareness around well-being and mental health has increased in prominence across society as a whole and the business world is no different, but it would be naïve to pretend the bottom-line numbers weren’t a major contributory factor—if not the primary one— in mindfulness’ corporate ascendency.

Origins

Of course, to give Silicon Valley credit for the benefits of mindfulness would be myopic in the extreme. These ideas are of an Eastern origin and have been around for millennia. Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of MBSR¹⁰ (mindfulness-based stress reduction), is often attributed with bringing mindfulness techniques westwards in the 1970s. Though it’s the advent of more modern technology—best exemplified by the then-unimaginable convenience of yoga and meditation apps— that has contributed significantly to the practice’s meteoric rise.

Spirituality integrates with business

While it may be tempting to presume that utilising these grand spiritual ideas for corporate agendas was a result of this move westwards, instigated by the monetise-at-all-costs instincts of Mega Capitalism, that assumption would be wrong. East Asian corporations such as Panasonic and Toyota have long been taking advantage of ancient teachings in a corporate context¹¹. In fact, “zen”, a widely recognised if less widely understood concept relating to (and deriving from the Sanskrit translation of) meditation, is the foundation of the term “kaizen”.

Kaizen¹² is a commonplace piece of business terminology in Japan, meaning change for the better or continuous improvement. It involves making the work environment more efficient and effective by creating a team atmosphere, improving everyday procedures, ensuring employee engagement, and making a job more fulfilling, less tiring, and safer. Its prevalence demonstrates that the marriage between mindfulness and corporate practice is no recent (or exclusively western) thing.

The benefits

When looking at the benefits mindfulness offers, it’s easy to see why it’s an appealing prospect to all parties, east and west. Mindfulness has been found to help reduce emotional exhaustion¹³, to help foster compassion and empathy¹⁴, to improve decision making¹⁵, to reduce aggression¹⁶, to generate greater attention and focus¹⁷, to promote divergent thinking¹⁸, to reduce stress, and to improve short term memory¹⁹. It is a seemingly endless list of benefits, each impacting instrumental parts of our day-to-day life, personal and professional. What’s more, research²⁰ shows that only short mindfulness sessions are necessary to achieve such results, rather than any dramatic lifestyle overhaul. A matter of minutes each day is enough. It’s no wonder businesses see it as an easy win. Even the US army is using mindfulness²¹ training to help soldiers better prepare for and deal with stress, before and after deployment.

The science

How mindfulness works and how it impacts—and potentially alters—our brain has unsurprisingly been the intrigue of scientists and academics the world over. In their book Altered Traits²², Daniel Goleman, a Harvard psychologist, and Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found that mindfulness practices such as breathing meditation are associated with decreased gray-matter density in the amygdala, the region of the brain that initiates a response to stress. Researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast²³ in Australia found that mindfulness training increased the efficiency of brain pathways that process information coming in from the senses. In other words, participants in their study were found to literally see information more accurately²⁴. The idea that mindfulness can genuinely re-wire our brains continues to enthral, and the evidence is mounting.

Going forwards

Scott Shute²⁵, former Head of Mindfulness and Compassion at LinkedIn, author of The Full Body Yes: Change Your Work and Your World from the Inside Out, and upcoming guest on The 1% Podcast²⁶, wants to mainstream mindfulness—in the workplace and beyond. Scott says that we should treat mindfulness in the same way we trat our physical health. “Fifty years ago, physical exercise was a strange thing. Now, every company feels good if they can provide gyms at work.”²⁷ His argument is that in the same way we make time to exercise or go out of our way to eat nutritiously, we should also make the effort to strengthen our minds.

Considering the wide-scale proven benefits, the relatively little effort needed to achieve them, and the ubiquity of mindfulness apps²⁸ offering free trials for curious parties, now feels as good a time as ever to start your mindfulness journey. One that will likely provoke change in two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

More on burnout

• “The cultural obsession with productivity has led to an epidemic of burnout and stress in the workplace, and it’s impacting quality of life as well as businesses.” (Read more)
• “Reducing burnout and caring for worker well-being are some of the benefits mindfulness offers businesses” (Read more)

More on mindfulness

• “Mindfulness and meditation can help with stress and the ability to remain calm under pressure. Prioritising mental health is equally important as physical health and the items on a to-do list. Goals are important, but they also need to be sustainable.” (Read more)
• “Studies have shown that practising mindfulness and meditation can help with depression, chronic pain, anxiety, and a variety of other mental and physical conditions.” (Read more)

References

¹ https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/ishybridworkingheretostay/2022-05-23

² https://www.oxfordmindfulness.org/

³ https://www.tenpercent.com/

⁴ https://www.linkedin.com/business/learning/blog/career-success-tips/stress-at-work-report-who-is-feeling-it-the-most-and-how-to-com

⁵ https://www.gallup.com/workplace/237059/employee-burnout-part-main-causes.aspx

⁶ https://www.wired.com/2013/06/meditation-mindfulness-silicon-valley/

⁷ https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/unleashing-power-of-mindfulness-in-corporations

