WorkPuzzle

The Science of Sleep - Episode 1

At 54 years of age, I have noticed that my sleep patterns are significantly different than when I was younger. So I decided to do some exploration on the latest sleep research and pass on my findings to our readers.

There is so much of interest and value that I am going to share the facts over the next 3 blog editions. There will be a couple of "sleep myths" at the end of each article - just to keep you awake!

Today's topic covers general information on sleep as provided by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; a branch of the National Institute of Health.

"The amount of sleep each person needs depends on many factors, including age. Infants generally require about 16 hours a day, while teenagers need about 9 hours on average. For most adults, 7 to 8 hours a night appears to be the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as 5 hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day. Women in the first 3 months of pregnancy often need several more hours of sleep than usual. The amount of sleep a person needs also increases if he or she has been deprived of sleep in previous days. Getting too little sleep creates a "sleep debt," which is much like being overdrawn at a bank. Eventually, your body will demand that the debt be repaid. We don't seem to adapt to getting less sleep than we need; while we may get used to a sleep-depriving schedule, our judgment, reaction time, and other functions are still impaired.

People tend to sleep more lightly and for shorter time spans as they get older, although they generally need about the same amount of sleep as they needed in early adulthood. About half of all people over 65 have frequent sleeping problems, such as insomnia, and deep sleep stages in many elderly people often become very short or stop completely. This change may be a normal part of aging, or it may result from medical problems that are common in elderly people and from the medications and other treatments for those problems.

Experts say that if you feel drowsy during the day, even during boring activities, you haven't had enough sleep. If you routinely fall asleep within 5 minutes of lying down, you probably have severe sleep deprivation, possibly even a sleep disorder. Micro-sleeps, or very brief episodes of sleep in an otherwise awake person, are another mark of sleep deprivation. In many cases, people are not aware that they are experiencing micro-sleeps. The widespread practice of "burning the candle at both ends" in western industrialized societies has created so much sleep deprivation that what is really abnormal sleepiness is now almost the norm.

Many studies make it clear that sleep deprivation is dangerous….Driver fatigue is responsible for an estimated 100,000 motor vehicle accidents and 1500 deaths each year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Since drowsiness is the brain's last step before falling asleep, driving while drowsy can – and often does – lead to disaster. The National Sleep Foundation says that if you have trouble keeping your eyes focused, if you can't stop yawning, or if you can't remember driving the last few miles, you are probably too drowsy to drive safely."

As promised, to end this edition, I have included 2 Myths about sleep from WedMD:

1. To function best, you need to get eight hours. 
There's nothing magic about that number. Everyone has different sleep needs, and you'll know you're getting enough when you don't feel like nodding off in a boring situation in the afternoon, says New York University psychologist Joyce Walsleben, Ph.D., co-author of A Woman's Guide to Sleep .

2. If you can get it, more sleep is always healthier. 
You wish. Some studies have found that people who slept more than eight hours a night died younger than people who got between six and eight hours. What scientists don't know yet: Whether sleeping longer causes poor health or is a symptom of it, says Najib Ayas, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia. Long sleepers may suffer from problems such as sleep apnea, depression, or uncontrolled diabetes that make them spend more time in bed.

 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

Another 2.8 Million Real Estate Candidate’s You’re Missing—Part 2

Earlier this week, I pointed out a new trend that has developed in the workforce.  This trend is the long-term and extensive use of temporary or contract workers.

If you need to catch-up, read the WorkPuzzle posted earlier this week.

The fact that these workers exist (and many are frustrated with their current work situation) was our previous topic, but how can a real estate hiring manager engage these workers successfully?

Finding where they work.   The first step to engaging contract workers is finding where they work.   Here are the industries where you’re most likely to find temp/contract workers:

Agricultural, Automotive Repair, Barber/Beauty/Nail Salons, Computer Programmers, Software Designers, Consultants, Insurance/Financial Services,

Long-Haul Truck Drivers, Medical Professionals, First Level Health Care /In Home Care, Office Personnel , Pharmacists, Political Campaigns / Petition Gatherers, Inside/Outside Sales, Telemarketing, Travel Agents, Information Technology, Engineering /Scientific, Accounting/Finance, Management (including executives), Legal.

It may seem a little awkward at first, but many of these workers are people that you could connect with during your normal business and personal dealings.  

