It's simple: A lot of the company's problems take place on the head of their workers and managers before they get to the income statement. Let's take a look to some examples:
Problem 1: Communication management Before a key employee goes to our competitor she has been thinking about it for a while. Before thinking about it there has been a reason behind. And this reason behind has probably began with a little incident. What if we could know WHAT incident? What if the solution was just telling her how important is her last project for the company? If you could with a sentence save the cost of losing a key employee, How much would you pay for those words? Solution: The psychology of course doesn't let us read other's minds, but can detect the signs of unsatisfaction. Psychology allows us to create environments where the employees can express their doubts and frustrations. This way you can look for solutions to the conflicts before it costs money. Problem 2. Emotions management. Economy are numbers, money, maths, all of them concepts controlled by the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that most diferentiates us from the rest of the animals. In the blink of an an eye we are able to master consciously our brain to make a mathematical operation, controlling the prozess all the way long. But everything starts with the behaviours and the emotions, and they are not so easy to master. Try this: Next time you're angry, try not to be angry in an instant. You won't be able to do it though you are about to ruin an important business meeting. Emotion defeats reason and negative emotions like fear, anger and anxiety are the most dificult to control. Solution: Psychologists know that the best solution to this problem is to control the emotion before it appears, identifying the signals. Throught training you can get that skill and save a lot of problems in the office, and at home. Case 3. Change Management Imagine that creativity has become a major competitive advantage to face an ambiguous market that changes rapidly. Imagine that your "Total quality" statement doesn't properly serve the demands of your customers. That statement lead you to success in the past, but today it threatens to make your company irrelevant. How to go from a Zero-Error mentality to a Continuous-Innovation one? Solution: Psychology uses different strategies in this case, but one of the more important is the change of leadership style. You must cheer errors instead penalizing them. You have to encourage risk taking, and you have to communicate it to your employees or team. To get to that point you and your people have to change behaviors and learn to react differently to failure. The change has to come from above, from managers and directors. The most important thing is not what you say to your people, but what you DO and how you REACT. You are the role model for all of them. The psychologist can work with the behaviors and emotions of the leaders so they can transmit that change to all the people. Psychology is a very powerful tool. Working with behaviors and emotions you can get a better work climate, more enhanced focus to the company goals, more satisfaction and motivation of your team. And at the end it is reflected on the income statement.