Optimism

At some point or another in life, we all face hardships, encounter adversity, and have to deal with difficult situations. However, it’s how we view and talk about these adversities that influences our wellbeing and outlook on life - a bad experience for one person may be a learning experience for another. Positive psychologist Martin Seligman explains how it is possible to cultivate positive perspectives in his book Learned Optimism (1990).

Whether we are optimists or pessimists can be determined by the way that we talk about our experiences and the events that happen in our life, particularly adversities. Seligman describes this as our explanatory style, of which there are 3 aspects, permanence, pervasiveness and personalization. These are known as the 3 Ps.

The three P’s

Permanence relates to how long you believe any given situation will last. Those with a more pessimistic view in life will tend to describe bad situations as permanent and believe they will last forever. They will also typically describe good fortune as a fluke that won’t hang around. However, optimists will view setbacks as temporary, which enables the ability to accept situations for what they are and to adapt for the future instead of dwelling upon the past.

Pervasiveness is all about how widespread you perceive a situation to be. Pessimists will believe that bad experiences will affect all aspects of their life but that good things only happen in isolation. On the other hand, optimists will look at negative experiences as just one minor inconvenience instead of projecting it to all aspects of their life.

The personalization aspect of explanatory styles refers to the degree in which an individual attributes the cause of an event to internal or external factors. Optimists will consider external factors outside of their control when things go wrong and take credit for their personal achievements. Whereas a pessimist will look internally when things go wrong and believe the good times must be down to luck.

The benefits of being optimistic

There are many known benefits for looking on the bright side of life and being optimistic. Optimists are known to have higher levels of motivation and attainment, have better health and live longer than those who tend to see life through a more pessimistic lens. Studies into optimism and the perceived health benefits show that higher levels of optimism can be related to higher levels of engagement, less avoidance, better coping skills, and taking proactive steps to maintain a healthy lifestyle. On the other hand, pessimism has been related to health-damaging behaviours such as trying to avoid the reality of the situation (Segerstrom et al., 2010). In times of ill health, those of us who are optimistic may therefore take a more practical approach to recovery, rather than trying to avoid the situation or withdraw from those around them who may want to support us or be able to help. Optimists are also better able to put a positive spin on negative situations and experiences.

In the workplace optimism has been linked to higher levels of intrinsic motivation, goal focused behaviours, and a better ability to endure stressful situations. Optimistic persistence in pursuing goals may have beneficial consequences such as protection against negative effects and a greater likelihood of goal attainment (Solberg & Segerstrom, 2006).

So, the benefits of being optimistic seem clear, but what can we do ourselves to try and view things in a more positive light?

Can we learn to be more optimistic?

Being optimistic is not a fixed trait, individuals may have different levels of optimism at different points in their lives. It is also something that anyone can cultivate and change when they start to notice their automatic negative thoughts and begin to challenge them. People can work on changing their explanatory style once they teach themselves to become aware of the relationship between how they explain situations in their lives and how this affects the outcome of those situations.

Seligman’s adaptation of the ABC technique is a method which can be used to help cultivate optimism. The ABC technique stands for Adversity, Belief, and Consequence, and it is a way of breaking down our experiences in order to focus on how you get from adversity to belief. This stage of how you get from A to B is known as your explanatory style, and it is this that directly impacts how we react to situations. When we become aware of our pessimistic explanatory style, we can confront it and replace it with more optimistic thoughts.

For example, say you are struggling to complete a task at work because you believe it’s too complicated, this is the adversity. This adversity may lead you to the belief that you must be stupid because you can’t do it. Therefore, the consequence is that you stop trying to complete the task and your self-confidence may have taken a bit of a hit.

Sometimes it can be hard to break out of these negative thought cycles because they seem to happen without much conscious thought. However, there are some tips and tricks you can use to try and reframe how you think about those setbacks in life to work towards a more optimistic explanatory style.

1.     See setbacks as temporary

2.     Don’t over-generalize

3.     Shift your focus from things you can’t change to things you can.

4.     Take a balanced approach – there are always things you do well and always things you can change.

5.     Acknowledge your own contribution

It is possible for everyone to reap the benefits of thinking more optimistically by acknowledging pessimistic thought patterns and adjusting their mindset. Once we are able to reflect on how our negative thoughts influence the consequences we experience, we can teach ourselves to think more positively about ourselves, our abilities and the situation when we encounter adversity. It is these positive beliefs that will lead to positive consequences, making way for a more positive outlook on life.

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 ‘Positive Psychology’ 

Feeling Tired? You need more than just a good’s night sleep.

Did you know that there is more to being rested than just getting a good night’s sleep? Dr Dalton-Smith has identified seven different forms of fatigue. Each one offers a different path to feeling restored, rested and rebooted!

Mental Fatigue

Mental fatigue is characterized by a sense of working through a mental fog, of making mistakes because you can’t concentrate properly, of feeling befuddled. This one I definitely recognize! A simple way to address this is to intersperse periods of intense concentration, each forty-five minutes or so, with short time blocks of ‘low level’ activities, like email and social media of ten minutes duration. This way you stop the attention destroying activities getting in the way of work that needs intense concentration, and, you give yourself little ‘a change is as good as a rest’ breaks from the more demanding work. Taking regular breaks to attend to the ‘low level’ work also gives you a fighting chance of staying on top of it and reduces the worry that something is lurking in your email that really does need attention now.

Emotional Drain

This is characterized by feeling you have nothing left to give to others. To help reduce emotional tiredness, you can reduce contact with people who you find draining, open up to more re-energising people a bit more and to try not to compare yourself badly with other people ( a particular danger of mindless social media scrolling). Personally, I often find ‘transit time’, either spent actively in a restorative action like reading or spent passively gazing at the adverts on the Tube while my mind wanders, helps regather energy for the next interaction.

Social Tiredness

Social tiredness comes from effortful socialising, being with people with whom we feel we can’t be ourselves. This is a subtle but distinct difference from emotional tiredness. Many of us find ‘small talk’ exhausting: I used to refer to social tiredness, after a busy day or week working with strangers, as being ‘all peopled out’. However, the way to recuperate isn’t just to avoid people, but rather to spend time with people, usually friends and family, with whom we can be our unvarnished self. 

Sensory Overload

While you might think that sensory overload is only something neuro-diverse people suffer from, the fact is we are all susceptible to being overloaded with sensory input. For example, as we get older we may find that spending time in the noise and bustle of a busy market or bar, that we once failed to notice or even relished, no longer appeals or indeed leaves us in need of a lie-down in a darkened room! It also helps to positively notice and appreciate moments of quiet, or soothing images like a sunset.

Creative Exhaustion

In order to be creative we need space to think: minds all abuzz with to-do lists and deadlines can crowd out creative thinking. The way to get the creative juices flowing again is to build breaks into your days. Even a twenty-minute walk can help the crammed mind to find space. In general, focussing on something entirely different can give your brain enough of a holiday that it organises itself behind the scenes and creates ‘brain space’. I have been amazed how when I make myself set off on a walk along the river, convinced I don’t really have time for it, it changes things. I set off a cracking pace, only to find that as my mind starts freewheeling and ways forward on challenges present themselves, my pace slows. On my return to my desk I often feel as if I have more time, not less. It can be hard though when ‘in the grip’ of busyness, to make yourself take that break.

