Absentee leaders and Zombie Managers: Hidden, Harmful and in need of Help

Flicking through The Psychologist Magazine the other day, I unexpectedly came across the phrase ‘absentee leader.’ [i] Although it was new to me, it immediately resonated, and I was intrigued to find out more. As I did, I realised the phenomena could just as well apply to some managers.

What is the absentee leader?

A 2015[ii] survey of 1,000 working adults that showed that eight of the top nine complaints about leaders concerned behaviours that were absent; that is, employees were most concerned about what their bosses weren’t doing. The complaints weren’t about actively bad leadership behaviour, rather they were about unmet expectations of what leaders should be doing.

Absentee Leadership[iii] has been defined as leadership that fails to lift off; where individuals occupy leadership positions (and enjoy their attending privileges) but neglect to fulfil many of leadership’s core responsibilities. It’s when people occupy leadership roles but fail to be present in them, are psychologically absent (if not also physically absent!). In this way they avoid meaningful engagement with their team.

What are the effects of absentee leaders?

Working for an absentee leader is associated with role ambiguity, health complaints, intra-team bullying and has negative effects on job satisfaction. Unsurprisingly it saps motivation and team and organisational loyalty. It creates employee stress and a talent drain that, in time, affects the organization’s bottom line. That’s to say, zombie management and absentee leadership is bad for people in their orbit and for the whole organization.

Why isn’t it dealt with by the organization?

The research answer to this question this speaks volumes. It appears that organisational capacity is so taken up dealing with other manifestations of leadership malfeasance such as sexual harassment and abuse, bullying, theft, excessive drinking, illicit drugtaking and other maladaptive coping behaviours, that a passive issue like absentee leadership doesn’t even register as a problem.

Absentee leaders and zombie managers despite being much more common and more toxic to both group and individual functioning than the misbehaving leaders described above, are often invisible to those in power. Unlike the highly visible, attention-grabbing stress responses exhibited by some leaders, coping by psychologically disappearing is sustainable over a long period before coming to light. And indeed, such leaders and managers have been described as ‘silent organisation killers.’ [iv]

Why does it happen?

Research suggests some possible reasons[v].

• People promoted from ‘being a good worker’ to management or leadership struggle with the different nature of leadership challenges

• Excessive work stress

• Too many responsibilities

• Role overload

• Too many direct reports

• No support in their role

In other words, being psychologically absent can be viewed as a highly adaptive way of escaping or avoiding a difficult environment which someone has neither the skill nor the resources to cope with.

What can be done?

Bring the issue into the light

The issue has to be brought into the light. The clues should be there: churn, sickness, performance, team difficulties and other data. Alternatively, a staff survey might indicate any problem areas. It’s important to note that such operators might be very good at appearing ‘on it’ in the presence of those senior to them, this is partly how they remain undisturbed. It’s the staff who will be able to identify the zombies at large in the organisation.

Consider the context

There is the big picture to consider. How well does the organization prepare and look after its leaders? Is improvement needed in systems and processes that support leadership? If the organization has produced a toxic working culture, everyone will be trying to cope in their own particular way. Sometimes what is needed is a change in organisational culture.

Team Dynamics

Leadership is a relational activity. Creating psychological safety, building connectivity and encouraging honest contracting around staff expectations of their leader might act to reconnect, energise and motivate a disaffected leader, and team. It helps to bear in mind that most people want to do a good job and that, with skilled help, relationships can be repaired and reset. However, there will be those wholly unsuited for the role, promoted beyond their comfort or competency, or just in the wrong situation. They need help to return to a place they can once again be productive.

Help the individual

Sometimes, its just that someone hasn’t made the transition to being a leader or manager. They don’t understand the expectations of them. They don’t know how to lead a team, manage conflict, delegate or how to develop staff. In this case leadership development or personal coaching can help.

For a great toolkit to support leadership development see our Leadership Development Essentials Bundle

[i] In this article by Dr Laura McHale (2023). McHale, L., 2023, Corporate gaslighting, absentee leaders and the emotions of work. The Psychologist. December. pp 34-37

[ii] This is in Gregory, S., 2018, The most common type of incompetent leader. Harvard Business Review

[iii] This definition comes from this article Heifetz, R. A., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The practice of adaptive leadership: Tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world. Harvard business press.

[iv] (Gregory, 2018) again

[v] McHale, L ,2022 Where’s the boss? Korn Ferry. Thought Leadership Paper.

See also

Hogan, R., Kaiser, R.B., Sherman, R.A. & Harms, P.D. (2021). Twenty years on the dark side: six lessons about bad leadership. Consulting Psychology Journal, 73, 199-213.

A very good short article by C. Brad entitled: The Phantom Menace: Absentee leadership and its silent destruction on Linkedin. 21.11.2023

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Co-Creating Planning Teams For Dialogic OD’, published by BMI Publishing, ‘Positive Psychology in Business’, published by Pavillion, ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management', published by Kogan Page.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books.

More blog posts categorised as ‘Leadership’ 

Could it be the active recruitment of incompetent men that stops women getting to the top?

The central cause, argues Tomas Chasmorro-Premuzic, of the low numbers of women recruited into leadership, ranging from 36% in bottom tier management to only 6% at CEO level, isn’t that they aren’t competitive, assertive, bold, talented or in some other ill-defined way, enough like men; but rather that a persistent systematic mistake is made during the recruitment process. A mistake that leads to many of the opportunities, up to 74% according to one survey quoted, being filled with incompetent men.

Hence the question isn’t: how can we get more women into management, but rather, how do we stop so many incompetent men filling the available positions?

No one sets out to hire incompetent leaders, so how can this happen? The answer lies in the difference between what is attractive at the selection process and what is effective in a leader.

Why do men get selected more often?

When looking for leadership potential, many instinctively look for behaviour that suggests a forceful and dominant character. This attentional focus on forcefulness and dominance reinforces the preferential selection of men for leadership in two ways. Firstly, this behaviour, along with the traits that support it, are found more often in men than in women. And secondly, when they are displayed by women they can be frowned upon. Such women can be dismissed as being too forceful or domineering to be considered as good leadership material. Yet, in a classic Catch-22 situation, if they don’t display this type of behaviour they are also not perceived as being suitably leader-like. Hence it is frequently forceful and dominant presenting men who get selected into leadership positions.

Research shows, however, that those who are most likely to appear forceful and dominant, are also those who are more likely to self-centred, entitled and narcissistic. All of which are related to the personality traits of narcissism and psychopathy, and none of which are good predictors of effective leadership behaviour.

In this way, it becomes apparent that there is a fundamental, and negatively impactful, difference between the personality traits and behaviours it takes to be chosen as a leader, and those it takes to be effective as a leader. The essential problem is that the traits that are taken as signs of leadership talent in men, are the very same that will eventually predict their downfall as leaders. In other words when considering male candidates, clear character flaws are mistaken for attractive leadership qualities. How does this happen?

The mistaken appointment of narcissists and psychopaths

Chamorro-Premuzic explains how this mistake is made. One important aspect is that confidence is taken as a proxy for competence. However, there is no relationship between confidence and competence. Most of us skew a little to over-confidence, it’s normal and healthy. But excessive overconfidence becomes dangerous and, statistically speaking, men are significantly more likely than women to display excessive overconfidence in their abilities. And while confidence is commonly regarded as the most important quality for a leader, research suggests that in fact it is less important than expertise, intelligence, hard-work, connections and even luck!

This over-confidence that we can find so attractive has its roots in two particular personality traits, narcissism and psychopathology. Narcissism and psychopathology are both more common in leaders than in the general population. For example, psychopathy is present in 4-20% of people in senior management roles, compared to 1% in the general population. Narcissism also runs at about 1% in the general population yet is estimated to be 5% amongst CEOs. By accident, this is what we end up recruiting for. Why, how does it happen?

Narcissists are master are masters of impression management, great at conveying confidence (and remember we use confidence as a proxy for competence). At the same time the advertised rewards of leadership, lucrative compensation, fancy titles and the other signs of success, could have been purpose designed to attract them in their droves. Meanwhile courage and risk-taking often coexist with psychopathology, enabling psychopaths to demonstrate striking audacity and resilience under stress, for example. They also often display a high verbal ability, meaning they can be eloquent and persuasive and tend to come across as charming and charismatic. What’s not to like, then, at the interview stage?

What happens when they become leaders

However, both narcissists and psychopaths, while brilliant at getting the role, often perform poorly thereafter. For examples psychopaths, once in the role, tend to operate passively, failing to fulfil basic management tasks such as evaluating performance, giving accurate feedback or rewarding employees. They don’t hold teams accountable for their performance and are likely to prove unable to motivate others. They are loathe to accept blame and responsibility for the consequences of their actions. As overconfident leaders they can be immune to negative feedback.

Narcissists, meanwhile, are significantly prone to counterproductive behaviour such as bullying, fraud, white-collar crime and harassment, including sexual harassment. And while they are good at dreaming big, they are less good at delivering on that dream. What to do instead then?

Going forward

Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that, given this picture, the last thing we should be doing, if we want to improve the quality of our leaders, is to help women contenders become ‘more like the men’!

 Secondly, Emotional Quotient (EQ), or emotional intelligence is acknowledged as the best single measure of people skills, which are key to getting the best out of other people, the distilled task of leadership. And people with a higher EQ are generally more effective in leadership roles. This is the proxy we should be using to predict leadership success, not levels of confidence.

Thirdly, the three important leadership competencies that are enabled by higher EQ are found at higher rates in women. These are transformational leadership, personal effectiveness and self-awareness.

So, in essence, we need to

• Stop using confidence as a proxy for competence

• Stop being dazzled by attractive qualities at the point of selection, and select instead for the personality traits and other factors that predict success once in the role

• Avoid prompting narcissists and psychopaths to positions of leadership

• Stop looking at leadership potential through a gendered lens

• Start to appreciate some of the qualities that are more typically, but obviously not exclusively, found in woman that correlate with successful leadership, and look for them in our selection processes.

Those interested to explore this topic further are referred to Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2019) Harvard Review Business Press. All statistics quoted and other assertions made are referenced in this text.

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Co-Creating Planning Teams For Dialogic OD’, published by BMI Publishing, ‘Positive Psychology in Business’, published by Pavillion, ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management', published by Kogan Page.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books.