⁸ https://www.mindful.org/mindful-working-the-best-practices-for-bringing-mindfulness-to-work/

⁹ https://siyli.org/

¹⁰ https://positivepsychology.com/mindfulness-based-stress-reduction-mbsr/

¹¹ https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/unleashing-power-of-mindfulness-in-corporations

¹² https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/kaizen.asp

¹³ https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&referer=https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_mindful_managers_make_happier_employees&httpsredir=1&article=4319&context=lkcsb_research

¹⁴ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/mindfulness-meditation-empathy-compassion/398867/

¹⁵ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140212112745.htm

¹⁶ https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118221

¹⁷ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00315/full

¹⁸ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-014-0352-9

¹⁹ https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/unleashing-power-of-mindfulness-in-corporations

²⁰ https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/mindfulness-at-work/

²¹ https://www.army.mil/article/149615/improving_military_resilience_through_mindfulness_training

²² https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34272471-altered-traits

²³ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-78343-w

²⁴ https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-mindfulness-change-your-brain-202105132455

²⁵ https://www.scottshute.com/

²⁶ https://steeringpoint.ie/the-1-podcast/

²⁷ https://www.mindful.org/mindful-working-the-best-practices-for-bringing-mindfulness-to-work/]

²⁸ https://positivepsychology.com/mindfulness-apps/

Dublin is an inspirational setting. Past and present stories of resilience are written into the city’s fabric and carried by its people. In Merrion Square, there is a unique totem to hopefulness that stands out more than most, the Oscar Wilde memorial monument honouring one of Ireland’s lauded poets and playwrights. Memorably, in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Wilde wrote, ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’ The power of these lines goes beyond their poetics, positivity, or universality because they touch upon something more profound, the hidden strength of the human psyche.

Measuring optimism

Optimism is a source of scientific inquiry and has been studied extensively to ascertain its physical and psychological benefits. These studies are ongoing, but optimism supplements better health. Research shows that it is associated with contributive behaviours such as being physically active and not smoking (Boehm et al., 2018), a healthy diet score (Hingle et al., 2014), better sleep quality (Sims et al., 2019), and higher composite cardiovascular health scores (ibid, see also Hernandez et al., 2015, 2018). We still need to find out how and why optimism scientifically influences these diagnostics, but we know it yields clear-cut results with empirical certainty.

Other points of influence that may not affect you daily but are impacted by optimism include high capacities for surviving a disease, particularly heart disease (Tindle et al., 2009). Studies also correlate optimism with improved recovery from surgery, broader immunity, positive cancer outcomes, positive pregnancy outcomes, increased pain tolerance, and more stability amid other health concerns. In all of these metrics, those with an optimistic outlook had better results than those who were pessimistic.

Even more impressive is optimism’s association with overall health and longevity. Having a positive outlook is predictive of a greater quality of life (James et al., 2019) and a lower death rate (Rozanski et al., 2019). Optimistic people—whether by disposition, purposeful mindset, or praxis—lead healthier longer lives. Although living better or ageing gracefully does not determine success, health is essential if we approach success as a web of holistic factors related to achieving maximum performance. The evidence is unequivocal; having a positive outlook can boost your physical robustness and provide the platform from which you will most likely achieve consistent success.

What is more, optimism is blind. The data suggests that optimism is a boon regardless of demographic factors such as income level or general health. Maybe this should be less surprising since the positive thinking associated with optimism is also attributed to effective stress management. Stress may not be equal, but it is universal.

Mental health and mentality

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines mental health as a ‘state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realise their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community. It is an integral component of health and well-being that underpins our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build relationships and shape the world we live in.’ Critically, WHO’s definition includes this addendum, ‘Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders.’ It is more variable and directly assists our health continuum, which, by extension, aids our self-maintenance and performance.

Optimism is intersectional within the body and mind realms it inhabits. It supports psychological well-being, especially during uncertain times when the risk of deteriorating mental health rises. As recently as last year, a statement made by the American Heart Association (AHA) declared, ‘Positive psychological health is also multifaceted and may be characterised by a sense of optimism [my italics], a sense of purpose, gratitude, resilience, positive affect (i.e., positive emotion), and happiness.’

Moreover, mental health’s positive emotional and social dimensions help us foster productive relationships personally and professionally. Being aware of the many unseen components of mental health can help us generate empathetic responses to problems that arise with staff. None of this comes as intuitively as you might presuppose.

Our most recent 1% podcast with Dr Libby Sander identified some gaps in professional culture regarding expectations, an overemphasis upon certain kinds of productivity, boundary setting, burnout, the role of emotional intelligence in leadership, and even the physical space that we work in. I must reiterate Dr Sander’s points. Ultimately, everything is a possible component of our successes and our failures. It is up to us to harness them for our means rather than leave them to become something to be dealt with later.  

Pushing out pessimism

Optimism’s counter-force is a balanced critical perspective, not pessimism. The AHA statement outlines that pessimism may be understood as ‘the tendency to expect negative outcomes or by the tendency to routinely explain events in a negative way.’ Just as optimism engenders varied physical and mental health benefits, pessimism is linked to unwanted outcomes such as cardiovascular risk and hopelessness (Pänkäläinen et al., 2019). 