Spiritual Fatigue

We know we are in need of spiritual rest when life in general feels meaningless and pointless. We are restored spiritually when we feel really ‘seen’ by others, when we feel once again that we belong, that we are accepted, and most importantly, that life has meaning. For different people this will be provided by different activities: yoga or mindfulness, religion, or voluntary activities.

Physical Tiredness

This of course is the most familiar definition of tiredness. Physical tiredness doesn’t necessarily mean muscle fatigue from hard physical labour; long hours cramped over the computer can have adverse effects, causing tension and strain. What we need is incorporate small, but frequent, movement into our days. Little and often is the key here. This can be getting up and moving around, or just standing up and stretching, or even doing small movements sitting down. Working from home, I find it helpful to fit small household chores like emptying the dishwasher or hanging out the laundry into these mini-breaks: they give my brain a break as well as getting me to move about a bit.

Indebted to Emma Beddington’s article in the Guardian, who in turn interviewed Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith. A link to Dr Dalton-Smith’s free rest quiz is attached here. https://www.restquiz.com/quiz/rest-quiz-test

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 ‘Positive Psychology’ 

The Benefits of Feeling Good and How to Reap Them

Emotional states are an overlooked resource in the workplace. How we feel affects how we work individually and together as well as our resilience to stress and our creativity. Unlike other resources to help our staff in these straitened times, positive emotional states are a zero-cost, renewable, source of energy. And they make a difference to those around us.

Did you know?

• That 20-30% of business performance can be determined by the mood of employees

• That back in the 1930s it was discovered that workers who experienced positive emotional states demonstrated an 8% increase in efficiency compared  to the output of workers in a negative emotional state

• That employees experiencing positive emotions are more helpful to customers, more creative, more attentive, and respectful of one another

• And that daily experience of positive emotions influences an individual’s readiness  to engage in particular organizationally beneficial behaviours (i.e. what we sometimes call organisational citizenship behaviours, beyond the constraints of our job description )

Did you also know?

• That Alice Isen and her colleagues found that positive emotions facilitated cognitive flexibility, intrinsic motivation, promoted patterns of notably unusual thought e.g. creativity, boosted receptivity to new information, and improved problem solving.

• And that furthermore, that they had an impact on social relations by facilitating inclusion, promoting helpfulness, generosity and social responsibility and reducing conflict.

• While Fredrickson and colleagues established, amongst other things, that positivity enables people to see new possibilities, bounce-back from setbacks, connect more deeply with others, and reach their potential.

So it seems feeling good can be good for us at work. In addition,

• Research highlights that resilient individuals use positive emotions in the face of adversity by finding positive meaning in ordinary events or within the event itself. This means that, even as everything looks gloomy, that can still appreciate the beauty of a sunset, or, they can extract some learning or benefit from the difficult situation if only ‘well, I won’t make that mistake again!’

• And also that, the cultivation of positive emotions such as compassion, courage, forgiveness, integrity, and optimism prevents psychological distress, addiction, and dysfunctional behaviour.

So how can we help each other feel better at work?

Cameron identified six key positive practices that correlate with reduced turnover, improved organisational effectiveness, better work environments and better relationships with management. These are: 

• Caring friendships

• Compassionate support for colleagues

• Fostering a culture of forgiveness

• Fostering respect, integrity and gratitude

• Inspiring each other at work

• Emphasis on meaningful work

In essence, how we relate to each other and how we work with each other. So how can we put that into practice?

Here are five ideas for how to create micro-boosts of positive feeling and energy

1. Sharing a joke or having a  laugh together

2. Cardio-vascular exercise, in my experience 20 minutes of swimming or circuits can do it

3. Meditation, personally l’m finding that the 55+ Pilates class induces a very zen-like state as I try to move muscles I didn’t know I had

4. Sharing a deeply meaningful conversation with a real connection, if only briefly

5. Being with your pet

And at the group level, in work

1. Asking each other positive questions; inquiring into the best of our work and steering away from the moan-fest

2. Constructively responding to each other’s good news

3. Bringing in unexpected treats (could even be healthy treats!)

4. Knowing three things about each of your colleagues’ out of work life, and finding a common point of connection

5. Celebrating everyone’s success as a group success, and group successes as everyone’s

 We can’t prevent difficult emotions like anger, jealousy, fear, stress, anxiety and so on from arising. And as has long been established they have their psychological role: calling attention to a need for help; telling us there is something we aren’t happy about that we need to address; giving us energy to stand up for ourselves, or allowing us a cathartic moment. And no one is saying we should deny, suffocate at birth or otherwise suppress these feelings. But when they have served their purpose and we need to move on, we sometimes need someone to help us do that.

 Other times, it’s just good to experience a blip of positivity, and look at all the benefit it brings.

With great thanks to Suzy Green, Michelle McQuaid, Alicia Purtell and Aylin Dulagil for much of the information above which I cribbed from their excellent chapter ‘The psychology of positivity at work’ in Lindsay Oades, Michael Steger, Antonella De Fave and Jonathon Passmore’s excellent book The psychology of positivity and strengths based approached to work’ published by Wiley Blackwell in 2017.

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 Positive Psychology 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

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

How to add life to your years

Mae West famously suggested that it’s not the ‘men in your life’ you need to worry about so much as ‘the life in your men; and as the celebration of another birthday reminds me that more of my life is behind than in front of me, I feel I’d be wise to focus on ‘the life left in my years’ rather than the ‘years left in my life’. And so, I turn to George Valliant for advice.

Valliant has been a key researcher in the Study of Adult Development. This study has tracked 100s of white, American college men since the 1940s, and a similar group of Inner-city men (i.e. different class, culture etc.) tracked since they were school children in the 1950s. Reporting research conducted when the men were in their 70s or 80s, he asks, ‘What predicts a good quality of life, as subjectively and objectively defined, at that age?’

Factors that don’t predict good quality of later life

Interestingly Valliant identifies six factors that, contrary to popular belief, are NOT shown by this study to have any impact of the chances of being classified as Happy-Well at 70 or 80, rather as than Sad-Sick, Prematurely Dead (died after age 50 but before general life expectancy) or Intermediate (neither definitely Happy-well nor definitely Sad-sick, but still definitely alive!). 

·     Ancestral Longevity

·     Cholesterol

·     Parental Social Class

·     Warm Childhood Environment

·     Stable Childhood Temperament

·     Stress

Since these are things we have little control over, their lack of influence on the quality of our old age is good news. Also good news is the fact that the factors that do make a difference are within our control. The less good news (for those of us who are older already) is that these predictive factors need to be in place by age 50 to affect quality of life 30 years later.