More blog posts categorised as ‘Thought Provoking’ 

THREE CHANGE STRATEGIES IN ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT: DATA-BASED, HIGH ENGAGEMENT, AND GENERATIVE BY GERVASE R. BUSHE & SARAH LEWIS

Please find below an article co-authored by Gervase Bushe and myself recently accepted for publication in the Leadership and Organization Development Journal, Jan 2023 - Sarah Lewis

Bushe, G.R. and Lewis, S. (2023), "Three change strategies in organization development: data-based, high engagement and generative", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-05-2022-0229

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited. This AAM is provided for your own personal use only. It may not be used for resale, reprinting, systematic distribution, emailing, or for any other commercial purpose without the permission of the publisher.

Highlights from ABP conference

At the ABP conference on the 10th and 11th of November, I was struck by the professionalism of the presenters and the high standard of their content. I wanted to share a few of the ‘nuggets’ I picked up with you.

The ‘know it all’ and ‘learn it all’ culture difference

Matthew Syed introduced these two terms, the first reflecting a fixed mindset. The ‘know it all’ mindset can have some adverse effects:

• Everyone wants to look like the smartest person in the room, it’s all about showing off what you know, not being interested in what others might know.

• The competitive attitude undermines psychological safety.

• The need to be right can lead to ‘blame the customers’ mindset.

• And, as very often ‘people like us’ sound more intelligent, this attitude can lead to a monoculture in the organization.

Not great then!

The ‘learn it all ‘culture, more like a growth mindset, is much more interested in a diversity of knowledge and resources in the room, including the tactic knowledge that is part and parcel of different life experiences. It is this that enhances the ‘granular capacity’ of a group or organization to understand the diverse world of their customers and other stakeholders. In essence, we need a growth mindset and diversity to solve complex interdisciplinary problems. I thought these two terms very useful to summarise the difference.

Some fascinating takeaways

The 2-for-the-price-of-1 employee

Andrew Whyatt- Sames, introduced this concept of an employee which I hadn’t come across before. With a 2-4-1 employee, the employer gets the unpaid services of the partner at home doing all the domestic work enabling the employee to work ‘as if’ he or she had no other responsibilities. An arrangement which, not only takes us back to the 1950s, but, of course, also disadvantages all those employees who have to carry their own load at home.

‘Be nice to them or they’ll leave’

Summed up the message to bosses trying to revert to the good old pre-covid days of 7/5 office attendance. That ship has sailed.

Poor mental health on average costs employers £1652 per employee per annum

So asserted Maria Gardener while also sharing that Deloittes found a 5:1 return on investment in well being in their 2020 research. However, it depends how you spend the money. One size does not fit all, and an over reliance on sticky plasters and panic stations has little long-term benefit. Wellbeing needs to extend to financial wellbeing. You can offer your employees resilience workshops and mindfulness apps until they are coming out of their ears, but if you don’t pay them enough to make ends meet, then all a bit beside the point.

Ghost Meetings

These are non-existent meetings that desperate people book just for just to give themselves space to recharge in overpacked office days.

How to hack happiness

Amanda Potter from Betalent’s took us on a deep dive into the neurophysiology of both happiness and stress, with great suggestions for how to ‘hack’ happiness. I was delighted to see I was already using so many

• Snacking on nuts and seeds supports acetylcholine production, a rebalancing chemical

• Celebrating little wins produces dopamine. Yeah, I did it, I changed the filters on the hoover!

• Chocolate. Okay, so my go to is a Lint Easter Bunny rather than worthy dark chocolate but I’m sure its just as good for the serotonin

• And I’ve recently discovered Epsom salts in a hot bath – it was on the list,  honest!

The decisive amongst us are 12 times more likely to be high performing than those plagued by procastrination.

Psychological safety

Amanda and her team undertook some research identifying the characteristics of psychologically safe teams or spaces, which include such things such as

• Feeling personally connected,

• Feeling included,

• Appreciating and being appreciated.

While in psychologically unsafe teams or spaces people want to please, feel they have to be nice all the time, defer to leadership, are consensus driven, and seek consistency. All of which leads us back round to our opening idea of the ‘know it all culture’ with its premium on people who think like us and a lack of dissent.

 My thanks to everyone. It was a great event, really one of the better conferences out there.

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Co-Creating Planning Teams For Dialogic OD’, ‘Positive Psychology in Business’ ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management'.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books.

More blog posts categorised as ‘Thought Provoking’ 

How a dose of humility helps leaders succeed

In our narcissistic world the idea that being humble can help us succeed sounds counter-intuitive. Isn’t being successful based on making sure our achievements get noticed?

Well yes, but humility, it turns out, brings some useful things to the party. Let’s start with a definition. A humble leader neither over-estimates nor under-estimates his or her ability to relate to other team members, holding instead a ‘just right’ view of themselves. This fits with lots of research supporting the importance of self-knowledge to successful leadership: we need to know, acknowledge and take responsibility for our towering strengths and our yawing weaknesses.

Creates space for others to develop

Humility shows itself in a focus on others rather than self, through interpersonal modesty, through teachability, and through a willingness to express appreciation of others. This relates humility to other research showing the power of appreciation to help others grow. And supports the idea that a good leader knows how and when to get themselves (or their ego!) ‘out of the way’ to allow others to thrive and grow.

Increases team resources

We assess someone’s degree of humility when we see how they handle conflict, negotiate ideas, deal with power differentials, use wealth, receive honour and engage with cultural differences. I think we can all imagine the kind of person we would rather be around when these situations arise. Demonstrating a degree of humility in these situations makes it easier for the other person, helping them to be at their best in a challenging situation. In this way a leader who is able to show humility increases the resources in their system by allowing others to find their voice and develop confidence, indeed to shine.

Supports good team relationships

Humility, it has been established, is an important relational nutrient that helps people work better together by helping to repair bonds when relationships have become strained. Eating humble pie is an important part of maintaining good relationships with other people and is strongly related with eliciting forgiveness and building trust and commitment. 

Enhances team performance

When a leader leads through example, but exhibiting appropriate humility, it encourages the whole team to relate to each other in a different, more humble way. They become more willing to evaluate themselves accurately, appreciate the strengths of other team members, and to learn from each other. All this in turn encourages enhanced team performance.

Complements leadership drive

Now here is the really interesting bit, research found that exceptional leaders who guide their companies into periods of productive growth and also successfully set them up to continue thriving after their departure, exhibit both drive and humility. What does humility add to drive to produce these exceptional results?

Enhances resilience

One theory is that humility helps to buffer some of the effects of competitiveness and drive, an excess of which is thought to contribute to the high rates of divorce, depression and burnout amongst successful leaders. Bringing humility into the mix allows for a balance of both competition and cooperation which enhances resilience. The humbleness acts to soften interpersonal relationships in such a way that the leader can engage in a highly competitive way without incurring the usual wear and tear on relationships. They are more supported and less isolated.

So, what does this mean for you?

As a leader

·      If you already have the strengths of humility recognize it as an asset, not an obstacle, to successful, resilience leadership

·      If you don’t yet have this as a strength, it may well be one to nurture

·      Learn to use it in appropriate situations

o   To strength the team

o   To repair any damage to relationships

o   To improve team performance

o   To help others be their best

o   To create virtuous circles of cooperation, ‘we’ not ‘I’ thinking that boosts team cohesiveness

As a consultant or coach

·      Recognize this as a potential leadership strength

·      Help your client become skilled in identifying situations that call for humility

·      Assist them in learning how to exercise humility skilfully

Our strengths packs the Langley Group VIA Cards and Positran Strengths cards both include further information on this strength, how to work with it and how to develop it further, as does Ryan Niemiec’s book Character Strength Interventions.

Much of the material in this article was drawn from Davis, Hook DeBlaere and Placeres (2017) in Oades, Steger, Delle Fave and Passmore: The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of The Psychology of Positivity and Strengths-Based Aproaches to Work. 

 Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Co-Creating Planning Teams For Dialogic OD’, ‘Positive Psychology in Business’ ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management'.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books.

More blog posts categorised as ‘Leadership’

Some Challenges Posed by Hybrid Working and How We Can Meet Them

Hybrid working, for many a necessity induced by lockdown, is rapidly becoming a work pattern of choice for the future. Goldman Sachs are one of the few organizations so far to have declared against the trend with their boss David Solomon rejecting the idea of remote working, labelling it an “aberration”. The more common view seems to be that the working pattern has changed for good. Google, for example, expects 20% of staff to work from home permanently in future, while Microsoft is to make remote working a permanent option. This shift towards more flexible working patterns poses some tough questions for managers and leaders.

How is it being done?

1.     Who gets to work in a hybrid way?

An educational organisation I know identified this as a key question as staff began to return to working on the campus after the year of home based working. Each function’s stakeholders had different expectations of instant access, face-to-face contact. It was clear that the same offer of hybrid working couldn’t be made to all staff. How to decide? Nationwide answered this dilemma earlier this year, saying that the 13,000 of its staff who do not work in branches would be allowed to work from wherever they wanted, making for a very clear two-tier role-based system driven by a need for customer access. Is this a fair way to decide? Will staff agree? Which raises a key challenge, whatever route forward is decided, how to ensure it is fair?

2.     How to make it fair?

We know that people’s experience of working from home during lockdown has been highly variable. Some have really appreciated it while for others it’s been a seemingly endless struggle of juggling demands and battling technology. Estate agents report that many people have moved out of the city centres, thrilled at green spaces and lower rents while others, it seems, have experienced extreme pressure on their mental health from isolation or family pressures, and can’t wait to get back to the order and sociability of office life. Any system that assumes the impact of a move to permanent hybrid working is the same for everyone, is unlikely to be perceived as fair.

3.     What will the impact be for the organization?

The big advantages of everyone coming into a central working space tend to be relative ease of communication and information flow (I did say relative!). It is easy to reconfigure the network as needed: call everyone together, split them into small groups, create ad hoc spaces for people to meet and congregate. In this way information snippets get passed on while relationships are stoked and nurtured. Virtual platforms do their best, but they are not the same. The hybrid organization will have to pay special attention to the challenges of connection and communication. It is very easy for those remote from the buzzing centre to miss out on accidental conversations and to quickly feel they’re out of the loop. Once they start feeling disconnected, they can quickly start disconnecting.

