Evidence-Based Management

Myth-busting

Teamwork

It’s All Fun and Games Until You’ve Created a Hostile Work Environment: How Workplace Bullying is Linked to Mental Health

Key Points: Workplace bullying has been linked to negative outcomes of health and mental illness. Although depression, anxiety, stress, and burnout were all associated with being bullied. Symptoms of depression were most consistently. Anxiety and stress fall into two categories: Generalized anxiety and PTSD, which had stronger relationships with workplace bullying. Similarly, burnout symptoms were
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“Working together”: Does it really matter for Team Performance?

Key Points: Team collaboration is not fixed; embedding it is a great target for organizational improvement. Teams can be designed for collaboration. Focus on building collaboration into tasks and outcomes the team is pursuing. Team collaboration can impact how we think, act, and feel about our teammates. In turn, it improves performance. This Evidence-Based Summary has
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Team Building: How to Get Real Results from Team Building Activities

Key points Team building interventions have three essential characteristics which clarify the confusion around the term and help differentiate it from other interventions aimed at teams; Team building interventions improve team members’ feelings and team interactions, but don’t have a considerable effect on team performance; Effective team building activities are not only fun, but must
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Training & Development

A Quick-Start Guide to Leadership Training Done Right

Key Points: When delivered effectively, leadership training programs can improve leadership, change behavior, and help an organization’s bottom line. But you can’t just assume that the training you’re considering (or already receiving) is actually being delivered effectively. You should conduct a needs analysis before beginning training to ensure that the program that you’re considering is
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How Mindfulness Can Benefit Leaders, Their Followers, and Make for More Profitable Business

Key Points: Mindfulness is positively correlated with many highly sought health and wellness indicators. Mindfulness is similarly correlated with highly sought and highly effective leadership styles like transformational leadership, authentic leadership, and with specific leader behaviours like less leader abuse. Organizations would do well to implement demonstrably effective evidence-based mindfulness training as it’s both cost
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Team Building: How to Get Real Results from Team Building Activities

Key points Team building interventions have three essential characteristics which clarify the confusion around the term and help differentiate it from other interventions aimed at teams; Team building interventions improve team members’ feelings and team interactions, but don’t have a considerable effect on team performance; Effective team building activities are not only fun, but must
Continue Reading

Does Diversity Training Work? Time for an Evidence-Based Answer

There’s one place where cooperation between people is necessary: the workplace. With so many instances of division, leaders must take responsibility for giving people opportunities to collaborate and, thus, foster inclusion in the workplace. Can diversity training help leaders build a more inclusive workplace? What can we do to increase the chances for diversity training to work?
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Performance Management

Let Me Be: Why People and Businesses Should Prioritize Work-Life Boundaries and How to Implement Them

Detachment from work is an important component required for rest and recovery from work and yet many organizations are failing to provide their people with work experiences that take this key variable into account. Detachment is positively related to recovery, mental and physical health, wellbeing, having access to job resources, and task performance on-the-job. Detachment
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Job Satisfaction and Job Performance: Do They Have a Causal Relationship?

Key Points: Work attitudes do seem to have a small causal impact on job satisfaction. Job satisfaction does not seem to cause an improvement in work attitudes. The impact of attitudes fades over time. Everyone on Earth has probably experienced just how much our attitudes can impact our work. Many of us have elucidating moments
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Diversity & Inclusion

Does Diversity Training Work? Time for an Evidence-Based Answer

There’s one place where cooperation between people is necessary: the workplace. With so many instances of division, leaders must take responsibility for giving people opportunities to collaborate and, thus, foster inclusion in the workplace. Can diversity training help leaders build a more inclusive workplace? What can we do to increase the chances for diversity training to work?
Continue Reading

Leadership

Employees Need Support – But It Might Be Less Complicated Than You Think

Key Points: Adequate support is essential for employee well-being and positively influences their behavior and attitudes towards work, leading to improved commitment, performance, and less turnover intention. Emotional and instrumental support in the workplace are strongly correlated, regardless of whether it comes from a supervisor or co-worker, but the ideal support system may vary depending
Continue Reading

A Quick-Start Guide to Leadership Training Done Right

Key Points: When delivered effectively, leadership training programs can improve leadership, change behavior, and help an organization’s bottom line. But you can’t just assume that the training you’re considering (or already receiving) is actually being delivered effectively. You should conduct a needs analysis before beginning training to ensure that the program that you’re considering is
Continue Reading

How Mindfulness Can Benefit Leaders, Their Followers, and Make for More Profitable Business

Key Points: Mindfulness is positively correlated with many highly sought health and wellness indicators. Mindfulness is similarly correlated with highly sought and highly effective leadership styles like transformational leadership, authentic leadership, and with specific leader behaviours like less leader abuse. Organizations would do well to implement demonstrably effective evidence-based mindfulness training as it’s both cost
Continue Reading

Recruiting and Selection

Personality and Workplace Deviance: Big Five Versus HEXACO

Key Points: Scientists have been studying personality at work for a century and they’ve created some fantastic measures of personality like the Big Five and the HEXACO. A recent meta-analysis examined which assessment was better at predicting deviant work behaviour, the newer HEXACO model or the much more established Big Five model. They found that
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Employee Turnover

Health and Safety

Let Me Be: Why People and Businesses Should Prioritize Work-Life Boundaries and How to Implement Them

Detachment from work is an important component required for rest and recovery from work and yet many organizations are failing to provide their people with work experiences that take this key variable into account. Detachment is positively related to recovery, mental and physical health, wellbeing, having access to job resources, and task performance on-the-job. Detachment
Continue Reading

Employees Need Support – But It Might Be Less Complicated Than You Think

Key Points: Adequate support is essential for employee well-being and positively influences their behavior and attitudes towards work, leading to improved commitment, performance, and less turnover intention. Emotional and instrumental support in the workplace are strongly correlated, regardless of whether it comes from a supervisor or co-worker, but the ideal support system may vary depending
Continue Reading

Interviews

An Evidence-Based Take on Understanding Workplace Behaviors: Interview with John Ballard, PhD, Author of Decoding the Workplace

John Ballard is emeritus professor of management at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2016 the university presented him its Distinguished Scholar Award for his efforts to bridge the management scholar-practitioner gap through his blogs, tweets, and his award-winning book. He is co-author of the much-acclaimed “Who Built Maslow’s Pyramid? A History of
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