Certain graduation speeches leave a lasting impact on the students they are intended for, but also on all those who listen to them afterwards. This is the case of the one given by Roger Federer at Dartmouth College this year.

Of course, Federer spoke about work, effort, perseverance, stress management. Of course, he underlined the importance of one’s entourage, of having faith in oneself and the trust of others. But a particularly striking insight—and certainly a useful one in the corporate world—was the way he looks at his successes and failures.

Of all the points he has played, what proportion has he won? As surprising at it may be, that proportion amounts to just 54%—barely more than half! But it allowed him to win 80% of his matches, and to be world number one for nearly six years.

An invitation to not focus on our errors: the important thing is to know how to put them behind us (while reserving the right to draw lessons from them later, at the opportune time) and, especially, to play the next point without assuming that we will fail again.

 

Source : 2024 Commencement Address by Roger Federer, Dartmouth, June 2024.

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With every passing survey, it is observed that employees are disengaging from their work. Suffering at work seems to be inexorably increasing, and rare are the efforts to recreate job satisfaction that wind up being crowned with success.

It might be the time to return to the excellent article by Yves Clot, L’aspiration au travail bien fait (The aspiration for a job well done). The psychologist underlines that performance and health are wholly compatible. When we make an effective effort, one that meets the goal we had set ourselves or accepted, we may be tired, but also satisfied. Unless the load is a chronically unbearable one, we then recover from this healthy fatigue to take on another motivating project the following day. On the other hand, producing an ineffective effort is exhausting and demoralizing. Work fatigue is compounded by stress and ruminations about doing the same job again the next day, in an equally ineffective manner. It then becomes necessary to redouble our efforts to manage to get back to work—without even being in a condition to give the best of our capacities.

Yves Clot thus invites us to first remedy the organization’s dysfunctions: the idea is to treat what is preventing people from doing quality work, without limiting ourselves to offering psychological support to “help make unbearable situations bearable”.

 

Source : L'aspiration au travail bien fait (The aspiration for a job well done), Yves Clot, Journal de l'École de Paris du management, n° 99, January-February 2013.

To learn more :

¬ Stimulate job satisfaction (Manageris’ Synopsis No.212a)

Knowing how to deal with opposition is one of the qualities that distinguish great leaders. They know how to turn it into an opportunity for in-depth exchanges, allowing both a better understanding of the stakes and a more sincere commitment to the retained solution.

However, our reflexive reactions to criticism or resistance are often inadequate. Phillip G. Clampitt and Bob DeKoch put forth three traps to avoid:

– Unduly reassuring. Very frequently, resistance stems from concern about a situation of which the outcome is uncertain. It is then tempting to make promises to reassure people and thus win them over. But hiding uncertainty in this way is ultimately harmful, as trust will be undermined at the first disappointment.

– Taking the absence of explicit contestation for support. The more a leader finds themself in a position of authority, the greater the tendency to keep dissension silent or hushed. Being content to wait for responsible employees to express themselves would be counter-productive: it is up to the leader to seek out any dissonant voices.

– Listening to the most vindictive. The noisiest opinions do not necessarily represent the majority opinion, and relying on them does not help reach a consensus.

A checklist to keep in mind in order to handle opposition in a constructive manner.

 

Source: Five Ways Leaders Can Turn Pushback Into Progress, Phillip G. Clampitt, Bob DeKoch, MIT Sloan Management Review, October 2023.

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The Bloomberg group has shown that using ChatGPT in a recruitment process replicates certain prejudices at work in society. Fictitious CVs were submitted to the AI, with names selected in such a way as to evoke diverse ethnic backgrounds.

The findings are clear: given the same experience and skills, AI favors certain genders and ethnic backgrounds in selecting candidates. For instance, in the United States, ChatGPT clearly privileges people identified as “Hispanic women” for HR specialist positions, “Asian women” for financial analyst positions, and “white women” for software engineer positions. The disadvantaged groups are respectively those identified as “white men”, “black men” and “black women”. And the more the AI is asked to repeat the exercise, the more this bias is amplified.

To decide on the tasks we want to entrust to them, we should keep in mind how generative AIs work. They provide the most statistically relevant answers to the questions submitted. By construction, they therefore tend toward an average of the considerable volumes of information injected into them. Mechanically, if we inject prejudices, these same prejudices will emerge from their recommendations. It is up to us to spot and counter them.

Source: OpenAI’s GPT Is a Recruiter’s Dream Tool. Tests Show There’s Racial Bias, Leon Yin, Davey Alba, Leonardo Nicoletti, Bloomberg Technology + Equality, March 2024.

 

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In the corporate world, a majority of employees regret that meetings are too numerous, too long and insufficiently effective. Despite these criticisms, the problem persists. To find possible solutions to this thorny issue, a team of academics studied 76 companies with over 1,000 employees who had banned meetings for 1 to 5 days a week.

Their findings invite a thorough reconsideration of our work habits: the more the number of meetings diminishes, the more we observe an increase in autonomy, communication, engagement and satisfaction. The tendency toward micro-management decreases, as do stress levels. Productivity improves. Paradoxically, reducing the number of meetings even has a positive effect on collaboration! According to the indicators used by the researchers to assess the level of cooperation, it increased by 55% with the 3 days without meetings formula. The employees found other ways of coordinating and exchanging ideas, better suited to their needs.

Does this mean that meetings should be abolished altogether? Let us not go too far. Beyond 3 weekly days without a meeting, satisfaction, productivity, engagement and cooperation begin to decline. Up to you to find the right balance!

Source: The Surprising Impact of Meeting-Free Days, Benjamin Laker, Vijay Pereira, Pawan Budhwar, Ashish Malik, MIT Sloan Management Review, January 2022.

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