4.     How to ensure equality of access to opportunity?

Many of the benefits and perks of working can involve being in the right place at the right time to seize an opportunity, whether that’s an opening to meet a client, a chance to go to a trade show, or an invitation to give a presentation at a meeting. If you hear your colleague or boss fretting about being unable to be in two places at once, you can make the offer to help out. Face to face training sessions often have incidental network boosting benefits that can be nurtured and developed in the coffee break. We can beam colleagues in for the training but enabling them to roam freely in the breaks is impossible to replicate. How to ensure that the more remote workers don’t become out of sight, out of mind when a career-enhancing opportunity arises unexpectedly?

5.     How to ensure hybrid-working doesn’t become hybrid-washing?

It’s no secret that large organizations have spotted a money saving opportunity. HSBC, the UK’s biggest bank, is moving to a hybrid model and plans to cut its property footprint by as much as 40% in the long term, while Lloyds Banking Group has said it will bring in working from home as a permanent lifestyle change, allowing it to cut 20% of its office space. Who will benefit from these savings? It is important that organizations are honest that their motivations to elevate hybrid working from an emergency fix to a modus operandi are multiple and varied and not solely driven by a desire to increase flexibility for staff, if they want the initiative to maintain credibility.

6.     How will the organization continue to develop?

There has been a move over the last thirty odd years to recognize organizations as systems and to work with them as such. Approaches such as Appreciative Inquiry and Dialogic OD are predicated on the benefits of getting the whole system together to address development challenges and opportunities as an inter-connected, inter-dependent living system. How can this be done if people aren’t able to gather in the same physical space?

What helps?

1.     Pay attention to perceptions of fairness

Equity theory and research has made it plain that perception of fairness is key to feeling fairly treated; and that are perceptions of fairness are made by comparison by those around us. We compare what we put and what we get in return against what we see others put in and receive. We also value different things, and so experience their loss or gain differently. My son, who regards work as a necessary evil and values his leisure time highly, had to continue to go into work during lockdown and thought it mightily unfair that many of his mates were on furlough. Many of them though, were bored and lonely, drifting from day to day and would rather have been busy with work. All this means that while stakeholder expectations might dictate who can work away from the central office, attention will need to be paid to the specific impact for individuals. The greater the choice individuals have in accepting changes in their working patterns, the more individual preferences can be accommodated, and the greater the attention paid to perceptions of fairness, then the greater the likelihood of maintaining good motivation and morale.

2.     Make the shift from thinking of physical place to virtual space for development activities

One of the big adjustments for organisational development practitioners was how to run team development, training sessions or organisational change processes in an online environment.  We gathered and shared information on resources and apps and learnt that it was different, but it could be done. Consultant Gwen Stirling-Wilkins moved from thinking that bringing groups together to host and facilitate transformative change was unlikely to be productive, or effective, to writing a book about her experiences of successfully doing just this, leading and delivering a transformational project entirely online with 600+ people from five organizations, none of whom she ever met physically. Her book ‘From Physical Place to Virtual Space’ pulls together all her learning as a pioneer and is highly recommended.

3.     Make use of new online tools to enhance the online environment

There is an explosion of apps attempting to humanise the virtual workspace. From a psychology perspective I want to mention Deckhive, an online training app that has a fantastic and growing set of cards to support all sorts of training and development activity. The card sets include strengths, positive organisational development, motivation, creativity, coaching questions and emotions. They are useful for online coaching, performance reviews, career counselling, team development, training sessions and even organisational development. Moving, flipping and sorting cards on a virtual tabletop is as near as you can get to physically manipulating cards. I find it invaluable in making training sessions as experiential as possible.

4.     Pay attention to the rewards in the environment

There are rewards associated with social environments: smiles, verbal strokes (appreciation, thanks, compliments), shared laughter, physicality, shared non-verbal communication (winks, raised eyebrows, complicit smiles), acts of generosity (‘oh I’ll get these’ at the coffee bar). All these little incidental ‘blips’ of positive emotion have an effect on our sense of mood, wellbeing and morale. It is this continuous drip-feed of mood boosting interactions that is difficult to replicate in a virtual environment. Conscious effort needs to be made to introduce jokes, quizzes, rounds of positive news sharing and other mood boosting and rewarding activities into the online environment. And take a ten-minute break every fifty minutes minimum, if you want to maintain online energy.

5.     Review and revise

For many organizations going hybrid so extensively is going to be a new experience. Treat it as an experiment. Don’t assume you are going to get, or have got, it right first time. As the pressure on everyone to work from home all the time lessens, take time to discover what you, as an organization, have learnt so far about what works and what doesn’t. Plan how to build on that, then review how the new arrangements are working for everyone after six months: is the work pattern working for clients and stakeholders? Does the new work pattern feel fair? Is everyone getting fair exposure to opportunity? How are the work patterns impacting the organization (look for the unexpected consequences, good and bad) How are they impacting individual, team and organisational growth and development?

The shift over the last twelve months to hybrid working patterns has been emergency driven and ad hoc in execution. We have the opportunity now, as the ship steadies, of transforming them into intentional, strategic, thought-through beneficial ways of working that offer a win-win for people and the organization. This won’t happen by accident or by assuming what’s worked for the last twelve months will be good enough for the next. Instead we need to take stock, learn, re-negotiate the possible and launch pro-active plans that recognize the complexity of the opportunity, and the challenges it holds.

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Positive Psychology in Business’ ‘Positive Psychology at Work’, ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ and most recently ‘Co-creating Planning Teams For Dialogic OD’. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management'.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books.

More blog posts categorised as ‘Coronavirus’

Strengths and the Imposter Syndrome: The generative power of world cafe

Last year I ran an evening event I called a Learning Network Event. The purpose of the evening was to provide a space for those interested in positive psychology to share and learn from each other in a gently facilitated way. We used a world café process to stimulate conversation and to ensure cross-pollination amongst those present.

During the event I had a really powerful experience of the cross-pollination potential of the world café process when I had a 'shiver down the spine' moment as I suddenly saw a link between two conversations in which I was involved. 

In the first one we were discussing 'imposter syndrome': one of our group was currently doing a Ph.D. investigation into this common yet disturbing workplace phenomena. It’s a very interesting topic which resonated with those present. 

A short while later I was part of a conversation talking about how knowing our strengths allows us to understand better how we can be a success at our jobs - especially when we don't fit the 'template' for the role. We realised that knowing our strengths allows us to construct an authentic story about how we are succeeding, that may stand in contrast to the dominant story of what is required to succeed in the role. 

During this conversation a story was shared of by one person who was involved in sales. She talked about how understanding her strengths helped her recognise it was her relational strengths that enabled her to be good at sales even though she didn't see herself as a 'typical salesperson'.

Around this point of the evening I had my brain tingling moment as I put two thoughts together. I swear I could almost feel the neurons firing as I realised that we can pull these two thoughts together and put forward an argument about how imposter syndrome might arise. 

Could it be that part of the reason we experience imposter syndrome is because we don't 'see ourselves' as being like the kind of person who usually succeeds in this role; that we have no understanding of how we might succeed and so see ourselves as 'imposters' - getting by on luck and chance? 

If so, then understanding our strengths and how they relate to our abilities in our role can help us construct a story about how it is possible for us to be 'good at this' or 'a success at this' that makes sense to us and feels authentic. Might knowing our strengths and understanding how they help us to succeed be an antidote to the debilitating, anxiety-inducing, vulnerability-creating experience of feeling like an imposter liable to be exposed for the fraud we are at any moment?

For me the event demonstrated the power of world café to produce genuinely generative conversation: I had a new thought and for me that is one of the best feelings in the world!

What kind of conversation are you having today?

In many workplaces conversation is regarded as an adjunct to the real work of getting stuff done. All too often a request for a conversation is experienced as an interruption, a distraction from real work. Seen as a necessary evil, the objective is to complete the conversation as quickly as possible so all involved can get back to work. While the topic of conversation may be regarded as important, the quality of conversation doesn’t even register. This is very unfortunate as the quality of any conversation will have an impact beyond the moment. 

The information and ideas that follow come from the excellent recent publication ‘Conversations worth having’ by Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres,bar the table and graph which I generated from their writing. I have found this classification extremely helpful in thinking about the nature of conversation.

The quality of conversation affects people’s emotional state, their ability to learn or take advice, their creativity in problem-solving or generating initiative, their motivation, and their action potential e.g. the likelihood of them doing something appropriate and useful after the conversation. It will also affect their willingness to engage in future conversations. In this way every conversation is potentially an investment in the culture, creativity and productivity of the organization. 

This means every conversation has an impact on the quality of organisational life. Each conversation while a small thing in itself is part of huge construction: the organisational culture. How it feels to be a member of the organization, to work in the organization, to attempt to improve the organization is determined by our day to day interactions: our daily work conversations.

So we are wise to give some thought to the nature of conversation in organizations. Conversations in the workplace can be classified along two key dimensions or axis: inquiry to statement, appreciative to depreciative, as the table below shows. Each combination of dimensions generates a different quality of conversation.

For example, conversations can be conducted from an appreciative or depreciative stance. In general terms, those conducted from an appreciativestance are likely to add value as people share ideas and build on the ideas of others. In addition, people’s contributions will be acknowledged, opportunities identified, new perspectives generated and possibilities for action created. Such conversations create upwards spirals of confidence and optimism. These conversations serve to strengthen connections, enhance relationships and expand awareness. People experience meaningful engagement.

By contrast conversations conducted from adepreciative perspective, where people advocate for their own ideas and ignore or actively criticize those of others, are likely to be experienced as belittling and critical. In such conversations people are focused on pointing out why things won’t work. They may be dominated by a few strong characters. Such conversations are likely to weaken connections and strain relationships, to reinforce existing assumptions and to eclipse people’s potential i.e. to limit possibility and movement forward.

Inquiry-basedconversations are based on questions. Conducted from an appreciative perspective, the aim of the questions is to generate information, to reveal hidden assumptions perspectives or knowledge or to expand awareness. They aim to make room for the emergence of possibility and opportunity or to deepen understanding and initiate change. Such conversations are likely to build relationships, awareness and connections. People are likely to feel valued in such conversations. We can see that this is where the practice of Appreciative Inquiry is located. From a depreciativeperspective they are likely to consist of rhetorical and negative questions that are pejorative. People are likely to feel that they and their efforts are devalued in such a conversation.