Optimism is an active process. Harvard Health Publishing explains that optimism is divided into ‘dispositional’ or ‘explanatory’ modes. Regarding the latter, being optimistic does not mean ignoring less pleasant situations. Accept them and approach unpleasantness more positively and productively. Imagine the best or at least the best possible scenario, not the worst. Be confident you can make it happen. Reconfiguring your visions to even moderately desirable outcomes is beneficial. On these terms, optimism is often a form of honest appraisal and reframing when unexpected or unwanted events occur.

Positivity often begins with self-talk. The thoughts within us can uplift or inhibit us. Much self-talk comes from logic and reason; listen to it. Equally, self-talk comes from misconceptions we create from doubt, if not fear, a lack of information, impossible or unrealistic expectations, and preconceived ideas of what will happen to or against us. These thoughts are not reasonable. Quiet them. Cynicism and downbeat steadfastness are not virtues and spread quickly in a pressurised workplace. If you tend to be pessimistic, you can still learn positive thinking skills. Optimism is part mind state, part mental practice. Identify negative thinking, and try to reduce it. Examples include filtering out what is going well and emphasising what is not, personalising setbacks or making them your fault when they are not, blaming others when it is your fault, expecting the worst possible outcome as opposed to planning for it, magnifying minor setbacks, setting impossible standards so that disappointment becomes a fait accompli, and adopting a polarising view of things as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ whereby leaving no room for nuance. Envision what you want to happen next or understand what remains possible and focus strictly on actualising it.    

Conclusion

I began this article with a personal flourish intentionally. We are human, and success is not mechanical or natural. It is earned and does not typically follow a linear or smooth path. Similarly, goals require commitment, and so does our physical and mental health. If these elements in any way become a hindrance, our long-term professional performance will likely dip. Without question, our ability to reach and maintain maximal performance levels will be diminished. 

In a piece fittingly titled, ‘The Optimism of Uncertainty, Howard Zinn reminds us that ‘To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness. What we choose to emphasise in this complex history will determine our lives.’ If nothing else, science backs up that very last point incontrovertibly. Zinn continues, ‘The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvellous victory.’

At this moment in time, the global context is bleak. War, economic, and energy crises loom overhead. More things are more uncertain than they have been for a while. All of which impact our work and our lives. We must take nothing for granted and care for our bodies and minds. We may not know why, but optimism significantly helps us do so.

References

  Boehm, Julia K., et al. “Is Optimism Associated With Healthier Cardiovascular-Related Behavior?” Circulation Research, vol. 122, no. 8, Apr. 2018, pp. 1119–34, https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.117.310828.

  Harvard Health Publishing. “Optimism and Your Health.” Harvard Health, 1 May 2008, https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/optimism-and-your-health.

  Hernandez, Rosalba, Hector M. González, et al. “Association of Dispositional Optimism with Life’s Simple 7’s Cardiovascular Health Index: Results from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL) Sociocultural Ancillary Study (SCAS).” BMJ Open, vol. 8, no. 3, Mar. 2018, p. e019434, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-019434.

  Hernandez, Rosalba, Kiarri N. Kershaw, et al. “Optimism and Cardiovascular Health: Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA).” Health Behavior and Policy Review, vol. 2, no. 1, Jan. 2015, pp. 62–73, https://doi.org/10.14485/HBPR.2.1.6.

  Hingle, Melanie D., et al. “Optimism and Diet Quality in the Women’s Health Initiative.” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, vol. 114, no. 7, July 2014, pp. 1036–45, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2013.12.018.

  James, Peter, et al. “Optimism and Healthy Aging in Women.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol. 56, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 116–24, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2018.07.037.

  Levine, Glenn N., et al. “Psychological Health, Well-Being, and the Mind-Heart-Body Connection: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association.” Circulation, vol. 143, no. 10, Mar. 2021, pp. e763–83, https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000947.

  Pänkäläinen, Mikko, et al. “Pessimism and Risk of Death from Coronary Heart Disease among Middle-Aged and Older Finns: An Eleven-Year Follow-up Study.” BMC Public Health, vol. 16, no. 1, Nov. 2016, p. 1124, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3764-8.

  Rozanski, Alan, et al. “Association of Optimism With Cardiovascular Events and All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” JAMA Network Open, vol. 2, no. 9, Sept. 2019, p. e1912200, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.12200.

  Sims, Mario, et al. “Optimism and Cardiovascular Health among African Americans in the Jackson Heart Study.” Preventive Medicine, vol. 129, Dec. 2019, p. 105826, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2019.105826.

  Tindle, Hilary A., et al. “Optimism, Cynical Hostility, and Incident Coronary Heart Disease and Mortality in the Women’s Health Initiative.” Circulation, vol. 120, no. 8, Aug. 2009, pp. 656–62, https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.108.827642.

  World Health Organisation. Mental Health: Strengthening Our Response. 17 June 2022, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-strengthening-our-response.

