The Ambiguity Advantage - Audio from Cranfield School of Management

Cranfield have published an audio about The Ambiguity Advantage: What great leaders are great at and leaders dealing with ambiguity. Listen to it here, or download it.
They mix modes and types / styles of leadership. They are not the same. See an earlier blog about modes here.

There is feeback and then there is FEEDBACK

So leading on from the previous blog. What I was really interested in was the quality of the feedback given to an individual through the four conditions mentioned in my last blog.

Just to remind you of the four conditions of the test:

1. An online automated product which gets respondents to to fill in a series of 40 questions about the individual and included free text feedback items as well. The individual then gets an aggregated document with the feedback split into sections. They do not know who submitted what feedback.

2. The pen and paper system was operated in two different conditions:

a. The first where the forms were sent direct from the respondent to the individual getting the feedback.

b. In the second condition the forms were sent to a third party (the individuals coach) who then aggregated and anonamised the feedback.

3. The respondents were interviewed face-to-face or over the phone by the individuals coach who then aggregated the feedback and gave it to the individual.

I then had the individual receiving and the respondents giving the feedback all rate (5 point scalar) the feedback in terms of:

1. Usefulness
2. Accuracy
3. Honesty

In reverse order the results are (drum role)...

2a where the forms were sent direct to the individual

• The Receiver of the feedback: Usefulness average 2.1, Accuracy 2.0, Honesty 4.2
• The Respondents: Usefulness 2.9, Accuracy, 2.9, Honesty 1.8

1. Online automated system

• The Receiver of the feedback: Usefulness average 3.1, Accuracy 2.9, Honesty 3.7
• The Respondents: Usefulness 2.8, Accuracy 3.3, Honesty 1.5

2b Where the forms went to the coach

• The Receiver of the feedback: Usefulness average 3.2, Accuracy 3.5, Honesty 4.0
• The Respondents: Usefulness 4.2, Accuracy 4.1, Honesty 4.1

3. Fact to Face interview with the coach

• The Receiver of the feedback: Usefulness average 4.6, Accuracy 4.7, Honesty 4.6
• The Respondents: Usefulness 4.2, Accuracy 5.0, Honesty 4.9

I have all the tabulated data (sample size, conditions, frequencies, ranges, levels of significance etc) which I will post later.

So just looking at these figures there appears to be a clear difference between the way the feedback is

1. Collected
2. Given
3. Fed back to the individual
4. Received

In my next post I will discuss these results in greater detail. I'm off for a few days trying to get the next book in some semblance of order. Until then...

Split test of 360 degree feedback. Not all feedback is equal.

I had the opportunity to test three versions of 360 degree feedback, using four different conditions in the last couple of weeks with some interesting results. The three versions were:

1. An automated online system

2. A pen and paper system, and

3. Interviews with respondents

1. The automated product gets respondents to to fill in a series of 40 questions about the individual to get the feedback and includes free text feedback items as well. The individual then gets an aggregated document with the feedback split into sections. They do not know who submitted what feedback.

2. The pen and paper system was operated in two different conditions.

a. The first where the forms were sent direct to the individual getting the feedback.

b. In the second condition the forms were sent to a third party (the individuals coach).

3. The respondents were interviewed face-to-face or over the phone by the individuals coach.

The respondents were told in all conditions that the feedback was in confidence and that the individual getting the feedback would not know who gave any particular feedback.

The respondents were then interviewed after they had completed the feedback and asked how honest they had been, if they had mediated their feedback in any way and what considerations they made whilst answering the questions.

We then interviewed the individuals to get their view of the feedback they received.

Results tomorrow...

Problem Solving and Mood

A couple of clients last week poked me and said. You must be busy because we haven't seen much from your blog recently. I have been working on a number of projects including the next book and a new academic post, however I will get back to this - now.

There have been a couple of interesting and interconnected pieces of research published recently about problem solving and emotion. Readers of The Ambiguity Advantage and clients I coach will know that one premise I work from is that every decision we make is emotionally based. There are a number of prices of research (especially current work using MRi and fMRi) that shows emotional parts of the brain kick in before the decision and the rational-logical areas get to work after the decision is formed. In other words we appear to make decisions based on emotion and then engage in post-decision rationalisation.

A paper actually published in 2009(1) has just hit the headlines (NY Times) in which it was found that positive mood and in particular enjoying comedy just before having to solve a problem increased insight problem solving ( just getting the answer as opposed to methodically working through the problem). Not reported but in the original paper was that the researchers found that anxiety depressed insight problem solving, so that individuals were significantly less likely to be able to just intuitively get the answer.

There are quite a number of research papers showing similar findings, however what Is different here is that the researchers used fMRi to see the process happening.

The second article (2) (awaiting publication), looks at using emotion regulation (the stuff I teach about emotional resilience) strategies when making risk decisions. They discovered that the use of such strategies not only helped the participants to make better decisions but they were also better able to workout which decisions were the riskier choices more accurately and mediate their response in the light of this. This meant that they were able to avoid the decisions that could have more negative effects when engaging in emotional regulation activity then when not, especially under stress.

So what does all this mean? Firstly we are less likely to be able to solve problems with insight problem solving when anxious. Secondly when under stress we are not that good at discerning the levels of risk of a problem or ambiguous situation and are therefore likely to make a more risky decision without knowing we are doing so.

The ability to regulate our emotions is important in both cases. To 'up-regulate' for insight and regulate and therefore mediate the effects of anxiety and stress in any situation that contains ambiguity (I would argue all situations contain ambiguity) so we can better perceive the risks involved and reduce the negative effects that risk and anxiety have on our decision making capability.

1. Subramaniam K, Kounios J, Parrish TB, & Jung-Beeman, M. (2009) A brain mechanism for facilitation of insight by positive affect. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 2009 Mar;21(3):415- 432

2. Martin, L.N. & Delgado, M.R. (2011) The influence of Emotion Regulation on Decision Making Under Risk. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Yet to be published - 2011 poss May/June.