Christine M. Riordan, Ph.D.

Leadership Author. Speaker. President. Board Director

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The Crux of Confidence

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An Introduction to Confidence by Dr. Christine Riordan

Courage, passion, ethics, and resilience are inarguably components of confidence. While some are born with these comprising attributes, many others need the direction and encouragement of our teachers, our parents and our friends, who instill confidence.

Improvisational comedy functions on a theory called “Yes, and,” where members of a troupe build off of one another when they’re on the stage. They have to embrace and escalate zany and uncanny ideas. If they were to say “no,” the action and the laughs would stop, so they accept every challenge with a smile and a “Yes, and.”

For most adults, the inclination to say no is ingrained, particularly when opportunities present themselves, likely because new opportunities require more energy and more work. Yet, an extraordinary person welcomes all new opportunities, due chiefly to the fact that they have the confidence to say yes. They understand that confidence begets productivity, and they understand that each idea they bring to the table could be elevated and built upon with “Yes, and.”

Businesses and business schools around the nation have sought out improv troupe to learn the power of “Yes, and.” It should be understood that if you champion a culture where people are encouraged to develop ideas, people will come to you to you with ideas. They’ll have the confidence to bring ideas to you, and you, in turn, will feel confident about sharing your own ideas.

Please keep the following words in mind:

When you instill confidence, you get it back in return.

So, today, I dare you to be extraordinary.

I dare you to exhibit the PASSION you have for your career, your life.

I dare you to call upon your personal INTEGRITY to do the right thing.

I dare you to find the COURAGE to overcome obstacles

I dare you to be RESILIENT and bounce back from mistakes or disappointments.

And I dare you to acknowledge the CONFIDENCE you have and find a way to instill confidence in someone else.

Just today. Just for today, be extraordinary.

Tomorrow, you can go back to being ordinary.

But I don’t think you will.

“An Introduction to Integrity” is the fifth and final post in a series published around the “Dare To Be Extraordinary” address, shared at the independently organized TED event, TEDx Adelphi University. The preceding pieces are “An Introduction to Extraordinary,” “An Introduction to Passion,” “An Introduction to Courage,” “An Introduction to Resilience” and “An Introduction to Integrity.” 

Christine M. Riordan, PhD, is the 10th president of Adelphi University in New York. Her writing focuses on diversity and inclusion, leadership effectiveness, and career success. Follow her on Twitter at @Chris_M_Riordan.

The Brilliance of Resilience

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Christine Riordan, TEDTalk, ResilienceWant a challenge in steadfastness? Try being resilient.

Naysayers may have frequently told you that the odds are against you or that your plans will never come to fruition. They’ve likely told you to play it safe and to steer clear of certain risk. However, extraordinary people understand how to ignore these voices and how to proclaim self-assigned success. While resilient individuals sometimes suffer disappointments, they rebound. They don’t wallow in said failure, they pull themselves up by their bootstraps and return to the battle with raised fists.

All-time winning NFL coach Don Shula is a terrific example of resilience. He coached pro football for 30+ years and holds the record for most career wins. To date, he’s the only coach to have teams in six SuperBowls. Shula instituted a “24-hour rule,” a policy of looking forward instead of retreating from a loss…

Please read the rest of this piece on LinkedIn Pulse.

“An Introduction to Resilience” is the fourth post in a series published around the “Dare To Be Extraordinary” address, shared at the independently organized TED event, TEDx Adelphi University. The preceding pieces are “An Introduction to Extraordinary,” “An Introduction to Passion,” and “An Introduction to Courage.“

Christine Riordan, Ph.D. is the president of Adelphi University, and she’s renowned for her commitment to diversity, inclusion, leadership development, and team performance.

 

Foster a culture of gratitude

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This post was first published in Harvard Business Review.

In the movie Remember the Titans, Coach Herman Boone takes his high school football team to the battleground of Gettysburg. Having inherited a fractured and divided squad, Coach Boone implores the players to “take a lesson from the dead. If we don’t come together, right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed, just like they were.” Coach Boone then establishes the primacy of an important team virtue: “I don’t care if you like each other right now, but you will respect each other.”

