“Facts are ventriloquists dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.”

Aldous Huxley

I have a habit of collecting some “facts” that I read in both academic non-academic journals.  I try sometimes to go back to the source for non-academic studies but can’t say I am always 100% successful in finding the exact citing. 

So, with a qualification that I’ve captured these as I’ve read them, I’d like to share some interesting leadership and talent management “facts” I’ve collected.  Here you go!

1. A 2007 survey study by Bersin & Associates on the Top 22 “Best Practices” which drive business impact based on 750 corporations, they rank the top six as being: 1) Coaching programs for employees (48%); 2) Consolidating staffing requirements across the organization (42%); 3) Ability of current workforce planning process to identify current and future talent gaps (38%); 4) Competencies maintained through annual maintenance process (384%); and 5) Staffing metrics (33%); Development planning (33%); and 6) Aligning golas to manager or corporate goals (33%).

2. The International Coach Federation in 2007 released the “ICF Global Coaching Study” which was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and they conservatively estimated there are at least 30,000 coaches worldwide.  Estimated revenue generated by the industry is close to $1.5 billion (USD).  Approximately 400 new members are added to ICF each month and the organization has doubled in each of the last 3 years from 237 in 2004, 441 in 2005 and 807 in 2006. 

3. A 2006 survey by Marshall Goldsmith Partners, LLC and the Institute of Executive Development suggests that the coaching industry will grow at least 10% for the next three years.  Our own research questions whether it will become a science or a fad¹.

4. A recent survey by Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development  (CIPD) research in the UK that indicates that some 88% of organizations now expect line managers to deliver coaching.  The survey found that external coaches weren’t used at all in 32% of organizations. When they were used, they delivered less than 25% of the total coaching activities. But manager coaches receive very little training. The study goes on to report that only 2% of respondents train all managers to coach and only 17% train a majority.  I guess this adds to some of the arguments of Dr. Robert Hogan who has speculated that the “base rate” of incompetence ranges from 50% to 75% of all leaders.

5. In a 2007 survey of 180 organizations by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, 75% reported they are currently using psychological assessments for executive recruitment, selection and promotion.  52% utilize external psychologists and 64% utilize both interviews and assessments.  With that in mind, current research suggests strong caution in using personality inventories for personnel selection due to low validities in predicting future job performance.

6. Monster and Developmental Dimensions International (DDI) recently surveyed 1,250 hiring managers and 4,000 job hunters in their study “Slugging Through the War for Talent: Selection Forecast 2006-2007.  Job hunters reported their top three to be 1) Opportunities to learn/grow (78%); 2) Interesting work (77%); and 3) A good boss (75%).  Hiring managers and staffing directors reported that they believed what was most important to the job seeker was opportunity to advance (69%) although hiring managers also rated working for a “good manager/boss” as equally important.

7. A recent survey from Hudson Institute suggests that half of American workers fail to take all of their vacation time.  30% take less than half of their allotted time. And 20% take only a few days instead of a week or two.  Among extremists, 42% claim they cancel vacations regularly. Even when we go away, we don’t seem to really get away mentally. 

8. University of Michigan professor David Meyer suggests that at least 6% of Internet users have become clinically addicted.  David Greenfield, Ph.D., founder of the Center for Internet Studies (www.virtual-addiction.com) has conducted one of the largest surveys on the topic to date: a 1998 study of 18,000 Internet users who logged onto the ABC News Web site and found that 5.7 percent of his sample met the criteria for compulsive Internet use.

9. In a survey of 477 senior executives conducted by the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC), nearly half of the 402 male respondents said they now ask for less travel when negotiating a job offer than they did in the past. Fifty-five percent said they are less willing now to take a new job that requires frequent business travel than they were five years ago.

10.  Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, discovered in a recent study that among 75 key components, “trust and confidence in top leadership” was the single most reliable predictor of employee satisfaction.  In some new research exploring the factors that keep talent, Terence Mitchell and colleagues have introduced a powerful new construct called “job embeddedness” that involves: 1) Relationships; 2) “Fit” between the individual and organization; and 3) Perceived fairness and what the person would have to sacrifice if they left.

