Since 1979, the research team of George Dudley and Shannon Goodson have quietly laid bare a personality construct they have labeled the "inhibited social contact initiation syndrome." In sales people, it’s also called "call reluctance" or a fear of prospecting. As an adolescent, it was that hesitation and queasy feeling you got just before you called someone to ask them out on a first date.

With a huge interest in this topic in the ranks of sales organizations that employ real estate agents, insurance salespeople, brokers and so on, George and Shannon have ridden the crest of this baby quietly to significant success. Never heard of them? Well, you should, especially if you have responsibilities for sales.

Having established construct validity for established instruments such as the NEO, MMPI, 16PF, CPI, and so forth, George is at heart a researcher, stemming from his quantitative background. He has a database to beat the band and offers his and Shannon’s last 50 research articles on the Web at http://www.bsrpinc.com.

In short, they have identified 12 specific factors or scales for the inhibited social contact initiation syndrome, as well as lie scales and overall scores, a sample of which are: Brake Score, an overall measure of the total energy diverted to inhibiting contact with prospective buyers; Doomsayer reluctance, an habitual worrier over worst case scenarios; Hyper-Pro reluctance, an over-investment in the mannerisms and appearances of success at the expense of goal-supporting behaviors like prospecting; Yielder reluctance, hesitation to prospect for new business due to a reflexive fear of being considered intrusive or pushy; Social Self-Conscious reluctance, a hesitation to initiate contact with up-market prospective buyers, hesitation to contact those with more wealth, prestige, education or power. Don’t take my word for it, check out the research upon which these factors are based—it’s well done.

George Dudley is putting out a new book next spring entitled Hard Truth about Soft Selling. In it he hopes to raise concerns he has for the U.S. developing, in his opinion, a career of "professional visitors" or Yielder (to use his terminology). He examines why there is an underlying discomfort with the legitimacy of the sales profession itself and how we have been taught that selling is bad. He feels the concepts of call reluctance fall beyond the role of just sales professionals but includes others responsible for promotion of any kind. (Stretch this thing far enough and you’ve got about every man, woman and child affected by these ideas.)

George, thanks for telling Practice Network about this fascinating work and continued good luck to you in the future!

The long and short of it is that the rules for what scientific evidence is admissible in a courtroom have changed. Things have anted up. Seventy years ago the Supreme Court established the "Frye rule" which said that evidence is admissible if it "has gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs." In addition, it was up to the expert to decide what met the rule—the judge or jury did not see the expert’s testimony until it was presented in court.

Now that may all change. Enter Daubert (pronounced daw-bear) v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. The Daubert case was brought in the mid-1980s on behalf of two children in San Diego whose birth defects were allegedly caused by their mother’s ingestion of the morning-sickness drug Benedectin. To prove the drug responsible, the plaintiffs brought in eight expert witnesses to refute multiple published epidemiological studies that concluded Benedectin does not cause birth defects. The plaintiff’s experts reanalyzed the original studies and came to another conclusion. The lower courts found the plaintiff’s evidence inadmissible under Frye and Daubert appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court found the Frye standard too rigid and ruled to require judges to use a more flexible set of considerations, similar to those used by scientists, to decide whether evidence is scientifically sound.¹ (Daubert then returned to the lower courts, which continued to find the plaintiff’s evidence still admissible, however, the new standards remain.)

So, Frye has been superseded (or in fact actually expanded upon). There are four new standards:

1. Falsifiability. The theory or technique can be and has been tested.
2. Peer Review. The theory or technique has been submitted to peer review. (Submission to peer review is not dispositive, but is viewed as a component of good science.)
3. Error Rate. There is a known or potential rate of error and there exists standards to control the techniques’ operations.
4. General Acceptance. There is general acceptance of the methodology in the scientific community (The old Frye standard continues, but is not dispositive.)

