Archive for the ‘Brain’ Category

Why Working Memory Is So Important

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Memory

A while back I saw a TV program about Tony Buzan working with some 13-year-old children at a school. He had asked for the worst students, those who were performing poorly.

In the two part series he took a group of about a dozen of these children and, quite simply, transformed their lives.

My most striking memory of the series was a particular boy. At the beginning of the program he said to the boy:
‘We are going to do some shopping. We’re going to buy some eggs, tomatoes and crisps. What are we going to get?’
The boy could not remember a single one of the three items.

Yet, just a year later, that very same boy presented to the parents of the children in that group. He walked round the car park before the event. When he came to the front of the hall and stood in front of the parents, he recited the makes and number plates, in order, of all the cars that were parked in the car park.

His great pride was obvious. The whole audience was stunned, as was I. The boy had changed from a ‘no-hoper’ to a star, and he knew it.

Is Working Memory or IQ a Greater Predictor of Success?

This is a question that was asked by researchers recently. There have long been debates over whether IQ predicts success and we are all familiar with the stories of people in MENSA who are bus conductors.

What Is Working Memory?

It’s your ability to hold different things in your head at once. It has been described as the ‘table top’ in your head.

Most importantly it’s what enables you to remember what I was saying at the beginning of this article or even this sentence. If you couldn’t do that it would be hard for you to know what I was talking about.

Why Is It So Important?

If you are sat in class and have trouble remembering what the teacher just said, you can be judged as inattentive and having a poor attention span.

You can forget the teacher’s instructions so you don’t know what you’re doing. You can be seen as making ‘careless’ mistakes and failing to complete tasks.

Processing information also takes longer for those with poor working memories.

Given all this, it’s not hard to work out why they may perform badly at school.

From recent research by Tracy Packlam Alloway it turns out that working memory is a much better predictor of success than IQ. I think it’s pretty clear why there is such a strong link. But not many teachers focus on helping their students to improve their memory. Probably because they are unaware of the link or don’t have the time.

What Can You Do?

It has long been known that children increase their working memory capacity with age. Another ‘bit’ gets added about every year. This research indicates that if you start off with a poor working memory you stay in that category. However, this research didn’t seem to be looking at people who were making an effort to improve their memories.

From what Tony Buzan achieved, we know this can be done.

I listened to an interesting argument about this on the radio. People were arguing over whether memory improvements really improved your working memory or were just a series of ‘techniques’, implying that they didn’t count!

Clearly they had not seen the boy from my story. Yes, I know this wasn’t a controlled clinical trial, but it was quite clear that this boy’s memory had improved. There was no test (that I remember) of his working memory, but the fact that he could now carry out a sensible conversation and remember what had been said at the beginning of a sentence seemed to indicate vast improvement.

Memory and Self Esteem

Sonia Lupien, a Canadian researcher, did some very interesting work showing that there is a link between the size of the hippocampus (a part of your brain responsible for moving short term memories into long term memories) and self esteem.

The smaller the hippocampus, the lower the self esteem in the children she was testing.

We also know that the size of the hippocampus is related to memory (you’ll probably recall the research on London taxi drivers from a few years back).

This means that, as they are both linked to the size of the hippocampus, memory and self esteem are directly related to each other.
This makes it doubly worrying for those with a poor working memory.

It Can Be Done

I believe the key is working with what you have. In the memory course I run, we start off with ‘Kim’s Game’. You probably played it when you were a child. There are 20 objects on a tray. You are allowed to see them for a minute or so. Then the tray is covered up and you have to write down all the objects you remember.

Usually there are some people who excel and others who do quite badly at this task. But within fifteen minutes or so, those who did badly the first time have usually improved their scores drastically. They do this just through trying out a few simple techniques.

And I’m sure you can imagine how they feel, improving so quickly.

It’s Not Rocket Science

Many people think that some people are just good at remembering things and they themselves are not. The truth is that those who are good at it usually have some clever tools and techniques that can often easily be used by others.  Sometimes they are so used to using them that they don’t even realise they are doing it.