Statement-basedconversations consist mostly of comments. Offered from anappreciativeperspective these are likely to be experienced as affirming. The comments will be positive as well as add value in the way they respond to questions or point to important facts. They are likely to be experienced as validating and to have a positive impact on people and situations. Conversations conducted from a depreciativeperspective are likely to be focused on criticism and blame, they are likely to be a non-validating experience.

In general, the two appreciative focused conversations are likely to be more beneficial to individuals and the organization. The different characteristics of the two appreciative focused conversations are interesting, as reflected in the table below

The important difference being that appreciative and generativeconversations are more likely to result in change. The difference lies in the power of questions to promote change in thinking and action.

The tell-tale signs of an appreciative conversation are recognised as the presence of energy, creativity and positive emotions. Importantly critical conversations can be effective when balanced with strong relationships formed as the result of predominantly appreciative conversations. Destructive conversations are likely only to be damaging to those present and the wider organization.

With thanks to Jackie and Cheri: Stavros, J and Torres, C. (2018) Conversations worth having. Berrett-Koehler

Did you know? Build in Wellbeing from the beginning

Lots of people feel instinctively that happiness and wellbeing at work must be important. But are they a business necessity or a ‘nice to have’. Surely it makes more sense to ensure your business is profitable and thriving before you start worrying about how people feel?

Increasingly research suggests that investing in employee wellbeing by ensuring positive work relationships, an emphasis on strengths-based development, and worker happiness has productivity pay-offs. So why delay, start promoting positive psychology practices at work today!

Our happiness and wellbeing is at least partly within our control - and it matters!

Here is a selection of evidence-based support for the promotion of positive psychology e.g. happiness and wellbeing at work. It is clear from the evidence that a large component of the happiness we feel is within our control, and that many, more than 50% of the population, are functioning at a less than optimal state. And that our emotional state affects our performance and productivity at work:

1)    40% of the variation we experience in our sense of happiness, compared to others, is within our control. 10% is due to circumstances beyond our control and 50% due to our genetic make-up and inheritance which dictates our set point of happiness. Our 40% is influenced by ‘intentional activity’. In other words we can affect the happiness of ourselves and others. The research behind this assertion is based on twin studies (the genetic component) and the long-lasting effect of changing circumstances on happiness levels (the circumstances) leaving 40% of the variation due to individual actions.

2)    54% of Americans are ‘moderately mentally healthy’ meaning they aren’t mentally ill but they lack great enthusiasm for life and are not actively and productively engaged with the world. 11% languish – just above clinical depression.

3)    Exercise can be as effective at treating clinical depression as medication, and have an effect for longer.

4)    People whose managers focus on their strengths as 2.5x more likely to be engaged at work than those whose managers focus on their weaknesses.

5)    Highly engaged employees take, on average, 3 sick days per annum, actively disengaged employees , 6+ per year.

6)    The least happy employees average 6 days absence a year, the most happy 1.5, in the UK and USA. Liking your colleagues produces the same absence correlation.

7)    Engaged employees give 57% more discretionary effort at work.

8)    Doctors in a positive mood before making a diagnosis make the correct diagnosis 19% faster than those who were in a neutral state.

9)    In a major fast food company an intervention to reduce management turnover (the retention of managers being a major problem for this sector) the approach using AI led to a retention rate 30% higher than when problem-solving techniques were used.

10) The happiest people at work are 180% more energised than the unhappiest, they contribute 25% more and achieve their goals 30% more. They are 47% more productive meaning they are contributing a day and a quarter more than their least happy colleagues per week.

11) The most happy are 50% more motivated than the least happy. 

12) People who are happier are 25% more effective and efficient than those who are least happy.

13) Feelings and behaviour are contagious: negative behaviour has a ripple effect to two degrees, but positive behaviour can reach to three degrees.

14) The more you want recognition, the less you want money in its place.

15) We lose 40% of our productivity flip-flopping between tasks – three lost hours in a typical 8-hour day.

Sources

These findings are collated from various sources, including particularly the work of Pryce-Jones and Lyubomirsky.

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management'.

See more Engagement, Leadership Skills, Performance Management and Positive Psychology articles articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books

Making your own mission

Anyone who has ever tried to assemble flat pack furniture will know that vague or unclear instructions can be of as little use as no instructions. Yet how many times do we receive requests from higher management to ‘Increase employee engagement’, ‘heighten brand awareness’, ‘Improve office culture’ or ‘Streamline work processes’. Indeed we may be guilty of issuing such directives. Orders such as these that do not have specific measurable outcomes, or direction as to how management wants them to be fulfilled, they are mere vague desires disguised in management jargon.

Negative Outcomes

Unfortunately, it is not often appropriate or good for one’s career to highlight these concerns to those who issued these vague objectives. but leaving them unaddressed leads to negative outcomes such as:

·      Lack of focus and motivation in individuals

·      Deterioration in office culture

·      Low morale

·      Uncoordinated or unproductive actions

·      Teams working for mutually exclusive goals

·      Loss of confidence in leadership

·      Loss of ambitious staff

These effects of unclear goal setting in an office environment can result in lost revenue and employee dissatisfaction.

Case Study

To help us understand the potential consequences of poor mission setting, and to see what a leader who finds himself in this situation can do, let’s examine the actions of Colonel Richard Westley, O.B.E., M.C., who  found himself in exactly this situation in 1995 during the genocidal war in Bosnia.

Just like the now infamous town of Srebrenica, Gorazde is small Muslim Bosniak town in the mainly Christian Serb south of Bosnia. In 1995 British Army sent a small group of troops under United Nations authority to Gorazde. Their orders were twofold:

·      Serve as the eyes and ears of future N.A.T.O./U.N. action

·      To protect the civilian populations of the designated safe areas against armed attacks and other hostile acts, through the presence of its troops and, if necessary, through the application of air power, in accordance with agreed procedure

There were no planned future actions by N.A.T.O. or the U.N. at that point and so no direction as to what information to prioritise gathering. And through the vague terminology ‘serve as the eyes and ears’, no direction as to what kind of intelligence gathering to focus on. It also did not specify what ‘other hostile acts’ included, what the ‘agreed procedure’ was or most importantly give any indication as to how the mere ‘presence’ of several hundred lightly armed peacekeepers will deter several thousand heavily armed and highly motivated Serbs. Especially considering that the ‘application of air power’ turned out to be non-existent.

Defining the Mission

However, he and his immediate superior knew the risks of not having a clear mission and decided on a simple solution; to make their own. This lead Colonel Westley and his immediate superior to devise their own, more specific objectives:

·      To prevent any Serbian encroachments into any part of the U.N. outlined Safe zone of Gorazde, with force if necessary

·      To prevent any Bosniak forays out of the U.N. safe zone of Gorazde

·      To establish a strong psychological presence to both sides by operating on both sides on the exclusion line (i.e. patrolling outside the safe zone and establishing freedom of action, showing they won’t be bullied)

·      To prevent civilian casualties as much as possible

·      To neutrally liaise between the two sides when possible

·      To update U.N. command to any developments in and around the safe zone such as troop build ups, violations of the safe zone or humanitarian emergencies

What this meant in practice was the decision to change from peace keepers to peace enforcers. By redefining their mission in this clearer and more aggressive way, adopting a  stance to actively hold the ring between the two forces come what may, and to protect civilians at any cost, it removed any doubt in the ranks as to why they were being deployed far from home somewhere they had never heard of.  It also allowed the British to establish a stronger defensive position and gave them a stronger negotiating position.

This contrasts with other UN peacekeepers in the area who:

·      Were constrained by U.N. agreed procedure in the threat of force and use of force to counter Serbian violations

·      Suffered a progressive loss of morale caused by an inability to influence events

·      Gave full initiative to the Serbian forces in the region and emboldened them

·      Undermined U.N. military credibility in the region

·      Became overly dependant on negotiation

Opposing Outcomes

Around two months after the British deployment the Serbs attempted to capture Gorazde and then Srebrenica. At Gorazde, they encountered immediate and effective resistance on the ridges around the town at the extreme edge of the exclusion zone from prepared and motivated British troops.  This gave the Bosniak soldiers of Gorazde time to move up to these ridges out of their own exclusion zone, relieve the British peacekeepers and protect the town themselves. It is important to note that Colonel Westley was aware that firstly the small U.N. force would never stop the Serbs on their own and secondly that whoever controlled the ridges around Gorazde, but between the two exclusion zones of both Serbs and Bosniaks, controlled Gorazde.  So, he called on Bosniak forces as soon as fighting began to prevent a massacre, against U.N. procedure.

However, in the proceeding months at Srebrenica, another European force had allowed the Serbs to take 30 of their soldiers hostage to use as human shields against air power, allowed them to seize several observation points around the town without resistance, and, allowed high ranking Serbian officers into the town which spread discord and did not fully enforce the exclusion zone around the town. This meant that when the Serbs chose to seize the town and murder all the males, the peacekeeping force were in no position to resist and had lost the will to do so. As unfortunate or tragic as these actions look in retrospect at each stage the UN soldiers were attempting to follow their vague orders while not overstepping them, and were being constrained by U.N. procedure. Remember they were only to protect the safe area’s ‘through the PRESENCE of its troops’, not explicitly through their actions. 

Redefining over Interpreting the Mission

Colonel Westley pursued a smaller but more defined mission while giving himself more freedom of action and was thus able to focus on and prepare for the worst eventualities. Whereas as the other force dissipated their effort on several contradictory aims meaning they achieved none of them and lost focus on the main goal of preventing ethnic cleansing. Proving that interpreting an instruction is not the same as redefining it. Interpreting a mission in your own way is a refinement of a flawed instruction and will inherit many of those original flaws, redefining a mission is a paradigm shift resulting in a completely new mental framework in which to address the problem.  

This is an extreme example but a common outcome of unclear goal setting and a heroic but simple example of how to avoid that fate. Individuals, teams, departments and companies all work better towards a clear, defined and measurable goal. So, when you receive that next aspirational contradictory pie in the sky instruction from upper management, or indeed if you are in danger of issuing it, don’t ignore it but redefine it.

Redefine in a way that’s

·      Concise,

·      Easy to understand,

·      Measurable and

·      Achievable,

So, doing a few things right is a lot better than doing many things wrong.     

Other Resources

The book itself - Positive Psychology And Change, published by Wiley.

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology for Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management'.