An important aspect of the Daubert ruling² provides that expert testimony is "screened" by the judge before it is admitted into court. This, according to George, is a significant process change from the Frye standard. After some digging in preparation for an article in the journal Employee Testing Law and Policy Reporter (December 1997), George Thornton and his co-author, attorney John Webb, have been unable to uncover as of yet a single instance in which the Daubert standards have been applied to employment testing cases. PN believes the key here is the phrase "as of yet." "I do know of some cases where the judge has held a Daubert hearing, however, the case was settled before the ruling was made on the admissibility of the scientific evidence," he said.

Conjecturing into the future, George is of two minds. One is that, "If you follow APA, EEOC, and other guidelines, our evidence will stand up well to the Daubert principles…we have a long, rich scientific history and solid methods…the scientific method will serve us well here." But the flip side of this coin is that "Our issues are complex. A lot of us make our mark by debunking things that have already been said. Our community has an openness to criticizing things…this is how the science marches on," he says, adding it is precisely these contrary views that will make for interesting discussions in judge’s chambers on what a particular theory or technique’s peer review or supporters feel about the evidence under discussion for admittance into a court. "How do we tell the world we know something, but at the same time inform them that there are opposing views," he wonders?

Thanks, George, for keeping Practice Network informed of this important legal change of potentially great impact in our field!

Michael Beyerlein (University of North Texas, Denton, Texas) has some interesting comments on a subject that has occupied an awful lot of his time and attention since 1990.

As Director for the Center for the Study of Work Teams, Mike has seen lots of teams come and go. He has made several notes along the way. "In our own research nearly half of the implementation attempts we have studied ‘failed’," Mike notes, emphasizing the difficulty of precisely defining the term "fail." Since one key goal to establishing work teams is to "increase the potential of the natural work group to do effective work," this then was used as the measure of success for implementation of work teams.