For example, let’s suppose that you’re having a life insurance physical and the person sent to your office to take your blood sample shows up for her appointment.

It’s not that hard to say something like this:

“Hey, do you happen to be a contract worker?  I was reading recently that about the increase in contract positions...”

Learning about their frustration.  If individuals are doing contract work and they’re frustrated with their situation, they’ll be more than happy to tell you about it.

Ask a few questions such as:

“How did you get this job?” 

“Was this your first choice, or were you originally looking for something more permanent?”

“Do you feel like there is a future in this job, or is it a stepping stone to something else down the road?”

During the discussion, ask a few more open-ended follow-up questions based on their answers.   It won’t be long before you uncover a bunch of frustration about their employment circumstances.

Most of the frustration will center around two issues—they’ll probably dislike the work their doing, and they won’t see a viable future in staying in this role for a long period of time.

Offer a Better Alternative.  If someone is experiencing a high level of frustration, they will naturally be more open to new ideas.   It’s not hard to say something like this:

“Considering your situation, have you ever thought about working in a field that would offer more long-term potential and give you more control over your future?”

“I manage a local real estate office, and I work with many great agents who come from all different career backgrounds and now have successful careers.  Perhaps this could be a fit for you.”

As you carry on this part of the discussion, it’s helpful to also point out that transitioning to real estate from a temporary or contract position can be less risky and financially more palatable for workers in contract positions.  

Why?   Because contract workers often have some flexibility over the number of hours they work and the schedules they keep.   They may be able to slowly ramp down their contract work level as they increase their focus on real estate.

There are a lot of temps/contract employees working in today’s job market.  Try identifying them and engaging them in a discussion about their careers.  It’s not as hard as it may sound at first, and soon you’ll start to enjoy the challenge.  Let me know how it goes!

 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

Another 2.8 Million Real Estate Candidates You’re Missing

Last year, I wrote a WorkPuzzle on the large pockets of workers in the economy that would be well
positioned to transition to a real estate career.  In total, there are over 6-million workers who are “underemployed” and could potentially use their education and talent to upgrade their careers in the real estate industry.

Over the weekend, NBC News reporter Martha White uncovered another 2.8 million employees in today’s workforce who may be open to transitioning to the real estate industry.

Who are these individuals?  They’re temporary or contract workers (often called temps), and they now make up over 2% of the workforce in the United States. 

They may be more open to transitioning to industries such as real estate because the nature of the temp employment world is changing.   What used to be a pathway to fulltime employee status in many companies is now a dead-end road.   White makes these observations,

For Americans who can’t find jobs, the booming demand for temp workers has been a path out of unemployment, but now many fear it’s a dead-end route.

With full-time work hard to find, these workers have built temping into a de facto career, minus vacation, sick days or insurance. The assignments might be temporary — a few months here, a year there — but labor economists warn that companies’ growing hunger for a workforce they can switch on and off could do permanent damage to these workers’ career trajectories and retirement plans.

Like underemployed workers (those working less than 29 hours per week), these individuals are not receiving traditional employee benefits.  This “levels the playing field” for what real estate companies are able to offer new agents.

So while the frontend of the arrangement for real estate agents looks similar to the value proposition being offered to temp workers, there is much more upside potential in the real estate industry.   Agents who are successful establish independent businesses that produce higher wages and earn the capacity to purchase the traditional employee benefits. 

Most temp workers will never have this advantage.  White points out the structural changes that are happening in the workforce are probably here to stay.

Economists say it’s typical for temporary hiring to rise initially as the economy recovers, before businesses are ready to commit to hiring full-time employees. But, … the current pattern doesn’t fit historic norms.

Right now we’re seeing something interesting.  We’ve seen [temporary hiring] surpass its previous highs, so it looks like there could be a structural shift going on, too. There’s a reason to believe we might see some increase in the use of temporary help in general.

No one wants to be stuck in a temp job with little opportunity for growth and advancement, but that’s what most traditional companies are offering these workers.  To a person in this situation, transitioning to a real estate career may seem compelling.

Finally, who are the people who find themselves in this position?  In addition to being numerous, they also share a few other characteristics.  First and most importantly, they are people who want to work, and are more established in their careers.

Second, they generally have education and skills that allow them to get up and running certain jobs quickly.  For example, White demonstrates how diverse the temp worker market has now become:

More kinds of businesses seem to be drawing that conclusion, as industries not thought of as traditional temp work territory are using more contract workers. [For example, even] adjunct college professors face much of the same uncertainty and lower wages than their full-time counterparts.