Don’t Just Accept A Poor Memory – or Anything Else

So often people say it’s just their age or they have a poor memory. I strongly believe that there’s always something you can do about these things. It just takes a little effort. But the payoff is huge.

Posted in Brain, Improving Performance, Learning | 2 Comments »

How to Cope with Stressful Situations and Shocks

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Recently I’ve been working with a client that is having to make a large number of positions redundant. One of the workshops I ran for them was about how to deal with the initial feelings (shock, worry etc) in that situation.

Instead of going through the usual curve I decided to look at the more recent research into what’s going on in your brain and what you can do about it. People seemed to find it very useful so I thought I’d share some of the key tips with you to keep to hand just in case.

Your Brain

When you get stressed your brain is flooded with cortisol. This makes you feel stressed and, long term, can be quite damaging to your hippocampus. This part of your brain moves short-term memories into long-term memories. That’s why your memory starts to go when you are stressed.

It’s also directly related to your self esteem, so when it’s damaged, your self esteem goes down, just when you need it most.

What to do

Aerobic exercise flushes this chemical out of your system – so get some exercise as soon as you can. Keep doing it on a regular basis. Aerobic exercise also helps you to grow new brain cells (neurons) by releasing neurotropic factors (brain fertiliser as John Ratey calls them).

Your Perception

Your interpretation of inputs can start to become very negative. You see new inputs as threats. This is perfectly sensible from an evolutionary point of view, but can be very unhelpful if you are possibly going to lose your job.

This is because it can mean you simply become unable to recognise opportunities when they are staring you in the face. It can also make you a complete pain to live with. The exercise will help with this too.

Energy

Your prefrontal cortex can help you in this situation, by reasoning with your negative thoughts, but only if you are not too tired. When you are tired you just don’t have enough energy in your prefrontal cortex to do this. This is why people are generally more grumpy when they are tired. So make sure you get enough sleep.

Plan

Another problem is that you can lose your ability to set goals and plan when you are stressed. From an evolutionary perspective, this response was evolved to deal with very immediate threats so there was no point in wasting energy on long term planning. (Your brain, whist it makes up 2% of your body weight, greedily uses 20% of the energy.)

Unfortunately these days, long term planning is very much what you need to do and keep focussed on. So go through what you really want to achieve in the next five, ten or twenty years. See how the current situation can help you to do that.

Your Thinking Skills May Be Impaired

This happens because simply using up space in your prefrontal cortex worrying about things doesn’t leave much space for anything else. It really is virtually that simple.

So follow the next procedure carefully.

Emotions

When you are presented with a shock or difficult situation to handle, talk about your emotions, or, at the very least, write them down. As usual, Shakespeare was ahead of us in this:

“Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er fraught heart and bids it break.” (Macbeth)

It turns out that this is true. If you just describe your feelings they are reduced. If you don’t want to say them, write them down. This turns out to be jut as effective. Just keep a diary for a few weeks where you do this.

Friends

Have you ever noticed that, if you are ill and some friends come to see you, you don’t feel so bad while they’re there? This is because you suppress your groans and moans out of politeness (well, I’m assuming you do).

Your brain has just one part for doing lots of different kinds of suppression, including suppressing moaning and suppressing pain. The thing is, it’s an on/off switch. Once it’s on, it suppresses everything. So you really do feel better.

I hope you don’t have to use this information yourself, but please keep it to hand just in case it comes in useful one day. And feel free to share it with anyone who might benefit from it.

Please share your favourite coping strategies.

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Posted in Brain, Improving Performance, Learning | 6 Comments »

Sir Gerry Does It Again

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Last week I watched the first part of another series by Sir Gerry Robinson. This time he was trying to fix Dementia care homes.

Nightmare

He mentioned that his own father had suffered from this awful disease. We were taken to the kind of home we imagine in our worst nightmares; elderly people sat in a lounge staring bleakly into space in silence for hours.

