The Working Week 13: David Tinker
This week’s guest is David Tinker of Wellness company, Feeling Alive, an organisation that sets out to promote greater health and wellbeing in the working population through education, training and personal development coaching.
01:08 - Wayne kicks off by looking at some new research by Cisco which shows that mobile workers are expected to account for a quarter of the world’s working population by 2009. It goes on to identify the personality types, cultural influences and management techniques that are critical for success.
01:21 - Continuing the technology theme, a blog by Derek Torres introduces us to Wakamaru, the new face of the Japanese receptionist. And receptionists won’t be laughing when they find out that Wakamaru is a robot.
01:38 - Whilst robots cannot speak, actress and voice coach Janet Howd provides practical and down-to-earth advice on vocal technique for people who have to give presentations.
01:54 - Finally, Wayne alludes to research by U.S. research and advisory organisation Catalyst which claims that women are doomed to failure in business as they are faced with a range of “double-bind” contradictions.
02:17 - This week’s guest is David Tinker of Wellness company, Feeling Alive, an organisation that sets out to promote greater health and wellbeing in the working population through highly education, training and personal development coaching.
David’s attention has been drawn by an article on Management-Issues which suggests that many managers are only able to handle crises is by making a drama out of them - in other words, getting stressed and bothered and burning the candles at both ends.
03:31 - Wayne wonders why managers tend to sometimes make things more dramatic than they need to be.
03:35 - People need and enjoy a certain degree of pressure - but it can get to a point when it becomes stress. He continues that stress is an internal process - and is actually within our control.
04:29 - Wayne - What control do we really have when so much of our stress come from other people?
04:37 - David explains the concept of locus of control. Those of us who have an external locus are more likely to feel out of control - tend to suffer more. People with an internal locus manage pressure better. David expands.
05:43 - What things do people do to gain some control asks Wayne?
05:57 - A key issue is an inability to let go, a feeling of having to control everything. This is often based on fears that we don’t understand….
06:56 - Wayne asks about the business costs of being stressed
07:05 - A real life example is given by David which focuses on both the below and above the line costs.
08:02 - Are companies starting to recognise the cost of stress Wayne asks?
08:25 - There are a group of organisations who know this is important and are investing in wellness whilst there are others who know that it is an issue but are not sure what to do about it…. It’s not dissimilar to where CSR was five to ten years ago.
09:29 - Wayne asks - is the workplace opening up to the concept of wellness?
09:45 - At last people are starting to talk about nutrition, emotional intelligence, etc. Spiritual intelligence is also coming into play. The managers who do suffer least from stress are likely to take time out for themselves at a spiritual level to be with themselves and take that as an important aspect of their lives.