In every workplace and on every team, all people have the innate desire to feel appreciated and valued by others. Like Coach Boone, leaders of teams — and team members themselves — should work to foster a culture of value and appreciation.

High performing teams have well-defined goals, systems of accountability, clear roles and responsibilities, and open communication. Just as importantly, teams that foster cohesion with a sense of appreciation and gratitude among the team members maximize performance on a number of dimensions. Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, authors of the Wisdom of Teams, define a high-performing team in part by members’ strong personal commitment to the growth and success of each team member and of the team as a whole.

Research on gratitude and appreciation demonstrates that when employees feel valued, they have high job satisfaction, are willing to work longer hours, engage in productive relationships with co-workers and supervisors, are motivated to do their best, and work towards achieving the company’s goals. Google, which sits atop many best-places-to-work lists, fosters feelings of employee value through an open culture that promotes employee input, routinely rewards and recognizes performance, and encourages personal growth. In a recent interview, CEO Larry Page stated, “My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society.”

And consider the consequences of not fostering a culture of gratitude: A study of over 1,700 employees conducted in 2012 by the American Psychological Association (APA) indicated that more than half of all employees intended to search for new jobs because they felt underappreciated and undervalued.

Several recent articles point out the importance of saying “thank you” and giving specific praise to employees when earned in genuine, honest, and heartfelt ways. Mark Gaston’s blog on How to Give a Meaningful Thank-you is full of great advice such as sharing with employees how their contributions had personal significance for the leader and team.

In addition to these very important gestures of thanks, recent research suggests that a leader can enhance a culture of gratitude in the following ways.

  1. Help others develop. Interestingly, the APA study indicated that 70% of employees feel valued at work when they have opportunities for growth and development. While promotion opportunities within companies may sometimes be limited, you can still invest in team members’ professional development through training, assignment to new and interesting projects, participation on task forces, and exposure to new and interesting different areas through cross-training. Employees frequently have skills that extend beyond the position for which the company hired them. Additionally, they typically grow their skills over time. Leveraging these broad skill sets can lead to greater engagement and satisfaction.
  2. Involve employees. Team members feel valued when they have an opportunity to take part in decision-making, problem-solving, and to use their skills to benefit the organization. A 2012 study by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) showed the importance of employees’ opportunities to use skills and abilities, with 63% of respondents listing the ability to use their skills as the top driver of their job satisfaction.
  3. Support camaraderie and collegiality. I conducted a study many years ago on the positive benefits of friendship in the workplace. Camaraderie in the workplace can lead to greater job satisfaction and commitment to the organization and doing a job well. Leaders should foster collegiality, help to eliminate toxic and dysfunctional team behaviors, and create opportunities for team members other than on work projects. At Google, the games/toys the company provides allow for entertaining and informal interactions among colleagues. These positive and fun feelings carry over when the colleagues work on projects together. The SHRM study in 2012 found employees’ relationships with their co-workers was the second highest factor related to their connection and commitment to the organization. Team leaders may also consider using social contracts, explicit agreements on how team members interact, to help shape positive behaviors within their teams.

Taking the time and effort to create a culture that values and appreciates the diversity and similarity within a team can reap great rewards in terms of performance and satisfaction of the entire team. At the end of the day, this principle is really very simple: we all want to feel valued and appreciated. So, in addition to overt recognition to employees, use a variety of ways to build a culture of gratitude.

Christine M. Riordan, PhD, is the 10th president of Adelphi University in New York. Her writing focuses on diversity and inclusion, leadership effectiveness, and career success. Follow her on Twitter at @Chris_M_Riordan.​

The value you create: Your raison d’être

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This post was first published by SmartBrief.

Value creation is the raison d’être of any business entity. How do you accurately assess the value of a company? What dimensions are the most important for determining company value? How do you calculate a company’s long-term prospects for success?