Bottom line

There is a large and growing part of the workforce who are employed in temporary/contract jobs.  While many of these individuals are educated and talented, they are frustrated because they are not being offered permanent positions and see little hope for career advancement.   Transitioning to the real estate industry may be a better option for some of these individuals.

In my next WorkPuzzle, I’ll address the issue engaging these workers successfully and helping them make the transition to a career in real estate.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

To Be or Not to Be - Audited

It's not that I have anything to hide, but the prospect of an audit just doesn’t sound very pleasant. Although I have some friends who tell me that their audits were pain free, I nevertheless hope to avoid the experience.

My curiosity led me to Google a search about the odds of an audit. Here is what I found in a Washington Post article written by Christopher Ingraham.

“The Associated Press reported Monday that your chances of getting audited are the lowest in years. ‘This year, the IRS will have fewer agents auditing returns than at any time since at least the 1980s,’ the report says. Noting that less than one percent of individual returns were audited last year, the story quotes IRS Commissioner John Koskinen as saying that the audit rate will be even lower this year.”

If you want some historic perspective, the IRS doesn't make it easy. It has reported on annual audit rates for decades, but these figures are buried deep within PDFs of its annual reports. I dug up the audit rates going back to 1980, which I charted below.

 

Last year did indeed mark the first time audit rates dipped below one percent since 2006. But the rate was even lower in previous years, bottoming out at 0.49 percent in 2000. Audit rates were highest over this time period in the early 1980s, when more than 2 percent of individual returns were examined by auditors.

Audit rates differ by income. The IRS doesn't provide consistent income breakdowns of the audit data over time, but in 2013 your chance of getting audited was 0.88 percent if your income was under $200,000, 3.26 percent for incomes greater than $200,000, and 10.85 percent for earners making over $1 million per year.

In sum, you're about half as likely to get audited today as you were in 1980, but twice as likely as you were in 2000. If you get audited this year, congratulations! You are the one percent - at least when it comes to tax filers.”

This was an informative article and I hope it relieves some anxiety... except, of course, for those of you who make more than 1 million a year. 

Have a Happy Easter or Joyous Passover or a Great Weekend!

 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

New to the Endangered List: Reading

I’ve noticed over the last couple of years that my ability to read for long stretches of time has shortened. I’m now reading four books at once, partly because they are easily accessible on my Kindle and partly because I can't seem to focus on one for any length of time without getting distracted and moving onto the next one.

In fact, when I read at bedtime I find myself falling asleep after reading just a couple of pages. And, until I read the recent article in the Washington Post I believed that it was all due to being busy and perhaps older.

There is apparently another cause for all of the above symptoms.

Neuroscience researchers are discovering something pretty alarming.

“Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.

“I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing,” said Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist and the author of 'Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.'

If the rise of nonstop cable TV news gave the world a culture of sound bites, the Internet, Wolf said, is bringing about an eye byte culture.”

Here is an excerpt that describes where we’ve been and where we are now:

“Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so on. Sure, there might be pictures mixed in with the text, but there didn’t tend to be many distractions. Reading in print even gave us a remarkable ability to remember where key information was in a book simply by the layout, researchers said...

The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been documented in academic studies. Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of reading is beginning to invade when dealing with other mediums as well.

“We’re spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scroll­ing and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you,” said Andrew Dillon, a University of Texas professor who studies reading. “We’re in this new era of information behavior, and we’re beginning to see the consequences of that.”

What will the consequences be? What about this next generation? Apparently reading wasn’t something our brains were designed to do originally, and because of this it may not take much time to unwire the reading ability:

“The brain was not designed for reading. There are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. But spurred by the emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet, Chinese paper and, finally, the Gutenberg press, the brain has adapted to read.”

I doubt and sincerely hope that reading does not become a de-evolving experience of human behavior.

I, personally, am going to reduce my internet scanning and I will do my best to read to my grandson every chance I get. 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

Key to Organizational Success Part 2: Teaching Agents to Get Over Small Offenses

Earlier this week, I highlighted research that Gallup recently published on the characteristics of high-performing managers.  Here is the list of common traits that great managers share:

They motivate every single employee (agent) to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.

They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.

They create a culture of clear accountability.

They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.

They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.

