Managing Cognitive Load During Long Meetings

What is cognitive overload and why is it important to consider as managers? The Mayo Clinic describes this challenge as follows: "When there is too much information to process, you may feel cognitive overload. This happens when you reach a point of paralysis of information — not being able to process and then act on what is heard."

When I'm teaching, I always try to be very aware of the cognitive load that I'm imposing on students.  I want them to be engaged in challenging and rigorous analysis, solving tough problems, and debating with their peers.  The cognitive load can be very high at times. I'm cold-calling intermittently.  They have to be on their toes.  However, I try to shift gears pretty frequently during class, knowing that the best teaching often has a change in pace, content, or pedagogy every 10-12 minutes.  When I change things up, I might occasionally engage students in a brief task that offers them a bit of a cognitive break.  For example, I might show a quick video about the company or leader we are discussing, or I may ask them to ask them to get up and go to the whiteboard to brainstorm some options for the company moving forward.  The students are still engaging in critical thinking, but this shift gives them a bit of a cognitive break.  They are engaging in something a bit less stressful, and/or they are moving around a bit in the room.  Then, in a few minutes, they are ready to dive into a different, quite complex issue.  

This same approach to managing cognitive load can be useful in meetings, particularly those that are lengthy in duration.  Having people sit in their chairs for hours discussing a series of complex financial performance metrics can be difficult.  People will eventually become less attentive and productive. They may find their cognitive performance deteriorating due to fatigue and stress.  Therefore, managers need to think about giving them a cognitive break during these meetings.  That does not just mean having a coffee break here or there.  You can intermittently introduce lighter topics or a brief activity that gets them out of their chairs and up to the whiteboards.  Movement, change of pace, and topic selection all help to manage cognitive load in a way that leads to more effective meetings. 

What All of Us Can Learn About Decision Making From Baseball's New Pitch Clock

Source:  Sports Illustrated

If you are a major league baseball fan, you probably are enjoying the new pitch clock implemented this year.  Over the past few decades, games have become longer and longer, typically exceeding 3 hours.  In the playoffs, many games have exceeded 4 hours.  The increasing length of games and the slow pace were turning away many fans, particularly younger ones.   Interestingly, a scholar of decision making under pressure has suggested that all of us can learn a bit from the addition of the pitch clock in baseball.  Dartmouth College President-Elect Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientist, has argued that we might actually see better performance with the new time constraints for pitchers.  She extends that argument to many decision makers in an array of fields, arguing that situations without time bounds can actually increase decision fatigue and burnout, while yielding inferior choices.  We can spend so much time pondering and re-hashing our options that we become cognitively overwhelmed.  Here's an excerpt from a piece she wrote recently for Fast Company: 

My own research shows that we actually perform better under tight time constraints—especially when we’re doing something we’re good at. The performance of elite athletes is largely controlled by procedural memory and repetition rather than conscious thinking...  Too much time causes us to focus excessively on the minutiae of our performance, which can disrupt what we are doing. San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler had it right when he said that the greatest advantage of the pitch clock will be “taking all the thoughts out of your head.”

Parkinson’s law suggests that when people are given extra time to complete a task, we’ll generally take advantage of that time, even if we don’t really need it. In other words, we don’t lose out by trimming down deliberation time. All we gain is extra time for our thoughts to percolate—and disrupt our performance... In a world where we are all facing 35,000 daily decisions, it’s worth taking stock of how too much thinking time might be causing more harm than help. The “paradox of choice” tells us that having too many options actually makes us less happy—an experience anyone who’s spent a night scrolling through hundreds of Netflix titles only to declare “there’s nothing to watch” knows well. In many ways, the absence of a pitch clock in our own lives could be viewed as the culprit for decision fatigue and burnout, which over half of Americans are struggling with today.

Naturally, we have to consider the context.  The performance of an athlete performing the same task that they have performed millions of times since childhood is far different than a distinctive strategic decision that a CEO is facing and perhaps has never encountered previously.  Still, we should think carefully about what happens when we delay decisions repeatedly in hopes of benefiting from further deliberation and analysis.  There is a delicate cost/benefit calculus at play.  The benefits of delay don't always exceed the costs, and those costs are not only associated with the danger of falling behind more nimble competitors in the marketplace. 

