PIHRA Scope - Winter 2008 - (Page 18)

DYSFUNCTION continued from page 17 to work. It seems that you leave your house and all of a sudden you ﬁnd yourself at the ofﬁce. It’s as if the car drove itself. That’s because the behavior is so rehearsed, you aren’t consciously aware of doing it. Learning new behavior requires paying attention. When you learned to drive, for example, you had to consciously remember to look in the review mirror. Now, it’s automatic. It’s the same with learning to behave differently. Research also indicates that learning is much more effective when dosed out in little sips over time, rather than swallowed in one big gulp. This is because new learning requires that we load new information from our short-term memory into our long-term memory. This requires multiple exposures to the material in order to create successful transfer. Your intervention does not need to be either elaborate or complicated. Supportive conversation focused on goal attainment will do the trick. One HR professional found a short walk with his employee once a week during the lunch hour to be highly effective. They spent the time talking about alternatives to problem behaviors and strategizing better ways to approach frustrating situations. This went on for about six months and much improvement was gained. Both left the experience quite satisﬁed with the outcome. In terms of expectations, ﬁrst and foremost: Expect backsliding. Change doesn’t happen in a straight-forward progression. It’s often a case of two steps forward, one step back. Backsliding is a normal part of the process. Secondly, don’t expect a total transformation. The identiﬁed individual will still have skill set deﬁciencies and may continue to be difﬁcult and unlikable at times. There still may be a lot about interpersonal interactions he or she doesn’t understand. When the training is over, the individual still may not understand, for example, that it affects people negatively when you purposely ignore them at staff meetings. This deﬁciency is certainly not desirable. However, it’s far better than humiliating an employee at a staff meeting by calling him or her some kind of animal body part or throwing a cell phone at that person’s head. So, remember: Focus on changing speciﬁcally identiﬁed problem behaviors with the individual in power, and plan to spend several months engaged in the effort. We live in the real world and you can’t change everything. However, by using these three steps as a starting point, you have a better chance at success. A successful outcome can make a signiﬁcant contribution to the functionality of your organization. ■ Jill Kohn, Ph.D., is a marketing and management consultant for Kohn Communications. Dr. Kohn helps individuals acquire new clients and better manage workplace interactions with superiors, subordinates, and peers. She has created several programs for Kohn Communications regarding interpersonal communication in the workplace. Kohn can be reached at jill@kohncommunications.com. SHRM LEARNING SYSTEM Three Courses Saturdays, January 24 – April 18, 2009 • 9 am – 12 pm Devry/Keller Graduate School Building Long Beach, CA Tuesdays, February 3 – April 21, 2009 • 6 pm – 9 pm CalTech, Brown Gym Classroom Pasadena, C Pasadena, CA a a Tuesdays, February 3 – April 21, 2009 • 6 pm – 9 pm UCR Palm Desert Graduate C nte Building CR R m De es adu Ce ter uildin din P Pa Palm Desert, CA rt, SHRM GLOBAL LEARNING SYSTEM S Saturda Saturdays, March 7 – April 18, 2009 • 9 am – 3:30 pm New ng ri Offe P PIHRA Learning Center El Segundo, CA n CALIFORNIA HR CERTIFICATION STUDY SERIES Wednesdays, March 4 – April 15, 2009 • 5:30 pm – 9:30 pm PIHRA Learning Center H in El Segundo, CA Visit www.pihra.org for program details. 18 PIHRAScope Cert poster12V.indd 1 Winter 2008 10/15/08 2:53:46 PM http://www.pihra.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of PIHRA Scope - Winter 2008

PIHRA Scope - Winter 2008 Contents Message from the CEO What’s on the Legislative Horizon in 2009 HR Concepts Dysfunction Doesn’t Make Cents The Three R’s of Environmental Sustainability PIHRA Calendar Scope on the Districts PIHRA’s New Members Index to Advertisers

PIHRA Scope - Winter 2008

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