At one point a woman cried out for help for half an hour, and nobody came. Another issue was the way the owners had taken away meals from the staff. The staff are people on almost the minimum wage who work 10 hour shifts.

Let Them Eat Cake

We saw one scene where the particular owner grilled a member of the kitchen staff on half a loaf of bread she had found that had been labelled apparently for the night shift. She was clearly convinced that the crime committed was that this bread had been left for the member of staff not the residents.

Another owner spoke indignantly saying he didn’t want the kitchen staff having to bother with food for the carers when they were supposed to be looking after the residents. This was a man living in a £4m home.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This

We then saw a very different home in Warwickshire. The residents were taking part in all kinds of activities; many of the normal daily routines that keep any house going: ironing, setting the tables and so on. It was a huge difference.

We must always bear in mind that this is TV, but even so, as my old friend Elaine would say ‘A blind man on a galloping horse could see that,’

The Manager

We met the manager, a cheerful friendly but above all enthusiastic man, who clearly cared. His approach seemed simple and straightforward.

We compared this to the poor woman managing one of the previous homes. She had had no training in this kind of care. She showed Sir Gerry the forms and files she had to keep on all the residents. These listed out all kinds of statistics designed to make sure they were safe. But as he pointed out, there was nothing about the quality of life.

There seemed to be no notes on the previous lives of the residents – nothing to give the staff clues that they could use in talking to the residents.

Quality of life

There was none. It had been sacrificed on the altar of safety. On a lovely sunny day the residents were all locked inside, for their own safety and we heard that you just couldn’t let them out.

As you can imagine, in the Warwickshire home, things were different. We saw the residents planting pansies and a man who was clearly very disabled in some kind of chair using what seemed to be his only working limb to paint a piece of furniture. He was clearly very happy to be doing something useful.

We saw lunchtime in Warwickshire where staff were sat enjoying their lunch with the residents. At the other homes we saw people being fed.

No Such Thing As A Free Lunch?

When Sir Gerry asked some of the disgruntled staff whose lunches had been withdrawn why they stayed, the answer was simple. It was because they really cared for the residents, in spite of the way they had been treated themselves.

What was heart-rending to me was that these very dedicated people were not given the skills or the opportunities to look after the people they cared so much about in a way that would really make those people happy.

A Free Lunch

We learned that it was no more expensive to run the home in this much more effective way.

And it’s so often the case. In fact, I would go as far as to say that running things well is almost always cheaper than doing it badly. If you find yourself cutting lunches and arguing over half a loaf of bread you really need to question what is going on.

When Gerry suggested to the ‘bread woman’ that she get some tips from the Warwickshire home it did not go down well. She responded aggressively and clearly felt threatened. She didn’t want to be ‘told what to do’.

Sometimes when people are in this situation they just can’t believe there is a solution and assume people are out to get them. Whereas Sir Gerry was just trying to help.

Dementia

As yet there is no cure. But there are things you can do to reduce the risks of getting dementia. Getting exercise, eating fresh fruit, vegetables and fish are all linked to lower risk of dementia. Vitamins C and E also reduce it.

Looking after your brain is another way to slow the onset of dementia. This means you need to keep mentally and physically active. This is not particularly recent research, yet the people in two of the homes featured on the programme were left with nothing to do and no stimulation at all for hours every day.

We know that, when you do this to any brain, within a matter of hours there is deterioration. This is why it’s so important to keep people active after operations and brain damage. Yes, they need lots of rest, but they also need to get their brains working.

Marian Diamond

In her groundbreaking research of many years ago now, Marian Diamond took some rats and put them into different environments. One group of 12 rats had toys to play with and other rats to communicate with in their cage. Another group of rats was put in isolation with nothing to do.

At the end of the experiment, there was a measurable difference in their brains. Those of the rats in the groups (the ‘enriched environment’) had more connections between the neurons than the rats that had been kept on their own.