See more, Leadership, Leadership Skills and Though Provoking articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

Book Review – Holocracy The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy: Brian Robertson (Originally published in AI Practitioner)

Why this book?

This book claims to offer an alternative way of organizing that breaks away from the command and control model or as Brain calls it ‘the predict and control’ model. This seemed sufficiently in line with our aspirations to warrant further investigation.

Brief account of the book

The book has noble, honourable and inspiring intentions: it offers holocracy as a ‘new operating system’ for organizations that will create a ‘peer-to-peer distributed authority system’. This operating system creates empowered people who are clear about the boundaries of their authority, about what they can expect from others, and are able to be highly effective in their roles.

In this model the organizing process itself becomes the ultimate power, more than any individual, and every individual can have a voice in designing and altering the process. It is a flat system of roles and links that delivers high autonomy. It is predicated on a system of roles (essentially disembodied job descriptions), decision-making circles (meetings by another name) and a process of links. It bravely attempts both to relieve leaders of the pressure of the demand of omnipotence, and to make it possible for weak signals of dysfunction, lack of alignment, gaps in accountability, missed opportunities etc. to be attended to promptly and effectively by empowered individuals. It offers a clear process for distinguishing working in the business from working on the business. It presents a view of strategy as ‘dynamic steering’ by simple rules or principles towards a general purpose. In this way it attempts to simulate evolutionary development processes and indeed sees itself as an evolutionary model.

Holocracy - Too much to ask?

Reading this book was an interesting experience. The book is a ‘how to’ book and it sets out the process model in great detail, describing the purpose of key facilitator roles and the process of key tactical and governance meetings (circles in the terminology of the model). It’s not hard to tell that the author and originator of this model has a software development background. My initial impression reading it was reminiscent of getting to grips with the complex board games of Allies and Axis that my sons and husband loved to play some years ago: a complex set of rules about the properties and powers of various pieces and cards subject to the rules of the dice. In the early stages as much time was spent consulting the rule-book as playing the game. As I read on I realised there was a strong binary flavour underpinning much of the process, an ‘if this then that’ logic driven by an implicit flow chart of binary decision-making. The author’s argument is that these tight constraints work to create an empowered freedom within them. However it is noticeable that much of the instruction reads ‘no discussion allowed’ as the process is strictly followed. In essence he is trying to programme out the negative aspects of the human element in this organizing process and to create an organisational process that functions effectively despite the emotional and relational wayward behaviour of people. This takes a lot of discipline on the part of all the players; which is to say it takes organizational energy.

The author is honest enough to point out that this new process doesn’t always ‘take’ in organizations despite various people’s interest, energy and support. He identifies that the key challenge, which is also at the heart of the model’s power, is the need for those with current power in the system to give it up. The author is of the opinion that after an initial period of painful discipline, the benefits will become clearer to all and the process will become more self-maintaining. It is clear that not all organizations make it over the hump. Similarly, while initially he took a whole-system ‘all or nothing’ approach to implementation, he has since softened his views and in this book he offers a chapter on holocracy-lite possibilities that offers guidance on how to implement parts of the process.

In summary

The book is well written, offering a clear and detailed explanation of the holocracy organizing process with a worked case study and anecdotes from experience used to illuminate how the various meetings and roles work.

My take on the model presented

This model is likely to appeal to those who have great faith in rationality and like highly structured, detailed and disciplined processes. In this sense it reads as very bureaucratic. It put me in mind of LEAN, another process that, in theory, makes perfect sense, however in practice often takes a lot of energy to maintain. Both demand great human discipline. Robertson is clear that the role of facilitator ‘requires that you override your instinct to be polite or ‘nice’ and that you cut people off if they speak out of turn’, amongst other skills and abilities. In this way it is trying to programme out the emotional irrational human decision-making influences such as ego, fear and group think, to create a less contaminated system of governance.

In many ways this model seems aligned to Appreciative Inquiry and co-creative ways of thinking. For example it is more wedded to biological than mechanical metaphors, it prioritises adaptability over predictability, and it is focused on releasing collective intelligence within a leader-ful organization. However, it seems to work against human nature, or human psychology, rather than with it. It is this constant fight against core features of human systems that, in my opinion, is at the heart of the gap between the promise of these kinds of models and the frequent experience of the lived reality.

However, I do think it offers a real, well thought out, and to some extend tried and tested alternative to our current creaking-under-the-strain-in-the-modern-era command and control organisational model. It will be interesting to see to what extent it is adapted across the organizational domain and I would love to hear from anyone who has either direct experience of working in an organization based on this model, or who has attended training on it.

Other Resources

Much more about organisational change can be found in Sarah’s new book Positive Psychology and Change

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology for Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management'.

See more Book Reviews and other Emergent Change, Leadership Skills and Organisational Development Strategy articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

Why We Need To Do Change Differently

In the twenty-first century we need to be doing change differently. Whole-system change methodologies such as Appreciative Inquiry and World Café offer alternative ways of creating organisational change and are explained in my new book Positive Psychology and Change

So Why Do We Need To Do Change Differently

1. Because the old ways are too slow and hard

Traditionally change has been a top-down, linear, compliance process; first designed and then implemented. In today’s fast paced world this takes too long and is too hard. People resist the pressure. Instead we need change that is whole-system owned and generated, focused on maximising tomorrow not fixing yesterday.

2. Because the future is created by our actions and our imagination

Forecasting is tricky in an unpredictable world of disjointed and disruptive change. When it’s hard to plan a future we need to use our imagination to create attractive possibilities that inspire us, co-ordinate our efforts and pull us forward. Our analytic powers help us analyse data, our imaginative powers create hope, optimism and forward motion i.e. change.

3. Because organisational growth is a systemic phenomena

The evidence is mounting that good work places and profitability can grow together; that beyond a certain point of profitability-establishment greater returns come from investing in social capital features like workforce morale, camaraderie, worker benefits, and community action. And from ensuring that employees feel hopeful, encouraged and appreciated.

Timberland, Merek Corporation, Cascade, Synovus Financial Corporation, FedEx Freight, Southwest Airlines, The Green Mountain Coffee Corporation, Fairmount Minerals and the Marine Corp are all testament to the possibility of doing the right thing and doing well. The current edition of Firms of Endearment lists 28 US publicly funded companies, 29 US private companies and 15 Non-US companies that are good organizations and exceptionally profitable.

4. Because relational reserves are key to change resilience

Organisational resilience, an attribute called on during change, is as important to organisational change success as financial reserves. Relational reserves are an expression of the accumulated goodwill and mutual trust that helps organizations bounce-back quicker from disruption or trauma.

5. Because we need to conceive of successful change differently

Pushing change into, down or through an organization takes too long. We need ways of achieving organization change that allow action to happen simultaneously in an interconnected way across the organization, not as a dependent series of actions. To relish this we need to recast our understanding of both change and success to allow the celebration of adaptation, direction shift and even project abandonment, rather than viewing these as signs of failure.

6. Because mistakes can be costly

Separating the change shapers from the change implementers and recipients can be costly as errors in understanding, judgement and knowledge only come to light when time and money (not to mention hope and commitment) have already been invested. People pointing out such challenges late in the day risk being labelled as obstructive or resistant. Better to involve those who will be effecting any changes from the very beginning.

7. Because change needs more buyers and less sellers

Have you ever walked into a shop, money in hand, keen to buy only to leave empty-handed frustrated by the salesperson’s emphasis on selling rather than listening to you? Maybe they dazzled with jargon, or listed irrelevant features, or tried to push their favourite version on to you despite its unsuitability to your situation? At its worse organisational change can feel like a bad sales job. Good salespeople ask questions and listen before they talk, so should organizations.

8. Because we need to use our intelligence

The world is a demanding place to do business. Organizations need to be able to access the intelligence of all involved. We need leaderful organizations not leader-dependent ones.

Much more about the need to do change differently and guidance on how to do it, can be found in my new book Positive Psychology and Change

Other Resources

Much more about strengths and managerial techniques such as the ones mentioned here can be found in Sarah’s new book Positive Psychology and Change

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology for Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management', by Kogan Page, the second edition is out in September.

See more Change, Leadership, Resistance To Change and Thought Provoking articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

Eight High-Value Ways To Access Our Expertise

1. Use Our Learning and Development Activity Support Card Packs

Over the past year we have assembled a range of card packs to support development activities from coaching to strategy development. In particular we have our own Positive Organisational Development Cards that condense the wisdom of positive psychology into questions and action suggestions across twenty themes, from leadership to positive emotions. We also have a selection of Strengths Cards suitable for groups across the organisation. And we have a range of other cards to enable work with Values, Behaviour, Expertise and Emotional Intelligence. While many have free downloadable pdf guides, all are highly versatile, easily portable and great value!

Click Here

2. Play The Happiness at Work Game

We are very proud to be the sole European distributor for this excellent learning and development tool. Packed with practical ways to apply positive psychology to work place challenges, the game format encourages valuable in-depth discussion of the different ideas, approaches and options. The challenge cards outline common workplace situations, while the answer cards offer a wide range of behavioural tips to encourage greater happiness or wellbeing, reduce stress levels, improve performance and strengthen their relationships. A wonderful feature of the game is that some of the answer cards suggest that you ‘do it now’, allowing participants to experience the power of the suggested activity in the moment. This in turn facilitates deeper connection and learning in the group. Save yourself the cost of a facilitator and self-facilitate yourself a great team development session.

Click Here

3. Prepare With Our Practical E-books

We are developing a range of practical e-books to support first line managers with some of the early challenges of management. In PDF format they are instantly downloadable, offering instant help! Each book contains easy to follow guidance and words of advice. In addition practical pull-out planning tools are included to support preparation, and to ensure that purpose and success criteria are clarified before the event. These can be photocopied and used again and again. So far we have one on Courageous Conversations and another on Great Meetings with more under development. Less than the price of a meal out, they allow you to save on training costs and encourage self-directed learning. Let us know about any other topics you think would be valuable.

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4. Pick our Brains

We recognize that sometime you just want to ask the expert a few questions about something you are planning to do or something that is bothering you. You don’t necessarily want to engage a permanent coach, you just want to spend up to an hour of your time getting high quality advice quickly. Our ‘pick our brains’ service is designed precisely to meet this need. Save yourself time and money by speaking to us directly.