Factors that do predict good quality of later life

The factors that are shown to positively predict Happy-Well status at 70 or 80 are:

·     Not smoking or stopping young (best to stop before 45)

·     Mature defences adaptive Coping style. This essentially means you use on ‘all about the other’ coping mechanisms such as altruism, sublimation, suppression or stoicism, and humour, rather than ‘all about me’ mechanisms such as passive aggression, dissociation, projections, fantasy, or acting out, when coping with adversity. Or, as Valliant says, to put it another way you are good at turning lemons into lemonade and not turning molehills into mountains when dealing with the slings and arrows of life.

·     Absence of Alcohol Abuse – e.g. alcohol not causing multiple problems with family, law or life.

·     Healthy Weight – BMI between 22-28

·     Stable marriage – without divorce, separation or serious problems 

·     Exercise. - that burns more that 500 Kilocalories per week, regularly

·     Many years of education - Interestingly this isn’t about the correlation with social class so much as an apparent association with increased self-care, future orientation and perseverance.

Of the first six, at least four need to be present at 50 to reap the benefits 20 to 30 years later.

Unfortunately, we are all subject to the whims of bad luck: being stuck by lightening, injured by the stupidity of others, crippled in an accident, or derailed by malignant genes. So, no guarantees. 

This is undoubtedly a terrific and valuable study, the question for many of us, of course, is how generalisable it is across gender and ethnicity, culture and class? Even so, for now I’ll gamble that it is and be cautiously optimistic that there will be ‘life in my years’ yet.

Most of this is taken from George Valliant’s chapter on Positive Ageing in Positive Psychology in Practice (Joseph, 2015 2ndedition)

Did you know: seeking happiness can make people unhappy?

While we recognise that in general happiness is a crucial ingredient of well-being and health, happiness is not valued to the same extent by everyone. For some people it is a ‘nice to have’ while for others it is the stuff of life, a state to which they constantly aspire. Goal pursuit theory suggests that if we value something and actively pursue it we should experience more of it. So if we value happiness and pursue it, so we should experience more of it.

However, there is a sting in the tail. The more highly we value something, the higher the standards are likely to be against which we evaluate our achievement of it. So, for instance, if I value academic excellence and strive hard to achieve it, I’m not going to be very satisfied with just a ‘pass’ grade – it hasn’t met my standards of a great mark.

Importantly, while my disappointment with my mark doesn’t change my mark, if my goal is to achieve happiness, my disappointment with the level of happiness I am experiencing DOES affect my level of happiness. To be disappointed is incompatible in the moment with feeling happy. Of course, expectations are context specific: most people don’t expect to feel happy at a funeral, but might well expect to feel happy at a party. 

If I’m at a party and DON’T, as I expected I would, feel happy, then I am likely to feel disappointed. And the feeling disappointed will lower my happiness. If I had not had any expectations of feeling happy then I wouldn’t feel disappointed by not feeling happy and, paradoxically, might actually feel happier than the disappointed person!

In other words, by valuing happiness very highly, and making it a goal and measure of value, we product the very circumstances that raise the likelihood of disappointment and adversely affect our chances of achieving happiness: The pursuit of happiness may cause decreased happiness.

Considering all this, Mauss, Tamir, Anderson and Savino (2011) concluded ‘that valuing happiness is not necessarily linked to greater happiness. In fact, under certain conditions the opposite is true. Under conditions of low (but not high) life stress, the more people valued happiness, the lower were their hedonic balance [ratio of positive to negative emotional states], psychological well-being, and life satisfaction, and the higher their depressive symptoms.’

In short, an overly focused pursuit of happiness is unlikely to lead to greater happiness. We need to recognize that we experience all sorts of emotions and while happiness can be encouraged by the way we live our lives it can’t be produced to order: it is not a guaranteed outcome of any activity. 

I wonder if the reported huge increase of reported depression in the world is in any way related to this strange paradox. Have we somehow, with our twenty-first century interest in and emphasis on happiness, raised expectations about how much happiness people should feel, maybe even to the extent that all non-happy feelings are experienced as strong failure and disappointment? My mother used to say to me ‘I don’t mind what you do (as a career she meant) as long as you are happy.’ For her happiness was the goal and measure of success. Even then I struggled to understand the advice as I didn’t understand how to ‘be happy’ I didn’t know what made me happy. Finding that out has been a life-long journey.

My father, conversely, pointed out to me long before it became a poster slogan, ‘happiness is a journey not a destination’, or to paraphrase John Lennon ‘Happiness happens while you are concentrating on something else,’ or finally my own thoughts: happiness is a happy by-product of the life lived and the choices made. 

This article is based on the research and article byMauss, Tamir, Anderson and Savino (2011) Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, Vol 11, No. 4, 807-815

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

Why it's important for all of us to learn to forgive those who trespass against us

Forgiveness has an image problem. Asked to forgive people say: ‘but I can’t forget what they did’ or ‘I can’t imagine ever being friends again’ or ‘but I want them punished.’ These responses show a confusion between forgiveness, reconciliation, forgetting and justice.

Forgive them for you

To forgive doesn’t mean forgetting, it doesn’t mean reconciling and it doesn’t mean letting people off e.g. ignoring, minimising, tolerating or excusing. Nor does it mean minimising an injustice, putting up with ill-treatment or allowing an offender to harm again. It is not about meekly turning the other cheek. It is a personal process that may or not be expressed directly to the offender. While knowing you have been forgiven is clearly likely to have an impact on the offender, I want to focus here on the benefits to us of learning to be more forgiving of others, whether we tell our offender about it or not.

Forgiveness is a gracious and courageous response that enables the forgiver to lessen the power of the transgression to define him or her. Forgiveness remembers the past in a way that opens up positive futures.

It tends to be a process that unfolds over time, slowly replacing the desire for revenge or avoidance and unforgiving emotions such as bitterness and fear.

Techniques that help foster forgiveness include

One thing that helps induce feelings of forgiveness is focussing on the offender’s humanity, and seeing the action as distinct, not defining. Thus we might say: ‘They lied’ rather than ‘they are a liar.’ Developing feeling of compassion or mercy also helps, reflected in sentiments such as  ‘I can’t condone what they did but I can see how they were driven to it’, or perhaps, ‘I can see there was some muddled good intentions in there, but that doesn’t excuse what they did to me. ’ These are pro-social responses of empathy and compassion and a desire for genuine and ultimate good that act to edge out the hurt and bitter responses. Forgiveness responds to harm with grounded hope. Hope is a key positive emotion for moving forward in life.

What helps us to forgive?

Forgiveness begins (and this is unexpected to many) by accurately naming and blaming the offender for the harm done. A strong religious identity and commitment helps (but not just ‘being spiritual’), as does feeling empathy or compassion for the offender. Having a more agreeable personality and having a closer and more committed relationship before the offense (with the exception as outlined below) also aid forgiveness.

What makes it harder to forgive?

Having a hostile personality or narcissistic tendencies make it harder to forgive. Also depression adversely affects the ability to forgive in previously close relationships.

Why should we forgive?

Correlational research suggests that people with more forgiving personalities have less anxiety and lower blood pressure while those with unforgiving personalities have worse self-esteem, greater depression and anxiety, and often exhibit post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms such as nightmares. Those who have trouble forgiving themselves suffer the worst!