  Zinn, Howard. “The Optimism of Uncertainty.” The Nation, 2 Sept. 2004, https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/optimism-uncertainty/.

“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” ¹ So said Friedrich Nietzsche in his 1886 philosophical treatise Beyond Good and Evil. In the more than a century that has passed since that book’s publication, many other leading public thinkers from Albert Einstein to Steve Jobs also preached the virtues of walking as a tool for thought. And they were right to.

The Stanford Strolling Experiment

A 2014 study² co-authored by Marily Oppezzo, a Stanford doctoral graduate in educational psychology, and Daniel Schwartz, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition found that walking dramatically enhances creativity.

176 volunteers, mostly Stanford undergraduates, took part in the study. Across four marginally varied experiments, the study assessed the difference in creativity that emerged when the subjects were sat in front of a drab wall, walking on a treadmill (also in front of a drab wall), walking outside, sitting outside, and being pushed in a wheelchair outside. They assessed creativity through cognitive tasks commonly used to measure “divergent thinking”, marking the novelty of an idea as an indicator of its creativity. For example, when asked for the possible use of a loose button, one participant offered, “as a doorknob for a dollhouse.” This constituted a creative response.

The findings showed that not only does walking enhance creativity by as much as 60%, but that the positive impact of walking outside is only minimally more than walking inside. In other words, it is the act of walking itself that produces the results, not the surroundings. As the authors note, “While research indicates that being outdoors has many cognitive benefits, walking has a very specific benefit—the improvement of creativity.”

The results also showed that creativity remained high when participants who had just gone for a walk then sat down to undertake a task. We are not just creative when walking, but for a period of time afterwards too.

Creativity, not mood

A similar study³ was conducted by researchers at the University of Graz in Austria, published in Scientific Reports in 2020. The findings were along the same lines, though with an interesting twist. While it also concluded that, “active people come up with more and better ideas during tests of their inventiveness than people who are relatively sedentary” ⁴, it then factored in happiness too.

Its findings? While greater activity contributed to increases in both happiness and creativity, the two were not interlinked. In other words, being happy does not make one more creative.

This point is both backed up and contradicted by a 2018 study⁵ in The Journal of Positive Psychology. While this study, using a sample of 658 young adults over a thirteen-day period, agreed that undertaking creative tasks does not necessarily lead to one being happy, it did result in participants having greater energy and feeling more fulfilled. Creative output can stem from or exacerbate negative emotions but embracing that negativity and wielding it within one’s creative arsenal can foster a greater sense of meaning and engagement, if not necessarily fixing deeper lying issues.

Confined creativity

Creativity is not the reserve of creative professions. One need not be an artist, musician, or poet to benefit from a boost to those creative juices. Creativity has endless benefits across almost all endeavours—professional and personal.

As Michele Root-Bernstein, co-author with Robert Root-Bernstein of Sparks of Genius⁶, surmises, “It’s the problem-solving processes they exhibit rather than the content or craft that make [people creative]. Just about anything we do can be addressed in a creative manner, from housecleaning to personal hobbies to work.”⁷ Self-imposing limits on our creative potential based on arbitrary measures like job title benefits no one. Creativity can and should be wielded by all, especially when something as universal as walking can help.

The static age

We are more sedentary than ever⁸. Strewn on our sofas, the latest streaming venture spills from the screen ahead of us while global catastrophes play out for cheap clicks on the one in our hands. We are in an era of perpetual information, digitally overloaded, mentally fatigued. And as a result, creatively stifled. Walking can serve as a simple fix, not to mention a welcome respite from the virtual onslaught.

Three brain researchers, writing in the journal Frontiers in Public Health, posit that our complex human cognition, including our remarkable capacity for innovation, developed alongside our ability to walk⁹ in an evolutionary sense. So, opting for that daily stroll may not just be a way of experiencing nature but embracing your own. And given the current state of global economic affairs, walking is one of the cheaper routes to inspiration available too.

Mindless innovation

The reasons for walking’s impact on creativity aren’t fully understood but have been widely speculated. Its rhythmic nature is thought to have the greatest effect as it allows walking to work in a similar way to meditation and other activities that incite a semi-fugue state. Rhythm is known to lower brainwave frequency. The lowest frequencies our brainwaves reach throughout the day are right before we sleep and right after we wake up, known as alpha waves¹⁰. This state appears to be the best at inducing creative thought.

Essentially, the less active our brains are, the further their reach may expand. Think of all the times the name of that song you were desperately trying to remember came to you in the shower or during any other such everyday act in which the brain is seemingly unrequired, and you’ll recognise that mundanity can free our minds in surprising ways. The simplest acts help access our deepest complexities.

This is another reason it may be best to eschew our phones when walking. Enjoyable as listening to music or a podcast may be, it is keeping our brainwaves active, and thus potentially limiting the beneficial effects walking can produce.

Walk the walk

Hippocrates called walking, “man’s best medicine.”¹¹ Proverb fans may prefer to sub in laughter. The more practical amongst us, penicillin. But walking has certainly proved to be an effective and enduring form of creative inspiration.