Many analysts use a broad definition of value creation, and they include in it the calculation financial factors (e.g. financial statement analysis, cash flow, profit), internal capabilities (e.g. ability to innovate, leadership, people, brand reputation, customer base) and future potential of the company (e.g. growth, revenue forecasts, risk assessment).

Similar assessments can be made of the value created by employees.

Analysts often cite Mutar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola, as a leader who has created significant value for the company. Under his leadership, the stock has risen over 50%. As importantly, Kent set the foundation for future growth and relevance by creating a culture that emphasizes collaboration, innovation, and global expansion.

Whether a front-line employee or a senior leader, you should ask: “What is the value you personally create for your company?”

Dimensions included

Similar to company valuation, we use many dimensions to gauge the value created by an employee. Results and goal accomplishment are clearly important in the eyes of many within organizations.

But, the value created by employees also includes internal capabilities such as expertise, helpfulness to others, vigilance on behalf of the company’s interests, engagement, ability to inspire esprit de corps among others, innovation, customer service, ability to build trust, leadership, and positive change facilitation.

Capabilities related to employees’ future value, such as leadership potential, ability to change and learning agility, are also important.

Detractors

Additionally, certain behaviors often detract from your perceived value. Specifically, employees need to consider whether they are costing the company money as a result of an inability to develop new skills in response to a changing environment, an inability to form good relationships with co-workers and customers, or a propensity to engage in unethical or destructive behaviors. These become your liabilities.

Researchers have shown that costs associated with training, coaching, facilitation, employee morale issues, and potential lawsuits due to negative behaviors are high.

An executive within a consulting firm shared that one of her employees was simply brilliant and an expert in systems design. But he lacked interpersonal skills, rejected calls for diversity among employees, and alienated teammates by screaming at them. Ultimately, the executive deemed the employee’s liabilities to be greater than any assets he brought to the company.

Assess the total picture

In any situation, you should ask what assets and liabilities you bring. The value created by these assets (or lost because of any liabilities) will vary with the culture and needs of the company. And your value may actually change over time within the same company. Not all companies view assets similarly, nor do they view liabilities in the same way.

Additionally, most people keep track of and over-emphasize, the importance of their own assets and downplay, or ignore, their liabilities. Such a strategy is dangerous because you may not realize the negative impact of your liabilities on the value you hoped to create. Research also indicates that supervisors more easily recall negative behaviors than positive behaviors. As a result, others within an organization may put more emphasis on or recall your liabilities more than you do.

As you move throughout your career, ask yourself, “What is the impact I bring?” Because at the end of the day, success within a company is really about the value you create and defines your raison d’être within an organization.

Christine M. Riordan, PhD, is the 10th president of Adelphi University in New York. Her writing focuses on diversity and inclusion, leadership effectiveness, and career success. Follow her on Twitter at @Chris_M_Riordan.

How to Use Optimism to Defeat Adversity

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This post was first published in Forbes.

I asked executives, in a series of interviews, about the most difficult professional situations they had faced as leaders. One chief executive discussed the effect of 9/11 on the operation of his airline company. Another told of taking his company into bankruptcy. A former CEO reviewed how his company’s stock price had plunged from a high of $48 dollars to mere pennies in less than a year.

Other executives described coping with decreasing sales and market share, employee layoffs and terminations, poor employee performance, failure to respond to changes in the marketplace, inability to grow their business, increasing competition, and managing conflict.

How did they overcome such great adversity? Their responses varied, but most of them said they survived through optimism, maintaining a sense of hopefulness, confidence, and positivity while striving to improve their situations.

Research by psychologists including Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania indicates that optimism is both a natural trait and a learned skill. The executives I interviewed picked themselves up and got on with business instead of wallowing in self-pity, just like Smart, Lin, Garvey, and Zinardi.

Optimism correlates with resilience, strong coping techniques, and a sense of well-being in times of adversity. In fact, productive optimism can be a very healthy leadership characteristic. There are at least six things you can do to promote productive optimism.