1. Top-down implementation. This often-recommended approach features an executive steering committee in some form, which spends large amounts of time studying the topic before rolling out a strategic plan. Its is not uncommon for the start-up, "study" stage to take 18 months. Mike comments, "I don’t have exact statistics on the success rate for this approach, but my impression is that it can be fairly successful, if all of the steps are thoroughly carried out." The reason this approach fails or is abandoned is because of its long and cumbersome nature.
2. Understanding how radical team-based organizations are. You can almost compare this type of change to personal changes such as marriage and moving from adolescence to adulthood. Slow, gradual and downright incredible! Kuhn (1962) the first to apply the term "paradigm" suggested that in the sciences a paradigm shift can only occur when the old guard dies off and the new scientists replace them with a new perspective. That may not be literally true in the business world but it underscores the difficulty Mike has observed as to how significant a shift will cause people’s perspectives to be remade.
3. Grassroots efforts. Mike notes that Linda Moran, who has written two books on this subject, has conjectured that grassroots efforts may even be more successful than top-down efforts. He goes on to point out that "isolated, spontaneous efforts typically have minimal support and run into lots of problems interfacing with the traditional parts of the organization around them. It’s a part of, as Sandra Richardson describes, the corporate immune system: What doesn’t look like part of the familiar dominant system must be destroyed."
4. Accelerated change approaches. Mike cites Lytle and Rankin (1996) who warn against accelerated methods for work team implementation within traditional organizations. At the very least, the "choice of implementation approach can be a source of failure unless there is a match between approach and type of organization."
5. Use the right type of team. Self-managed teams are only appropriate in certain settings. Self-directed, cross-functional, quality improvement or virtual teams may fit an organization better. It depends on the circumstances and goals.
6. Implementing teams for the wrong reason. Teams should be implemented to get the work done better. The key phrase here is to "get the work done." This is the language of business. Many organizations don’t see the connection between team and organizational performance and become disenchanted with teams as a consequence of the lack of evidence for a connection between teams and output.
7. Isolated teams. Mike credits the work of Sue Mohrman for emphasizing the "major error of implementing isolated teams." Sue and her colleagues push for "lateral integration, the creation of teams of teams and for the critical role of support systems" to effectively implement teams. The obvious example here is the company that ‘implements’ teams and then keeps its traditional, individual-oriented, compensation system. As Mike comments, "If upper-level managers have little understanding about what the team’s transformation means, minimize commitment to it, or make little effort to communicate the overarching vision and mission of the initiative to team members, the initiative is likely to be abandoned."
. This often-recommended approach features an executive steering committee in some form, which spends large amounts of time studying the topic before rolling out a strategic plan. Its is not uncommon for the start-up, "study" stage to take 18 months. Mike comments, "I don’t have exact statistics on the success rate for this approach, but my impression is that it can be fairly successful, all of the steps are thoroughly carried out." The reason this approach fails or is abandoned is because of its long and cumbersome nature. You can almost compare this type of change to personal changes such as marriage and moving from adolescence to adulthood. Slow, gradual and downright incredible! Kuhn (1962) the first to apply the term "paradigm" suggested that in the sciences a paradigm shift can only occur when the old guard dies off and the new scientists replace them with a new perspective. That may not be literally true in the business world but it underscores the difficulty Mike has observed as to how significant a shift will cause people’s perspectives to be remade. . Mike notes that Linda Moran, who has written two books on this subject, has conjectured that grassroots efforts may even be more successful than top-down efforts. He goes on to point out that "isolated, spontaneous efforts typically have minimal support and run into lots of problems interfacing with the traditional parts of the organization around them. It’s a part of, as Sandra Richardson describes, the corporate immune system: What doesn’t look like part of the familiar dominant system must be destroyed." . Mike cites Lytle and Rankin (1996) who warn against accelerated methods for work team implementation within traditional organizations. At the very least, the "choice of implementation approach can be a source of failure unless there is a match between approach and type of organization." . Self-managed teams are only appropriate in certain settings. Self-directed, cross-functional, quality improvement or virtual teams may fit an organization better. It depends on the circumstances and goals. . Teams should be implemented to get the work done better. The key phrase here is to "get the work done." This is the language of business. Many organizations don’t see the connection between team and organizational performance and become disenchanted with teams as a consequence of the lack of evidence for a connection between teams and output. . Mike credits the work of Sue Mohrmanfor emphasizing the "major error of implementing isolated teams." Sue and her colleagues push for "lateral integration, the creation of teams of teams and for the critical role of support systems" to effectively implement teams. The obvious example here is the company that ‘implements’ teams and then keeps its traditional, individual-oriented, compensation system. As Mike comments, "If upper-level managers have little understanding about what the team’s transformation means, minimize commitment to it, or make little effort to communicate the overarching vision and mission of the initiative to team members, the initiative is likely to be abandoned."

These are some of the "big picture" items that threaten a work team initiative. It’s not exhaustive. Mike notes that recent books add much to this discussion and recommends you look at Hitchcock & Willard and Strauss (in press), or contact Mike Beyerlein at our nation’s leading Center for the Study of Work Teams at 940-565-2653.

Especially on the academic side, we offer rich resources of research and information to the waiting public (the fact that the public doesn’t know how to use us is grist for a different PN article). Scads and scads of referred and non-referred information are out there on the hard drives and in the file drawers of our academics.

Craig believes there is a future in this treasure trove if (and it’s a big one) we can figure out the value this information offers to readers and bring it to market in an acceptable way. For researchers, the real opportunity here is in the growing Internet tool called "micro cash transactions." Would I pay a nickel to read and download your meta-analysis on XYZ? You bet I would, but we currently don’t have a good means by which to enable this transaction. But hang on, Craig suggests; the mechanics for micro-cash are coming to the Web in a big hurry and could put some jingle in your step.