Changing Your Mindset About Stress

Source: Stanford University

All of us have found ourselves overwhelmed at times by high levels of stress and anxiety. For some, these feelings and emotions can become debilitating. Our performance in a challenging situation suffers greatly. However, the consequences do not always have to be so dire. I recently listened to a fascinating podcast featuring Stanford psychology professor Alia Crum. She's the principal investigator in Stanford's Mind and Body Lab.

Crum has been examining how and why many of us have come to assume that stress should and will be debilitating. In fact, she argues that well-intentioned public health communications tend to reinforce this negative perception about stress. However, her work has explored how our mindset matters. Looking at stress with a different perspective can help us persevere through adversity and actually elevate our performance in very challenging situations. Here's an excerpt from the podcast:

The nature of a challenging situation or a demand in our life. That’s what we been focused on. And what we’ve found is that, if you kinda go back into those core assumptions, what you realize is that, most people have the mindset that stressful situations are inherently debilitating. They’re going to ultimately make us sick, make us struggle, make us crumble under pressure. And when you look at the truth about stress which is like most things very complicated, you realise that that is a simplified assumption. It’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s only one way of viewing stress and you start to realize that the true nature of stress is more complex.

And in fact, there’s a whole other side of stress that reveals to us that the body’s stress response, the mind stress response, was not designed to be debilitating, but instead designed to help us elevate our performance and behavior to meet the demands we’re facing. There’s a whole side of stress that shows that it can have enhancing qualities on our cognitive functioning, our physical health and on how we behave and interact with others. And so, our work is not necessarily to find out the truth of stress, what it is or what isn’t. But to look at how our mindsets, the core assumptions we make about it shape how we respond in stressful situations. And what we’ve shown is that if we can get people to open their minds to this notion that stress can be enhancing. That stress can help you rise to a new level of understanding, can deepen your connection with others, can make us even physiologically grow tougher and stronger. Having that focus shifts our attention and behaviors in ways that make that mindset more true.

Small Wins: More Important Than Ever

Source: https://michiganross.umich.edu/faculty-research/faculty/karl-weick

In the 1980s, the great social psychologist Karl Weick wrote a paper about the importance of small wins. Weick argued that some problems can be cognitively and emotionally overwhelming. In these cases, people may find it very difficult to make progress toward addressing the issue and achieving their goals. Weick advocated breaking down large, complex problems and goals into smaller, intermediate objectives. Pursuing a small wins strategy could then help people achieve their goals, but lowering stress, creating a powerful sense of accomplishment, and motivating people to continue working on a tough project. Here's an excerpt from that paper:

A small win is a concrete, complete, implemented outcome of moderate importance. By itself, one small win may seem unimportant. A series of wins at small but significant tasks, however, reveals a pattern that may attract allies, deter opponents, and lower resistance to subsequent proposals. Small wins are controllable opportunities that produce visible results.

The idea of small wins seems more important than ever right now, amidst the COVID-19 crisis.  It's easy to feel overwhelmed at times.  Thinking in terms of concrete small wins may help us work toward longer term, stretch goals as well as to tackle very challenging projects.  

How to Avoid Choking During Your Next Job Interview

Sian Beilock, President of Barnard College, has written a good HBR digital article titled, "Why Talented People Fail Under Pressure."   She writes,

When the pressure is on, we tend to panic — about the situation, its consequences, and what others will think of us — and as a result we apply too much cognitive horsepower to what we are doing. We start overthinking something that usually comes naturally to us.  

How we can avoid panicking in these types of situations, such as a crucial job interview?  Beilock argues that we need to shift our thinking to other tasks in ways that use up some of our cognitive horsepower.  That prevents us from overthinking the challenge at hand.  She explains:

If you notice that you are starting to overthink, try singing a song, repeating a one-word mantra, or focusing on the three key points you want to get across to your audience. These approaches use up that cognitive horsepower that could otherwise be used against you.. Let’s say you’re preparing for a job interview. You know your resume inside and out, and in normal circumstances, you can easily recount your strengths and accomplishments. But when you sit down in the interview chair, you freeze up. If you take time beforehand to occupy your prefrontal cortex with unrelated activities, you’re less likely to overthink in the moment and more likely to be able to communicate your message effectively.

For more on Beilock's work on coping with pressure, see her great book, "Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To."  