While experimental research demonstrates that as people learn to forgive, they show increased self-esteem, hope, positive attitudes towards their offender and a desire for reconciliation. They also generally experience reductions in grief, depression, anxiety and anger and increases in positive affective responses, that is, they are better able to experience positive emotions.

Interestingly those who focus first on forgiveness to restore their own happiness (rather than focussing on the offender) make faster progress. However, in the long run, those who seek to forgive out of altruistic compassion and concern for the offender ultimately experience greater self-benefits.

Other lines of research have shown that unforgiving reactions, such as the mental rehearsal of the painful event, arouse strong negative emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, muscle tension around the eyebrows and eyes, higher levels of blood pressure, heart rate and sweating. While empathetic and forgiving reactions have significant positive and calming effects.

So what to do?

Attempting to understand the transgressive behaviour without minimizing or excusing it, focussing on compassion for the humanity of the offender (to err is human, and we are none of us perfect) and forgiveness e.g. replacing the hurt and bitter feelings with a genuine attempt to wish the offender well; these empathetic and forgiving responses prompt greater positive and relaxing emotion, joy, and a sense of having more control in the situation, with a calmer physiological profile.

Sources

Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet pp 403 -408 in the Lopez J. L. (ed)  The Encylopedia of Positive Psychology. Wiley-Blackwell

Other Resources

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, How To, Positive Psychology and Thought Provoking 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.

Where Next With Positive Psychology

Earlier this month I attended the Global Strengthscope Practitioner Conference in London. A wonderful and inspiring conference where completely unexpectedly I was presented with the 2017 conference ‘Outstanding Contribution to Positive Work Practices Award.’ I was delighted and honoured and it got me thinking about what we have achieved so far in bringing positive work practices into the workplace and what we have yet to achieve.

There are some specific practices that stem from positive psychology that have and are definitely making their way into the workplace. Strengths awareness is one. Thanks to the work of Strengths Partnership and others the language of strengths, and, the ability to identify and measure strengths is an established work practice in many organizations. The need to help people work to their strengths is making headway in organizations. Only the other day I received an inquiry from someone in a large manufacturing automobile organization for a strengths framework to replace their competency framework. They wanted a ready to go, large scale complete strengths based process to support development from recruitment onwards. I was able to introduce them to BeTalent who have developed a fantastic, online strengths and related behaviour assessment and development process, suitable for use at scale, that is exactly what the inquirer was looking for. This ‘work practice’ is on the edge of mainstream practice.

The importance of mood or positivity to work culture and performance is making headway although still regarded by many as something to concentrate on after doing the difficult thing not as a way of doing the difficult thing. Positivity is central to Appreciative Inquiry, a methodology for change that can usefully be regarded as an operationalization of positive psychology for the workplace, which itself is definitely more widely known and practiced in the UK than it was when I started practicing in this way in the late 1990s. It is taught as an approach in our management colleges and these days people are more likely to approach me specifically asking for an Appreciative Inquiry intervention.

Wellbeing has long been a workplace concern, and the emphasis of positive psychology on flourishing and positive health has had an impact on workplace practices in this area. Nic Marks, previously of the National Economics Foundation and presently CEO of Happiness Works has been a pioneer in developing organisational ‘happiness’ or wellbeing measurement tools built from positive psychology principles. The development of organization-wide measurement processes allows positive work practices to be implemented at scale.

For myself, as a sole practitioner, my contribution has been more on a ‘bits and pieces’ basis. I bring the positive psychology perspective to bear on every assignment one way or another, and increasingly find myself an educator both in business and academia on positive psychology and its implementation in the workplace. I am able to run Appreciative Inquiry informed events, or run sessions on strengths, or help develop positive and appreciative leadership skills. And of course I have tried to spread the work through my writing. And I am not alone, there is a growing band of UK based positive psychology practitioners, thanks not least to the Positive Psychology Masters established at the University of East London by Dr Ilona Boniwell.

For the future my ambition and vision is for this to become a movement.

To this end I am already talking to people about establishing something akin to an Institute for Flourishing Organizations. I see such an organisation acting as a central hub for those attempting to create flourishing organizations in the UK, those seeking to work in such organizations and those with skills to help. In my mind it will be a home for those interested in this growing movement so they can find other like-minded people. I want it to act to bring the positive psychology and the Appreciative Inquiry field together around their shared ambition of creating flourishing at work.

My vision at present for such an organisation is that it would promote positive psychology practice in organizations; offer measurement and assessment processes, possibly a badge of accreditation; act as guidance for job seekers looking for organizations that ‘got this’; offer a resource for academics seeking research possibilities; bring together positive psychology and Appreciative Inquiry. This organisation would be where my friend who asked if I knew of organizations that worked in a strengths-based way so he could apply to them, and my colleague seeking a strengths-based alternative to competencies, could come to find answers.

I firmly believe we have enough knowledge and well developed practice now that we can offer a full organisational service that has something to offer or say to every aspect of organisational life from recruitment to strategy to downsizing. We know we can help organizations adopt more flourishing work practices on a piece by piece transactional basis, and I believe we know enough now to be able to develop a truly transformational way of organisational life fit for the challenges of twenty-first century life.

I can’t think of a more fitting way to build on the honour of the award and to create a lasting legacy of my nearly thirty years of contributing to positive workplace practices.

I’d love to hear any initial thoughts in response to this piece, and if you want to be involved in the conversation as it develops please let me know.

Energy state transformation is the key to Appreciative Inquiry effectiveness

I have recently come across a great paper about human energy, it is referenced at the end of this piece. It set me thinking about what it was saying in relation to Appreciative Inquiry. These are my thoughts.

What is 'energy' in an organisaitonal setting?

Energy can be a transforming resource. When people become ‘energised’ they are transformed before our eyes. We talk about how people become ‘fired up’ or are ‘on fire’. We see increased animation, people seem more dynamic; quiet wallflowers are suddenly able to hold a room’s attention because they are talking about something that really matters to them. The generation of this energy transforms potential futures as while un-energised people are disinclined to ‘spend’ any energy or to exert any energy to get something done, energised people are a force for movement.

We know from earlier theorists that we can conceptualise energy as non-activated, that is, latent, or, as activated, that is, ‘in motion’. We understand human energy to be made up of different elements e.g. to have affective, cognitive and behavioural dimensions.  Human energy can be characterised as being positive or negative in intent or direction.

Organisational energy, while clearly related to individual energy, can also be thought of separately as a resource of a collective unit. Four different collective or organisational energy states have been identified: productive energy, comfortable energy, resigned inertia, and corrosive energy. These names have great face validity with me: armed with this language I can see I am in the business, frequently, of transforming resigned inertia or corrosive organisational energy into productive organisational energy that is going to work to move things forward.

These four states can be seen as lying across two dimensions: intensity and quality. Intensity as a dimension ranges from high (activated energy) to low (non-activated energy). While quality ranges from positive to negative reflecting how the energy is constructive or destructive of the organizations goals.