Bringing research to "market" and "marketing" research (think of it as management information) is a whole different story. APA article-titling rules are intended to force the author to be explicit when naming an article. What is the impact of more "journalistic" titling, titles that zing—would they help to lead potential leaders to you or lead them away because they might be more vague than current titling guidelines? A small question mark, you may think, but not when you have a generation of Web users who are used to a bulleted, 1-2-3 type of world, who get their news in one-sentence overviews on their pagers.

Ready to start your own university? You’ll need three things: (1) an MPEG digital VCR camera, currently about $2,500, (2) an infrared-driven motor that would allow the camera to track a moving body—you are an energetic lecturer. This’ll set you back another $5,000, (3) a room to hold your lectures in (paint the wall of your garage real "purdy-like"), and (4) a $20 shareware piece of software the allows you to take a digital camera input and put it up on the Web! Voila, you are a teaching machine! Oh yeah, you’ll need content, too (Bill Gates’ bugaboo!).

A charlatan could do this (and no doubt already is) or a real quality production could utilize this technology in the right way. Live training anywhere in the world? Canned, and playback-at-will, lectures and training on any of a zillion topics? Get a behind-the-scenes interview with a researcher on the "craftsmanship" calls she/he had to make during a study or in setting up a new selection, training or OD intervention? Where do you want to go today, fellow practitioners (TB: Second Microsoft reference; had to fulfill my quota for this issue)?

You could say this is all about making money and you’d be half-right. The other side of this coin is that brilliant research and quality information does not have to be an end in and of itself, but can add value to people who need the information. Craig Russell says, "The question is how do you capture the value of information? What, or where is the value in what we do as researchers?" The future is starting to happen right now. Hang onto your browser!

Jade has two particular pet peeves. The first is when we overly pursue the science end of our craft and do a disservice to our customers. The second is when we do not leverage multiple purposes into I/O interventions and think of things in too one-sided a manner.

How many of us spend 80% of our time working feverishly doing everything possible to inch a validity figure up from .31 to .34 while, during this period of paralysis-by-analysis, the meaning of the intervention for our customer gets somehow waylaid? They get turned off by our mumbo jumbo or get tired of providing employees to gather predictor or criterion data and tune out. We get to the end of our dark tunnel, emerge and have no one to share our work with because, in reality, we have not served our customer’s needs for an answer to their question in a timely manner. Known anyone like that? Send them to Jade, she’ll talk to ‘em!

In another recent development project, she turned a request for selection help into one or two things beyond the immediate need by leveraging multiple uses and interests in accomplishing her customer’s end. Some of the innovations she came up with include:

1. Utilizing a focus group-approach to job analysis, to share the decision making of what was to be assessed with executives in the customer’s organization. Not only was this a speedier process, but it caused the executive team to come to consensus by themselves (not through the intervention of a third party, such as an anonymous job analyst), thereby greatly impacting their interest in finding out how candidates and employees faired against their standard.
2. Following the creation of the competency models, she did some subanalyses to determine how the competencies were weighted for different types of situations the target jobs could work in (think of it as determining the differing mix of skills for managers in start-up companies, versus, say, large bureaucracies). This neat information was used by executives to determine specific job fits for candidates who passed her selection process (an assessment center). This is a really great idea and a super tool for our customers.
3. Jade also involved the employee development group in the original selection-oriented assessment center, turning it into a more complete intervention for the candidates. The employee development folks actually act as a second set of assessors gathering developmental information during the center. At the end of the center, candidates get their feedback from the employee development group who have, as you can imagine, expanded their report/ observations/feedback to include a heavy dose of suggested developmental activities. This approach neatly ties the loop tighter between selection and ongoing performance management.
4. This assessment center was run very "above board" for all of the candidates. Communication sessions were held and lots of written information was distributed prior to the assessment day. What was shared? How about the kinds of exercises that would be held, examples of those exercises, lists of what would be assessed and how it would be scored and how scores are accumulated. Jade feels this helps to equalize the playing field, reducing the differences in performance to just that, the differences in performance observed during the assessment center, without confounding effects of nervousness and unfamiliarity with the material, et cetera.

