How can leaders foster team learning? Effects of leader-assigned mastery and performance goals and psychological safety.

Learning and adapting to change are imperative as teams today face unprecedented change. Yet, an important part of learning involves challenging assumptions and addressing differences of opinion openly within a group--the kind of behaviors that pose the potential for embarrassment or threat. How can leaders foster an environment in which team members feel it is safe to take interpersonal risks in order to learn? In a study of 71 teams, we found that psychological safety and learning behavior were higher for teams with mastery than performance goal instructions or no goal instructions. Team psychological safety mediated the relationship between mastery and performance goal instructions and learning behavior. Findings contribute to our understanding of how leader-assigned goals are related to psychological safety and learning behavior in a team context, and suggest approaches to foster such processes.

Can mock interviewers' personalities influence their personality ratings of applicants?

The authors examined individual difference and self-regulatory variables to understand how an interviewer rates a candidate's personality. Participants were undergraduate students at a large midwestern university in the United States who completed measures of individual differences, read an employment interview transcript involving a candidate applying for a customer service job, and rated the candidate's personality. Participants' agreeableness, social skills, and communion striving were positively associated with their ratings of the candidate's helpfulness and obedience. The authors provide a foundation for further research on interviewer effectiveness and the processes underlying the employment interview.

Case management and outreach: similarities and differences in worker tasks.

Case management and outreach are two important services provided to many individuals, particularly people with multiple problems. Unfortunately, no taxonomy or measuring instrument has been developed that captures the many dimensions of the jobs performed by both case managers and outreach workers. This study conducted a job analysis that led to the development of an instrument that has a variety of potential uses. It can be (a) a method for classifying both case management and outreach programs on a number of dimensions that can be used in comparing different models of case management and outreach, (b) a means to identify specific case management and outreach activities that might be correlated with client outcomes, and (c) a tool for developing selection criteria as well as performance appraisal dimensions to assess case management and outreach work activities.

Note-taking in the employment interview: effects on recall and judgments.

Although note-taking in the employment interview is highly recommended, little research has examined its effects. This study investigated the effects of note-taking styles, review of the notes, and content of the notes on participants' cued recall of information and decisions made from videotaped employment interviews. Note-taking increased recall accuracy but not judgment accuracy. Being able to review notes resulted in increased judgment accuracy for those taking conventional-style notes. The content of the notes also had important implications for conventional note-takers, suggesting some benefits of recording notes using the key-points style. The findings suggest that the act of note-taking may be more important for memory and legal reasons than for improving the decisions made by interviewers.