Productive (high positive) organisational energy can be characterized as a collective temporary emergent state. Temporary of course means not permanent, collective means involving everyone. The idea of an ‘emergent’ phenomena comes from the theory of complex adaptive systems and suggests that the phenomena of productive (high positive) organisational energy ‘emerges’ from the behaviour of individual actors in the system. The behaviour of these individual actors that help to create collective high positive organisational energy include individual interactions in settings of mutual dependence; the creation of shared interpretations of shared events; and by the generation of shared emotional or cognitive states.

A language for Appreciuative Inquiry interventions

It was at this point of my reading that I sat up and took notice. This is exactly the area in which Appreciative Inquiry and other dialogic, co-creative change methodologies create their magic. It is precisely by actively working with the interactions in situations of mutual dependency (a whole system), by creating shared interpretations of shared experiences (the process we take people through to create ‘account’ of past, present and future) and by the deliberate generation and expansion of positive emotions (Appreciative Inquiry particularly) that we are able to have an effect on the energy of a group or an organization and so the potential for action and change. I find this articulation of the phenomena of organisational energy and how it relates to the processes of Appreciative Inquiry very exciting.

In this paper energy is described as a resource that allows actors to generate new cognitive frameworks to organise their understanding of a situation. In other words, as we have different experiences together, so we see things differently together, and therefore we can act differently, together. As the paper explains, once a group starts to experience a shared enthusiasm, shared cognitive activation (brain or thought activity) and shared sense of working for joint goals, so the situation begins to feel more one of mutuality and less one of antagonisms. As the sense of mutuality (we’re all in this together) grows, so people are more likely to get involved helping to create meaning, direction setting, deciding, motivating others and in general taking on such leadership tasks in some area or other. The leadership capacity of the system expands. Leadership capacity and leadership enactment becomes less a property of a job title and more a property of the social system.  It is this shift in the leadership capacity and pattern in the group, as well as the emergent productive energy that allows change to happen. Again this describes exactly what, as a practitioner, I see as the Appreciative Inquiry process unfolds.

And so I suggest that as we look to help organizations adapt and grow in changing conditions we need to attend to the phenomena of organisational energy. Thanks to researchers and theorists we have a language in which to describe what we see in organisations and to help us understand what underlies the effectiveness of these ‘positive energy, whole system, dialogic’ change methodologies such as Appreciative Inquiry. By giving us words and a framework they help people articulate something they instinctively know i.e. difference between the energy of resigned inertia and productive energy. They make it possible to explain what Appreciative Inquiry does and how: namely that it transforms the energy of resigned inertia or corrosive energy into productive energy by working with the collective phenomena from which the temporary phenomena of productive energy emerges. By so doing it creates a shift in energy state and an increase in leadership capacity allowing for effective organisational action.

I am highly, if not wholly, indebted in this article to the paper ‘Experiencing Human Energy as a Catalyst for Developing Leadership Capacity’ by Bernard Vogel published in Developing Leaders for Positive Organising: a 21st Century Repertoire for Leading in Extraordinary Times, of the which I have here only scratched the surface.

Sarah Lewis

Book Review – Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies PROFIT from Passion and Purpose, by Raj Sisodia, David Wolfe, Jag Sheth (Originally published in AI Practitioner)

Why this book?

I went to the World Appreciative Inquiry Congress in Orlando USA last year where this book was positively recommended by various luminaries such as David Cooperrider. After I heard about it for the third time, I thought I would investigate.

Brief Account of the book

The book is based on two rounds of research undertaken by the authors in collaboration with their MBA students. They identified the organizations initially by asking the question ‘Tell us about some companies you love. Not just like but love.’ They evaluated the suggested organisations against some criteria and produced an initial batch of 18 companies that qualified, expanded to 62 in the current edition. The headline criteria are that, to qualify as a firm of endearment, the company or organisation must be passionate about doing good while doing well, and must be equally committed to doing well by all its shareholders e.g. partners, investors, customers, society and employees. In addition there must be evidence that they live these values.

The headline news is that when they then compared the performance of these Firms of Endearment against the Good to Great companies and the Standard and Poor top 500, they outperformed them against the market by 4 to 6 times as much. In other words while Good to Great and top 500 companies outperformed the market, the Firms of Endearment, particularly the American ones, outperformed the market even more, by a 6 – to – 1 ratio (p. 20). So of course the question is chicken or egg? Interestingly, much later in the book, a model is presented that suggests that initially a company has to ‘establish a strong market position and a predictable stream of profits’ before it can then it can advance up a hierarchy equivalent to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. At stage two of this ‘Kyosei’ hierarchy ‘managers and workers cooperate’, at stage three the organization ‘extends cooperation to customers, suppliers, communities and even competitors’ and finally at stages 4 and 5, gets to address global imbalances and help governments solve global problems (p.157).

The big point - 'Age Of Transcendance'

In attempting to explain the rise of the Firm of Endearment as a successful business model, they suggest it is part of a wider C21st zeitgeist, prompted in part by an ageing population experiencing the psychological process of ‘generativity’ which is ‘the disposition of older people to help incoming generations prepare for their time of stewardship of the common good’ (p xiii-xiv). Many of these ageing baby boomers are also of course in senior and influential positions in business life. They also believe that the world is experiencing a strong search for meaning which is driving people to look beyond the relationship of an organization to their purse to a relationship that speaks to their hearts, their passions, and their values. This is described as ‘A transition from material want to meaning want.’ (p. xxvii). The authors describe this as the emergence of the ‘Age of Transcendence’, suggesting that in this new age, organizations will need to connect with six specific senses: design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning, to engage and influence their stakeholders. All of which are asserted to have deep roots in the brain’s right hemisphere and all of which of course resonate with Appreciative Inquiry. There is a suggestion that we are moving from a ‘having’ society to a ‘being’ society. One can’t help noticing this resonates rather with our straitened and benighted times where there is less ‘having’ to be had.

The book draws on its 60+  exemplar organizations to illuminate the various features of a Firm of Endearment and how they are expressed differently with the various stakeholders. For example it recounts how Costco implements practices that reduce staff turnover, increase per person productivity and create good efficiencies that create a virtuous circle that allows the organization to both pay better wages and generate more income per person than rivals in the same industry (p.35). Wegman is quoted to illustrate that high quality, highly motivated staff can result in a doubling of margin per square foot against the industry average, a gain which more than offsets their proportionally greater wage bill (p. 61).

In Summary

There is no doubt the authors have identified an interesting group of organizations. A key question is whether, as argued, they are harbingers of a new age, or whether they are outlier organizations of a type that have always existed. The book itself starts well but for this reader became progressively less interesting.

My take on this book

I can see why David and others got excited about this book. It is centred on answering a great AI question ‘How are we going to make this company an instrument of service to society even as we fulfil our obligation to build shareholder wealth?’ (p.3) and gives good, quantified answers to that question. The evidence that organizations can be good and do well is very convincing and valuable. The authors have clearly contributed immensely to the business case for Appreciative Inquiry.

The text is clearly located in idea that ‘Business is by far the greatest value creator in the world’ (p. xv) and argues that we need to ‘Understand the power of capitalism to transform our world for the better’ (xvi). This belief underpins the ‘Business as an Agent of World Benefit’ Appreciative Inquiry project.