References

¹ Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. Beyond Good and Evil : Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. London, England ; New York, New York, USA :Penguin Books, 1990.

² https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xlm-a0036577.pdf

³ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-68632-9

⁴ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/well/exercise-creativity.html

⁵ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760.2016.1257049

⁶ Root-Bernstein, R., & Root-Bernstein, M. (1999). Sparks of genius: The thirteen thinking tools of creative people.

⁷ https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/articles/200911/everyday-creativity

⁸ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2019/03/06/americans-sit-more-than-anytime-in-history-and-its-literally-killing-us/?sh=7ffacb08779d

⁹ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4879139/

¹⁰ https://www.healthline.com/health/alpha-brain-waves#what-are-they

¹¹ https://news.stanford.edu/2014/04/24/walking-vs-sitting-042414/

Following The 1% Podcast with the brilliant and funny Des Bishop, a background thought came to the foreground with further reflection. At the outset of the episode, we settled into our conversation by talking about how past errors or indiscretions helped position us toward a new course. In that regard, we can follow a negative trajectory downward, exacerbating what has gone wrong, or gain clarity and make necessary changes by understanding how and why certain events unfold against our desires or best-made plans. 

Making the most of your mistakes

Many know this but may not want to hear it. The concept may be anathema to your sense of being and thinking, and you may not even be willing to process the possibility in your workplace. Nevertheless, let’s talk about it. No matter how cautious, discerning, motivated, prepared, and skilled you are—failure is inevitable. So why does it happen, and why are we afraid of it? 

Why we fail

Failure has many makers, and any of the causes below could prove costly. Yet, as a concept, it is something we should be less afraid of, if only because it is unavoidable and can aid us once we grapple with it. According to Shiv Khera, author of You Can Win (2014), we usually fail for one of seven reasons:

• Lack of persistence
• Lack of conviction
• Rationalisation
• Dismissal of past mistakes
• Lack of discipline
• Poor self-esteem
• A fatalistic attitude

Forbes magazine reiterates a lack of belief and expectation of sub-par outcomes and adds:

• The desire to not be disruptive even if required
• The instinct for self-preservation
• Losing sight of our agency
• Fear of risking what has been built and our legacy
• Real and imagined stagnation
• Confusion

Impatience, a lack of a clear plan, a missing long-term or contingent strategy, and poorly thought-out or unattainable objectives, can be included in the list.

Tuning in versus tuning out

Additionally, failure is frequently related to something happening in our lives. In other words, it is already within us and is a manifestation of an existing discomfort. Humans are complex entities, our psyches are even more layered and nebulous, and we are routinely impacted by unexpected and undesirable circumstances happening to us or around us. Moreover, the minutia of everyday life can easily influence all the causes above. 

Therefore, to believe that unwanted aspects of our personal or professional lives can be wholly cordoned off from influencing job performance to some degree is naïve. That said, and as outlined in a previous 1% article, the ability to compartmentalise and conquer is necessary at certain moments, but what happens if and when we cannot do that entirely and are forced to face failure head-on? 

Redirection through reappraisal   

Random and not-so-random outcomes go against us or do not go according to expectations. Sometimes there is no logic for what has happened, at least in terms of the event itself. Befuddled as we are, we must act. In the corporate environment, often, there is little time or room for context. 

What comes next—i.e., fixing it—requires consideration. Once we figure out how and why we can devise and execute a response. That does not simply mean carrying out damage control, although that, too, is a skill. Rather it entails an alteration of our mindset. We must reappraise the situation as well as ourselves. What was our role, if any, in this? What could have been done differently? What was learned, and how can we turn it into a gain? Mistakes can represent an opportunity, one specifically for change. 

When we fail, we are highly conscious of the meaning of that setback and its repercussions. Our self-awareness is heightened, and we become more malleable and open-minded because we may be less sure of decisions or what is happening around us. Humans and markets are not always predictable or rational. However, these conditions help enact evolution and transformation, which are metonyms for progress. In that regard, failure precedes success. 

Ad astra per aspera 

You may know the meaning of the somewhat ambiguous, albeit ubiquitous, Latin phrase above (a rough road leads to the stars), but did you know that it adorns the memorial plaque for the astronauts who died on Apollo I? Not only is the phrase befitting, but its application to this tragic event is instructive. 

On February 21, 1967, a cabin fire killed the three astronauts on board during a launch rehearsal. The mission had failed before it had even gotten off the ground. Rather than lose hope and stop, the American space programme looked inward and studied the series of mistakes that led to the accident in granular detail to learn from its errors. It saw fault within itself and did not attempt to shift blame or explain away the tragedy to either bad luck or the unknowable. Ultimately, NASA was better for it. 

This shift was embodied by Gene Kranz, the legendary boss of Mission Control, who delivered this impassioned speech three days after the tragedy:

“Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung-ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. […] From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: ‘Tough’ and ‘Competent.’ Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. […] Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘Tough and Competent’ on your blackboards. It will never be erased.” 