As I think about leading my own team of employees, these traits set a high bar.  I personally need to make improvements in all five areas.

There is one trait on this list, however, that I think is particularly difficult to implement (#4): Building relationships that create trust, open dialog, and full transparency.

Why is this one so difficult?  Because it’s the only trait that requires the full bilateral engagement of those I manage.  I can’t create trust unless the other person chooses to trust me.  I can’t have an open dialog unless the other person agrees to talk.  We can’t have a fully transparent relationship unless both sides agree to reveal themselves.

Improving on #4 is certainly a complex topic, but I wanted share a strategy I’ve personally been trying to use to improve the trust and openness with those I manage.

The technique was brought to my attention by an article I read a few months ago written by Esther Inglis-Arkell on a blog called IO9.  Here is an excerpt from Arkell’s article:

We seem to have a kind of pettiness built into our nature. We will watch soppy movies about the redemption of murderers, or a long television series about gleeful serial killers, but have a character in a movie litter and we want them in prison.

Our real lives are not exempt from this. We can nurse a grudge against someone who gave us a dirty look for years. When someone we love screams at us, we forgive them in a few days.

A team of scientists from UCLA, Harvard, and the University of Virginia conducted a series of experiments that showed the people are bad at predicting how hurt will affect them over time.

We tend to assume the more painful injuries, the major ones, or the ones committed by loved ones, will cause the most pain over time… [But the opposite is true]. If the hurt is minor, we [tend to] let it fester...

Why do we furiously resent the minor insults but forgive, or at least let go, of the major ones? Why do we let those close to us insult us in ways we'd never take from a stranger? According to the study authors, it's because we can afford to….

If holding a grudge means we have to be angry and miserable for a long time, we find a way to stop being angry. If we just suffer a little annoyance, we allow it. Or sometimes we even enjoy it.

So, here is my new strategy to create trust, open dialog, and full transparency with those I manage: 

I am making a point to overlook and forgive the small offenses that commonly take place in the work environment.

In addition, I am going to encourage others to do the same (both with me and with each other).  

My goal is to make this way of relating an integral part of our company’s culture:  We don’t hold grudges, we overlook the small stuff, and we forgive those around us who commit small offenses—even if they don’t ask for forgiveness.

Is this something you could also implement on your team?  Like me, you’d have to start with your own behavior and then let it grow into becoming part of your culture.

According to the research, this change will improve your chances of building trust-filled relationships among those on your team.  Combined with the other traits, you’ll then be one step closer to becoming a great manager.

Note:   If you like all the social science/organizational psychology stuff, you may want to read all of Arkell’s article, or download the original research paper.  Both are helpful in understanding why forgiveness in helpful in building trust.

 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

Key to Organizational Success: The Right Manager

Are you a great manager? If so, you’re amongst a small minority of individuals who work for companies in the United States.  If you are not a great manager (yet), keep reading.  There is a recipe of talents that great managers possess and it is not as complicated or illusive as you might imagine.

The research on this topic (done by the Gallup Organization) was recently reported in the Harvard Business Review (HBR).  It outlines both the importance of good managers and the scarcity of their existence in business world.

Gallup has found that one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name manager. Yet our analysis suggests that they usually get it wrong. In fact, Gallup finds that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time. 

Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units, Gallup estimates. This variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement.

Gallup reported in two large-scale studies in 2012 that only 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and a staggeringly low 13% worldwide are engaged. Worse, over the past 12 years these low numbers have barely budged, meaning that the vast majority of employees worldwide are failing to develop and contribute at work.

So, high-performing managers cause employees to increase their engagement in their day-to-day work. That begs the question: Why is employee engagement so important?   HBR goes on to explain:

Gallup has discovered links between employee engagement at the business-unit level and vital performance indicators [such as] customer metrics, higher profitability, productivity, quality (fewer defects), and lower turnover…. When a company raises employee engagement levels consistently across every business unit, everything gets better.

A negative chain reaction seems to be at play in most companies.  Employees (agents) who are disengaged cause companies to perform poorly, and employee (agent) disengagement is primarily caused by low-performing managers.

The purpose of this WorkPuzzle is not to beat up on managers.  Even if they wanted to do so, most real estate companies would have a hard time replacing their existing managers with higher-performing alternatives.

In most cases, it would be a better strategy to help the managers who are already on the job make improvements.  More specifically, these developments should be focused on the task of improving employee engagement.