I remember seeing Marian Diamond, who is Professor of Anatomy at Berkeley, show us diagrams of the neurons from the ‘enriched’ brains and the ‘impoverished’ brains. The difference was quite astonishing. The ‘enriched’ neurons had a forest of branches linking them. The others had a few twigs.

I met Marian Diamond several times at various conferences. One time, I went down to the gym early in the morning (about 6am) and there she was, already powering up and down the lanes in the pool. She then leapt out and did her weight training. She was easily 70 at that time.

We left the gym together and climbed up the stairs (about five floors) to our rooms. You can see some excerpts of her being interviewed here:

The Good Home

At the home in Warwickshire, they are helping their residents to keep those connections between neurons going in spite of their illness. In the other homes the problems are just compounded. But it’s not that difficult to do better.

And that’s the key point from Sir Gerry. You don’t have to be unpleasant or mean. Running things well, and making a profit can be done in a way that is fun and good for everyone. And it’s not hard. Sometimes it’s just a question of having the courage to ask for and accept some help.

If you are in the UK, and would like to watch it, the second and final episode of ‘Can Gerry Robinson Fix Dementia Care Homes?’ is on BBC2 tonight at 9pm (15 Dec). Enjoy.   Let me know what you thin.

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Posted in Brain, Learning, Management Skills | 3 Comments »

How Honest Are You?

Monday, September 21st, 2009

In a piece of fascinating research Dr Stefan Fafinski and Dr Emily Finch studied public perceptions of dishonest behaviour.

Some of the findings were a little surprising, if disappointing.

Nearly two thirds of people said they had taken stationery home from work, but 82 per cent thought it dishonest, according to the study.

Nearly 97 per cent said taking a DVD from a shop was dishonest, but only 58 per cent thought it dishonest to download pirated music, and only 49 per cent said it was dishonest to buy a pirate DVD.

Why Are We Dishonest?

There’s quite a bit more to come as their study continues. However, I think it’s worth asking why so many people are happy to take stationery home from work even though they think it’s dishonest.  And we know people take a great deal more than just stationery.

Some Embarrassing Statistics

In fact, what is really horrifying is to compare the figures from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Crime in the United States with the estimates for theft and fraud in the workplace.

For 2004: total cost of all robberies in the US as $525 million.

Theft and fraud in the workplace: $600 billion.

Apparently the IRS (the tax people in the US) think they probably lose about $350 billion a year in taxes that should be paid and are not.

I have no reason to imagine that the figures are any different in the UK or any other country.

In his fascinating book: ‘Predictably Irrational’ Dan Ariely describes some of his research into honesty (and the lack of it).

We All Do It

It turns out that most of us behave dishonestly to a small extent when given the chance to cheat. We are also more likely to steal when we are a step removed from the ‘victim’ or from real money. So we don’t see copying a CD as the same as physically removing £15 from an old lady’s purse.

For some reason we see a burglar who may take £1000 as worse than a company executive who cheats employees out of a pay rise.

And it doesn’t just stop with individuals. Dan Ariely gives an example of company stealing. It was almost identical to one I had experienced myself. His friend had earned thousands of Airmiles, yet when he tried to use them there were ‘no seats available’. We have had exactly the same problem. This kind of thing is just as dishonest as stealing.

I was talking to our accountant just yesterday. I suggested a course of action. ‘But you’d have to pay tax on that.’ He said in horror. I have tried to explain to our accountants that I have no problem with paying tax. We use the facilities – I went to a state school, I drive on the roads, I have used the NHS. I am delighted to go to free art galleries and museums. How does he think these things are paid for? Evading tax is stealing from all these places and from the community.

He seems happy enough to use the facilities himself.

Your Brain

One of the factors here is part of your brain; the insular. One of its functions is to let you know when you are being treated unfairly. It also focuses on the cost of what you buy – but strangely does not get as excited when you spend that money on your credit card. It’s much more concerned when the money is in real cash.