  1. Stop negative thoughts. Dr. Seligman explains that to maintain optimism we must halt our negativity. When a negative thought creeps up on us, we must tell ourselves to stop. Athletes use this technique to redirect their mental focus away from negative outcomes or self-doubt. The technique is hard to implement, particularly in negative situations, but it is important.
  2. Reframe situations. Research shows that optimists develop more positive ways of explaining disappointing events, and often reframe them. They tend to see challenges as opportunities. Steve Jobs famously reframed his firing from Apple. In his Stanford University graduation address, he noted, “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple.”
  3. Fight hard to find solutions and regain a sense of control. Actively managing ourselves rather than simply reacting allows us to gain control more quickly in an adverse situation. Executives told me that in such situations they tried to think about all possible solutions. Active problem-solving allowed them to gain a feeling of control and think positively. Seeking solutions was empowering. Psychology research has indicated that 85% of what makes us happy emerges from how we handle problems and how we make meaning of our experiences.
  4. Fail wisely. Every mistake, setback, and failure offers a lesson. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, recently found that most executives believe that learning from failure involves reflecting on the failed situation, determining what went wrong, and working to prevent similar mistakes or setbacks in the future. Not all situations are avoidable, but reflecting on setbacks can certainly add to your wisdom and ability to handle tough circumstances.
  5. Communicate hope. Research confirms that leaders need to communicate hope and resilience about important and potentially difficult issues. Followers respond more positively to negative situations when there is confident communication. Rudolph Giuliani, the mayor of New York at the time of the tragic disaster of 9/11, notes that “optimism is the secret weapon that draws people to you, if they believe you have the answers to their problems.” Giuliani urges leaders to both share problems and optimistically suggest solutions.
  6. Be realistic.Psychologists warn that that optimism must be realistic to be productive. Excess optimism can cause problems like failure to recognize risks. In Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Barbara Ehrenreich argues that we all need vigilant realism. Avoid optimism if it means ignoring warning signs of real difficulties. Face reality with a positive outlook, but recognize real threats.

The poet Alice Abrams once wrote that “in life as in the dance:  Grace glides on blistered feet.”

Some people are better than others at gliding through life’s injuries, both personal and professional. Productive optimism seems to be a key tool for picking ourselves up when adversity hits and getting on with life and business.

Christine M. Riordan, PhD, is the 10th president of Adelphi University in New York. Her writing focuses on diversity and inclusion, leadership effectiveness, and career success. Follow her on Twitter at @Chris_M_Riordan.​

 

Helping Others – Helping Ourselves

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how can i help

by Christine M. Riordan, Ph.D.

This post was first published in theglasshammer.com on December 17, 2014

“One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.” Lewis Carroll

How do you actively back, encourage, and support the people you work with – whether you are a boss, co-worker, or subordinate?

Social psychologists call behaviors we engage in to help others at work – prosocial behaviors. These types of behaviors include having a genuine concern for the rights and welfare of others, feeling and expressing empathy, or doing things – simply put – that benefit other people.

Research has long shown that people who receive helpful and supportive behavior from others at work profit in ways such as higher performance, greater self-worth, an enhanced sense of belonging, lower stress, and an increased sense of well-being.Additionally, a 2014 study in the Journal of Vocational Behavior demonstrated that employees’ perceptions of a supportive work climate by both supervisors and co-workers led to greater employee organizational commitment, engagement, performance, and reduced turnover. Not only are supervisor-employee relationships important, but so are the behaviors among co-workers.

In short, we all have the ability to make a positive (or negative) difference for others in the workplace. So, what are some common supportive and helping behaviors that have the most benefit for others?