However the book proceeds as if a concern for the common welfare is a new phenomena, with no reference to, for example, the Quaker run businesses or model factory towns of the 19th and 20th Century. I could also take issue with the unintended sexism of calling older women ‘postmenopausal’ while older men are referred to, somewhat more graciously, as ‘grandfathers’ (p. xxviii). Similarly the first time the female personal pronoun pops up is in relation to a hypothetical customer (p.7); none of the experts or CEO’s quoted to this point (or at all according to memory but not rigorously checked) are female.

This book offers support to the Appreciative Inquiry project. It will also give you case study stories for your presentations. In addition there are some great statistics in here but you have to dig through a lot to find them. I confess I didn’t finish the book.

Other Resources

Much more about the links between creating positive workplaces and enhanced productivity and profitability 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 Book Reviews and other Leadership Skills and Positive Psychology 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.

Starter For Ten - How To Begin Applying Positive Psychology At Work

For those who would like to dip their toe into the positive psychology world I've plucked a few of the recommendations from my book, Positive Psychology At Work, for you to have a look at. Hopefully they illustrate just how intuitive a lot of this is - which doesn't make it easy to do in a hierarchical, busy organisation of course!

Elicit Success Stories

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.

Develop A Success And Achievement Strategy

It is very easy during difficult times to lose sight of achievements and successes. All too quickly it begins to feel as if there is no good news only more bad news. One way to counteract this is to develop a strategy for recognising, capturing and broadcasting the great things people and teams are still managing to achieve, despite a difficult context.

Positive Inductions

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.

Educate Leaders and Mangers about Key Research

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

Help People Identify Their Strengths

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?’

Move Towards Being An Economy Of Strengths

Find ways to use people’s strengths more at work and, equally important, ways to do less of the work that drains them of energy. Encourage strengths based delegation. Reconfigure how you achieve objectives so the plan plays to strengths. Pair people up with complementary strengths. Allocate tasks in your team by strengths rather than by role and delegate by volunteer rather than imposition when possible.

Advertise Your Strengths

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

Encourage Good Relationships At Work

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.

Find Your Positive Energy Network Nodes

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.

Other Resources

The book itself - Positive Psychology At Work, 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 Positive Psychology articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

For case studies on positive psychology at work visit our case studies collection

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.

Free excerpt from my new book 'Positive Psychology And Chnage': Features Of Co-Created Change

Co-created change differs in its process and effects from imposed change. Whole-system change methodologies such as Appreciative Inquiry and World Café facilitate co-created change.

This is an edited extract from my new book Positive Psychology and Change

Co-created change...

1. Calls on the organization’s collective intelligence

Participative co-creation involves, from the very beginning, those affected by the change, allowing them to apply their ‘local knowledge’ intelligence at the point at which it can save the organisation both time and money.

2. Creates active participation

Being an active participant engaged in understanding the situation, making sense of what is happened and able to influence decision-making positively affects people’s motivation to put ideas into action. Early involvement effectively bypasses or greatly reduces resistance to change and the need to get ‘buy-in’ at a later date.

3. Involves people actively in the decision-making

When people feel their views have been genuinely sought, appreciated and considered, and they have been party to the evolving discussions, they are much more likely to accept the outcome and to be able to see their influence on it. Having been actively involved, they experience a sense of ownership and commitment to the outcome.

4. Builds social capital

These co-creative methods bring people together across the system and so create greater social capital. Social capital facilitates information-flow, lower level decision-making and trust around the organization, all of which lower organisational cost and increase co-ordination during the disruption of change.

5. Builds on past and present strengths to create sustainable change

Co-creative approaches focus on identifying past and present organisational and individual strengths as resources for the change. Using our strengths is energizing and easier than using areas of non-strength. Being able to construct the change in a way that calls on our strengths can be highly motivating.

6. Understands strengths as the key to a new organizational economy

With an awareness of strengths, we can reconfigure our understanding of the organization as an ‘economy of strengths’. At its simplest this suggests that people can spend most of their time doing what they love doing, within a structure that allows them to easily find people with complementary strengths to their own.

7. Understands social networks as the heart of organizations

Understanding the organization as a social network directs our attention to the importance of relationships in change. It sounds obvious but the language of the organization as a ‘well oiled machine’ or ‘ a bureaucracy’ or ‘an org. chart’ can easily obscure this essential reality. A continual focus on people and their patterns of interaction and communication is a key focus of these approaches. 

8. Recognises the importance of dialogue as words create worlds

It matters both what people say to each other and how they say it. It is easy for people to fall into talking about change in a solely negative way. Creating an opportunity for those concerned to co-create more purposeful, forward oriented, positive accounts of what is happening and their role in the change and the future, and creating opportunities to broadcast this new narrative more widely, can be very beneficial.

9. Recognises the importance of narrative for sense making in action

The accounts we create of the world and what goes on it are our best guides to appropriate action. They are our reality. They aren’t immutable. A key factor in the success of these approaches in achieving change is that they facilitate connected, system-wide shifts in narrative, allowing the team or organization as a whole to create new accounts of ‘what is going on’ that allow new meanings to emerge, or sense to be made, which in turn liberates new possibilities for action.

10. Recognises the energizing and resilience boosting effects of positive emotions

Hope and courage are key to the process of change. It is easy for these to be damaged or reduced during change processes and a key focus of all these appreciative and positive methods is the re-ignition or re-generation of positive emotional states in general, and these in particular. Positive emotional states are a key component of resilience, also an attribute much in demand during times of change.

11. Utilises imagination as the pull for change

We can push people towards change or we can pull them towards change. The former can seem easier and quicker and leads to the desire to create, find or build ‘burning platforms’ for change. The latter is slower, and, since the imagined future is often less immediately available to the imagination than the all too real undesirable present, can be harder to access. However it creates a more sustainable energy for change. Appreciative Inquiry as a methodology is particularly alive to and focused on this.

12. Calls on the whole power of systems

Working with the whole system simultaneously is a key way to involve the power of the organization to achieve simultaneous, co-created change.

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 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, Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry 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.

The Distinctive Nature of Co-creative Change

How is it different, why is it better?

Co-creative approaches to organisational change such as Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space, and World Café have some very distinctive features that differentiate them from more familiar top-down planned approaches to change.

1. Change is a many-to-many rather than one-to-many process

In co-creative change a lot can happen in a short space of time as conversation (and change) takes place simultaneously amongst people in various groups rather than relying on a linear transmission from top to bottom. It can feel messier and less controlled but the benefits of active engagement, participation and commitment far outweigh these concerns.

2. They work on the understanding that the world is socially constructed

By allowing that we live in social worlds that are constructed by interactions in relationship, these approaches recognise that beliefs, and so the potential for action, can be affected by processes or events. The co-creative change processes allow people to experience each other, and the world, differently and so adjust their mental maps of their social world, creating the potential for change.