A Pain in the….

I know that many people working in companies feel that they have not been fairly treated by that company.  It’s very hard to ignore that feeling. It turns out that it is a real physical pain.

The trouble is that once you feel unfairly treated, your judgement starts to be modified. You feel justified in getting your own back. I think this is why so many people indulge in what is clearly dishonest behaviour. It’s a ‘tit for tat’ justification.

Distance

Couple this with the distance when stealing doesn’t involve taking cash from someone’s wallet and we can see how it’s easy for people to justify dishonesty to themselves, because it seems only ‘fair’.

What Can You Do?

You may by now be thinking there is no solution to this problem. Fortunately you’d be wrong.

In another experiment Dan and his colleagues asked one group of students to remember 10 books they had read at school. He asked another group to list the 10 Commandments.

The two groups were both then given a test and an opportunity to cheat. Astonishingly the book group cheated just as much as all the other groups they had tested in similar circumstances, but the Commandments group did not cheat at all.

Other research getting people to sign up to a ‘code of honour’ delivered similar results.

Values

So many companies have values and behaviours, but very few really use them. I’m sure you have examples of organisations you’ve dealt with or worked for where they have values such as ‘respect’, ‘honesty’ and so on, but you don’t feel they have behaved in a way that is in line with those values.

It may be that the answer to workplace theft could be as simple as getting people to remember the company values. Of course that would mean the whole company would have to live up to them in the way they treated customers and employees alike. They would have to actually mean them, rather than them just be a marketing statement as so many are.

They would also need to be clear, easy to understand and straightforward to implement.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think it would be a very good thing.

Do you know what your company values are? Do you have any? Have you ever used them?

To have a go at the Honesty Lab test, where some of this research comes from go to:

http://www.honestylab.com/

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Posted in Brain, Communication, Improving Performance, Management Skills | 4 Comments »

Is Your Memory Fading?

Monday, September 14th, 2009

A few weeks ago my mother called me to let me know my father had forgotten something. I was a bit surprised. I wondered why she was calling me on such a trivial matter.

Then it became a bit more obvious. She was just letting me know because he never forgets things, so that I would know for future reference. I quipped that she should try living with my family who I constantly have to remind about most things.

My father is in his 80s now so I suppose he’s allowed to forget the odd thing here and there. Once she had reminded me, I realised that, yes, I couldn’t remember him forgetting anything. He just seems to have that sort of brain.

I remember asking him once how he remembered things. He laughed and told me how he had explained to someone a way of remembering a particular number. The number was 119. ‘It’s easy.’ He told them. ‘It’s just 7 times 17.’ I laughed at that point (he’s a mathematician). Funnily enough I’ve been able to remember that ever since.

Then I started thinking about my own family and why I’m constantly having to remind them about things. So I decided to do something about it.

When you get stressed, this can have a bad impact on your memory and you start forgetting things like a birthday or where you put your keys. As many people are stressed at the moment I thought it might be useful to share a couple of strategies with you.
I’m running a workshop on this soon for one of our clients. It’s not for a month, and it’s already full, so I suspect there are quite a few people keen to improve their memories out there.
What’s great about the course is that, whenever I run it, people are already reporting improvements after just three hours. It’s all simple stuff that you can use safely at home, so here are a few tips for you.

What Most People Don’t Know (or have forgotten) About Memory

People who have good memories don’t just do it ‘automatically’ they have ways of remembering things.

These techniques can be learned by anyone, no matter how old they are.

An Easy Strategy

I taught my daughter one of these techniques. After just a couple of hours she was able to remember a list of 20 unrelated items in about 3 minutes.

I set her a task of being able to remember 30. A day later she was up to 28 and the following day she was able to remember 30.

I won’t pretend she was keen to learn, but she was certainly pleased with her new ability once she’d done it.

A Bit About Your Memory

Memory isn’t just one system; it’s lots of different systems. Most people with poor memories are just relying on one. That’s a bit like only having one route to a destination. When there is a block on that route, you can’t get there.