These words are known as the ‘Kranz Dictum,’ and they remain pillars of the programme. Surprisingly, Kranz’s 2009 book about the missions he was a part of is entitled, Failure Is Not An Option. Although inspiring, his title is a little misleading. Kranz, and everyone involved with Apollo I, failed. However, they were not defined by this and are instead remembered by their response. Two years later, the programme landed three men on the moon, one of the crowning achievements in the history of the human race. 

Looking back, although NASA was interrupted by catastrophic failure to such a degree that it suspended crewed flights for twenty months, they were undeterred and used their mistakes as a catalyst for self-improvement. If we choose (and it is a choice) to use reflection, understanding, and growth as tools, every one of us can harness misfortune and miss-steps similarly. 

More on Failure

Bouncing Back from Professional Failure

Why You Should Take Risks

The Courage to be Disliked

Professional Regret: Why is it so Prominent, How Can You Avoid it, and What Can You do if You Have it

References

Khera, Shiv. You Can Win: A Step by Step Tool for Top Achievers. Bloomsbury India, 2014.

Kranz, Gene. Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond. Simon & Schuster, 2009.

Among the holistic factors that impact job performance may be something that many of us do not acknowledge or take little notice of but matters considerably. That is our ability to mediate our environment and self-generate calm through silence. Without it, we may allow mental fatigue, creative stagnation, and distraction to influence our decisions and output.   

Not all noise we experience is sound-based

The amount of conversation in the world is ever-expanding. Between our tasks, colleagues, smartphones, tablets and computers, we are surrounded by noise, white noise, and visible signals of something or someone to respond to. Transit to and from work can be loud, if not chaotic. Even if it is not, often it is frustrating. There is activity, commotion and movement in almost everything we do, which prevents silence and inhibits a sense of calm. Even without these contributing ‘noise-makers,’ the brain can be just as loud. 

The meaning of silence

Silence, which should contain an absence of sound, is loaded. It is associated with loneliness, heaviness or awkwardness, and some use it as an indicator of emotional withdrawal, disapproval or punishment. Even in language, silence often carries negative connotations, e.g., a ‘conspiracy of silence,’ ‘silent war,’ being given ‘the silent treatment,’ or ‘lifting the veil of silence.’

To our detriment, increasingly, we perceive silence less and less as a form of strength. In other words, it is something to be done away with, not strive for. However, finding silence in our workday can offer us much-needed clarity and renewal in micro-doses and is, in fact, ‘an essential part of professional and/or personal development’ (Alerby, 2003). Here is why.

The Values of Silence

In his book Silence: In the age of noise, explorer Erling Kagge (2017) calls silence ‘the new luxury.’ Make no mistake, the nature of our existence in a busy and noisy world necessitates locating points of silence—it is not a luxury. The World Health Organization (WHO) released a report that investigated the impact of environmental noise from planes, trains and vehicles, and other community and leisure sources in Western Europe. It concluded that too much noise is a corrosive element in our lives. Not surprisingly, studies also show that dialling down the audible noise offers psychological and mental health advantages, such as enhanced creativity, heightened focus, self-control, self-awareness, and greater perspective. When these faculties of our mind operate at optimal levels, we can have more confidence in our thoughts and decisions because we are sure that our brain is functioning as we want and need it to. Silence is, therefore, a ‘sense-making process’ (Alerby, 2003).

Within reflective praxis, silence is also an active process. In Japan and Japanese business culture, silence is considered as important as speaking because it offers a ‘moment to understand what has just been communicated’ and to ‘respond in a well thought out manner’ (ibid). Through silence, we might understand the value of what is being said to us. If we allow it to be, silence is instructive, and periods of reflection, no matter how brief, may yield more understanding or extra time to overcome a problem. Famously, Francis Bacon once said, ‘Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.’

Productivity is a universal term in professional environments. How we achieve it is varied but not typically aligned with silence and taking a pause. Some business insiders argue that, contrary to logic or belief, the collective benefits of silence and taking a break from our professional responsibilities may stimulate productivity and creativity. Before he was a figure of nonviolent resistance, Gandhi was a lawyer and kept a weekly day of silence on Mondays to re-centre himself and concentrate specifically on work. Others like Vijay Eswaran, chief executive of Qi Group, a Hong Kong conglomerate, and Nick Seaver of Ziff Capital Partners have combined meditation with professional development and attribute time spent in silence to their successes. Reducing internal noise is as critical as reducing external noise.

There are physical benefits to be derived as well. Spending time in silence positively affects the body by reducing blood pressure, boosting the immune system, reducing blood cortisol, promoting hormone regulation and preventing arterial plaque formation. Moreover, research published in the National Library of Medicine indicates that prolonged silence produces new cells within the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for memory and the senses. Even just two minutes of silence a day has a calming effect more significant than listening to relaxing music. Although extended silence may be difficult to come by at work (and home), its value on your psychological and physical well-being is clear. Make time to engage in forms of wakeful rest.    

Strategies for finding silence

How do you incorporate silence into your day? Time and space are needed for this, and some amount of ‘pure’ silence is beneficial if it can be found. If it cannot, meditation takes many forms and does not require classes. There are apps, and then there is simply sitting with yourself, gathering your thoughts, or letting go of them for a few minutes each day. Silence is as much a context as it is a process, and you can find it anywhere. We must seek it.