 So, I will leave you with another quote by Robert Ballard who once said, “Don’t confuse facts with reality”….Be well….

Technorati Tags: talent management, succession planning, coaching, executive coaching, executive development, surveys, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

1. Nowack, K. (2003). Executive Coaching: Fad or Future? California Psychologist, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, 16-17 [↩]

“I’m not asleep… but that doesn’t mean I’m awake” Author Unknown

We all seem to be working longer and harder with health, sleep, and mood being affected.

Research by Sylvia Ann-Hewlett and Carolyn Luce shows that 62% of high-earning individuals work more than 50 hours per week, 35% work more than 60 hours a week and 10% work more than 80 hours¹.  Their findings suggest that more than 70% of professionals reported not getting enough sleep.

Leaders and others know that the sleep-deprived are typically moody, miserable, and just not much fun to be around.  New research from UC Berkeley using MRI technology helps explain why for the first time.

The study is the first to show exactly what areas of the brain are affected by sleep deprivation². The human emotional brain without sleep — a prefrontal amygdala disconnect. ³.

In the UC Berkeley study of 26 young adults, half of the subjects were kept awake for 35 hours straight and the other half were allowed a normal night’s sleep in that same time period. Then all of the subjects were hooked up to an MRI and shown a number of images while the researchers monitored what happened in their brains as each image was shown.

The sleep-deprived subjects showed significant activity in the amygdala (the section of the brain that puts the body on alert to protect itself and control emotions), and simultaneously, showed slowed activity in the prefrontal cortex (which controls logical reasoning).  On the other hand, subjects who got a full night of sleep showed normal brain activity.

Americans are among the most sleep-deprived people in the world with 40% of Americans getting less than seven hours of sleep a night, according to a 2005 poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation.  Additionally, 75% of Americans reported having some sort of sleep disorder one or two nights a week⁴.

What this means for most people is that a sleepless night or very poor quality of sleep can cause employees to overreact to emotional challenges that they would otherwise be able to tolerate without any trouble. 

So, if you have sleep-deprived talent and leaders who lack emotional intelligence — look out — their amygdala is already compromised….Be well…

Technorati Tags: insomnia, sleep, fatigue, depression, sleep disorders, fatigue countermeasures, REM, NREM, circadian rhythms, stress, health, job burnout, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

1. Hewlett, A. & Luce, C. (2006).  Extreme jobs.  The dangerous allure of the 70-hour workweek.  Harvard Business Review, December 2006, pp. 1-12 [↩]
2. Yoo, S., Gujar,N., Hu,P., Jolesz, F., & and Walker, M. (2007) [↩]
3. Current Biology. Vol 17, R877-R878, 23 October 2007) [↩]
4. http://www.sleepfoundation.org/ [↩]

“Forget about style; worry about results.” Bobby Orr

We are all working longer and doing more….any more results to show for it?

For example, Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano of the National Bureau of Economic Research found that college educated employees working 50-hour weeks rose from 22.2% to 30.5% between 1980 and 2001. Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Luce in their research on employees who put in tremendously long hours (Extreme Jobs, HBR, December 2006) complain that most can’t find time to maintain their home (77% of the women surveyed and 66% of the men) and 45% of those that work a 12-hour day reported being “too tired” to say anything to their partners or spouses. Maybe they can at least text message each other with their Treos or Blackberries in bed.

About Results vs. Activities
Results vs. Activities is a new blog by Envisia Learning for those who are truly interested in increasing organizational performance. This blog will be devoted to evidence-based practices, research, book reviews, and findings to help leaders and talent become more competent, efficient, productive, successful, and healthy:

Regular contributors will include Kenneth M. Nowack, Ph.D., Michael Perrault, and William Bradley.  Other guest contributors will include other senior practitioners and authors who will periodically provide value tips, suggestions, and evidence-based information focusing on enhancing results.

We’d also like to welcome existing readers from KenNowack.com.  We hope you enjoy the high-quality and unique content we will be offering you in the coming years.

Technorati Tags: Envisiatools, Envisia, Envisia Learning, Results vs. activities, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack