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

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

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

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

Why do men get selected more often?

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

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

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

The mistaken appointment of narcissists and psychopaths

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

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

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

What happens when they become leaders

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

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

Going forward

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

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

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

So, in essence, we need to

• Stop using confidence as a proxy for competence

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

• Avoid prompting narcissists and psychopaths to positions of leadership

• Stop looking at leadership potential through a gendered lens

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

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

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Thought Provoking’ 

Working with the Organisation’s Shadowside: Helping organisations discuss the undiscussable?

At the recent EU AI network meeting some colleagues and I fell into a conversation about working with the organisational shadowside. I thought it was interesting enough to share.

What is the organisational shadowside?

While discussion our work, we identified a common experience, when working with faith organisations, of encountering such a strong surface ‘story’ about what it meant to be a good person of this faith that it was impossible for the organisation to talk about actions and feelings in the organisation that didn’t fit that story. In one example it was the hurt, anger, betrayal, resentment and other difficult feelings following a round of redundancies that had taken place the previous year that was unmentionable. In another it was the difficulty of working and living within the constraints of monastic vows that was pushed under the carpet. The challenge we encountered wasn’t the stories themselves, it was the sense that we were being drawn into a secret or ‘shadow’ conversation that couldn’t be fitted into the accepted organisational story.

Another colleague expanded the conversation by added her experience working with ‘vocational’ organisations like charities, noting how she had found that an excess of ‘passion’ about the work or the clients was used to excuse bullying behaviour. Of course, we noted, all organisations have topics and parts of their history that are difficult to address, but these types of organisations seemed to have an extra factor of difficulty in acknowledging and owning organisational imperfections.

What is particular about these organizations?

Reflecting on this led us to the observation that these organisations could all be described as striving towards a greater good. In a way the organizations didn’t just want to do good, they needed to be good. This purity of spirit allowed little room for imperfections of spirit. But the organizations were full of people, and people have plenty of imperfections. It was this, we postulated, that made it hard for the organisation and the people in it to bring their stories together. The lived experience of troubling feelings and actions was pushed into the shadow.

So as Appreciative Practitioners, our challenge was, how to bring these two conversations into the same space in a fruitful and appreciative way? We needed to be able to have a conversation that acknowledged and owned people’s experience of the difficulties that come with being human that also honoured the organisation’s story of itself as essentially ‘good’. Somehow, within the container of a specific safe space, we needed it become permissible to name and share the challenging parts of life in this group while upholding the values and beliefs of the organisation about its purpose and its ‘spirit’ of being. The organisation, and the people, needed to be able to own the whole.

We felt that this idea of permission, permission to tell the untellable stories and of being heard, was key to joining the two conversations together. We discussed and shared different approaches and techniques we had used, recognising that what worked in one context wouldn’t necessarily have the same impact in another; that we needed, in all situations, to enact situational sensitivity.

Some of the approaches we identified that we had found helpful in the past were

• Validating but not amplifying. One of us had found that creating an opportunity for people to share difficult stories in individual interviews meant that they could tell their story of the ‘bad things’ going on before the group event. This meant that the story/ experience could be heard and acknowledged, without being amplified within a group setting. It was also noted that the sense of having ‘deposited ‘the story with the facilitator beforehand seemed to act to reduce the anxiety and so likelihood of someone being driven to just blurt something out. Instead, the facilitator could create opportunities for people to choose to share difficult material within a generally appreciative and positive oriented event, at an appropriate time.

• Problem and Solution Tree. One of us had also worked with a ‘problem tree’ and ‘solution tree’ process, drawing on the work of David Shaked, which worked to bring both problem and aspiration visibly into the same space in relation to each other.

• Working with hopes and fears. The allowed the fears (of getting together to have a tricky conversation for example) to be named. It was found that allowing them to be named worked, in the specific context described, to lessen their strength and their impact. Naming and recording these hopes and fears also allowed for regularly monitoring of changes in group concerns and helped appreciation that hopes were being realised and fears ameliorated.

In addition,

• We noted in these situations it can be helpful to work in small groups a lot, and of course, to always be focused on creating questions that move the discussion and conversation towards connection, creation and compassion.

• We also reminded ourselves of the value, frequently, in checking assumptions underlying conversational contributions and people’s mental maps

• And we noted the importance of exercising contextual intelligence. That is, recognising that the story is bigger than the people in the room and systems, for example, often mirror the tensions in the bigger system.

Since our conversation I have been reminded of how story is the key resource with which we are so often working. The question often is how we can help the group move from its current story or stories towards something that is inclusive of a wider experience. One that recognises forces at play beyond those in front of us, or that recognises good intentions can be behind bad actions.

I find this an interesting topic, and I hope this has been interesting for you too.

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 Organisational Culture’ 

Highlights from ABP conference

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

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

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

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

• The competitive attitude undermines psychological safety.

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

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

Not great then!

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

Some fascinating takeaways

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

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

‘Be nice to them or they’ll leave’

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

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

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

Ghost Meetings

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

How to hack happiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Psychological safety

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

• Feeling personally connected,

• Feeling included,

• Appreciating and being appreciated.

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

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

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Thought Provoking’ 

How can we bring the benefits of Appreciative Inquiry to stuck change projects?

There are various signs that a change project has got stuck. One is that the senior managers are working all hours while everyone else is sort of waiting, not knowing what to do. Another is frustrated change agents pointing to the plans and diagrams all over their office walls while talking about their problems of ‘resistance to change’ and ‘lack of buy-in’. Yet another is a workforce that is demoralised, demotivated and rapidly losing hope of any improvement any time soon.

It’s not resistance to change, it’s resistance to imposed change

The fundamental issue behind stuck change is often that the wrong approach has been applied to the change challenge, typically that the organization has applied logical rational problem-solving to a challenge of a different nature. In brief, if the change challenge is a logical, rational problem then taking a logical, rational ‘planned’ or ‘diagnostic’ approach might work.