Similarly, you can meditate on an ad hoc basis. Walks, driving or riding the train, waiting at the doctor’s office, and layovers at the airport provide regular windows for meditation, contemplation, release and quiet decompression. Remember, it is more important to find a place for and not necessarily of silence. All you need is a few minutes of quality time for meditation, which, as the Mayo Clinic suggests, is good medicine.

Guard this space in your schedule

Achieving silence takes effort. For most people learning to use silence involves meditation training, retreats and wilderness experiences. Keep yourself open to what your mind and body require, and do not let this time and space be interrupted. Make it sacred, especially if it can only be a few minutes a day.

Soundlessness applies to a quiet mind as well. Take email and social media breaks and blackouts. Do not let yourself be consumed by ‘silent’ conversations. Our internal chatter greatly contributes to a lack of silence. Ultimately, if we cannot control the noise level in our society, we have some say regarding the amount of silence in our lives. These psychological and physical reprieves may be critical during difficult or tense periods.

References & Resources

Eva Alerby & Jo´runn Eli´do´ttir Alerby (2003) ‘The Sounds of Silence: Some remarks on the value of silence in the process of reflection in relation to teaching and learning,’ Reflective Practice, 4:1, 41-51. DOI: 10.1080/1462394032000053503

Bernardi L, Porta C, Sleight P. ‘Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and non-musicians: the importance of silence.’ Heart. 2006 Apr; 92(4): 445-52. DOI: 10.1136/hrt.2005.064600

Erling Kagge (2017) Silence: In the age of noise, Becky L. Crook (trans.), Vintage Books.

Dan Ruch (2017), Founder and CEO of Rocketrip, ‘Why Silence May Yield More Productivity Than You Think,’ published in Inc., https://www.inc.com/dan-ruch/why-silence-may-yield-more-productivity-than-you-t.html

Betsy Mikel (2016), Owner of Avek, ‘Neuroscience Reveals Nourishing Benefits That Silence Has on Your Brain,’ published in Inc., https://www.inc.com/betsy-mikel/your-brain-benefits-most-when-you-listen-to-absolutely-nothing-science-says.html

Mayo Clinic Staff (2022) Meditation: A simple, fast way to reduce stress

The WHO European Centre for Environment and Health (2011) ‘Burden of Disease from Environmental Health: Quantification of healthy life years lost in Europe,’ Bonn Office, WHO Regional Office for Europe coordinated the development of this publication.

Vijay Eswaran profile by Paul Maidment (2007) ‘The Sound of Silence,’ in Forbes

Nick Seaver TedX

See also Ted Talk

Game of Thrones, and its Song of Ice and Fire source material before it, connected with viewers around the globe for a variety of reasons. Arguably first among them was escapism. For an hour each week, viewers would disconnect from their lives and focus instead on this intoxicating fantasy realm, replete with magic, medieval brutality, and dragons. But even the most seemingly imaginative of otherworldly distractions requires some ties to everyday reality to land with an audience. For Games of Thrones, one such stark (and Stark) pronouncement that permeated the zeitgeist and became an everyday part of the cultural lexicon was the oft-repeated, ever-ominous assertion: Winter is coming. As clocks turn back in most of the western world, we must contend with the fact that, though we are still in the throes of autumn, winter has come, or at the very least is coming, bringing with it the annual productivity malaise that accompanies the season of darkness.

Winter is the least productive season for businesses. That’s according to research from project management software company Redbooth, published in Forbes magazine¹. The company analysed their data over a four-year period and found that in winter users completed 22.8% of their tasks on average, compared with 27.3% in the autumn, 25.4% in the summer and 24.5% in the spring. A report by British Summer Fruits² found that during the colder months, 74% of people find it harder to get out of bed for work, while 37% are far more likely to call in sick. In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens proclaimed that, “Darkness is cheap.” Not, it seems, if you’re running a business contending with a seasonal productivity slump.

Why does winter hamper our productivity?

Some of the reasons for our drop off in productivity through the winter months are clear to all. The first is that, naturally, we get less light during winter than we do during the other seasons as there are less hours of sunlight. This minimises the amount of Vitamin D we receive, which can negatively impact³ our mood and performance. The darkness, paired with the cold, also has a motivational impact. We are less inclined to get out of bed and go for a pre/post-work walk or run (or whatever wellness habit floats your boat) on a dark, wet and windy day than we are in the height of summer. And this kickstarts a cycle. As we become less active, we become lazier. And laziness only breeds more laziness. Lack of exercise leads to lack of motivation to eat well, which in turn gets made worse by the cold weather that makes filling comfort foods a more appetising prospect than that mid-November salad. The downward spiral becomes self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating. Once our routine is broken, it becomes incredibly difficult to get back on the wagon. At least until the frost melts and we’re returned to the hope of spring.