  • Treat Others with Dignity and Respect. In her book, Dignity, Harvard Professor Donna Hicks notes that we all need to treat people fairly and justly. Hicks goes on to suggest that it is important for us to make others feel physically and psychologically safe – free of concern about being shamed, excluded, or humiliated and that people can feel free to speak without fear of retribution. Tony Schwartz, CEO and President of the Energy Project, comments that “great leaders understand that how they make people feel, day in and day out, has a profound influence on how they perform.” While these supportive behaviors sound so simple, a study in 2013 found that workplace rudeness was on the rise. Authors Christine Porath, Professor at Georgetown, and Christine Pearson, Professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management said that rudeness in the workplace is rampant. Porath and Pearson polled workers over a 14-year period, and found that 98 percent of respondents reported experiencing rudeness and that over 50 percent of the respondents said they were treated rudely at least once a week. The behaviors included overt nastiness, intentional undermining, ignoring their opinions, among others. Research has also shown that workplace incivility is related to reduced satisfaction with the job, supervisor, and coworkers, lower intention to stay, decreased daily happiness, and decreased longer-term mental and physical health.
  • Support Others’ Strengths and Weaknesses. Another recent study showed that CEO’s, who are more empathetic and appreciative of others’ strengths and weaknesses, create positive impacts for both their employees and organizations. It is important for all of us to celebrate others for their hard work and contributions and it is equally important to accept that everyone has weaknesses and makes mistakes. In an interview with Harvard Business Review, CEO of Hotels.com, David Roche, noted that you must be tolerant of the diversity of weaknesses in your employees. He goes on to explain that within their company culture, they look beyond the shortcomings of employees because doing so accepts them in their totality and allows their strengths to shine. Moreover, it creates an integrative, broad-minded, and inclusive environment.
  • Take Ownership. When we help others because we want to, and not because we have to, we put more time into building a high quality relationship and a greater sense of closeness to them. Others also receive more value from us when we ask them how we may be of the most help. Indeed, studies have shown that recipients of gifts benefit more when the givers ask them what they need or want. Furthermore, when we hold ourselves accountable for our own actions – we also create value for others. During a talk at UCLA, Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, stated, “Our mission statement about treating people with respect and dignity is not just words but a creed we live by every day. You can’t expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don’t exceed the employees’ expectations of management. That’s the contract.”

While we have the capacity to support others daily through our actions and words, research has also shown that when we help others, we benefit as well.

  • Broadens Our Perspective. When we focus on other people, we change our perspective. We move away from a focus on ourselves – our own needs and motives – to consider the pressures, stresses, needs, and welfare of others. A great deal of social psychological research has shown that when we take another person’s perspective – try to see the world through their eyes – many benefits ensue. The results include increased liking and greater compassion, improved social interactions, better decisions, and less prejudice towards others who differ from us.
  • Makes Us Happier. Additionally, the more we focus on contributing in meaningful ways to other people’s lives, the more our own happiness hinges on theirs. According to one study, the trait most strongly associated with long-term increases in life satisfaction is, in fact, a persistent commitment to pursuing altruistic goals. That is, the more we focus on compassionate action, on helping others, the happier we tend to feel in the end. What’s more, according to another study, altruism not only correlates with an increase in happiness but also actually causes it. Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky conducted a study in which students performed five acts of kindness per week over six weeks. The students who engaged in their own acts of kindness reported a significant increase in their levels of happiness relative to a control group of students who performed no acts of kindness.
  • Improves our Health. Stephen Post, physician and author of Altruism and Health, writes that prosocial acts link to fewer symptoms of depression, lower stress, greater psychological well-being, and greater longevity for the giver. Physicians have indeed found that the body doles out feel-good chemicals such as dopamine, which has a soothing effect. In 1988, Allen Luks called this physical response to helping a “helpers high.” Luks surveyed thousands of volunteers across the United States and found that people who helped other people reported better health than peers did, and many claimed that this health improvement began when they started to volunteer. Helpers reported a physical sensation associated with helping; half reported that they experienced a “high” feeling, 43 percent felt stronger and more energetic, 28 percent felt warm, 22 percent felt calmer and less depressed, 21 percent experienced greater feelings of self-worth, and 13 percent experienced fewer aches and pains.

So take the challenge – ask yourself how you can create moments that matter for others by providing help, encouragement, and support – and, at the end of the day, it is likely to help you as well.

Christine Riordan, Ph.D. is the president of Adelphi University, and she’s renowned for her commitment to diversity, inclusion, leadership development, and team performance.

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