New content on LinkedIn

Just a quick note to say that, from now on, I won’t be posting much (if at all) here on this robyeung.com website.

I’ve found that most of my clients are on LinkedIn. For me, LinkedIn is a much better way to reach the clients who hire me to assess candidates, coach individuals, run workshops, and speak at conferences.

So, if you would like to continue to read my ongoing advice, please follow me on LinkedIn:

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Once you have clicked the ‘Follow’ button, you can also subscribe to my monthly LinkedIn newsletter, which I’ve called ‘Psychology at work’. Subscribe to the newsletter and it will come directly to your email inbox – and I’ll never send out any kind of marketing stuff or other rubbish. As I have always done, I will continue to write research-based reports on topics such as productivity, mental health, leadership, and job performance.

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Thank you for your continuing support!

How to set effective goals

What are your goals at the moment? Perhaps you want to achieve something in your career. Maybe you want to change something in your personal life – to do with your fitness, health, or relationships, for example.

I’ve written before on how to set motivating goals. But in doing one-on-one coaching with a couple of clients recently, I was reminded of the need to set really specific goals.

For example, one recent client is studying for some professional exams. The exams have a reputation for being very tough. More than two-thirds of people who take the first exam fail them on the first attempt. She had set herself a goal of studying every evening. But the research suggests that it’s more productive to set a specific goal. That could be based on time, e.g., “I will study for an hour and a quarter”. So, that’s a target of studying for 75 minutes. Or a specific goal might be to do with the number of pages in a textbook (e.g., “I will read 2 chapters”) or the number of sample questions she completes every evening (e.g., “I will complete 60 multiple choice questions and one essay question”).

Another client is trying to manage his psychological wellbeing. We had previously talked about the benefits of mindfulness, but in recent months he had been busy and hadn’t made the time to practise it. So, I encouraged him to set himself very specific targets. He decided that that on Sundays at 11.00am (when his children are at football and ballet practice), he would spend five minutes planning exactly when in his coming week he would engage in mindfulness and for how long. For instance, last week, he emailed me to say that he had decided that he would do five sessions of mindfulness as follows:

  • Taking time during his lunch break on Monday to follow a guided mindfulness session from a video (lasting 7 minutes and 33 seconds) on mindfulness.
  • A 10-minute session of walking mindfulness (i.e., actually going for a walk in the streets near his office) at some point during his lunch break on Tuesday.
  • A 5-minute session of seated mindfulness on Thursday at 11.15am when he was working from home. He chose 11.15am as that was during a break between two online meetings.
  • And so on.

As you can see, he did not just have a broad intention to practise mindfulness. He decided exactly which type of mindfulness practice he would do – and when he would do it.

Studies by psychologists confirm that people who set specific goals – describing what they will do and when – tend to get much better results than people who set looser goals. So, over to you. Are your goals really, really specific? In the coming week, what will you be doing – and when will you do it?

3 tips for coping when you’re feeling bad

What kind of emotions do you tend to experience when you feel bad? Are you prone to anger or depression? Or are you someone who gets tense and anxious a lot? I frequently run masterclasses and webinars for client organisations on how employees as well as leaders can help to protect their mental health. Often, the individuals that I coach on a one-to-one basis benefit from advice on handling their emotions, too.

Here are three steps you can follow to feel more in control of your emotions when you’re feeling bad.

1. Notice your feeling with curiosity rather than judgement

A lot of people punish themselves for feeling bad. In their minds, they may tell themselves harshly worded messages such as:

  • “Why am I so rubbish that I feel like this?”
  • “I should be able to control myself better than this!”
  • “I’m so angry with myself for getting this way.”

Unfortunately, telling yourself off for feeling the way you do may only serve to make you feel worse. There may be an external trigger such as a person or a problem in the real world that has made you feel bad (e.g., anxious, depressed, or whatever else you may be feeling). You could think of that trigger as the primary cause of feeling bad. But punishing yourself can then become a secondary cause, which may add an additional layer to your bad feelings. Essentially, by punishing yourself, you may only be making yourself feel bad for feeling bad.

So, when you do feel bad, simply notice your feeling with a sense of curiosity as opposed to judgement and self-punishment. Try to notice your feelings and sensations with a sense of “Hmm, this is interesting” – try to experience it without commenting on whether you should feel this way or not. Imagine yourself a scientist commenting on what’s going on in your mind as well as your body. For instance, if you feel any tightness in your body or physical tingling or other sensations, just notice them as if you were one scientist pointing it out to another scientist.

