Our first visitors for 2021! Meet Associate Professors Helena Nguyen and Anya Johnson

We were delighted to have visitors again, for the first time since the pandemic!

Joining us from the University of Sydney are A/Prof Helena Nguyen and A/Prof Anya Johnson, both of whom have collaborated extensively with our Director, Professor Sharon Parker.

Associate Professor Helena Nguyen is an Associate Professor in Work and Organisational Studies and co-director of the Body, Heart and Mind in Business Research Group at the University of Sydney Business School. Helena's research is multidisciplinary and her interests include the role of emotions and cognition at work, human performance, work engagement and well-being.

Associate Professor Anya Johnson is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of Discipline in Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School. Anya’s research investigates how employees regulate their emotions and cognitions in the workplace, and the relationship between the design of jobs and teams and outcomes such as engagement, wellbeing and performance.

We interviewed them for our "Meet our visitors" series to get to know them better.

⭐️Tell me a bit about yourself?

We are both Organisational Psychologists by training – and started working together with Sharon in 2005 when we were both PhD students. Also, we are both Associate Professors at the University of Sydney Business School. We collaborate closely with Sharon – and are constantly inspired by the work she does.

⭐️What will you do / are you doing at CTWD / FOWI?

We are here to work on several projects. Some legacy projects we started working on with Sharon back in 2005 with the Prince of Wales Hospital, we have continued to work on (yes we are still collecting data for wave no. 8) and where we have involved others at the CTWD such as Florian and Fangfang.

Other newer projects such as the process underpinning the giving and receiving of compassion between a nurse and patient and the design of junior doctors work and the effects on their mental health.

We are also excited to work with Mark and the team at FOWI on looking at patient safety data and how we might analyse how they change over time.

⭐️What does the future of work look like to you?

A world of work that is much more complex and diverse and where our IO / OB skills will be even more important as we navigate these challenges

⭐️If you were a book or a movie, what would it be?

Well as we work together we would be “Thelma and Louise” ….or maybe “Dumb and Dumber”.

⭐️One thing not many people know about you?

Well, maybe we will leave this up in the air?

One is a competitive dragon boater and the other the other is an enthusiastic cycler. We will let you guess which one is which!

How to capture team behaviours ‘in action’ - Part 5

By Cecilia Runneboom

IIs there anything more fascinating than human behaviour? When you look into people’s (non-) verbal communication, you can find things out about them that they are not even aware of themselves.

Most of what we do, we do without thinking about it. When we are asked to explain our actions, we take our intentions, thoughts, and likability into account as we all want to come across favourably.

This is why it is difficult to get an accurate insight of behaviour when you ask people about it – an issue that psychologists have struggled with for decades. The answers you get will be most likely biased.

So what do you do if you are a researcher and want to learn about human psychology and social interactions?

You study human behaviour by observing it.

However, if you have ever tried to capture communication using an excel sheet or a piece of paper, you know how challenging it can be to keep an eye on the timing, remember what you’re looking for, notice when it’s happening, and write up your notes – all while you are concentrating on what is happening. EEEP!

Understanding teamwork is a lot easier when you have access to recorded sessions that enable you to pause, rewind and replay. However, this is simply not always possible or ethical. This can leave you with ‘live coding’ as your only option.

If you feel discouraged due to the difficulty of live coding, we have good news!

We developed a program called CAT (Communication Analysis tool) that will make live coding much easier by doing most of the additional work for you.

1. CAT can prompt you when to code, so you don’t have to keep an eye on the time so much.

2. CAT helps you remember what to code, as all your codes are captured by buttons you now simply have to click.

3. CAT even decreases your workload by summarising the results for you.

4. You can fully tailor the coding scheme so it meets your needs, and if you are working with a team you can all join the session and code with multiple observers.

5. Added bonus: CAT will calculate your interrater reliability (ask us what this means, if you don’t know!).

If you are looking for a way to capture communication patterns and interactions, or if you are working with coding ‘live behaviours’, this is something you can’t miss.

Not convinced yet? Give it a try yourself! This video walks you through the steps:

Still not sure if you could use CAT in your work? Stay tuned for the next posts in this series, where we will give other examples of how CAT can be used, including videos from our very own ‘CAT lovers!’

For further detail on the functionality and history of CAT, and how to access it, click here.

For the original Curtin University media release on CAT, click here.

Improving your team meetings with a CAT - Part 4

By Dr Georgia Hay

It’s 9:01am and the team meeting has officially started – but a number of people are still talking about what they did on the weekend. Are you wondering whether this is just a huge waste of time? Are you thinking, “why can’t we just get straight to the work?!”

Researchers and practitioners alike have grappled with the challenge of making meetings effective for a long time. Although casual conversation at the beginning of team meetings may seem useless, it can help to maintain important social trust and familiarity that is critical to the teams’ effectiveness – what researchers call ‘relationship-oriented behaviours’. This is also relevant in times of Covid-19, where most employees are forced to work at home and have fewer informal opportunities to interact with their colleagues (e.g. a coffee corner).

Of course, ‘getting on with the work’ – ‘task-oriented behaviours’ – are also important.

So how do we get the balance right between building relationships and doing the work? How much of each should we do? When is relationship-building the most important?

Hold that thought for a moment.

Continuing with our hypothetical scenario…Do your thoughts change if it’s Karen, who suggests that the meeting should start properly (i.e., a task-oriented behaviour), compared to if it’s Andrew?

Increasingly, researchers and managers are also wondering how gender stereotypes and biases affect how we react to what others say and do – what researchers call ‘verbal behaviours’ – in team meetings.

In fact, these perceptions of others’ verbal behaviours in meetings may shape whether women or men are more successful at rising through the ranks and becoming leaders in their organisations.

Professor Fabiola Gerpott, Professor of Leadership at WHU in the Otto Beisheim School of Management, and Sofia Schlamp PhD Candidate at VU Amsterdam and HR professional at Royal Dutch Shell, have been using CAT since 2018 to study these topics.

Professor Fabiola Gerpott and Sofia Schlamp

For more information about this research project, check out this video:

For our academic audience, you can find the full paper, published in the Journal of Managerial Psychology, here.

Using CAT to study gender dynamics in meetings

At the beginning of her PhD, Sofia knew that she wanted to study how team members’ verbal behaviours shape the success of team meetings, and how this differs for males vs. females, but she wasn’t sure which tool to use. Luckily, Fabiola, her PhD supervisor, pointed her towards CAT.

Sofia says: “This way of collecting and analysing data is really unique because it combines the quantitative and qualitative.”

She also loved how the feedback function within CAT helped her to develop a sense of trust and buy-in with the employees and managers she was collaborating with.

For more about Sofia’s experience (including some advice for first-time users), check out this video:

Still not sure if you could use CAT in your work? Stay tuned for the next posts in this series, where we will give other examples of how CAT can be used, including more videos from our very own ‘CAT lovers!’

For further detail on the functionality and history of CAT, and how to access it, click here.

For the original Curtin University media release on CAT, click here.