However, often the challenge is of a different order, for example, how to change ways of working, how to create a different culture, how to get people to be more adaptable, flexible, creative in their work. These can be seen as being ‘wicked’ or ‘adaptive’ problems, and they are generally not amenable to logical resolution. Instead, they need a different approach, something more emergent, more dialogic, more like Appreciative Inquiry.

ideally we wouldn’t start from here, but since we’re here…

With the planned change already underway, the challenge becomes how to introduce different ways of approaching change, like Appreciative Inquiry. The answer lies in Appreciative Inquiry processes rather than the well-known 5D Appreciative Inquiry summit. We are coming aboard a ship already underway and we have to negotiate such areas of influence as we can.

For example, I was once asked to help a company that was implementing a new IT system and hadn’t fully appreciated the culture change nature of their plans: the whole work process was being redesigned, some people’s department were closing and other people were having to re-apply for what they thought of as ‘their’ jobs. I was asked in once it became apparent that the project was getting very stuck.

I was able to negotiate a three-hour session with a voluntary group of front-line staff entitled ‘Making sense of the changes’. In which I hoped to address three questions: What will be different? How will it impact my work? How can I positively affect my experience and that of my colleagues around me?

The first question released an avalanche of stories of bad management: they don’t tell us what is going on, they are all too busy to talk to us, they aren’t doing this change very well. The Appreciative Inquiry approach is here to acknowledge this, but not amplify it, not inquire into it. Instead I asked, has this always been the case or is the experience you are describing more recent?

It took a few more minutes but then someone said, ‘It wasn’t like this when it started’ ‘How was it, I asked?’ ‘It was very consultative,’ came the reply, along with a recognition that their managers, the same people, used to be fine. ’So, what’s changed recently?’

This was a pivot point in the conversation which then moved to a focus on the change in circumstances rather than a managerial personality transplant. This important change in the story allowed for different ways forward, started to create hope and opened the way, later, to more fruitful questions such as ‘What fires can I light, what seeds can I plant to help this organization continue to be a great place to work`’ and ‘How can I contribute to help make the experience of change as good as possible for me and others? In this way the group become more appreciative of the fact that they had choices about how they behaved. In response to a final ‘what’s changed in the last three hours?’ question, people reported feeling more positive, more accepting and, paradoxically, also more assertive, more pro-active, more choiceful and braver. They had clear ideas about what they would do, in their own spheres of interest, to start moving the change process in a better direction.

Top tips

Here are my top tips for bringing Appreciative Inquiry to get stuck situations moving again

•       Focus on what you can influence and help others do the same

•       Attend to the stories being created about change and people

•       Create and recreate states of positive affect

•       Create, amplify and enlarge a state of hope and choice

•       Co-create ideas for the future and ways forward with others

•       Start where people are at and move to more productive place

•       Use your attention as a resource, re-direct the attention of others

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 ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ 

How Positive Psychology Can Promote Children’s Wellbeing and other Benefits

By Ella Jackson-Jones

Marketing Assistant for Appreciating Change and part-time Nanny, writing from her perspective as a Nanny

As a childcare provider I see the benefits of incorporating positive psychology techniques and practices in all aspects of children’s lives from a young age. It helps support their emotional development, promote wellbeing, and build resilience that they can carry with them into adulthood. Generation Alpha children will have to navigate an ever more competitive, demanding and increasingly complex education system and job market, as well as cope with being embedded in social media with access to 24/7 news. They are growing up in a world of globally connected new technologies which will become part of their everyday lives, and that will ultimately shape their attitudes and expectations of the world.

Young children need to learn the skills necessary for managing their emotions. Adults who can model this are essential in helping to shape children’s emotional development. There is a strong link between mental health concerns in children and their ability to regulate their emotions. Assisting children to cultivate positive emotions helps to mitigate mental health issues not just for them but for future generations also.

Poor emotional regulation can manifest as behavioural or mental health issues in children such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, mood disorders, sleep disorders and neurotic disorders. Children are affected by life’s adversities, in particular those from lower socio-economic backgrounds or those who have experienced high levels of trauma, are more at risk of developing a mental health condition, with 1 in 6 children aged between 5 and 16 currently likely to do so. In addition, 39.2% of 6- to 16-year-olds have experienced a deterioration in mental health since 2017. Educators and parents are seeing the consequences of both an education system, and traditional parenting styles, that ignore the importance of the mental health needs of children.

An answer to some of the issues faced by children may lie within the teachings of Positive Psychology. It is already known that wellbeing is a clear indicator of academic achievement, success, and satisfaction in later life (Wise up: prioritizing wellbeing in schools) and it is possible to support the wellbeing of children through our interactions with them both in and out of school. Research into the effects of positive psychology interventions in young people is still in its infancy, however there are systematic reviews that suggest these interventions benefit the wellbeing of children now and the children of future generations.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is a method that aids both children and adults to recognise, understand, and manage their emotions. SEL targets 5 areas; self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making. In time, working with SEL, children learn to establish and achieve goals, express empathy for others, engage in healthy relationships and make responsible decisions. . The benefits of this kind of intervention include better academic performance, improved attitudes and behaviours, greater motivation to learn, deeper commitment to school, increased time devoted to schoolwork, fewer negative behaviours, decreased disruptive class behaviours, reduced emotional distress, fewer reports of student depression, anxiety, stress, and social withdrawal. Organisations such as the Education Policy Institute are fighting to have SEL integrated into the national curriculum in the UK.

Another way we can attend to the social and emotional needs of children is by supporting them in the fostering of good and healthy relationships with others since the quality of our relationships affects our ability to have a happy and fulfilling life.

There are always ways you can practice positive psychology techniques with your children at home. I have listed some ideas below.

• The Good Things List – Each day you can work together to write a list of 3 good things that happened that day which children can refer back to as they grow up.

• Relationships – Make sure children spend quality time with parents, special relatives, and friends.

• Random acts of kindness – Encourage your children to do one act of kindness each day and talk about how doing nice things for other people make you feel.

• The Gratitude Jar – Assist your child to write down 5 things each day that they are grateful for and pop them in a jar, each week you can reflect on all the wonderful things they appreciate.

• Goal chart – Create some short- and long-term achievable goals. Keep reviewing them and reflect on how you feel as your achievement list grows.

• The strengths list – Discuss and write down your children’s strengths. Focus on some each day to help them improve their day or to help someone else.

• Savouring the moment – Take a part of your child’s routine that you both enjoy and slow it down so you can really enjoy the moment.

It is possible and important for you to provide the tools and scaffolding children need to look after their mental health and wellbeing throughout their lives. By teaching them to focus on the positives and create happiness from the little things will help children be more resilient in times of adversity and mitigate against mental health conditions in the future.

The following sources helped inform this paper

• Mental Health of Children and Young People in England, NHS Digital, 2020, accessed, https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-of-children-and-young-people-in-england/2020-wave-1-follow-up

• Mental Health of Children and Young People in England, NHS Digital, 2021, accessed, https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-of-children-and-young-people-in-england/2021-follow-up-to-the-2017-survey

• Young Minds ‘Wise Up’ prioritizing wellbeing in schools. www.youngminds.org.uk

•  Social and emotional learning: An evidence review and synthesis of key issues – Education Policy Institute, 4th November 2021, accessed, https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/social-and-emotional-learning

 Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Thought Provoking’ 

How our pets have been helping us through difficult times, and what this means for the workplace

As humans we have been domesticating animals for tens of thousands of years, taming wolves for protection, horses for transportation and livestock for food. Our relationship with domesticated animals began for these kinds of practical reasons, however when we consider the definition and purpose of the pets we know and love today, it is drastically different.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines a pet as “any animal that is kept in the home as a companion and treated kindly”. These days you’re likely to find people talking very affectionately about their pets, describing strong feelings and bonds and even considering them part of the family. In 2018 it was estimated that 44% of UK households owned at least one pet and the total number of pets owned was roughly 51 million (PFMA).  Dogs and cats continue to be the most common pet in UK households.

However, the variety of animals people keep are pets has expanded considerably to include more exotic and unexpected species such as reptiles, rodents, fish, and birds. While not as obviously affectionate as dogs, some of these, such as bearded dragons and budgies, can, with enough time, be trained to bond with humans, reflecting one of the key features of pet ownership that we value: they cuddle us back.

During the recent pandemic with all but essential workers forced to stay at home, whether working or on furlough, many people found themselves with a lot more time on their hands, at the same time a lot of us felt more isolated, cut off from family, friends and missing the social interaction we typically experienced by going in to work. Pets seemed like an obvious choice to fill the hole of missing social interaction and indeed animal charities saw the volume of enquiries for rescue animals increasing by 253% across the lockdown period. By 2021 the number of UK households that owned a pet had risen by over 10% to 59%, with 3.2 million households acquiring a pet since the start of the pandemic. 

This increase reflects the benefits animal contact or pet ownership holds against many of the challenges posed by lockdown, such as increased isolation, poorer mental health. Animals can help:

·       Reduce our stress levels, non-human touch can reduce cortisol levels and lower blood pressure. This in turn increases our resilience.

·       Encourage organisation and routine, pets require feeding and cleaning and dogs require daily walks. This can give pet owners a sense of purpose and keep them motivated, which can help alleviate some symptoms of depression and anxiety which can help boost self-esteem and wellbeing.

·       Provide companionship, pets provide company, which reduces feelings of loneliness and isolation.

·       Increase social interaction, having a pet can increase the amount of social interaction owners have through attending clubs and pet shows and making conversations on walks.

·       Increase exercise, daily walks can have physical health benefits as well as helping with stress and depression and dog owners typically live longer and are less likely to suffer from heart disease.

Implications for the workplace

There has always been a small presence of animals in the workplace, assistance dogs for people with disabilities for instance, or companion cats in care homes. More recently though, a trend has emerged for more general pet-friendly attitudes or policies as organisations recognise the possible benefits of animal company to people and work. For example, a survey study conducted revealed pet-friendly organisations benefit from lower stress levels in the workplace (Naumann, 2016). The pressure to accommodate pets at work may increase as ‘pandemic pet owners’ push to be able to bring their animals back to work with them. Already we are seeing what might happen if workplaces can’t accommodate this, with The Dogs Trust reporting a 39% increase in calls from people wanting to hand in their pets and the RSPCA reporting that abandonment figures are up 20% in 2021 from 2020.

However, we need to bear in mind that the workplace needs to work for everyone. While some people love dogs and cats, and maybe even bearded dragons, and will gain great satisfaction and peace of mind from having their pets close at hand or from being able to interact with others’ pets about the workplace, there are many people who have animal phobias, or have experienced animal trauma, resulting in a dislike or fear of animals. While in others they may set off annoying or even life threatening allergy or asthma attacks. All of which means that pets at work might work for some but not others. Much as we would all prefer pets not to have to be given up as the world moves into yet another work phase, we also need, as ever, to balance the needs of different working groups and devise cultures, policies and ways of behaving that work for everyone to reap the benefits of pets at work.

 Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Emergent Change’ 

Are we having fun yet? Why having fun is no frivolous matter

When I began this article, I was pondering why had I put myself through the mildly stressful (dynamic pricing of the chalet booking, the race to book limited places on fun activities), definitely expensive and logistically challenging experience of organising an over-in-the-blink-of-an-eye holiday for the group of adults ranging in age from 26 to 75 who currently constitute my family? The answer, of course, is that I keenly anticipated having some fun. Why though? What does having fun do for us? And what, exactly, is it? 

According to Catherine Price, author of The Power of Fun, the feeling of fun is one of exhilaration or light-heartedness, of being energised and alive.  She interviewed 1500 adults about their experiences of fun, and identified three factors common to real, restorative fun: playfulness, connection and flow. In other words, it is within our power to create fun in many different situations, rather than only when we are engaged in specified ‘fun’ activities.

True fun, she enlarges, is about feeling a lightness of spirit, feeling engaged with another person or people, and being absorbed in the activity. Price suggests we don’t necessarily need all three components to be having fun, but certainly one or two. This explains why it is quite possible to be rowing an open boat in a light drizzle towards a wet campsite with two small damp children, and still be having fun! 

Why might fun be important to us even as adults? One answer comes from Barbara Fredrickson and her broaden and build theory. She asked, scientifically, what positive emotions were good for, and came up with some answers. When we are ‘feeling good’, for instance when we are having fun, we are boosting our resourcefulness and resilience for other, more difficult, occasions. A sense of achievement can boost self-confidence, new skills learnt might come in handy some other time - one of our party on this holiday took his first steps to playing bowls and pool, good for social skills and a confidence boost. Two others took up tennis racquets for the first time in yonks and rediscovered the delight of that skill as well as experiencing the pleasure of beating me hollow!). Fun also fosters relationships, allowing us to feel close to others as we laugh together, or share moments of achievement.

Price also exposes a widespread myth: that ‘fun’ is the shadow side of ‘work’ and so having fun is effortless, suggesting that your leisure time will just fill itself with fun activities of its own accord. Price notes instead, that unless you figure out how you want to fill that leisure time, you risk experiencing existential despair when the void within yourself becomes manifest. I know this feeling very well, as I suspect do many others. And I think she is right, fun isn’t just an absence of non-fun activity, it is a positive thing in its own right. It has to be sought and earnt.

Understanding fun in this distinct, positive way means you can work out when you have had fun in the past, and then proactively make more space for it in the future. With this orientation we discover, as with most things, that the more we look for opportunities to experience fun, the more we find. These can be both small moments of fun that we might have missed, and bigger opportunities to make things more fun, or more things fun. 

My own observation is that some people have a real knack of making things fun. My own partner, the 75-year-old, has a strong competitive streak, but is also great at teasing and joshing which takes the intensity of the competitiveness down a few notches, making activities much more fun for everyone else. One of my sons, who could beat the two of us armed only with a table tennis bat, plays badminton with his ‘parental units’ once a week. I marvel at his willingness to do this, wondering what’s in it for him. Applying Price’s thinking I realise it’s the sense of connection and engagement we all create by not taking ourselves too seriously that makes it enjoyable for all of us, skill levels be damned. And he does consistently experience the pleasure of beating his dad!

It’s interesting to note is that all of these things: playfulness, connection and flow are active states. Passive activities, watching a good film for example, might be relaxing and enjoyable but are unlikely to transport you like good fun can.

How to use this knowledge?

·      Think about your ‘micro-doses’ of fun. Five minutes playing with pets works for some people. Making someone laugh. Making funny faces to amuse a stranger’s baby (exercise with caution, but usually appreciated by harassed parents). Brief conversations with strangers in shops, at bus stops.

·      Notice when your battery is running down and you need a ‘fun’ recharge

·      Identify which of your friends are ‘fun magnets’, plan to hitch a ride on their fun train.

·      Make sure you are rested enough to be able to have fun. Being distracted, over-tired, over-stressed, or highly self-critical, are not good places from which to start to try to have fun, even though having fun will probably help with them! And resentment, says Price, is a sure-fire fun killer!

·      Avoid the trap of turning fun into work, and, most importantly

·      Don’t allow fun to leach imperceptibly out of your life just because life got busy.

The launch pad for this article was an excellent article by Elle Hunt published in the G2 section of The Guardian on Wednesday 26th Jan 2022. She in turn called on the book by Catherine Price, The Power of Fun

 Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Thought Provoking’ 

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

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

How is it being done?

1.     Who gets to work in a hybrid way?

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

2.     How to make it fair?

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

3.     What will the impact be for the organization?

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

4.     How to ensure equality of access to opportunity?

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

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

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

6.     How will the organization continue to develop?

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

What helps?

1.     Pay attention to perceptions of fairness

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

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

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

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

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

4.     Pay attention to the rewards in the environment

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

5.     Review and revise

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

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

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Coronavirus’

Boosting your resilience and adaptability

Lockdown is easing, but that doesn’t mean we are going back to normal. We need to think instead of ourselves as moving forward in to a new normal. This new normal involves living with the reality of coronavirus: a winter surge is predicted by many experts. Navigating this new normal will take resilience and adaptability.

What helps us be more resilient and adaptable?

Resilience can be defined as having the resources, mental, physical or experience-based, to cope with unexpected, difficult or adverse situations. 

Being adaptable means being able to flex our expectations and behaviour when circumstances change.

For both resilience and adaptability, being resourceful is key.

How can we discover and expand our resourcefulness to boost our resilience and adaptability?

Our resourcefulness is boosted by both personal and contextual factors.

Personal resources

Our Strengths

One of our biggest sources of personal resources is our own unique strengths. Strengths are the attributes that are at the heart of our best self. They are the things that are natural for us to do and that seem easy to us. We each have our own set of strengths.

It’s important to know our own strengths as using them boosts our confidence and gives us energy, allowing us to recover more quickly from setbacks. We are likely to solve a problem better if the solution uses our strengths.

Our workshop Understanding our strengths and how they help  with resilience will help you identify your strengths and how to use them to boost your resilience

Our previous experiences

Sometimes, when we are stressed or anxious it is hard to believe that we can cope, we feel so helpless right now. In this situation, it can be really helpful to remember other times when we did cope, when we got through a tricky situation or when we turned a situation around. Being in the grip of the present can prevent us from accessing resources from the past: our knowledge, our skills, our experience. Appreciative Inquiry is a change process that is built on the understanding that resources from the past can help us in the present and in the future.

Our workshop Enhance your adaptability to increase your resilience will introduce you to Appreciative Inquiry as a way of increasing our adaptability.

Boosting our resilience by building our HERO abilities

Our HERO ability made up of our states of hopefulness, optimism, resilience and confidence (efficacy). Add these four things together and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In other words, although resilience is part of our HERO abilities, it is also boosted if we can boost our sense of hope, optimism and confidence.

Our workshop Extending our resilience by boosting our HERO abilities will help you identify your own HERO abilities and how to use them to boost your resilience.

Social resources

Our social networks extend our resourcefulness. Our network contains people who find easy what we find hard. They can be a source of inspiration, uplift, practical advice, useful contacts and many other resources that help us cope. Exchange your strengths across your network.

And at work?

Organisational resilience is about all of the above, and, about social capital. The social capital of an organization reflects its connectedness. It’s about how easily information flows around the organization and how much trust there is. Both these factors make it much easier for organizations to be resilient and to adapt quickly. These positive organizational development cards have lots of information about the features of the best organizations

Our  workshop Boosting our organizational resilience will help you identify ways to boost organisational resilience

A few quick tips for boosting your resilience and adaptability in the new normal

• Follow safety instructions, but more importantly, understand the principles and apply them in different situations so you can be active in keeping yourself safe

• Manage your energy and look after yourself. Having to suddenly adapt our behaviour means we can’t run on habitual lines, so it takes more energy even if you seem to be achieving less. Go easy on yourself, adjust your expectations and standards

• Re-prioritise, and then do it again when things change again. It’s very easy to assume the priorities stay the same even as the situation changes. They don’t. So take the time to think about what the highest priorities are now, in this situation within these constraints, with these resources.

• Redefine your goals so you can succeed in the new situation. This is very important.

• Create and recreate structure for yourself. Structure really helps because it reduces decision-making, which is taxing. So keep evolving new structures to your day or your life as things change.

If you are interested in learning more about resilience and adaptability, we are running 4 three-hour live virtual development workshops on the subject. You can also access a video interview of two psychologists talking about resilience both generally and at work.

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Positive Psychology in Business’ ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ 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 ‘Coronavirus’

Using Lego in Appreciative Inquiry

I recently posted some pictures on Twitter and LinkedIn of a leadership development session I ran with a colleague where we used Lego to conduct an Appreciative Inquiry. This stimulated some interest and requests for more information on what we did, so I thought I would explain in a little more detail.

On this occasion my colleague was a trained Lego Serious Play practitioner, this was beneficial as she had some unusual and very helpful Lego pieces. It is possible to buy these specialist pieces online in the Lego Serious Play shop, however they are not necessary for the purposes of Appreciative Inquiry.

I have used Lego in Appreciative Inquiry sessions many times using a big box of Lego bits that were once my sons’ spaceships and pirate boats. The usual assortment of bricks, bases, people, maps, treasure-chests and the like, that accumulate in any Lego-using household, is perfectly adequate.

Here’s how I use Lego in Appreciative Inquiry

Before we start the Appreciative Inquiry process proper, I ask the participants to construct a model that is a representation of how things are now. So, for instance on one occasion, a person who was on a project team, but only part-time, chose to include a boat with figures at either end looking in opposite directions. This conveyed very clearly his sense of being pulled in two directions by his change-project manager and his business-as-usual manager.

We then do the Discovery process as usual. As we move to the Dream stage I ask them to create another model of ‘how things could be’, using their discovery conversations as a springboard to imagine this future state. Depending on context I may suggest they do this as individuals or as a group.

This means that as we come to the Design and Destiny elements of the process, they have both an ‘as is’ model and an ‘aspirational model’. So now I can ask people ‘How did this (the as usual model), become this (the aspirational model)? At which point people start moving or removing or adding bits of kit. Questions like, ‘What is that you’ve just taken off?’ encourages them to tell the story of change. For instance, someone might say, ‘Well this is all the stuff that gets in the way, the silly restrictions that mean we can’t do our job properly.’ To which you might say, ‘Tell me more, what sort of things are you thinking of?’ or, ‘Tell me how you got rid of them?’ or ‘What difference does removing that piece make?’

Fun yes, but it’s about helping people articulate a hopeful story

Obviously, the questions you ask, or encourage participants to ask each other, are context dependent, but the ambition is always to help people articulate a story of change; a story of how they got from there (the present) to here (the future). Once such a story has been constructed in the imagination like this, it exists as a possibility that can then be developed, questioned, robustly tested for feasibility etc. But until we have created such an account through the use of imagination and metaphor, it can be hard to articulate as a lived, grounded, hope-fuelled feasible course of action.

There are many ways of helping people articulate their inspirational futures and their story of change. Lego is particularly challenging to heave around which means that, if I’m travelling on public transport to an assignment, I often chose to use something else. However, when I am in a position to use it, I find there is something about the very tangible and concrete actions of manipulating a Lego model that can be a very powerful generator of hope, and of a belief that change really is possible.

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Positive Psychology in Business’ ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ 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 ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ and ‘Events/Workshops’

Appreciative Inquiry: working with a system in sections

Over the years I’ve had a number of requests to run an Appreciative Inquiry event for a system that is unable to come altogether at the same time in the same space. I have found ways to accommodate this, but I have never felt the process to be entirely satisfactory. Just recently I have had two more requests like this, so when I heard the UK Appreciative Inquiry Network was coming together in December, I decided this was a great challenge to take to the group.

A group of six of us had a great conversation about this challenge: How to design an AI event for a whole system that is unable to come together for a day or more in the same space at the same time?

How will it work?

We identified some of the decisions that need to be thought about when working this way:

1. How will the system be split across the events?

   • Is the same whole system that comes to each event i.e. the process of the event is split into a number of two-hour or half day-time slots across a month or two. The main challenge here is the loss of energy between each event and the need to spend time on each occasion helping the system reconnect with where it was at the end of the previous session two weeks ago.

   • Is it a vertical slice of the system that comes to each event i.e. the attendees at each event are like a hologram of the whole. This can produce disconnected duplication of conversation and outcome.

   • Is it a horizontal split i.e. managers at one event, team leaders another, and frontline staff at yet another? On the one occasion I have had to do this, it was the presence and participation of the senior leader of the whole system at each event that held it together and created sufficient cohesion between events.

   • Or is the proposal to split by function? In which case I would suggest engaging with a topic appropriate to the system in the room.

2. How, where and when will decision-making take place?

   • Will each event produce some design and destiny ideas that then need to be coordinated in some way?

   • Will each event only address discovery and dream with some further group, drawn from participants at all the groups, invited to a session for design and destiny that pulls on the material from all the earlier events?

3. Is each event topic and process the same or different?

   • Do you run essentially the same design, based on the same topic of inquiry at each event? In which case there are challenges of duplication and coordination of output.

   • Do you tailor each event in some way around a distinct process or topic? In which case the question is how to ensure no one feels they were ‘shut out’ of a conversation they would have chosen to be part of had it happened at ‘their’ event.

   • Does each event somehow ‘build’ on what has gone before with different participants?

Inherent issues with this approach

We identified some of the features created by working on a system-level issue with a whole system that can’t all come together at once, regardless of how the challenge of participants, process, topic and decision-making are resolved.

• People aren’t all part of the same experience.

• It creates challenges for the decision-making process, often introducing a time lag that can mean a loss of momentum and energy.

• There is a danger of either duplication between events, or, people not being in the conversations they would want.

• It can come to be seen as a process of representation e.g. those present at events are somehow representative of those who aren’t. In my experience, when people feel responsible for representing those ‘not present’ it can interfere at a fundamental level with the emergent properties of the process.

Some ideas of ways forward

It seemed to us that these types of split system events throw up some particular challenges that need close attention if they are not to weaken the power of the process.

1. Events need to be connected to each other, some ideas from the group of how to do this included

   • Using a graphic artist at each event to capture the essence of the experience, which can be shared at subsequent events.

   • Finding a way to bring the ‘voices’ from each event to subsequent events, for instance, a small group from event one are also participants at event two (although danger of burden of representation).

   • Participants at event one make a short video to be shown at event two and so on.

   • Using provocative propositions as a way to capture the dream from each event. These can be melded together by a subgroup made up of participants from all groups later.

2. The decision making process needs to be thought about very carefully so that interest, energy, voice, ideas and action stay closely connected.

Reflections on the discussion

I found the discussion very helpful. It confirmed for me that there was no easy answer or obvious solution to this challenge, it also helped me appreciate that I had found ways to work around these challenges in the past, i.e. it helped me tap into my resourcefulness. However, I’m not sure I can identify any actual advantages of working on a whole system dynamic in a sequential process with bits of the system separated by time and space; and my preference remains to get the whole system together in the same space at the same time for really effective co-creation.

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Thought Provoking’ and ‘Events/Workshops’

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

Why coaching isn’t as easy as people think, and something to help

And so it has come to past that from time to time I find my self teaching groups ‘coaching skills’. Sometimes this is groups of managers, sometimes fledging professional coaches, and sometimes people with post-graduate coaching degrees or similarly impressive credentials. And yet, for all these groups, one of the hardest challenges seems to be developing the skill of asking questions rather than more tempting options like: offering solutions, giving advice, sympathising, sharing their own experience, or in some other way failing to inquire.

Inquisitive questioning - harder than it looks

Not everyone struggles, some do manage to frame questions. A lot of people have been exposed to the basic idea of the difference between open and closed questions. What people aren’t always so aware of is the difference between low information and high information questions. Without this distinction a supposedly ‘open’ question can smuggle in a clear suggestion of action for the client to engage with. This means the coach is doing the work of finding a way forward rather than the client. The coach, wittingly or otherwise, is engaging in problem-solving for the client.

Examples

‘Do you think it would be a good idea if you said something about this?’

This can be recognised as a closed question, inviting a yes or no response.

‘What do you think will happen if you say something about this?’

This is a more open question, although I can hear ‘I don’t know’ response forming in the air.

‘How about if you say something about this?’

On the surface it looks like an open question, it doesn’t invite an obvious yes or no; but look more closely and the embedded suggestion is still there.

‘I think you should say something about this, what do you think?’

Now we are clearly in the territory of advice giving.

 ‘If you say something about it, won’t that make it harder for them to do it again?’

This might still be a question, but now, as well as the embedded suggestion, we have the hypothesis that is underpinning the suggestion. In this way we are learning a lot about what the coach thinks, what sense they are making of the situation, but very little of what the client thinks. However you change the opening word or the grammar  of the sentence, as long as it still contains the phrase ‘say something about it’ you are at the very least making a suggestion and quite possibly giving advice.

Suggestions can be helpful, but be aware of what you’re doing

Shibboleths exist to be transgressed. There are plenty of occasions when making suggestions or giving advice might be a good, helpful, appropriate therapeutic move to make within the coaching relationship. I’m interested in the difficulty people can experience when they actually don’t want to make a suggestion or offer advice, so they attempt to ask questions, and yet fall into the traps above.

 This happens because it is very hard to ask a ‘content-free’ question: a question that doesn’t smuggle in the coach’s own problem solving but rather actively engages the client in finding their own way forward. And that is because we are problem-solving creatures.

The problem solving ape

We hear someone describe their problem, challenge or opportunity and ideas and emotions rush to our brain. Stimulated by what we hear, we ask ourselves how we would feel, what we would want to do, be tempted to do, feel obliged to do, who else we would tell and on our brain goes engaging with the information we are hearing. We want to attend to this information yet also bear in mind our coaching training. And many times we solve this dilemma by framing the obvious way forward that is pulsating in our mind, as a suggestion embedded in a question.

What can be done to help develop the skill of inquisitive questioning? Coaching Cubes

It seemed to me that at times, particularly perhaps when we are training coaching skills, that it might be an idea to help people with this challenge of creating content-free questions.

To this end I devised a set of coaching cubes: large squeezy coloured dice that have a content free question on each side. They are broadly based around a coaching structure that covers:

• Exploring the positive aspects of the situation

• Identifying key people

• Creating shifts in perspective

• Illuminating ideas, values and energy sources

• Creating movement and identifying first steps.

The cubes are designed to help people practice inquiry-based coaching. And they seem to work.

During the debrief at a recent workshop using the coaching cubes, a woman said, with obvious sincerity, ‘it is such a gift not to have to be thinking of the questions!’

 So, if you train coaching skills or if you want support in your practice to help you ask different sorts of questions, or if you just like the idea of having a tangible soft tool in your coaching session, please do investigate them further here, I’d love to hear what you make of them.

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 Coaching  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 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

Love the money, hate the job? The effect of bulls**t jobs on happiness

Money for old rope - so why am I exhausted?

Many of us have noticed  a strange paradox but been unable to put a name to it. We believe that a job that doesn’t demand too much of us should mean we have plenty of energy left over for our real interests. Furthermore, we anticipate that if that job not only doesn’t demand much of us but also pays us very well, then we should experience happiness: we have beaten the system! We are being paid for doing practically nothing, what could be a better arrangement?

And yet, after an initial sense of triumph, it can slowly become apparent that the logic - lots of money for little work equals happiness and a fulfilled life  - doesn’t work out. Instead we feel, well, that something isn’t right. That despite the income we aren’t happy at work.

This leaves us caught in a trap: we feel we would be fools to leave such a great sinecure. And so we struggle on, wondering what is wrong with us that we can’t make the most of this; that after work we don’t spring into life as the artist, writer, dressmaker we know ourselves to be at heart; rather that we slump in front of the TV apparently exhausted after doing next to nothing all day. We grind through the endless days of non-work trying to look busy. We wonder why what should be great, and is the envy of friends slowing burning out in the caring professions, feels so awful, indeed, soul destroying. It seems there is a cost to taking the money without feeling we are really delivering value in return.

The Graeber hypothesis

David Graeber has put a name to this particular employment conundrum. He calls the jobs with these characteristics that produce these unexpected outcomes, ‘bull**t jobs’. A bullshit job is one that essentially has no meaning either to the job holder, nor, seemingly, to the wider world. It adds no perceptible value to life. As he says:

“Be honest: if your job didn't exist, would anybody miss it? Have you ever wondered why not? Up to 40% of us secretly believe our jobs probably aren't necessary. In other words: they are bulls**t jobs.”

This interesting book is highly recommended. It’s an easy with read with lots of quotes from those in bulls**t jobs. He goes on to offer an interesting analysis of the rise and proliferation of these jobs since the 1980s and the growing of the bulls**tisation of other, previously unaffected and otherwise meaningful jobs, such as teaching.

Thinking of ourselves as  rational economic actors the trap we find ourselves in makes no sense, and so we can’t resolve it.

Your job should seem necessary, if only to you

However, it makes perfect sense from a positive psychology perspective. From work in this field we know that meaningfulness is important to engagement and wellbeing at work. We also know that the boundaries between work and outside work are highly permeable and how we are in one sphere of life will affect how we are in other spheres of life. In other words the draining effect of a bulls**t job will adversely affect our ability to be energised at other times.

Pondering this, I related David’s theory to a model about the value of work from Christopher Michaelson, who suggests that the value can be arranged across two dimensions. He argues that work can offer a high intrinsic value i.e. feel  valuable in itself; it can have an instrumental value, such as being well paid. From these two values we can construct a landscape on which to place different jobs.

As you can see below I have had a go at locating where bulls**t jobs fit on this model e.g. high in instrumental value (well paid), low in intrinsic value (pointless).  It appears they are located directly opposite to many caring jobs e.g. looking after the sick or vulnerable.

I am hopeful this understanding might help people caught in the trap of highly paid yet soul-destroying jobs. It helps make sense of the situation and facilitates a discussion about the kind of job that might be, not just bearable but actually engaging, and whether the cost of switching might be worth it 

What do you think?

References

Graeber, D. (2018) Bullshit jobs: a theory. Allen Lane UK

Michaelson, C. (2013) The value(s) of work. In Froh, J. J., & Parks, A. C. (2013). Activities for teaching positive psychology: A guide for instructors. American Psychological Association.

Evaluation from an Appreciative perspective

People who are interested in the Appreciative Inquiry approach sometimes struggle to understand how they can apply it to the challenge of assessment or evaluation.

How does evaluation work?

To engage with this question, we need first to consider the nature of evaluation. There are two key ways of understanding evaluation. The first sees it as a measurement of change in something real. This suggests that any change to be measured exists independently of the measurer and is an impersonal fact of the world; that ‘knowledge’ exists independently of the knower. 

We might note that were this actually the case then medical research would not so value the double-blind protocol where neither the subject nor the experimenter knows who got the active drug and who the placebo. This design is the gold standard in medical research because of a recognition that a researcher’s knowledge can influence their measurement, albeit unconsciously. So while it is often useful to act ‘as if’ change can be understood in this ‘separate from the actors’ way, it is a convenient fiction not an undeniable truth.

Alternatively, we can recognise change as socially constructed. We can recognise that the change we see is dependent on who is looking and how they are looking. We can recognise that the relationship between the context and the actor is systemic: each affects the other. What we choose to search for affects what we find; what we find affects how we behave in the future. In this understanding awareness of change becomes something that we create through our ways of looking; and we make choices about our ways of looking.

We can further understand assessment and evaluation across two dimensions, creating 4 quadrants. 

We have choices about whether we are mainly focussed on the past or the future; and on assessment or development. We could also consider whether we are mainly interested in learning or control.

Different models of evaluation for different situations - the test isn’t everything!

This useful model allows us to consider different evaluation approaches for different situations. For example, if we are assessing against clear standards, such as assessing someone taking a driving test, then our focus will be on the bottom left quadrant: past/ assessment.

Since much of our assessment, evaluation experience is located in this quadrant, for example exams, tests, and, sad to say, even performance appraisals, many people are unaware that it is only one of at least four ways of thinking about assessment.

On the other hand I am currently involved in helping a group create a ‘strengths-based’ peer review process. This is a conscious decision to create a different evaluation experience.

The model above allows us to see that if the main point of our review is to improve the service in the future then the focus of our process lies in identifying development for the future; and is at the learning end of the control/learning spectrum.

For further information on how to create a systemic appreciative review you are referred to

Appreciative Peer Review: A procedure in the November 2017 Blog of the International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry, translated from the original Dutch article by Wick van der Vaart. https://aipractitioner.com/2017/11/09/appreciative-peer-review-procedure/

Embedded Evaluation by Mette Jacobsgaard and Irene Norlund in the August 2011 edition of aipractitioner. https://aipractitioner.com/product/embedded-evaluation/

This article is also indebted to Systemic Appreciative Evaluation by Malene Slov Dinesen in the Aug 2009 edition of aipratitioner https://aipractitioner.com/product/ai-practitioner-august-2009/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What kind of conversation are you having today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did you know? Build in Wellbeing from the beginning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

Other Resources

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

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

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.

Take a coaching approach - 7 top tips for developing talent in your team

A key challenge for leaders and managers is developing the capacity of their staff or team. Taking a coaching approach allows you to focus on drawing out motivation rather than trying to push it in!  It allows you to create energy and motivation and it is usually experienced as an empowering process by your coachee. It helps people develop their initiative and sense of ownership of their work and tasks, and, in general, converts potential into capacity.

Here are seven tips to help make your coaching conversations highly productive.

The TIPS

1) Be clear what you are coaching for

It’s important to be clear why you taking a coaching approach rather than just giving information, orders or instruction. Generally it is worth taking a coaching approach when we want to invest in skill development.

Examples might be:

• To improve problem-solving skills
• To improve emotional intelligence when interacting with customers
• To increase confidence in own abilities and so ability to be pro-active and use initiative
• To increase team collaboration and mutual support
• To develop expert excel skills

It is also important to know when not to invest in a coaching approach.

For example while for one person developing expert excel skills might be key for their job, for another their engagement with excel may be a very rare occurrence. In which case other ways of solving the problem might be more effective and appropriate.

2) Select appropriate opportunities

Coaching is only one of a number of management interaction styles and is not right for all occasions. In emergency situations for instance, you are better off just telling people what they need to do.

Some indicators of a possibly good opportunity for coaching are when:

• Whatever the person is struggling with, or asking for help with, is going to be a recurring challenge
• There is no panic. Heightened emotional states, such as panic, can lead to unhelpful learning. For instance they ‘learn’ that you are an obstructive unhelpful so-and-so rather than that you helped them develop a new skill or think for themselves.
• There is time to assure yourself that they are good to go after the conversation and that you are happy with their next steps. This needn’t take long, but there needs to be time to conclude the conversation.
• Someone is asking for help
• Someone comes to you with a problem, and its clear they have a solution in mind
• You are trying to help someone and they are resisting all your suggestions

3) Use Turning Questions to get into a coaching conversation

If people come to you expecting you to give them the answer, then you need to turn the conversation into a coaching conversation. These questions will help:

• ‘That sounds interesting/challenging/important, what do you think might be the way forward? What ideas do you already have?'
• 'If that is what you are worried about, what do you want to see happen instead?'
• 'If I wasn’t here, what would you do about this?'
• 'I can see you are looking for help with this, what is the most helpful question I ask you to help you with your thinking in the 30 seconds we have here?'

After asking any of those, or a similar question, put an expectant expression on your face and stop speaking! Create a big space full of expectation and hope for them to answer into. Hold your nerve.

These questions work to turn the question away from your resourcefulness towards theirs. It also helps move them from passive recipient waiting for an answer, to active agents in finding a way forward.

4) Help them draw on their existing resources

Questions you can usefully ask to achieve this include such questions as:

• ‘When have you tackled something similar? Not necessarily here but in other places you’ve worked or in other situations? How did that work out? How could what you learnt from that be relevant here?’
• ‘Who else knows something about this and might be interested to work with you on finding a way forward?’
• ‘What ideas do you have?’
• ‘Where else might there be some information on this that might stimulate ideas? Websites, in-house training, forums, professional associations?’

5) Help them explore and develop possibilities. Reality check.

This is where you finally get to feed your knowledge, problem-solving skills, and expertise into the conversation, but in a different way. You use it to help shape up the idea into the best it can be, making sure they retain ownership of it. For example:

• ‘Explain to me more about how that’s a good idea? How do you see it working?’
• ‘Have you considered/ taken into account/ thought about...?’
• ‘So what will you do if....?”
• ‘Hm, I’m just wondering how that might go down with... what do you think?’
• ‘Great, what do you see the risks as being? How will you deal with them?’

This is also where you set any boundaries on action. This might range from ‘It’s a great/interesting/novel/exciting/challenging/provocative idea and I truly am sorry to have to say I can’t support it as it will be too expensive/take more time than we have/be seen as too risky.’ Then move swiftly too ‘However, I think the bit about ... could work, lets explore that more.’ Or ‘what else have you got?’

6) Road test for readiness

This is a crucially important part of the process where you are testing to see how committed, ready and energised they are to make this happen. Questions you can ask at this point include:

• ‘What’s your first step?’
• ‘Who else do you need to talk to?’
• 'How will I know you are making progress?'
• 'On a scale of 1-10 how ready are you to get going on this?'
• 'What else needs to happen to increase your readiness?'
• 'How can I support you to make this happen?'

Offer encouragement and support, express belief, and agree a ‘progress check’ process.

7) It’s not for every situation and it doesn’t work every time

Coaching is not suitable for every occasion. Sometimes people do need to be told. For example when:

• They don’t know enough to even start to engage with the challenge
• They are missing a vital piece of information, and need to be informed of it
• Its an emergency, you have the answer and speed is of the essence
• Its not worth the time or energy e.g. it is doesn’t fit the criteria of point 1

Also sometimes particular people or even groups of people get stuck in patterns of belief that makes it hard for them to engage in coaching, for instance

• They believe its your job to think, not theirs
• They’re still smarting from some previous managerial behaviour (this can go on for years)
• They have zero confidence in themselves and their ability and are highly dependent on others
• They are severely depressed, anxious or otherwise cognitively incapacitated
• They are fully preoccupied with other challenges, maybe outside of work, and have no capacity to engage with being creative.

In this case you need to address these challenges before you can hope to get very far with coaching.

In conclusion

So be aware that coaching isn’t for everyone and every situation. Beyond that though, on the whole, once people genuinely believe that you want them to contribute and you will support them in their adventures of learning, they relish it; and they will grow in ability, confidence, initiative and general switched-on-ness before your very eyes!

Other Resources

More on this, and details of how to practice Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space, World Café and SimuReal can all be found in Sarah’s latest book Positive Psychology and Change

For more on Leadership Skills visit our knowledge warehouse

For case studies on Leadership at work visit our case studies collection

Or, click through to learn about or to order our positive psychology based positive organisational development card pack and other support resources

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.