Having many systems means that even if one route is blocked you can still retrieve your memory through another route.

Some of Your Memory Systems

* Visual – you remember what something looks like
* Auditory – you remember the sound
* Procedural – the memory in your muscles of what you do – like inputting your PIN into a key pad or riding a bike
* Smell – the only sense that connects directly to the brain
* Contextual – where you were or the context for a particular event
* Emotional – what you were feeling at the time – humour is one of the most effective for memory

Any good memory system uses as many of these as it can.

A Simple Memory System

The first system I taught my daughter is one with numbers. You simply write down each digit from 0 to 9 and turn each one into a picture of your own choosing. So ‘0′ could be a plate, ‘1′ in my case is a bottle of beer, and ‘2′ a swan.

Once you have finished your pictures you need to memorise them. However, this should be reasonably easy; you are able to use several systems:

* Visual – you remember the picture you drew
* Auditory – talk to yourself while you do it or, better still, think of a sound that links to the picture
* Procedural – you have physically done it
* Smell – if you have used something with a scent
* Contextual – where you were when you came up with the pictures, or some context around the number that is meaningful
* Emotional – if you make the pictures funny in some way or interesting, they will be more memorable

Once you have done this, then whenever you need to remember a list of items, or even tasks, you simply link each one somehow with one picture. Do your best to make it funny and include sound and some kind of movement.

Another Technique

It turned out my daughter had used a different technique to get up to her list of 30 items. It’s one I had come across years ago called the ‘Roman Room’. You simply remember a room, (or a building or place, like your garden) and put the things you are trying to remember in places in that room. Then, to remember everything, you simply take a mental walk around.

Personally I have never managed to get it working satisfactorily and prefer the numbers method. But she found this technique worked better for her. The key is to find a system that works for you and use it.

But It’s So Much Effort

Yes, the initial stage of learning a system is a bit of an effort, I concede that. But it’s worth it. When you know you can remember things, you feel more confident and your stress levels go down. And, most importantly, life becomes easier because you are able to remember things.

Once you get used to using a memory system, it becomes easy.

You can find these techniques and many others in Tony Buzan’s excellent book ‘Use Your Memory’.

If you do any training or educating of others, you can find out more about your memory and how to help participants remember what they have learned in ‘Memory Tips for Educators’ by Lew Miller, one of our range of booklets. To find out more about Lew’s book go to

http://www.vinehouse.co.uk/brainshop.htm

where you will find that and my booklet on improving your brain.

Remember

There is always something you can do about your memory. It’s a system that can be improved with a little effort. In fact Tony Buzan claims that if you put in this effort your memory can actually improve with age rather than getting worse. I agree with him.

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Posted in Brain, Improving Performance, Learning, Training | 2 Comments »

Are You Causing Your Employees Real Pain?

Monday, July 27th, 2009
Ellen, who I worked with years ago, spent many years caring for her father. She had a brother and sister who did not help at all and left all the work to her. She cooked meals for him every day and took them round to his house. She cleaned the house, she did his shopping and helped him in every way she could.

She never complained. She clearly loved her father greatly and saw herself as doing what any person would do.

Eventually her father died. She was very upset, but once again, set about organising everything while her siblings did nothing. The will was read and it turned out that he had left everything to her.

When she told me this I was pleased to hear it. I knew she hadn’t done it for the money, but it seemed fair to me that she should inherit what little he had left.

However, she didn’t think it was fair that her brother and sister should have nothing so, when the house was sold, for £8,700, (t was a long time ago) she split the proceeds equally between the three of them.

Then a letter arrived from the Inland Revenue (the tax people in the UK). They had assumed the house was worth £20,000 and she now had a bill of almost the entire sum she had originally received for the house.

Ellen was devastated. She contacted her brother and sister explaining the situation and asked for the money back. You won’t be surprised to learn that they did not return a single penny.