Jade Kuan presented some of these ideas during WRIPAC’s January 1997 meeting in Phoenix. She’d be willing to discuss other ideas with you and can be contacted in LA at 213-217-7718.

Active since the 1970’s, this I/O group works in association with SEPA. Annual conference in conjunction with SEPA’s annual conference—next SEIOPA conference is scheduled March 26-27, 1998 in Mobile, Alabama. Typically 50-100 attendees. Mid-summer column in SEPA newsletter.

For more information contact John Cornwell at Loyola in New Orleans at 504-865-3126 or email to cornwell@loyno.edu.

In Spring 1997, an Ohio Psychological Association committee, led by Diana Clarke (Brinoth Group, Cleveland), conducted a survey to identify typical job responsibilities, preferred areas for CEE and services the state’s I/O professionals want from the overly clinical- and counseling-oriented OPA. (PN: The situation where I/Os feel neglected by their state psychology association is not unique to Ohio.) What’s unique here is that the OPA is asking the I/O community how the organization could better meet their needs.

Members of this I/O task force, representing industry, consulting, and academia, included Bob Billings, Milt Hakel, Bob Lord, Paula Popovick and Bill Matte. One hundred and four (104) people responded to the survey, a 29% response rate, with 39 of the respondents being existing OPA members, so it had a reasonable reach outside of the state group itself.

The most-requested topics for continuing education were: (1) management/executive development and leadership, (2) organizational behavior and development, motivation, group processes and teams, (3) individual assessment, coaching and feedback, personnel selection and career development, (4) conflict management, culture/climate and process consulting, and (5) succession planning and productivity improvement.

The least-requested topics by surveyed I/O psychologists were: (1) absences and turnover, (2) labor relations, (3) EEO/affirmative action, (4) compensation, benefits, reward systems, (5) accidents/health/safety. (TB: Don’t get me started on the things we find uninteresting. Besides payroll dollars, turnover and accidents are probably the top two cost areas we add to a company’s balance sheet—both of them in a completely non-value-added manner. We may not have interest in them, but our business customers certainly do!)

The top Likert ratings of services respondents would like to see from the OPA, are: opportunities for CEU credit (4.02), information on leading-edge practices (3.79), OD training (3.37), legal updates (3.26), and networking opportunities with other I/Os (3.26).

Thanks, Diana, for getting involved and spearheading this effort. For 1998, two CE-qualified events are already planned—a January meeting with the Cleveland Psychological Association presenting a look at dysfunctional teams from both a clinical and organizational perspective, as well as a day’s worth of workshops tied to the Fall 1998 OPA conference.

Yes, it’s true. After 7+ years, 30 issues, 256 interviews and several thousand rather egregious typos and misspellings, I am stepping aside from the editorship of Practice Network after the next issue. Seven years of balancing the line between science and practitioner, between significance and meaningfulness. Now is your chance! Allan Church, TIP’s new editor starting with the July 1998 issue, and I are interested in keeping this ship afloat if you are willing to come aboard as captain. Interested in becoming the PN editor? Contact Thomas G. Baker at 614-475-7240, Fax to 614-475-7245, email to VTCJ69A@prodigy.com. Preference given to those lacking experience or qualification, but not enthusiasm and curiosity.

Hitchcock, D., & Willard, M. (1995). Why teams can fail and what to do about it: Essential tools for anyone implementing self-directed work teams. Chicago: Irwin Professional Publishing

Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lytle, W., & Rankin, W. (1996). Fast-paced change. Workshop given at the 1996 Strategies and Skills Conference for Effective Teaming, Dallas, Texas.

Mohrman, S. A., Cohen, S. G., Mohrman, A. M., Jr. (1995). Designing team-based organizations: New forms for knowledge work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

U.S. Supreme Court, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 759 (1993), No. 92-102, decided 6/28/93. 113 S. Ct. 2786.