3. Conversation is a dynamic process

Co-creative approaches to organisational change recognize that conversations and events take place in a dynamic context of mutual and reflexive influence. I act and speak in the context of what you are doing and saying and vice versa. This means that conversation is not a passive process for conveying information but is rather an active process for creation, and so holds the potential to create change.

4. Organisations are about patterns so changing organizations is about changing patterns

All of the above culminates in the understanding that organisational habits, culture, ways of being are held in place by the habitual patterns of conversation and interaction. Change these and you change the organization.

5. Change can occur at many levels simultaneously

Rather than being focused on rolling out a pre-designed planned change, these approaches are much more focused on growing change from the ground up. A useful metaphor to convey this is that of by encouraging of lots of different plants to flourish on the forest floor by changing the bigger context, such as clearing part of the canopy to allow in more light.

6. They connect to values to gain commitment

These approaches connect to people’s values as well as their analytic abilities. Appreciative Inquiry discovery interviews, for instance, quickly reveal people’s deep values about their organization and allow people with divergent surface views to form a meaningful connection at a deeper level that aids the negotiation of difference.

7. They create hope and other positive emotions

Appreciative Inquiry by design, and the other approaches by intention, focus on creating positive emotional states in the participants, particularly hope. Hope is a tremendously motivating emotion and is key source of energy for engaging with the disruption of change. By building hope in the group that the situation can be improved, these processes create great energy for the journey ahead.

8. They encourage high-quality connections and the formation of high-energy networks

These are two concepts from positive psychology and increasingly research is demonstrating that they have a positive effect on creativity, problem-solving and performance. The co-creation change methodologies are highly relational and facilitate the development of meaningful relationships particularly across silo or functional boundaries, increasing the ability of the whole organization to change in synchronisation with itself.

9. They allow people to feel heard

The very essence of the co-creative approaches is the emphasis on voice and dialogue as key components of change. As people are engaged with and have an opportunity to input to discussions about the need for change from the very beginning, and are also able to influence the design of change, they feel their voices and needs are being heard by the organization as the change unfolds. This greatly lessens the challenges of overcoming resistance or getting buy-in.

Appreciating Change specialises in helping organizations achieve positive, rapid and sustainable change.

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’ new book Positive Psychology and Change

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

Positive Psychology and Change: Evidence Based Practice

We now have enough theory, research and practice from work in Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Psychology to know how and why these interventions work. We can also work out how to combine them to create robust, effective approaches to change that are suitable for organizations grappling with the challenges of the twenty first century.

Why it works

Research in positive psychology over the last 15 years and earlier has given us a robust set of data about what flourishing organizations, organizational practices and people look like and how to create them.

How to do it

Appreciative Inquiry has extended its methodology from the original 5D summit model to include the SOAR approach to strategic development, Appreciative coaching, positive performance processes and many more appreciative practices to tell us how to do it.

In addition other co-creative methodologies such as Open Space, World Café and SimuReal offer clear processes for applying positive psychology to organisational change challenges

How it works

An increasing awareness of the psychology of group and human behaviour, and the influencing factors on that behaviour means that we know that these co-creative methods work through psychological processes such as the creation of new narratives and the reconfiguring of patterns of relationship. The influence on behaviour of dynamics such as imagination, metaphor, and identity are positively affected by positively applied co-creative change approaches.

What you get

From the application of science through the co-creative processes influencing group dynamics what you get is higher-level organisational transformation. Change at the level of highly energised shared aspiration, shared hope, keen interdependency understanding, community level thinking, energy-less synchronicity, and future oriented action. Such transformation pulls people over obstacles and set backs towards a better future.

Appreciating Change specialises in helping organizations achieve positive, rapid and sustainable change.

Other Resources

Sarah’s new book Positive Psychology and Change explains all this and more. Available now from Amazon and Wiley-Blackwell.

See more articles on Positive Psychology 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

Women Make Groups Cleverer! (Evidence for collective intelligence)

Fascinating research on group performance suggests two key things:

1. That the collective intelligence of a group is more than the sum of its parts
2. That the presence of women in a group is key to high collective intelligence

How do we know this?

Researchers worked with 699 people, divided them into groups of 3-5 people and set them various tasks. The wide range of these tasks was designed to measure all sorts of different aspects of intelligence. These included visual puzzles, brainstorming, making collective moral judgments, and negotiating over limited resources. They also measured the individual intelligence of everyone. They then tried to see how the individual intelligence scores related to the team performance scores. 

When they did a factor analysis of the group performance scores and the intelligence measures, they found one factor that accounted for 43% of the variance and that was not related to either average intelligence of group members nor the maximum intelligence score. It seemed to be something over and above a simple aggregate of intelligence. They consider this factor to represent a measure of the group’s collective intelligence, with collective intelligence defined as ‘the general ability of the group to perform a wide variety of tasks’. The suggestion is that collective intelligence is an emergent group phenomenon that is a product of more than just existing intelligence in the group.

They ran three different studies of this type and compared results. The findings held. On each occasion collective intelligence was found to better account for group performance than measures of individual member intelligence.

So if individual intelligence doesn’t account for group intelligence, what does? The researchers moved on to examine a number of group and individual factors that might be predictors of collective intelligence. Interestingly many of the factors that are thought to be associated with group performance, such as group cohesion, motivation and satisfaction, didn’t predict group performance.

The Findings

Instead they found:

• That there is a group factor of collective intelligence, conceptually similar to the idea of the individual factor of general intelligence, that has a global effect on performance on many different tasks, and accounts for 43% of the variance in performance. It also is strongly predictive of performance.
• That collective intelligence is not strongly correlated with the average or maximum intelligence in the group.
• That collective intelligence is strongly correlated with the average social sensitivity of the group members. This is the strongest predictive factor of group collective intelligence, which, in turn, is a strong predictor of group task performance on a wide range of tasks.
• That collective intelligence is strongly correlated with the equality of distribution of turn taking.
• That collective intelligence is strongly correlated with the proportion of women in the group.
• It is suspected that the last correlation is related to the others e.g. that the presence of women tends to increase the social sensitivity and the equality of turn-taking in the group.

What to do to improve or enhance the collective intelligence of your project or work groups?

• Help the group recognize that collective intelligence in group decision making and performance is an emergent phenomena of group interaction patterns.
• Help the group recognize that the emotional life of the group is as important as its intellectual life.
• Ensure their discussion processes allow all voices to be heard, and that people take turns to talk, and to listen.
• Ensure that the group is mixed by gender.

For further information see Woolley A W Charbis, C F, Pentland A, Hashmi N, Malone T W (2010) Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. Science Express. www.scienceexpress.org/30 September 2010

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

Bite - Sized Positive Psychology: The success round

Much research has now confirmed happiness has many benefits. One easy way to use positive psychology to bring these benefits into the work place is by opening a meeting with a ‘success round’. All too often in meetings we plunge straight into the business of the day. Starting the meeting by giving people a chance to share a recent success not only boost people’s mood in the moment, it also prepares them to engage more productively with what ever is to follow. As an added bonus,  we learn lots about what makes our colleagues tick.