There are scientific reasons for our winter malaise too. Darkness—or more precisely, lack of natural light—is proven to have a significant impact on our mood, alertness and general well-being⁴. Our body clocks, or circadian rhythms, are naturally tied to the sun’s hours. In winter, we often rise in darkness, throwing our bodies into what Greg Murray, professor of psychology at Swinburne University in Australia, calls “phase delay”⁵. Phase delay means that our circadian clocks are nudged later during winter, so that piercing iPhone alarm is going to feel much crueller the day after the clocks go back than it did before. Bad news for the annual optimists preaching the virtues of “the extra hour in bed”.

That’s not to mention the one in fifteen people who deal with seasonal affective disorder⁶ (SAD), a number that may be on the rise⁷. For sufferers of SAD, winter brings about prolonged mood changes and oftentimes spells of severe and debilitating depression. The point, if it weren’t already clear, is that the effect winter has on our mood and performance is profound. But there are steps we can take to minimise darkness’ damage and try to keep on track.

Battling the elements

Let’s start with the body. In order to counteract the lack of vitamin D, we’d be well advised to take supplements through the winter⁸ (and maybe through other parts of the year). Which is not to say supplements can suffice for the real thing. We should absolutely try to get outside during daylight hours as much as possible. That can be a run or walk on our lunch break, or pre-work for the early risers. In fact, one benefit of the ubiquity of home and hybrid-working patterns in the wake of the pandemic is that it gives us greater autonomy over our working schedules, meaning we may feel more comfortable putting work on hold to get outside during working hours than we would if doing so required leaving an absent desk in the view of potentially disapproving colleagues and bosses.

In the same way we might subsidise the vitamins and nutrients we receive from natural light, so too might we subsidise natural light itself. Those who suffer from SAD will likely already be familiar with SAD lamps⁹, a form of light therapy designed to replicate daylight and trick the body into releasing serotonin in the same manner it would through warmer months. This concept is no longer reserved exclusively for sufferers of SAD, with many leading lighting brands now offering some form of bio-adaptive lighting¹⁰—designed to work in tandem with the circadian rhythm— that mimics the sun’s natural patterns and helps the body react to artificial light as it would to the natural variety it is impersonating. This can improve our mood, alertness, sleep pattern, and even our creativity. Similarly, such lights can work as alarm clocks, simulating the look and feel of sunrise to wake us up naturally, removing the bleakness of surrounding blackness from our waking experience so we’re less likely to start our day in a negative mindset.

Light and its benefits aside, what can you do to enhance productivity? Tick off tasks first thing. Mark Twain famously said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” He was being facetious, of course, but studies show that ticking off a major task early¹¹ can set us up on the path for achieving more throughout the day. Others agree that completing tasks early is the way to go but argue that it’s better to accomplish a few small, achievable tasks¹² first thing rather than anything monumental, simply to get your mind in the habit of getting things done and feeling productive. Neither option will be right for everyone, so the trick is finding which works for you.

If you already have a routine heading into the winter months, don’t let it slip. It’s all too easy to let those first bitter mornings destabilise an established, fully functional set of morning habits and break the cycle. And starting a routine again is far harder than keeping one up. If you do happen to slip up, don’t worry. According to a study¹³ published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, missing any single day of a particular habit has no impact on your long-term ability to stick to the habit. But as Atomic Habits author James Clear notes¹⁴, “the most important thing is not to prevent mistakes altogether, but to avoid making a mistake twice in a row.” So, if you falter, as we all do, rather than castigating yourself, instead focus your attention on avoiding the second mistake.

Maintaining a routine through the winter months could be key to not letting your standards drop off, so if you have one, keep it going. If you don’t, it’s never too late to get started. As the entrepreneur Jim Rohn notes, “Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.”

Let routine bring some light to your winter—and keep the dark slump at bay.

References

¹ https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2017/12/08/when-do-people-actually-get-work-done/?sh=27502a742e5d

² https://palife.co.uk/news/winter-slump-productivity-suffers-in-the-colder-months/

³ https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/benefits-vitamin-d

⁴ https://www.business.com/articles/flick-of-a-switch-how-lighting-affects-productivity-and-mood/

⁵ https://www.wired.com/story/science-explains-why-we-should-work-shorter-hours-winter/

⁶ https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/seasonal-affective-disorder-sad/overview/

⁷ https://www.healthline.com/health-news/more-people-may-experience-seasonal-affective-disorder-this-year

⁸ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vitamin-d-supplementation-during-winter-phe-and-nice-statement/statement-from-phe-and-nice-on-vitamin-d-supplementation-during-winter#:~:text=Everyone%20is%20advised%20to%20take,of%20falls%20in%20older%20people.

⁹ https://www.healthline.com/health/sad-lamp

¹⁰ https://www.interact-lighting.com/global/capabilities/bio-adaptive-lighting

¹¹ https://theproductiveengineer.net/hardest-or-easiest-work-first-what-the-research-shows/#:~:text=However%2C%20other%20experts%20believe%20that,and%20work%20their%20way%20up.

¹² https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/07/change-your-life-procrastination-burkeman

¹³ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.674

¹⁴ https://jamesclear.com/second-mistake