2. Name the emotion you’re feeling

Studies have shown that simply naming a negative emotion can help to reduce its power over you. Complete the sentence: “I am experiencing a feeling of…” Then insert the appropriate noun, e.g. “anxiety”, “depression”, “sadness”, “irritation”, etc.

It’s an incredibly simple technique. It takes only a few seconds to do. But studies have repeatedly shown that this labelling technique increases activation in the rational parts of the brain and reduces activation in the emotional parts of the brain. So, it can help to take the edge off of strong emotions.

3. Do something in the real world

Psychological techniques can help to reduce the power that your feelings have over you. But, it can often be a good idea to do things in the real world to restore your emotional equilibrium, your sense of Centredness, and composure, too.

So, have a quick think about what you could do for just a few minutes. Often, doing some physical activity can be a great way to feel better. I have clients who put on a favourite song – perhaps a calming song if they are feeling tense or an upbeat song if they are feeling down. Going for a brisk 5-minute walk – even if it’s just around the block or even around the office – can often help to reduce negative emotions. Or, even deciding to look out of a window and deliberately notice details in the world around you may help you to feel less bad. If you feel up to it, you could make a plan for tackling the situation or problem that has made you feel bad. The point is: don’t just sit and dwell on your feelings. Do something for a while.

5 facts about the importance of curiosity in work and life

Psychological science is increasingly coming to the conclusion that curiosity is a rather powerful force in our lives. Let’s look at 5 evidence-based facts about curiosity (what I called ‘Awe’ in Chapter 1 of my book, E is for Exceptional: The New Science of Success), what it is, and why it matters.

1. Curiosity is about exploration and learning for its own sake

Many students are willing to learn because it may help them to do well in their exams. Many workers are willing to do the same in order to perform well, get noticed, and get promoted. But curiosity is about exploring and learning for its own sake rather than to achieve particular outcomes in the real world such as exam success or job promotion.

In an academic paper reviewing the research on curiosity in the workplace, a team of psychological scientists led by Singapore Management University’s Filip Lievens made a number of observations about curiosity:

  • Curiosity could be defined as “the desire to know, to see, or to experience that motivates exploratory behaviour, information seeking, and learning.”
  • Many businesses are now calling curiosity a “superpower” for both individuals and organisations that are interested in lifelong learning, innovation, making change happen, and gaining competitive advantage.
  • Curiosity is often accompanied by positive emotions such as joy. In other words, true curiosity is about the fun of learning as opposed to learning to achieve a result.

2. Curiosity is a powerful predictor of academic performance

A group of academic researchers led by Sophie von Stumm at the University of Edinburgh has called curiosity the “third pillar” of academic performance. Based on extensive analyses, the researchers found that intelligence is the single most powerful predictor of academic performance, which is hardly surprising.

A personality dimension called Conscientiousness – a measure of a person’s diligence, reliability, desire to be organised, and willingness to work hard – was also a powerful influence on people’s academic performance. Again, not a surprise.

But the third most important factor was curiosity. In other words, having a “hungry mind” – a willingness to explore and learn about things for its own sake – really matters.

3. Curiosity predicts job performance, too

Curiosity doesn’t just benefit students who want to boost their academic performance. For example, a research investigation conducted by Patrick Mussel at Julius-Maximillians University of Würzburg in Germany has found that curiosity is strongly related to job performance.

This has practical implications for employers. Organisations that are keen to hire high performers should specifically test candidates for their levels of intellectual curiosity. Given two candidates who are similarly intelligent and who have roughly the same technical skills, the one who is more curious and open-minded about learning for fun will probably end up doing the better job.

4. Curiosity actually has multiple components

Different groups of researchers measure curiosity in different ways, but most of these research groups have one thing in common: they agree that curiosity is not just one thing, but has several components.

For example, consider the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statements:

  • “I enjoy the fact that my mind continues to work through complex problems outside of work.”
  • “I look to take on work tasks where I will have to think in depth about something.”

The more strongly you agree with those statements, the more you would be said to possess the curiosity component that a research group led by academic Todd Kashdan call joyous exploration – finding pleasure in learning about topics and solving problems for its own sake.

But now reflect on the degree to which you agree or disagree with this pair of statements:

  • “When given a complex problem at work, I find it difficult to rest until I find the answer.”
  • “I sometimes end up spending hours on a single problem because I have a strong need to find the answer.”