Christmas Stress: Gift Givers Need To Worry Less About Their Choices

Source: Pixabay

Several years ago, Karl Halvor Teigen and his colleagues published an article titled, "Giver-receiver asymmetries in gift preferences."  As some of us scramble for last minute gifts this Christmas Eve (not me, I'm done!), we might want to keep in mind a few of their findings.  Perhaps retailers too should consider these research conclusions as they think about their marketing and merchandising strategies, though they may apply the lessons quite differently than consumers should.  Here is what Teigen and his colleagues found.   Gift givers and receivers have starkly different preferences regarding the nature of presents exchanged.  For example, receivers tend to enjoy practical and useful gifts, but givers often opt for more exclusive, less practical items.  Similarly, givers tend to prefer gift cards, while receivers would rather have cash.  Finally, givers often stress about insuring that the gift will arrive on time for an important holiday or event.  Receivers are much more forgiving than we think about a late arriving present.   In sum, the study shows that givers might want to rethink their strategies and stop worrying quite as much as they do.  Don't let stress hamper your celebration of Christmas.  After all, it's not really about the gifts anyway.  

Thanksgiving: Expressing Gratitude Enhances our Well-Being

Source: Grisson Air Reserve Base

For past Thanksgiving holidays, I've blogged about some interesting research regarding the benefits of expressing gratitude. For instance, last year, I wrote about experimental research conducted by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough that demonstrated the benefits associated with counting our blessings.   

This year, I'd like to share the findings from another important study about gratitude.  Several years ago, Sheung-Tak Cheng, Pui Ki Tsui, John Lam published a paper titled, "Improving Mental Health in Health Care Practitioners: Randomized Controlled Trial of a Gratitude Intervention."  In explaining the meaning and impact of their research, the scholars wrote, "This study revealed that an intervention involving writing gratitude events led to a reduction in perceived stress and depressive symptoms among health care practitioners. It is possible that such positive effects among these professionals can also lead to an improvement in both productivity and quality of patient services."

What precisely did these researchers do in their study?  102 physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists participated in this research project.  The health care practitioners wrote diaries about work-related events twice per week for four weeks.  The scholars directed some participants to describe events about which they were thankful.  They directed others to describe something that annoyed them.  Naturally, the scholars included a control condition in their study.   They found that the gratitude diary entries often described receiving assistance from colleagues or benefiting in some other way from a constructive relationship with a co-worker.   The scholars found that writing about gratitude reduced perceived stress and depressive symptoms among the healthcare practitioners.  In short, expressing gratitude seemed to have a positive effect on the workers' well-being.  The scholars speculate that these positive effects might actually enhance the care of patients, though they do not measure that in this particular study.  

We often hear about the importance of self-reflection.  Some leaders take a few moments at the end of each day or week to reflect upon what they have accomplished recently, as well as the mistakes that they have made.  This type of reflection can enhance learning and lead to continuous improvement.  These studies suggest that these moments of self-reflection ought to also include some time for considering those things and people for which we feel very grateful.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  I'm certainly grateful to those who take the time to read this blog! 

Time is Money: Does Thinking This Way Elevate Stress Levels?

Stanford Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer and Berkeley Professor Dana Carney have conducted some interesting new research on stress.  They examined the impact of thinking about the value of your time.   When we think of "time as money," we become significantly more stressed.  That's bad for us as individuals and bad for the organizations in which we work.  Stanford Insights summarizes the findings:  

Pfeffer’s most recent research, coauthored with Dana R. Carney from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrates the physiological consequences of the economic evaluation of time. Their study concludes that people who are keenly aware of the economic value of their time — people who think of time as money — generally are more psychologically stressed and exhibit higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol that do people for whom the economic value of time is less salient.

Why do stress levels matter?   Clearly, stress is not good for worker's health.  In turn, an individual's  health condition affects his or her productivity.   We don't want employees to experience burnout, both for their sake and for the benefit of the firm as a whole.  

Uncertainty More Stressful Than Knowing with Certainty That Something Bad Will Occur

What's more stressful for you: knowing for sure that something bad is about to happen or being highly uncertain about a possible negative outcome? Archy de Berker, Robb Rutledge, and their fellow researchers examined this question in a study in Nature Communications. The scholars conducted an experiment in which participants played a computer game. In the game, subjects looked under rocks, and in some cases, they discovered snakes. The subjects received an electric shock in the computer game if a snake appeared. The scholars embedded a great deal of uncertainty in the game, and it fluctuated significantly as participants played. They examined the stress that subjects experienced by measuring certain physiological responses (such as pupil dilation). Participants also reported their self-perceptions about stress as they played. 