Gallup outlines five critical talents that good managers possess as it relates to increasing employee engagement:

They motivate every single employee (agent) to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.

They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.

They create a culture of clear accountability.

They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.

They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.

If you’re a manager, review this list and take inventory of your day-to-day actions.  Are these the behaviors you find yourself doing?  If not, how can you start to focus your attention on these important tasks.  Remember, these are the tasks and traits of managers who manage highly engaged agents.

If you’re managing managers (owner, general manager, regional VP, etc.), set the example by making these traits part of your management culture.  Then coach your managers to take on these traits as they manage their own teams.

As a result, you’ll hopefully have more engaged agents who will produce the business metrics that make your company more successful.  That’s a purpose everyone can get behind.

 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

Execution Failure and Rescue: Lessons from Healthcare.gov - Part 2

In last weeks edition I described some of the challenges, chronicled in a recent Time Magazine article, on the healthcare.gov website's initial issues. It’s a compelling story, that when dissected, leaves us all with reminders of the differences between how projects can go wrong and what can be done to right them.

I previously listed three ingredients (principles) that when missing in any worthy endeavor will lead to failure; but conversely, when done well can lead to a successful execution. I also promised to draw parallels to HiringCenter successes.

Last weeks edition described the first and most important principle:

Metric Driven Leadership to Oversee and Drive the Effort 

The second ingredient is:

A Central Dashboard to Monitor, Measure and Improve each Important Metric.

Quoting again from the Time magazine article:

“One of the things that shocked Burt and Park's team most (the healthcare.com rescue team)--'among many jaw-dropping aspects of what we found,' as one put it--'was that the people running healthcare.gov had no "dashboard," no quick way for engineers to measure what was going on at the website, such as how many people were using it, what the response times were for various click-throughs and where traffic was getting tied up.' So late into the night of Oct. 18, Burt and the others spent about five hours coding and putting up a dashboard.”

Can you imagine this? You have developed one of the largest scaled projects known to developed countries, a system that will draw incredible scrutiny, and you have no way to monitor, measure or improve anything.  No idea what is wrong or how to fix it.

One of the first things we did, at Tidemark, as we were developing HiringCenter, was to create a dashboard. This allowed our clients (and us) to constantly monitor progress among the many tasks that must be performed with each candidate within the massive pipeline.

Those of our clients who practice ingredient one (metric driven leadership to oversee and drive the effort), seem to naturally utilize principle two exemplified by the HiringCenter Dashboard. Conversely those who don’t have ingredient one typically abandon the Dashboard. You can probably guess what results appear when these essential pieces are lacking. Sooner or later someone says... “this isn’t working."  

Which brings us to the third ingredient:

 A Sense of Urgency

 According to TIME, one of the technology consultants (Abbott) who had worked on the rescue site said:

“To this day he cannot figure out who was supposed to have been in charge of the healthcare.gov launch. Instead he saw multiple contractors bickering with one another and no one taking ownership for anything. Someone would have to be put in charge, he told Zients. Beyond that, Abbott recalls, "there was a total lack of urgency" despite the fact that the website was becoming a national joke and crippling the Obama presidency."

TIME then goes on to describe the rescue teams mentality:

"We need to stay focused on the most urgent issues, The stand-up culture--identify problem, solve problem, try again--was typical of the rescue squad's ethic."

What was the eventual result of the rescue squads overhaul of the website?

“On Sunday, Dec. 1, Zients issued a public report card showing the website's turnaround. A series of hardware upgrades had dramatically increased capacity; the system was now able to handle at least 50,000 simultaneous users and probably more. There had been more than 400 bug fixes. Uptimes had gone from an abysmal 43% at the beginning of November to 95%. And Kim and her team had knocked the error rate from 6% down to 0.5%. Average response time--once a ridiculous eight seconds per page--was down to 0.343 seconds.”

Impressive isn’t it?

Assessing the issues, solutions and steps involved in this example, we at Tidemark have considered requiring new to HiringCenter clients to agree to use only the  "best practices" established by us over the last 9 years and screen out those who don’t agree. So far we haven’t done this. What do you think? Would this be helpful?

For those of you who practice the principals listed above throughout every facet of HiringCenter we thank you. You make us look good, and it is our hope that we improve the efficiency, predictability and reliability of your new agent recruiting.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.