Stronger agreement with those two statements would indicate more of a different component of curiosity called deprivation sensitivity – a feeling that something is missing or wrong because until a problem is solved.

There are other components that together make up the concept that we know as curiosity. But the point is that curiosity isn’t just one thing that people either have or don’t have. People can be curious in very different ways.

5. Curiosity depends on your state of mind

Do you ever find yourself getting bored with topics or deciding to quit on tasks because you’re struggling with them? In order to boost your curiosity, try changing your mental self-talk, the messages you tell yourself.

For example, if you sometimes think “I don’t need to learn this”, try asking yourself “What would my future look like if I did?” If you’re thinking “Oh, this is boring”, try saying to yourself: “I wonder why other people find it interesting.”

Or if you say to yourself “I’m already OK at this”, try to set yourself a higher standard. Ask yourself: “Who do I admire who is better at this?” and “How might this be of value to me if I got better at this, too?”

Curiosity is allowing yourself to go off on tangents. If you are finding something not very exciting, give yourself permission to explore some aspect of the topic that you do find more interesting. By discovering things that help to make a topic more interesting to you, you may learn more – and perform better in the long run.

5 reasons to express gratitude towards others

I’ve written before on the importance of gratitude in our lives. For example, reminding ourselves about the good things we have in our lives is a surprisingly powerful way to lift our psychological wellbeing.

However, it turns out that expressing gratitude – showing our appreciation and saying thanks – towards others also has some powerful effects. Let’s look at 5 reasons we should all be expressing gratitude to the people in our lives:

1. Expressing gratitude makes for happier relationships

Research says that expressions of gratitude essentially benefit both parties in a relationship. Say we have a married couple called Taylor and Ashley. If Taylor expresses gratitude towards Ashley, then it motivates Ashley to engage in what are called ‘relationship maintenance behaviours’, i.e., actions that will serve to keep Taylor happier and prolong the relationship. In turn, Ashley’s actions will likely make Taylor feel more grateful towards Ashley, which will encourage Taylor to express even more gratitude towards Ashley.

Think about your closest relationship now. Gratitude on your part doesn’t just affect your partner. Your partner may behave differently towards you and boost your feelings, too.

2. Expressing gratitude boosts people’s job satisfaction

One research investigation followed 146 hospital workers over the course of 12 weeks. The research team led by Alicia Starkey at Portland State University found that employees who were thanked more frequently at work reported higher feelings of satisfaction about their work. These employees also said they slept better at night and experienced fewer headaches, too.

So, if you are a manager or an employee who wants to create a more positive work climate, simply say “thank you” a bit more often. Doing so may not only boost other people’s work satisfaction but improve their mental wellbeing as well.

3. Expressing gratitude motivates people to help others

A study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Adam Grant and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Francesca Gino demonstrated that even a brief, grateful comment can motivate people to be more helpful towards others. In their study, one group of fundraisers working at a university continued with their work as normal. A second group of fundraisers received a short visit from the university’s director of annual giving who said to them: “I am very grateful for your hard work. We sincerely appreciate your contributions to the university.”

When the researchers monitored the performance of the two fundraising groups, they noticed a staggering difference. The first group of fundraisers who carried on as usual made on average 41 outgoing phone calls. But the second group who heard the message of gratitude made 63 outgoing calls. In other words, hearing gratitude motivated them to work much harder to help others.

4. Expressing gratitude may make difficult bosses less unpleasant

Do you like your line manager? Unfortunately, a good number of employees report that their bosses are excessively critical or even aggressive towards them.

Managers who feel insecure about their capabilities are the most likely to engage in aggression towards their reports. However, a study conducted by Yeri Cho and Nathanael Fast at the University of Southern California found that employees who expressed gratitude towards their bosses were effectively able to defuse those bosses. Bosses who received more expressions of gratitude and thanks felt better about themselves and therefore became less critical.

5. Remember that expressions of gratitude are just words

Expressing gratitude is something quick to do – and it doesn’t cost any money to do it. There’s a massive body of research showing that expressions of gratitude have all sorts of positive effects both for people in their home as well as work lives.

So, get used to saying ‘thank you’ a little more often. For example, even if someone does something and doesn’t get a great result, you can still say thank you for their efforts, their hard work. Show your appreciation for others’ work and efforts a bit more frequently, and you may find that your relationships with all sorts of people could get better.