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5. Buy An ‘Off the Shelf’ Learning And Development Session

If you have the facilitation and training skills but just aren’t familiar with a particular topic area than this off the shelf session is for you. At present we offer The Complete Positive Strategic and Leadership Development Kit, The Complete Positive Team Development Kit, The Complete Positive and Appreciative Coaching Kit and The Complete Leadership Team Culture Kit, with more under development. We supply facilitator notes and any of our tools that you need for the session plus a useful carrier, pen and notebook.  Once you have the kit you can use it again and again, saving the cost of an external facilitator every time.

Click Here

6. Read Our Books

Sarah has written two books that distil her knowledge and experience of working with organizations. Positive Psychology at Work gives practical advice about leadership, performance, workplace culture, and team development for example. While Positive Psychology and Change is focused on large scale organisational change, offering practical advice on applying positive psychology to the challenge and introducing dialogue methodologies such as Open Space, Simu-Real and Appreciative Inquiry. In addition Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management is targeted at both those new to Appreciative Inquiry and more experienced practitioners, to extend their practice. Gain access to Sarah’s extensive experience at a fraction of the price of having her come in!

Click Here

7. Watch Our Videos

These are a completely free resource. Only a few minutes long they take short topics and explain them in plain English. For example we have videos addressing How to Work with Skeptics, Planning in Uncertain Times, and Why You Should Ask Appreciative Questions.

Click Here

8. Commission a Webinar

This can run in real time or be sent pre-recorded. It can be the whole session or part of a session. It can be a presentation or it can include questions and answers. Or we can organise a google-plus hangout. And we are willing to engage with any other favourite technology of yours to facilitate our ‘presence at a distance’ in your training session. Have Sarah or any of our other experts be part of your session at a fraction of the price of flying her in!

Click Here

And of course, if you would like us to come to you to help with your change process, or to run an in-house training or development session, we would be delighted to help!

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology for Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management, by Kogan Page, the second edition is out in September.

Other Resources

Much more about strengths and managerial techniques such as the ones mentioned here can be found in Sarah’s new book Positive Psychology and Change

See more How To, Team Development, Appreciative Inquiry, Card Guides and Leadership articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of the best L&D Tools are available from the website shop.

Entrepreneurs And Owners - Five questions that will add value to your bottom line

Save smart - make savings and improvements without the hidden costs

In the quest for ever great efficiencies, productivity and general cost saving, a few key questions can open up new avenues to improve performance and profitability.

1. How can we learn from our best performers?

An over-attachment to a view of organizations as a set of roles and role behaviours, with expected minimum standards of performance can blind us to the exceptional performance of the our best staff. Focused on trying to prevent our worst performers from costing us money, we don’t always focus on really examining how our best performers make or save us money. Research into these examples of positive deviance has demonstrated that there are distinctions between the best and the rest; and that these distinctions can frequently be small and replicable by others.

For example Atul Gawande, a general surgeon, was interested to learn more about how the increase in life expectation for people with cystic fibrous had been achieved. The first hospital he visited had a good track record and an array of processes and procedures for treating and supporting those with CF. He was impressed. Then he visited the top performing hospital where the life expectation of people with CF under its care is almost double the average.  What he found was while they too provided excellent care in all areas, they had one further by identifing one key feature, lung capacity, that made the key difference. It was the single-minded care and effort that went into supporting people to maintain or improve their lung capacity that seemed to be the distinguishing feature. This is not someone he could have learnt by studying the worst performing hospitals. Someone in your organization demonstrating double the sales figures, or twice the academic success rate? Be curious. Study and learn.

2. How much is this saving costing us?

When people or organizations focus in on areas where savings might lie, and start to implement processes to realise those savings, they don’t always account for the hidden costs of administering the process or achieving compliance. For example insisting that all requests for housing repairs are submitted to be assessed and approved by a manager might seem a good cost control idea. However as some Housing Associations have realised, the hidden costs of bureaucracy and close scrutiny can be greater than the cost of many minor repairs. If the bureaucratic delay means that the situation then escalates into a formal complaint or dispute then costs rise more and senior manager time starts to be eaten into. Some housing organizations have started to give front line staff direct access to budget to authorise payment for repairs. Not only has the overall repair budget not risen, but the benefits of engaged and committed staff who feel they can really make a timely difference and be helpful, and more satisfied clients, have been a real bonus to organisational culture and reputation.

In the same vein I recently read that the administration of the competitive tendering process in the NHS, that is the bureaucratic, managerial and legal costs, are conservatively estimated at £10 billion every year (and that’s not counting the time spent by those hopeful of securing a contract submitting exhaustive tender applications for relatively small contracts.) So we know how much the ‘saving’ is costing the NHS, do we know how much it is saving in real terms?

3. What behaviour do we want and what behaviour are we rewarding?

Over time perverse incentives creep into organisational life. As people make changes, launch initiatives or develop projects misalignments can occur between the desired behaviour and the behaviour rewarded by the contingences of the system. An example I have come across a few times concerns sales people. Rewarding sales people on their individual sales is a time honoured effective motivational system for many sales staff. However, it is not uncommon for an organisation to realise at some point that they are missing out on opportunities for cross-selling, either across products or between areas. They introduce a load of cross-product training and encourage people to try to sell other products, or introduce their colleagues to their clients. To spend time doing this, if the reward system hasn’t changed, is perverse since it lessens the time available for selling more of the thing you do get rewarded for. So there is a perverse incentive in the system not to spend time cross-selling.

4. How can we help people spend more time doing things they enjoy and less time doing things they don’t?

It is not always apparent to people the high cost of trying to get people to do things for which they have no aptitude, and less liking. Firstly when people have little aptitude for a part of their role the return on investment of trying to train them in it can be invisible. In other words hours of management time might be devoted to improving skills in this area to little avail. Secondly, even the most conscientious of people will be drawn towards putting off those parts of their job they dread, while the less driven find endless ways not to be in a position to do the hated deed. Somehow we get focused on the short-term objective, getting this person to this, and lose sight of the bigger picture which is just that a particular outcome needs to be achieved; not necessarily in this way, not necessarily by this person. In other words, sometimes we would be better off to step back and ask ‘Who would be better suited to this task?’ or ‘How else can we achieve this objective?’

On the other hand we know that people using their natural strengths, all other things being equal, are usually highly motivated, engaged and productive. Doing what we feel good doing is motivating, struggling with things about which we feel a hopeless inadequacy and dread (note this is different to being at the beginning of an eagerly anticipated learning curve) is demotivating. Demotivated people are a cost to your business.

5. How can we make our workplace a great place to be?

To some extent sickness absence is a discretionary behaviour. Clearly at one extreme we are too ill to rise from the bed, while at the other we are bursting with health and vitality. But between these extremes is the grey zone: tired, hung-over, bit down, cold coming on, bit head-achy, it could be flu etc. Two factors affect whether that person decides to go into work or take a day off. The push or pull factors of the alternatives e.g. the pull of a sunny day or the push of all my mates are away and I’ve no money to spend; and, the push and pull factors of work. Push factors might include being fed up with the work they’ve got at the moment, problems with colleagues or feelings about their managers while pull factors include loving the work, enjoying the company, feeling appreciated on a daily basis, believing your presence makes a real difference and feelings of mutuality and loyalty. Obviously you don’t want anyone coming in when they shouldn’t and spreading infectious diseases, but beyond that a great place to work is likely to have a positive effect on attendance rates.

Other Resources

Much more about the features of co-creative change, guidance on how to do it, and practical information about on the key methodologies mentioned here can be found in Sarah’s new book Positive Psychology and Change

See more articles on Leadership in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Working with the need for convergence in a divergent conversation

Appreciative Inquiry and other co-creative methodologies are essentially divergent ways of working together; the emphasis is on the value of diversity and variety. Such ways of working can trigger a pressure to converge on a few key points very early in the process, indeed sometimes before the event has even begun. This pressure can be the expression of various different needs, for example:

• The need for sense of coherence and co-ordination
• The need for sense of moving forward or making progress
• The need for a reassurance that there is a degree of commonality amongst the differences and divergence being expressed (that the group isn’t going to splinter)
• A request for amplification of points of agreement (a visibility of commonality)
• A need for a convincing story for other audiences of the value of the day
• A desire for a record of the intellectual learning, to accompany the experiential learning of the participants
• A request for tangibility
• A demand for a guarantee that something different will now happen

At its root this is often a request for a reassurance that there is a positive, sustainable momentum to action that won’t die the moment the session ends; this fear is often based on prior experience of away-days. There is often a fear that the day is ‘just a talking shop’ and that unless clear outcomes and actions are written down ‘nothing will happen’.

In addition, our ‘emergent’ ‘exploratory’ ‘unfolding’ description of how the day will run can feel very alarming to those commissioning our work, such as leaders, used to much more controlled ‘facilitation’. A focus on the need to converge can be a request for reassurance that the ‘complexity and diversity’ they are agreeing to work with can, in the end, be drawn back to somewhere safe and contained.

Ways to moderate this demand, so that it doesn’t distract from the day’s activities include:

• Bringing the leaders and other audiences into the event so they experience the change in the room, in the system, in the moment. This reduces the reliance on ‘planning’ as the driver of change.
• Working to help leaders understand that their role in this kind of change is to ‘ride’ the energy it produces; to co-ordinate activities rather than to command and control them. This reduces their feeling of needing to understand everything all at once.
• Working with leaders on their unchallenged or unquestioned stories of leadership, helping them behave differently around change and leadership. This can help reduce anxiety about being solely responsible for achieving change.

How to meet the need without compromising the spirit of our endeavors?

In discussing this we realized that there are two slightly different aspects to this. The first is a need to create sufficient coherence so that the system can move forward. This can be done very much in the same spirit as the rest of the day, with questions and activities focused on creating coherence amongst the group.

The second is the need to create a tangible or visible record of the level of agreement.

• 1.Making visible patterns and levels of coordination and coherence amongst the divergence.
• Use reflecting teams to reflect key points of agreement or action
• Use commitment and request conversations
• Have a last ‘action round’ for example in open space. Or a last ‘linking’ round of ‘golden nuggets’ from conversations in World Café
• Move into the domain of production – acting ‘as if’ we knew the world and therefore can have certainty.
• Ask those present questions such as, what story are we going to tell ourselves (and/or others) about what we have done here today and are going to do tomorrow and in the future? Who else needs to know? And how will you get the resources to do what you now believe needs doing?
• Ask people to make individual commitments to what they are now going to do differently or different
• Ask people ‘Given all we have discussed today, what is possible?’
• Ask the group what else needs to happen for them to go away convinced that something is going to change

How to create create some very tangible or visible record of the level of agreement.

