Paul W. B. Atkins

Coaching expatriate managers for success: Adding value beyond training and mentoring

This paper explores the potential of evidence-based executive coaching as an intervention for facilitating expatriate success. One-to-one professional coaching is proposed as a powerful supplement to two interventions that have traditionally been used to assist expatriate managers – training and mentoring. Coaching is likely to be effective with expatriate managers because, like the expatriate experience itself, it is a connected process that impacts interactively across the individual’s affective, behavioural and cognitive domains. Coaches can work with individuals to deal with their specific contexts, taking into account the complexity of the circumstances. It can also assist managers to take full advantage of training and mentoring programs. Evidence-based coaching informed by cross-cultural research and experience has the potential to improve work performance and the personal satisfaction of the expatriate manager. Its effectiveness would seem to be currently dependent, however, on the availability and deployment of suitably qualified and experienced coaches.

Mapping complexity of mind: using the subject-object interview in coaching

Abstract We describe a small, hypothesis-generating study of the use of a measure of complexity of mind in coaching contexts. The aims of the pilot study were threefold: (a) to explore participants’, coaches’ and interviewers’ insights and reactions to the use of a developmental theory in coaching; (b) to develop and explore a process for using the Subject-Object Interview (SOI) inside or outside existing coaching relationships; and (c) to provide a preliminary evaluation of the usefulness and/or potential limitations of the SOI for coaching contexts. All 15 participants in this qualitative study enjoyed the process and most reported significant or profound insights arising from the process that were potentially useful for their own development. The process revealed some of the growing edges of the clients’ insights into their own way of being, their relationships, and their work. Importantly, participants reported that the SOI and associated discussions allowed them to identify key developmental issues more quickly than other approaches they had experienced. While the time and high skill levels associated with conducting an SOI and feedback discussion may preclude its use in many coaching contexts, there are implications that arise from this work for coaches interested in working in developmentally-informed ways.

Contextual Positive Psychology: Policy Recommendations for Implementing Positive Psychology into Schools.

There has been a rapid growth in positive psychology, a research and intervention approach that focuses on promoting optimal functioning and well-being. Positive psychology interventions are now making their way into classrooms all over the world. However, positive psychology has been criticized for being decontextualized and coercive, and for putting an excessive emphasis on positive states, whilst failing to adequately consider negative experiences. Given this, how should policy be used to regulate and evaluate these interventions? We review evidence that suggests these criticisms may be valid, but only for those interventions that focus almost exclusively on changing the content of people’s inner experience (e.g., make it more positive) and personality (improving character strength), and overemphasize the idea that inner experience causes action. We describe a contextualized form of positive psychology that not only deals with the criticisms, but also has clear policy implications for how to best implement and evaluate positive education programs so that they do not do more harm than good.

Cultural identity and convergence on western attitudes and beliefs in the United Arab Emirates

Studies of acculturation have assumed that, under pressure to assimilate, individuals will accommodate by adopting behavioural and attitudinal attributes of the local, dominant culture. In contrast, this empirical study based in the United Arab Emirates used an original survey instrument, together with a range of convergent analytic techniques, to demonstrate pervasive westernization in the Arab and subcontinental-dominant communities. In addition, the study demonstrates a novel use of multiple discriminant analysis to explore differences between cultural and personal identities, a potentially useful tool for the cross-cultural management literature. In contrast to other studies, we examine how individuals perceive themselves as deviating from their home cultures in a context where there is minimal pressure to conform to the local culture and commercial globalization is given free reign. We show that non-westerners perceived themselves both as more deviant from their home societies than those from western nations and as more similar to westerners than to their own societies. The fact that even those born in Gulf Arab nations tended to converge on western beliefs and behaviours suggested the cause of westernization may have been media and western business models. These observations lead us to challenge common theoretical models of acculturation by suggesting that individuals may acculturate by assuming learned transient aspects of cultural identity in order to maximize personal opportunity.

Cognitive Defusion Predicts More Approach and Less Avoidance Coping With Stress, Independent of Threat and Self‐Efficacy Appraisals

OBJECTIVE Recent evidence suggests that the way in which individuals relate to their aversive thoughts predicts behavioral effectiveness more than the content of such thoughts. This article is among the first to explore whether this is true for coping with stressful events. METHOD Three studies with emerging adults (Study 1, N = 202) and adults (Study 2, N = 201; Study 3, N = 141) tested whether changes in how individuals relate to their stress-related thoughts, measured using the individual-difference construct of cognitive defusion, predicted more approach and less avoidance coping behavior, controlling for stress-related appraisals. RESULTS We found that cognitive defusion predicted more approach coping (Studies 1 and 3) and less avoidance coping (Studies 2 and 3) following laboratory-induced stress (Study 1), naturally occurring monthly stress (Study 2), and daily stress (Study 3). These effects occurred independently of the effects of threat appraisals (Studies 1-3) and self-efficacy appraisals (Study 3) on coping responses. CONCLUSIONS Cognitive defusion may be an important individual-difference predictor of coping behavior, adding to established theories of coping such as Lazarus and Folkmans (1987) transactional theory.

Mindfulness, identity and work: Mindfulness training creates a more flexible sense of self

Introduction In this chapter we explore the effects of mindfulness training upon individual identity. We aim to show that mindfulness training extends beyond improving emotional self-regulation. Our work shows that over time it changes how we respond to the questions ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Am I really separate from you?’ In turn, these changes have profound implications for wellbeing, effectiveness and relationships at work. Our identity shapes both our individual and relational responding. In this sense, identity underpins many other aspects of organisational behaviour. Indeed, it has been argued that identity has become central to organisational studies and the social sciences more broadly (Alvesson, Ashcraft, and Thomas 2008). In recent years, identity has been linked to issues as diverse as change management (Beech et al . 2011), leadership development (Carroll and Levy 2010; DeRue and Ashford 2010; Hannah, Woolfolk, and Lord 2009), motivation (Osborne and Jones 2011), career development (Petriglieri and Petriglieri 2010), and emotions at work (Atkins and Parker 2012). In this chapter we explore theoretically and empirically how mindfulness training affects identity and thereby affects work-related outcomes and wellbeing. We adopt the view that mindfulness involves the four processes of: knowing oneself as the observer of experience; flexibly attending to the present moment; willingly accepting experience as it is without trying to change its frequency or intensity, and defusion from the literality of verbal cognitions (Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson 2011). This approach is based on a contextual-behavioural account of language and human cognition where identity is understood to be the ongoing behaviour of constructing descriptions of ones own behaviours and characteristics (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche 2001). When mindful, such personal descriptions are not held as literal truths but rather are held flexibly as passing verbal constructs. We are particularly interested in the shift from treating self-referential statements as literal truths to flexibly engaging with them as constructs that serve varying degrees of usefulness.

Toward an integrated science and sociotecture of intentional change.

We heartily agree with the target article and focus on how positive sociocultural change can be accelerated through the systematic use of scenario planning - what we call sociotecture. Scenario planning is a design process for the creation and selection of symbotypes that make a positive difference. It cuts through complexity by integrating cognitive and affective processes across multiple scales.