5 ways to be more patient and less critical

I often coach people who wish they could be more assertive. However, I also sometimes coach people who are too assertive: they are good at spotting errors and quick to point them out. As a result, they may come across as impatient and overly critical about other people’s mistakes.

If you have been told (or suspect) that you are someone who is a bit impatient and overly critical, here’s some advice:

1. Take a pause

Studies have shown that it is possible to reduce feelings of irritation and anger. Many of these psychological interventions focus on changing how people think about situations; others involve getting people to relax their bodies so that they feel less physically tense. However, most of these interventions have in common that it requires people to pause for long enough to think differently about their situations.

So, the very first tip (which you have probably heard before) is to take a pause whenever you feel impatient or annoyed by something that’s happening to you. Perhaps take three slow, deep breaths. Even just take one deep breath. Try counting to three. Or label how you are feeling by saying inside your mind “I am experiencing the feeling of…” and then insert “irritation”, “anger”, “annoyance” or whatever else it is you are feeling.

Take a pause for just a few seconds and you help to interrupt your automatic reactions. Then you can try to add in some other tip, like one of the other tips below.

2. Choose your battles

Think carefully about which mistakes or failings you should speak up about. There’s a saying about choosing your battles in order to win the war – and that’s good advice here.

What’s your major career goal? Perhaps you want to get promoted. Or maybe you just want a pay rise. Bear in mind this big career goal is your equivalent of winning the war. But constantly picking little battles – by pointing out every error or issue you spot around you – could annoy the people around you so much that they just cannot bear to work with you any longer. And that could lose you the war – they may actively look for ways to prevent you from getting that promotion or whatever else you want.

So, aim to tone down your level of criticism. When you spot things that have gone – or could go – wrong, think about staying silent about at least some of them. Let the littler issues go. And focus your energies only on the bigger issues, instead.

3. Consider how you attribute things

When we make mistakes, we often attribute it to external circumstances rather than how we are. But when someone else makes the same mistake, we are more likely to attribute it to their disposition – their fundamental personality. For example, when I miss a deadline, I might blame it on my circumstances and think “oh, that’s because I’ve had so much work to deal with”. But when someone else misses a deadline, I’m more likely to blame it on how they are – “oh, she’s lazy” or “he’s incompetent”.

So, remember that you may be attributing other people’s errors to their disposition rather than circumstances. When you remind yourself that their mistakes may actually be down to external circumstances rather than the way they are, you are likely to be less annoyed by them.

4. Assume positive (or at least neutral) intent

Sometimes, we can get annoyed by other people’s actions because we think that they have deliberately set out to behave in a negative fashion. For instance, we may think that they are inherently nasty or manipulative. Or we believe them to be sexist, racist, or otherwise looking down on us.

Often, their behaviour might be a little aggravating. But it is our belief about their negative intentions that really turns it into something massively more annoying.

The thing is, our beliefs can often be wrong. People who are impatient or easily annoyed often assume intentions that are more negative than they actually might be.

So, be careful when you think that someone was “out to get you” or that someone was deliberately trying to harrass you. Remind yourself that you can’t read minds – and that you cannot know for certain what was behind their actions. Give them the benefit of the doubt and you may help yourself to let things go a little more easily.

5. Make more supportive comments

This final tip is not about changing your reaction to things. Instead, this is about changing the extent to which colleagues or other people in your life see you as impatient or overly critical.

Speaking up frequently about the mistakes or problems you see can gain you a reputation as someone who is impatient and critical. But you can help to correct people’s perceptions about you by speaking up a bit more often in order to support your colleagues.

Management researcher Ethan Burris at the University of Texas at Austin found that employees helped themselves to be perceived more positively when they spoke up in ways that supported either the organisation or existing ways of doing things. If you want to reduce your reputation as someone who is impatient or critical, try to:

  • Speak up occasionally to stand up for your organisation – for example when others criticise it.
  • Speak up in order to demonstrate your approval for current policies, procedures, or systems.
  • Voice your support for the ways that things are currently done within your team or organisation.

That doesn’t mean that you have to go from being somewhat critical to being over-the-top supportive of the organisation. But just making the occasional, extra comment in support of your organisation and how things are could make a real difference in terms of how you are perceived.