• Use dots or ticks to get individuals to select out of all the ideas or points that have emerged, which are most important (or some other criteria) to them. Gives an instant ‘weighting’ picture.
• Popcorn. Get people to write on a post-it the most important thing that has come out of the last conversation, for them. Sort and theme
• Pyramid. Start people in pairs identifying four or five top things. Then pair up with another pair and produce a new list of top four or five etc. until whole group are narrowing down the last few contenders.
• Get projects (with first draft name) and what it is going to achieve, on flip charts with interested parties and a first step to making something happen.
• Help group prepare something for absent sponsors who appear at the end of the day, about the best of the day and intentions for the future.

A few further helpful hints

• Everything is everything else. In this instance how you work with commissioners and leaders from the beginning affects the helpfulness or otherwise of the hunger for convergence later on.
• Life is always a compromise
• That the leader focused on how convergence will be achieved is essentially asking:

‘How will I, and my organization, survive the diversity, complexity, confusion, multiplicity and richness, you are proposing to unleash? Please reassure me that we won’t fly apart, that it will be safe, that it will be productive’

This is a very reasonable request for reassurance. It is a strong sign that the person wants to go forward yet has concerns. The is challenge in offering sufficient reassurance so that we are able to continue moving towards the day, while maintaining sufficient freedom of movement to be able to work with the balance of need in the room on the day.

Appreciating Change will be delighted to come and facilitate divergent events to convergent ends for you!

Leadership Gratitude Exercise

I used this recently with a group of managers as part of a workshop on positive and appreciative leadership. It is an effective way into the virtuous practices aspect of flourishing organizations and into the topic of authentic leadership. It could just as well be used as an exercise in individual executive coaching or development.

Objective

The brief moment of reflection on blessings that the exercise invites helped these leaders remember that they are connected to, and dependent on, many others. Some left resolved to make their (previously somewhat hidden?) sense of gratitude and appreciation more obvious. This exercise could be built on with individuals with the suggestion of the keeping of a gratitude journal. (The clue is in the title, it’s a journal in which you write down things you are grateful for everyday. This exercise is proven to lift mood in a short space of time).

The Exercise

Form people into groups of 4-6 people and invite them to introduce themselves. Then invite them each to share three things they feel grateful for

1) To their colleagues (individual or collective)

2) To their organization as a whole, or the leadership of their organization

3) And finally offer them a free choice (anything or anyone of their choice to whom or for which they feel grateful or gratitude)

Suggest they might like to start their sentences:

 ‘I want to express thanks..’

or

‘I’m very grateful that/for…’

And encourage them to enlarge on what difference the thing they are grateful for, or person they are grateful to, has made to their lives.

Once everyone has been around and shared their stories encourage the group to reflect on the experience of the exercise and, as ever, their learning from it.

Feedback from the recent workshop included the observation that it was easy to overlook the things that one is grateful for amongst the hurly-burly, frustrations and challenges of organizational life and that to reflect on reasons to be grateful was both a pleasant and a humbling experience.

In addition people commented on the value of taking time to experience gratitude, noticing that this led, in some cases, to a resolve to say something to someone. In a coaching session one could build on this to suggest that they write the person a gratitude letter, and then arrange a time to read it to them. This again is proven to be an excellent mood boosting exercise.

When to use

It worked well as an opener to a session exploring what leadership is and means. It could also be used:

• As an exploration of virtuous practices in flourishing organizations
• In workshops focused on authentic, ethical and moral leadership
• As part of individual or executive coaching

Other Resources

More on using Positive Psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles about positive psychology and leadership in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

When A Divergent Discussion Must Produce A Convergent Conclusion

A number of Appreciative Inquiry practitioners were having a conversation concerning the strong demand frequently experienced from commissioners and contractors for a highly convergent end to a discursive, divergent event.

We asked ourselves two questions: What was this request an expression of? and How could we meet it without compromising the spirit of our endeavours? Here are the high points of our discussion.

What is this hunger for convergence an expression of?

• A desire for a sense of coherence and co-ordination, going forward
• A reassurance of a degree of commonality amongst the differences and divergence being expressed
• A request for amplification of points of agreement
• A need for a convincing story for other audiences of the value of the day
• A desire for a record of the intellectual learning, to accompany the experiential learning of the participants
• A request for tangibility
• A demand for a guarantee that something different will now happen

At its root, we felt, this is often a request for a reassurance that there is a positive, sustainable momentum to action that won’t die the moment the session ends; this fear is often based on prior experience of away-days. There is often a fear that the day is ‘just a talking shop’ and that unless clear outcomes and actions are written down ‘nothing will happen’. In addition, our description of how the day will run can feel very alarming to those used to much more controlled ‘facilitation’ and this can be a request for reassurance that the ‘complexity and diversity’ they are agreeing to work with can, in the end, be drawn back to somewhere safe and contained.

We also discussed how to moderate this demand, so that it doesn’t distract from the day’s activities. Our suggestions are: 

• Include leaders and other audiences in the event so they experience the change in the room, in the system, in the moment. This reduces the reliance on ‘planning’ as the driver of change
• Work to help leaders understand that their role in this kind of change is to ‘ride’ the energy it produces; to co-ordinate activities not command and control them. This reduces their feeling of needing to understand everything all at once
• Work with leaders on their unchallenged or unquestioned stories of leadership, help them behave differently around change and leadership. This can help reduce anxiety about being solely responsible for achieving change

How to meet the need without compromising the spirit of our endeavours?

In discussing this we realised that there are two slightly different aspects to this. The first is a need to create sufficient coherence so that the system can move forward. This can be done very much in the same spirit as the rest of the day, with questions and activities focused on creating coherence amongst the group. Here are some examples we came up with of how one might do that:

1. Using reflecting teams to reflect key points of agreement or action
2. Using commitment and request conversations
3. Having a last ‘action round’ for example in open space. Or a last ‘linking’ round of ‘golden nuggets’ from conversations in World Cafe
4. Moving into the domain of production – acting ‘as if’ we knew the world and therefore can have certainty
5. Asking those present questions such as, what story are we going to tell ourselves (and/or others) about what we have done here today and are going to do tomorrow and in the future? Who else needs to know? And how will you get the resources to do what you now believe needs doing?
6. Ask people to make individual commitments to what they are now going to do differently or different
7. Given all we have discussed today, what is possible?
8. Ask the group what else needs to happen for them to go away convinced that something is going to change

On the other hand, sometimes there is a need to create some very tangible or visible record of the level of agreement. Here are some suggestions for achieving this:

1. Using dots or ticks to get individuals to select out of all the ideas or points that have emerged, which are most important (or some other criteria) to them. Gives an instant ‘weighting’ picture.
2. Popcorn. Get people to write on a post-it the most important thing that has come out of the last conversation, for them. Sort and theme
3. Pyramid. Start people in pairs identifying four or five top things. Then pair up with another pair and produce a new list of top four or five etc until whole group are narrowing down the last few contenders.
4. Get projects (with first draft name) and what it is going to achieve, on flip charts with interested parties and a first step to making something happen
5. Help group prepare something for absent sponsors who appear at the end of the day, about the best of the day and intentions for the future

During our conversation a few things became clear or were reinforced for me.

Everything is everything else. In this instance how you work with commissioners and leaders from the beginning affects the helpfulness or otherwise of the hunger for convergence later on.

Life is always a compromise

That I need to develop better answers to the unspoken question of the leader who is taking a huge risk in doing something very different and very outside their range of experience: ‘How will I, and my organization, survive the diversity, complexity, confusion, multiplicity and richness, you are proposing to unleash? Please reassure me that we won’t fly apart, that it will be safe, that it will be productive’ This is a very reasonable request for reassurance. It is a strong sign that the person wants to go forward yet has concerns, and the challenge for me is in offering sufficient reassurance so that we are able to continue moving towards the day, while maintaining sufficient freedom of movement to be able to work with the balance of need in the room on the day.

Appreciating Change will be delighted to come and facilitate divergent events to convergent ends for you!

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more Thought Provoking articles in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Ten Classic New Broom Mistakes

The pressure on new leaders or senior appointments to make an impact, and quickly, is tremendous. The organization has spent time and money attracting, selecting and securing the chosen candidate, now they want to see the value they have bought. It’s a brave person who can hold fire while they take time to look and learn; take time to find out what works here, and how it does; to find out who the people are who really ensure the work gets done; to find out who is brave enough to deliver bad news. This knowledge is often hidden, while, to new eyes, what doesn’t work, who doesn’t look or behave like management behaviour, and who too often isn’t at the end of their phone or at their desk, is all too obvious. In their attempts both to improve things and make a mark quickly, New Brooms frequently commit one or all of these mistakes:

1.They Believe in Year Zero. New Brooms often act as if everything that happened before their arrival is irrelevant. They have no interest in why things are the way they are, they know only that they are wrong. The wholesale change that follows as they (re)create the organization in the image of their last organization, or a textbook organization, tramples over history, accidentally throwing out precious babies with the bath water.

2.They Create Tomorrow’s Problems. ‘Today’s problems are yesterday’s solutions.’ said Senge.  And it follows that today’s solutions are tomorrow’s problems. New Brooms, in their enthusiasm to create new solutions, often inadvertently create the foundations for the next set of problems, for the next new person to solve. The experience on the ground can be of repeated extreme pendulum swings.

3.They Create Ground Zero. This approach often accompanies the Year Zero mentality: since nothing created before I arrived is of value, nothing will be lost in its destruction. Creating ground zero usually starts with the drawing up of a new organizational chart followed by frenzied activity restructuring, firing and rehiring, redrawing all paper work (job descriptions etc.), and retraining to create the brave new world. All too often the map changes but the terrain remains the same

4.They Have The Answer. At last our leader is in a position of power where they can put this great new idea they have come across into practice: LEAN, Team-based working, BPR. The list of management fads from which to choose is endless. The trouble is that there is no one right way to organize. Organizations are full of irresolvable tensions, they are dynamic entities that flux and flow, seeking to resolve the irresolvable. In this way they can keep everything in play. Once there is only one answer, only one way, the benefits of equi-finality and fluidity are lost.