In the end she did manage to reach some kind of agreement with the Inland Revenue.

Beryl, who had known Ellen’s father, confided in me that he had deliberately left all the money to her because he knew what the others were like and felt she deserved it.

It’s So Unfair

I imagine most people on hearing about Ellen will immediately feel the pain of this woman and a sense of injustice at the unfairness of the situation.

Let’s take another situation

Gina had been working for her company for 14 years was suspended after an official complaint was made by a new employee about bullying and harassment.

Up till this point her record was regarded as excellent.

She was not allowed to contact people from her department and was ignored by other colleagues. This went on for months. Worse still she lived on the site so constantly saw people who ignored her.

Then there was a hearing. It was inconclusive. So the situation continued for a total of 18 months. I met her at this point. I remember her describing the pain of the situation she was in; ‘It’s like a knife in my heart.’

She was depressed and kept bursting into tears. She finally left.

Broken Leg

If you have ever broken a bone or had a serious injury, you’ll know that it really hurts.

What may surprise you is that the same part of your brain is responsible for the pain you feel in all three of these situations.

That part is the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. It is vital. If you remove this part of the brain in a mother rat then she will neglect her pups and most of them will die.

Reducing the Pain

Intriguingly, taking a pain-killer (like aspirin) will reduce the pain in all three situations (you may need something stronger for a broken leg).

Sticks and Stones

….May break my bones, but names will never hurt me. It seems this old piece of advice is completely untrue.

When people are in situations where they perceive they are unfairly treated, or ostracised  they feel real pain, just as bad as breaking a leg and will respond accordingly. It turns out that this kind of pain can take longer to heal than that from a physical cause.

Another True Story

I did some work for a brewery a long time ago. They no long exist as a company. They treated their employees incredibly badly. They had the most iniquitous bonus system I have ever seen. The lazy ‘fatcats’, who did nothing to add value, got huge percentages of vast undeserved salaries. Those who worked hard for very little, got virtually nothing.

They wanted me to design a way to present this scheme in order to (and I quote): ‘Make it look fair’. I interviewed one manager of 20 years standing. ‘We know this system stinks.’ He told me. ‘What I’d really like is someone just to say: ‘This is really unfair.’ Then I’d be happy.’

The Problem

We all find it far too easy to justify our own position and are much less able to see why others deserve something. Our cause (in our own eyes) is generally more just than theirs. This becomes truer the further we are distanced from others.

That’s how a person with an already huge salary ends up getting a 10% rise or gigantic bonus and someone on a small fraction of that salary ends up with a very small percentage of hardly anything.

It’s how companies implement expenses systems that the employees see as unfair.

It’s all too easy to implement systems that seem perfectly acceptable to you but seem completely unfair to others. Once people have been treated in this way, people then feel justified in treating you unfairly.

It’s The Same With Social Exclusion

Many people are finding that their jobs are being made redundant at the moment. One of the worst parts of this is the social exclusion. For many people redundancy can come across as a group of your friends rejecting you, and it causes real pain.

A Problem Shared

Apart from taking pain killers, social support is a good way of reducing the pain of these situations. Of course, as an employer it’s a good idea to think about things from as many perspectives as you can before implementing them and not letting yourself get too far removed from the people your decisions impact.

You can also do your best to ensure that people have a social support mechanism when they are in situations that are painful.

Get It Right In The First Place

The best solution is to make sure that you treat people fairly in the first place if at all possible, or at least be honest with them if you can’t do that.

This involves thinking carefully about who will be affected by your decisions and how they will look from their perspective. When we are under stress it’s very easy to ignore the feelings of others or overlook them. So make sure that you set aside time to consider those other perspective.

In our hurry to get things sorted it’s very easy to think that your own feelings are more important than than those of others. They aren’t.
Being aware that these mistakes are easy to make can reduce the chances of you making them. It’s easy to behave in thoughtless ways that have a bad impact for others when you are under stress – make sure it doesn’t happen to you.

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