How to change your personality

Psychological change is possible

We talk about other people’s personalities in terms of the adjectives we use to describe them. So, one person might be “talkative but rude” while another person may be “quiet and inquisitive”. But in psychological terms, personality is broadly defined as a set of enduring traits and processes within the individual that influence that person’s interactions with the world.

Most psychologists agree that there are at least five (but possibly more) dimensions of personality. These include: extraversion, emotional stability, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Other dimensions of personality include honesty and ambition.

Surveys show that a lot of people want to change their personalities. For example, some people wish they could be more conscientious – more organised, tidy, and careful. Others want to become more extraverted – more talkative, outgoing, and able to speak up for themselves.

Several hundred studies have been conducted on the topic of personality change. Using a statistical technique called meta-analysis, a team of investigators led by academic Brent Roberts reviewed these many individual studies and confirmed that personality change was indeed possible. For example, people who were worrisome and low on emotional stability were often able to become less emotionally volatile and more centred.

Setting the right goals

Recent research led by Nathan Hudson at Southern Methodist University found that people were able to change their personalities in small but measurable ways in only 16 weeks. So, it’s important to recognise that personality change isn’t something that happens overnight or only in a few weeks. It will likely take months of effort.

Hudson’s team also found that the largest personality changes came when people wanted to change either their level of extraversion (i.e. the extent to which they enjoy and find it easy to approach and engage with others) or emotional stability (i.e. the extent to which they are able to stay calm and confident in the face of challenges and difficulties). People achieved the smallest amount of change for the personality dimensions of agreeableness (i.e. the extent to which they seek harmony and agreement in their relationships with others) and openness to experience (i.e. the extent to which people seek out a wide variety of intellectual and cultural pursuits). So, it may be worth reminding yourself that some personality traits may be easier to change than others.

Taking action

How did people manage to change their actual personalities? First of all, they set goals and then made a series of commitments to themselves in terms of actions they would take.

For example, a person who wanted to become more extraverted would decide on various actions that involved talking to others or taking charge in group situations. To start with, someone very low on extraversion might set themselves the task of just speaking to customer service employees in shops or supermarkets they went to. Someone who was moderately extraverted (but who wanted to become even more extraverted) might set themselves the goal of volunteering to become the leader of a project at work, for instance.

Someone wanting to increase their level of openness to experience might decide to read a couple of news items about foreign countries. Another person who was already a bit higher on openness to experience might set themselves the challenge to find someone with a different point of view on an contentious topic and then to have a conversation with that person.

But not everybody who wants to change their personalities actually manages to do so. A separate study discovered that some people slid backwards – their personalities changed in the opposite direction. In these instances, researchers have discovered that change in the wrong direction typically happened when people wanted to change but did not take actual action to do so. In other words, these people might have had the intention to change, but they didn’t follow through by modifying their day-to-day behaviour and actually completing tasks and challenges.

It’s like understanding the theory of weight loss. But then not actually doing any physical exercise or cooking and eating differently. Understanding the theory of personality change but not doing anything about it actually tended to make things worse for some people.

Making personality change work for you

By all means have a go at changing your personality. But remember:

  1. Accept that personality change is something that will take months rather than just a few weeks or days. This isn’t a quick fix. This is a project that will require a bit of sustained effort on your part.
  2. Don’t just wish or hope that your personality will change. If you set goals but don’t actually change your behaviour, you might actually end up changing your personality in the wrong direction.
  3. Above all, commit to taking actions in the real world. For example, I’ve written tips for introverts who need to network and advice for introverted leaders. So go talk to new people. Or talk to people in a different way – perhaps by modifying how you speak or use your body language to demonstrate the kind of personality you’d like to show the world. Read books. Watch videos. Rehearse what you want to say in particular situations. Keep doing things and you give yourself the very best chance of changing your fundamental personality and becoming a better version of you.

How to pass job interviews like a STAR

Imagine an interviewer asking you questions such as “Are you a good team player?” or “How would you rate yourself as a manager?”

It’s all very well answering by saying “Yes, I’m a good team player” or “I rate myself as a very inspiring and motivating manager.” But if you really want to impress an interviewer, you should answer by providing an example – a short story – explaining why you’re a good teamplayer or manager.

The STAR framework is a classic method for constructing answers that should help you to persuade interviewers that you have what it takes to do the job. I was interviewed for this article and contributed heavily (but didn’t write it). The article was aimed at candidates wanting to work in banking, but the principles apply to any job. Click the article below twice to bring up a larger version which you can also download and save.