5.They Love Tidiness. This approach is often related to having the answer. To the newcomer the evolved solutions are messy. The organizational chart is not neat, things aren’t arranged logically, the rationales for the way things are done are idiosyncratic, it doesn’t seem equable, everything is an acceptable exception. Like Trinny and Susanna they tear through the mess, creating order, boxing things up, cloning and standardizing. Everyone must start at 8.30, no exceptions. Bang goes the best customer service girl we ever had, who can’t get in until 8.45. Tough!

6.They Cut Through The Gordian Knot. Our new broom doesn’t have the time or the inclination to engage with office politics, so pretends they don’t exist. As they set about finding out what’s what, they dismiss any notion of being manipulated by the players. It’s easier to take everything at face value and then apply their own superior 20/20 vision to get to the truth. Often the people who lose out are those who really don’t know how to play politics and who strive to deliver a truth, as everyone else angles to demonstrate their irreplaceable value

7.They Believe Context Is Irrelevant. Leaders who believe they are impervious to office politics often also believe that context is irrelevant. They have a plan for change. There will be winners and losers. It’s very cold out in the employment market at present. The leader is in a very powerful position, determining people’s futures. Without a lively awareness of this context, it is very easy to mistake people’s quest to retain job security with the expression of a heartfelt endorsement of the new leader’s genius and a real desire for change. From here it is all too easy to get rid of dissenting voices.

8.They Fire the Opposition. The new leader is insecure: they need to prove their worth. They don’t want to hear that their plan has flaws, that there are benefits to the current, irregular, way of doing things. Expression of such thoughts is heard as disloyalty, easier to label such dissenters as resistant to change.

9.They Devalue Social Capital. The new leader is seduced by the organizational chart and all the paperwork that dictates who must report to whom, how the job must be done. Focused on this they fail to notice the intricate and delicate relating patterns, communication, information flow, informal problem-solving, that facilitate effective working. Seeing such informal networks as essentially irrelevant to achieving the task, they (re)arrange people without regard to these informal relationships and communication. The social capital of the organization is reduced, its efficacy damaged.

10. They Disregard Sense-making As A Powerful Change Process. Too often a new broom is overly focused on the behaviour change they require, and they work hard to ‘make’ people do things differently. Failing to appreciate that our behaviour is related to how we make sense of the world, they invest little time in working to change people’s mental maps, their experience of reality. They work to drive new behaviour into people rather than to release it.

Want to do it differently?

Appreciating Change can help you discover the strengths of the existing organization, can help you see and appreciate the less tangible assets such as the social capital, before you tear into making wholesale changes.

We can help you work with existing complexity, realizing the value of the evolved equi-finality, flexibility, diversity and difference before you become overwhelmed and seek to simplify by standardizing, and reducing complexity.

We can help you ‘be active’ in your engagement with the organization in ways that build on the best of what exists, that help people actively and willingly engage with new realities, and that grow positive change, before you lose patience and decide to impose a brave new world order.

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more 'Thought Provoking' articles and more about Leadership in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Charming Devils And The Mischief They Make

It is increasingly apparent that sometimes people with severe personality disorders (narcissistic, psychopathic, paranoid and schizoid) slip through the organizational selection net. The problem is they don’t appear in our midst with ‘trouble’ tattooed on their foreheads, instead they are often rather charming devils who do very well until they fall (and bring everyone else down with them).

How to reduce the chances of appointing a chancer, a megalomaniac, an egoist, a drama queen, or an obsessive, to your team

Beware that their failings come disguised as virtuous traits, as they bring almost an excess of a good thing. So the dimensions can look like this…

•    Work focused – workaholic – obsessive/compulsive

•    Team player – dependency on others – can’t make individual decisions

•    Action focused – decisive – rushed, rash and impulsive – dictatorial

•    Analytical – paralysed – unable to act

•    Integrity – strong values – rigidity/cult leader

•    Innovative – enthusiastic/ committed – unrealistic

Spotting trouble in your midst:

Someone who has the following characteristics…

Is all things to all people

About whom people hold deeply divided opinions (seen as saving angel by some and dangerous devil by others)

Who wields disproportionate power to their status

Can skillfully play individuals, telling them what they want to hear

Has an uncanny ability to make bad things, things that don’t work, and people in their way, disappear (Teflon man / woman)

Lies and cheats with impunity in the service of some greater goal, and

Demonstrates loyalty only to self

…just might be displaying strong psychopathic tendencies. As they advance up the organization and external control and non-deferential feedback lessens, the bigger the mess they can create.

How can you lessen the likelihood of this happening to your organization?

1. Be brave enough to let go of the problem people early
2. Select for optimal not maximal qualities
3. Do proper biographical tracking history on your top appointments
4. Beware of trading off weaknesses for some great strength
5. Use 360 degree feedback, and listen to what those of no current ‘use’ to the person have to say. The once seduced and now discarded may have a less enamoured view of the charmer
6. Give leaders a stable deputy and make sure they have adequate power to influence, control, veto leadership action i.e. make sure they don’t gain absolute power!
7. Offer support to help self-management such as coaches, mentors, therapists

Sarah Lewis and colleagues at Appreciating Change are accredited to use the Hogan suite of personality psychometrics including The Dark Side instrument. Such psychometrics can help identify those at risk of going seriously off the rails!

(Furnham 2007, The Icarus Syndrome, People and organizations @ work spring edition, Trickey, Talent, treachery and self destruction paper at ABP conference 2007)

Other Resources

Recommended read: Snakes in Suits, Bob Hare

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more about Leadership and Performance Management in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Five Tips For Getting Started With Positive Psychology At Work

Positive psychology is the new domain of psychology that burst upon the world when Martin Seligman coined the phrase at his inaugural speech as the President of the American Psychological Association in 1998.

He issued a rallying call for research into human success. He wanted us to know more about what helps us excel, in health, in sport, in achievement. His work, and that of others who responded to the call, has been picked up by institutions as varied as the American Military and the education system. We know more now than we ever did about how to help people live happy and successful lives. The ideas have spread to Governments, with our own deciding to take regular measures of national wellbeing as well as national wealth.

Positive psychology can be applied in the workplace. Its successful application will help you develop an engaged, productive, healthy workforce, and to create a great place to work. Here are some direct and practical ideas of how to apply the best of the results of the research into positive psychology to your workplace.

Losada and Heaphy in 2004 demonstrated that feeling good is good for us. In their research the teams that offered each other at least three times more praise than criticism were the most successful. Since then Fredrickson has made a study of what good emotions do for us, and Shawn Achor has brought all the research together in his great book ‘the happiness advantage’ also available on youtube as a Tedx talk. The result is conclusive: happiness leads to success. So, how can you help your people feel good?

Feelin' Good

1. Start meetings with a round of success stories.

Before you get into the meat of the meeting, usually a litany of problems and challenges, start by giving people the opportunity to share the best of their week.

2. Build the sharing of great stories about the achievements and success of the organization into your induction programme.

Get the owners of the stories to share their best moments of working for your company. Even better, equip your new recruits with appreciative questions about when people have been most proud to be part of the organization, or their greatest achievement at work, and send them off to interview people. This will leaven the dough of getting to grips with the staff handbook and inspire your new recruits.

3. Educate your managers about this research.

Too many managers are quick to offer critical feedback and slow to offer praise, hoarding it as a scarce resource. Explain that they need to keep the ratio of positive to negative comments and experiences above 3:1 and preferable 6:1 if they want to get the best from people.

4. Give them the tools to do this. 

Particularly, introduce the concept of diamond feedback and train people in its use. Diamond feedback is when you both report the behaviour you saw that you thought was good, and give the praise. E.g. ‘ I listened to how you handled that customer call. The way you admitted our errors and thanked her for letting us know was really good. I could hear that you saved a customer we might have lost. That’s worth a lot of money to us. Well done, that was great work.’

5. Help people use their natural strengths

Another finding coming through from the positive psychology research is that helping people understand what their natural strengths are and how to use them aids performance. Using strengths is energising and engaging for people. This means they find work that calls on their particular and unique strengths profile motivating. The more you can help people find ways to use their strengths at work, the more likely it is that they will become self-motivated in their work. But first they need to know them.

How You Can Do This

There are a number of strengths identifying tools around, particular the StrengthScope psychometric, which also has a great set of support cards. However in a low tech way we can just ask people ‘When are you at your most energised at work?’’ What feels really easy and enjoyable for you that others sometimes struggle with?’ and most interesting of all ‘what can you almost not, not do?’

Once you know your own strengths, find ways to use them more at work and, equally important, ways to do less of the work that drains you of energy. Find someone to delegate it to for whom it plays to their strengths. We’re not all detail people, but some of us love combing through data with a fine tooth-comb. Reconfigure how you achieve the objective so it plays to your strengths. Pair up with someone whose strengths complement yours. Allocate tasks in your team by strengths rather than by role and delegate by volunteer rather than imposition when possible.

Make sure other people know your strengths, so that they can call on you for opportunities that play to your strengths.

Positivity and strengths are probably two of the headline findings from the positive psychology research that are easily applicable to the workplace setting. However there are also other emerging findings that are of interest. For example, did you know that how you respond to someone’s good news is as important for relationship building as how you respond to their bad news? Apparently so. To encourage positive relationships at work, help people to be actively positive in their response to other people’s good news. This means not just saying ‘that’s great’, but actively inquiring into how they did it, how they feel and how they hope to build on it.

And finally, you may have noticed how some people are just people that other people like to have around. They give people around them a general good feeling. People are attracted to them. The research confirms the existence of such people at the centre of networks of positive energy. They have the knack of giving people little boosts of good feeling in their conversations or interactions with them, and they leave feeling better than when they arrived. These people are gold dust in terms of organisational motivation and performance. Notice who they are, place them strategically in projects and initiatives to which you want to attract other people, for example.

Futher Reading

This article has barely scratched the surface of the interesting research and ideas emanating from this field. The book ‘Positive Psychology At Work’ explains these and other ideas in more detail. For these with an aversion to books, we also have a set of development cards that offer bite-sized explanations of twenty core positive psychology concepts, with questions to help understand them and suggestions of how to integrate the concept at work.

Other Resources

More on using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques to boost engagement at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more 'How To' guides in the Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership , Engagement and Culture change.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715