The exercise is very easy. Essentially as you open the meeting you say something like:

‘Before we plunge into the agenda, let’s just take a few minutes to reflect on what is going well at the moment. What I’d like is for us all to take a moment to think of a recent success we’ve experienced at work. It doesn’t have to be anything huge, just something that gives you a little glow of achievement or success. Then I’d like us to share them.’

Depending on the size of your group you can do this as a whole round, or just ask people to do it in threes or fours and then share a few examples across the groups.

What you do next is up to you. You could just say

‘thank you, its great to hear so many good things are happening even as we ….(are experiencing challenges of some nature)’

Alternatively you might ask:

 ‘Who else needs to hear about any of this good news and how can we do that?’

Or:

 ‘So what have we just learnt about ourselves?’

You may have other ideas of how to build on what you hear.

Either way you should find that the meeting goes a little better for this early investment. And over time you may notice that people start noticing their ‘reasons to be cheerful’ more of the time, ready to bring them to your meeting, and that in turn the group’s sense of themselves becomes more positive.

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 How To 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

Why We Should Cultivate Gratitude In Our Leaders – Particularly In Difficult Times

One might have thought that the expression of gratitude was for the benefit of the recipient, to feel acknowledged and affirmed in their generous act: possibly so. However the experience of gratitude also brings great benefit to the donor, and some of those benefits can be seen to act as an inoculation against the dangerous seductions of privilege, power and position.

 Gratitude is an acknowledgement that we have received something of benefit from others. The grateful person reacts to the goodness of others in a benevolent and receptive fashion. Classically it was considered to be the greatest of the virtues. However, like all virtues, it needs to be cultivated. Resentment at the good fortune of others and a sense of personal entitlement seem to come more easily to us. So why bother to cultivate a sense of gratitude? What are the benefits? And why might it be especially beneficial to leaders to experience gratitude?

1. Gratitude enhances resilience and coping abilities

Counting one’s blessings in time of stress is a well-known coping mechanism. Such behaviour works by helping to facilitate a switch of attention from the negative and depressing in any situation to the positive and encouraging. It helps people switch into a more positive mental state, which in turn makes it more likely they will be able to adopt a pro-active adaptive coping mode following some set-back.

Specifically feeling gratitude makes it more likely that someone will be able to seek social support from others and that they will be able to positively reframe the situation (finding the silver linings). Gratitude has been found to be a key component of promoting post-traumatic growth rather than post-traumatic stress. And it plays a key part in determining transplant surgery post-operative quality of life. Experiencing gratitude was a key component affecting resilience and post-trauma coping for American students in the aftermath of the shock and horror of 9/11. All in all the evidence is fairly strong that the experience of gratitude promotes adaptive coping and personal growth following setbacks or trauma.

Leadership can be a stressful process: a degree of resilience is a requisite for the job these days. Cultivating a sense of gratitude for the good things going on and the benefits others bring will promote greater resilience, better coping, better mental and physical health and personal growth and renewal.

2. Gratitude builds and strengthens relationships

Feeling grateful encourages people to consider ways to reciprocate the goodness or kindness they have received. Such reciprocal behaviour builds social bonds, creating a mutually reinforcing positive cycle of expression and acknowledgement of interdependency. It enhances trust. In addition grateful people are attractive to others; being found to be extraverted, agreeable, empathic, emotionally stable, forgiving, trusting and generous. Gratitude is associated with empathy, forgiveness and a willingness to help others. These things inspire loyalty and commitment amongst other things. Gratitude is a vital interpersonal emotion, the absence of which undermines social harmony.

Leaders can’t do it on their own whatever the myth of hero leadership might suggest. Healthy relationships are key to organizational success. Leaders get things done through other people. Leaders need enthusiastic, committed, loyal and responsive team members and followers. Being grateful, recognising other’s benevolence, and reciprocating in kind help to build these essential social bonds and enhance organizational social capital.

3. Gratitude helps develop flourishing organizations

Cameron discovered that an emphasis on, and prevalence of, virtuous behaviour is a defining feature of flourishing organizations and positive leadership. Gratitude acts to motivate virtuous behaviour, that is, action taken to benefit others. Gratitude acts as a benefit detector making it more likely that opportunities to express appreciation and gratefulness will be spotted. Expressing gratitude reinforces pro-social behaviour while feeling grateful motivates pro-social behaviour. In this way gratitude is a motivating and energising emotion, not just a passive pleasant feeling. The benefits of gratitude can be far reaching. Acts of gratitude can stimulate virtuous circles of generous and grateful behaviour as the recipient of benefit is inclined to pass it on i.e. to do someone else a favour.

Leadership is all about cultivating and creating productive working environments. Virtuous circles of self re-enforcing beneficial behaviour that smooth organizational life and facilitate the effective transfer of skills and resources through acts of helping, the exercise of patience and forgiveness, and the expression of gratitude help to increase organizational capability without increasing hard cost.

4. Gratitude increases goal attainment

Interestingly gratitude appears to enhance goal achievement. Often the assumption is that a state of gratitude might induce passivity and complacency. However the limited research evidence available suggests that gratitude enhances effortful goal striving. One would imagine this is a product of the well-researched benefits of positive emotions in general: greater creativity, sociality, tenacity and so on.

Leadership is, amongst other things, about goal attainment. It seems that cultivating an attitude of gratitude in the process of goal striving, rather than giving into emotions of frustration and blame, aids goal achievement.

5. Gratitude increases personal wellbeing

Gratitude acts as a vaccination against envy. Envy is a negative emotional state characterized by resentment, a sense of inferiority, longing and frustration. It creates unhappiness and mental distress. Gratitude directs attention away from material goods more towards social goods. Grateful people appreciate positive qualities in others and are able to feel happy over their good fortune. They are also less likely to compare themselves unfavourably with people of a higher status. By encouraging a focus on the positive and beneficial in the present moment, gratitude also seems to protect against the damaging effects of regret.

Grateful people are concerned with the wellbeing of others, both in particular and in general. This focus helps them fulfil the basic needs for personal growth i.e. relationships and community.  They are less likely to define success in material terms. Materialism is damaging to subjective wellbeing and it is correlated with many things unhelpful to leadership such as less relatedness, less autonomy, and less competence.

 Leaders often compete in a world where advancement and success are measured by the trappings of material possession: salary, office space, houses and cars. Given our straitened times and the shift in many sectors from a sense of abundance to one of scarcity – less promotion, less bonus payments, less corporate benefits – cultivating increased gratitude may help inoculate against the corrosive emotions of entitlement, resentment and envy.

Gratitude is the mindful awareness of benefits in one’s life. It seems that counting one’s blessings on a regular basis really does help with overcoming the vicissitudes of life and with maintaining optimal personal functioning. For those in leadership positions the benefits can expand to increase organizational functioning. Feeling gratitude doesn’t come easily to many of us, but the evidence is mounting that the benefits it brings are worth the effort it takes to cultivate a grateful outlook on things.

Further reading

Emmons R and Mishra A (2011) ‘Why gratitude enhances wellbeing: what we know, what we need to know’, in Sheldon K, Kashdan T, Steger M (eds) Designing positive Psychology.

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 about Positive Emotions 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