What did the scholars find? Subjects experienced the most stress when uncertainty was at its highest levels. Perhaps most interesting though is the finding related to certainty vs. uncertainty. The Guardian recently reported on these findings: 

"So what’s the big deal? Everyone knows that uncertainty is stressful. But what’s not so obvious is that uncertainty is more stressful than predictable negative consequences. Is it really more stressful wondering whether you’ll make it to your meeting on time than knowing you’ll be late? Is it more stressful wondering if you’re about to get sacked than being relatively sure of it? De Berker’s results provide a resounding “yes”."

What's the implication for business leaders? You might be hesitant about communicating bad news because you know it will cause stress for others in your organization. However, this research indicates that the uncertainty leading up to a negative consequence could be much more stressful than knowing for sure that something bad will happen. Keeping people in the dark does not help them; it may cause more harm than good.

The Impact of Conflicting Goals

With the new year upon us, many people will be setting goals for themselves and their organizations.  Of course, we would hope that these goals would be aligned, i.e. that they would reinforce and complement one another.  Sometimes, however, we find ourselves trying to juggle conflicting goals.  Stanford's Jennifer Aaker has conducted research, along with Duke's Jordan Etkin and Rotterdam's Ioannis Evangelidis, on the impact of competing objectives.   What did they find?

1. Not surprisingly, people tend to experience more stress when they have competing goals that they are trying to juggle. 
2. People tend to feel more pressed for time when they experience conflicting goals, even when the goals do not compete for their time. 
3. When people have conflicting goals, they tend to become much less patient.  In other words, they are less willing to wait in line, or on the phone.  They are also less willing to wait for a package to be delivered.  
4. Because they have less patience, people are willing to pay more to save time.  The researchers found that, "Goal-conflicted subjects who felt short on time were willing to pay 30 percent more for expedited shipping of a DVD from Amazon. Such results confirm the hypothesis that feeling pressed for time shortens patience and increases willingness to pay."  

 What's the lesson for all of us as we set goals for 2015?   First, if we are leading an organization, we should be mindful of the pressures we create for others if we establish too many goals that are competing with one another.  We can never align objectives completely, but we can try to minimize conflicts.  Second, we can become more aware of how competing objectives may distort our behavior.  Before we expend resources, we might think about how stress and anxiety may be causing us to spend a bit less responsibly.    Finally, we might think about streamlining our list of goals and objectives for 2015.  If we set too many goals, we may not accomplish anything.  We have to be able to set priorities.  In so doing, we will also reduce the likelihood of stress from competing objectives. 

Do Leaders Experience Less Stress Than Front-Line Workers?

A new study by Gary Sherman and colleagues at Stanford and Harvard offers some interesting insights regarding how people experience stress in the workplace.   The scholars note that the conventional wisdom suggests that people feel more stress as they achieve higher levels of formal authority in an organization.  However, they found the opposite to be true.  The researchers discovered that leaders had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and lower self-reported anxiety than non-leaders in the organizations they studied.  The scholars argued that leaders may feel less stress because they have a greater sense of control.  Because they have more autonomy regarding the type of work they do and decisions they make, leaders may not experience the same type of anxiety that other workers do. 

For more information on stress, I highly recommend a new book co-authored by my Bryant University colleague Jim Segovis.  The title is:  Work Stress and Coping in an Era of Globalization.  The book offers a sound scholarly treatment of the subject of stress in organizations. 

Anxious Negotiators Lose Big Time!

Wharton Professor Maurice Schweitzer and graduate student Alison Wood Brooks have published an interesting paper titled, "Can Nervous Nelly Negotiate? How Anxiety Causes Negotiators to Make Low First Offers, Exit Early, and Earn Less Profit."  The scholars examine the effects of anxiety on business negotiations.   Not surprisingly, they find that anxiety can be very harmful in a negotiation. The study goes one step further though.  It shows precisely how anxiety harms negotiators.   Specifically, the researchers found that more anxious negotiators made lower initial offers, and they responded to others' offers more quickly.   Those behaviors contributed to the fact that anxious negotiators ultimately achieved worse outcomes. 

Why do anxious negotiators behave in this manner?  Schweitzer and Brooks explain that anxiety seems to induce conflict avoidance.  Anxiety often brings with it a desire to minimize the likelihood of confrontation with the other party.   However, the desire to avoid confrontation often drives a negotiator to compromise prematurely or advocate for their own interests less forcefully.   The lesson is clear:  If you are feeling anxious, step back for a moment and collect yourself before beginning a negotiation.  Your anxiety may not just make you feel sick to your stomach; it may lighten your wallet too!