Small Changes that make a Difference

I noticed a different flavour to the usual January blitz of ‘New Year, New You’ filler in the papers this year. Calls to action were hedged with novel warnings about not being over ambitious, about starting small, suggesting only working on a few goals at a time not a complete list of life transformation. Hurrah, I thought! At last, some psychology about change and habit formation is getting through.

On the first day of the new year, the Guardian ran an article, ‘100 small changes that really work’. The 100 entries that make up the article were sent in by experts and readers. Tried and tested then. I found it interesting reading and was delighted to find that some of them I had discovered myself.

Here are my top ten.

1.     Not setting a morning alarm. This is a bit of a cheat as it’s something I have done myself since I have regarded myself as ‘semi-retired’ and let myself off my weekday 7.00 a.m. alarm. At first, I found the extent of the resultant sleeping-in so alarming that I did set a ‘that’s enough’ 8.00 a.m. alarm, but I did treat myself to a new alarm clock with a SAD light that gradually lights up for the half-hour before the gently increasing sound of an Amazonian dawn chorus kicks in at the allotted time. Now I seem to have exhausted my sleep deficit and regularly wake before the alarm. I absolutely agree with the quoted Guardian reader who said that it means ‘I don’t start the day with the hideous stress of the alarm going off’. Highly recommended if your lifestyle allows.

2.     Leaving the phone downstairs at night. Already do it.

3.     Making homemade soup. Another one great winter idea I discovered myself. I use a soup maker and make two batches at the weekends but only when it feels doable, so it doesn’t become a chore. I bag it up in Lakeland soup ‘n’ sauce bags (perfect two portion size) and freeze. I can have a hot, quick, nutritious and tasty lunch any day of the week as long I remember to take out it the night before. You can reheat from frozen but it’s a faff.

4.     Walking outdoors every day. I try! I try! It very cold right now though! And the daylight is so short. I know it’s good for me, but it is a habit that lapses. Also, it’s not a small change in my book because it takes time.

5.     Buying a rowing machine. This isn’t on the list but is one of mine. A fold away one cost about £200. Use it once or twice a week. 4 kms. Headphones on to loud rock music. Walk to it from the bedroom. Takes 25ish minutes. Terrific. Works up a good sweat. Gets blood flowing, heart beating. Can breathlessly sing along. Can think about day ahead. Much nicer than standing bike for some reason. Shower. Then coffee. Ready start working day. And no going out in the cold. Love it! Easy cardio-vascular activity!

6.     The squeezy app. If you are a woman of a certain age with a dodgy pelvic floor this app is great. It reminds you to do your squeezes, and it counts and times them for you. With practice, you can do them while reading the paper, eating or probably answering emails. Have been using for months. It really has become a habit. Highly recommended.

7.     Lighting candles. I have a horde of candles. Never seemed to find the occasion to light them. Now, when doing my ‘creative writing’, I light a candle. I love the scent and the flicker of the flame. I think it acts both as a signal that I am now entering a different mental space, and is calming in some way – maybe the scent?

8.     Getting hearing aids. Been there, done that. They are better than the alternative. And if you pay the money, you can get much more attractive ones. My current dinky red and white ones bring me joy when I see them in the morning. Sadly, I can’t say the same for the depressing grey NHS ones I am currently temporarily having to wear!

9.     Exercise snacks. Great idea – doing squats while you wait for the kettle to boil type thing. Super idea. If only the dishwasher didn’t offer itself for stacking, unstacking, or refilling with rinse aid, or salt during this snatch of time. Might work up to this one.

10.  Focussing on joy rather than willpower. I realise I have been moving this way for years. And I used to be someone very good on willpower. Like the reader quoted in the article says, I do exercise I enjoy. I eat food I enjoy. I do work I enjoy.

And a few that I don’t see working for me

Following the one-minute rule. This is the idea that if something will take less than a minute, answering an email, hanging up the laundry, then you should do it straight-away. It is supposed to improve productivity. Hmm... I could see a whole morning disappearing in one-minute tasks. And some of these things take brain power. I prefer to relegate them to ‘low quality’ time, and cluster them together.

Two-minute cold shower every morning. I’m definitely not hardcore enough for this.

Committing to intermittent fasting. I’ve read the research. I believe it’s good for you. And I’m not willing to put myself into deprivation mode. Too many diets over the years. Never again.

There are plenty more to inspire you in the original article, The Guardian, Monday 1st January 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/01/100-tiny-changes-to-transform-your-life-from-the-one-minute-rule-to-pyjama-yoga

Why not let us know if you find something that speaks to you?

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’ 

Why Sexual Harassment is a Business Issue

Why Sexual Harassment is a Business Issue

Well, you have to ask - what is it with these men? Russell Brand publicly assaulting women on recorded TV. Bigwig Spanish Football Man grasping footballer firmly round the head to prevent avoidance of his unwanted smackeroo. Surgeons being touched up while scrubbed up. Kevin Spacey, the thinking women’s actor, revealed as a predator of young men? And on and on. Maybe rather than thinking this is aberrant behaviour we should just accept that...

Men + Power + Opportunity = Possibility of Sexual Abuse (That is, abuse, of power, of women, of men, of children, of position, underlings and on and on)

Are women exempt? Of course not, power is power. As Naomi Alderman’s fantastic book The Power makes clear. But, unlike in that science fiction, here on earth, in the main, men still hold the power.

So, very unpleasant for the abused, assaulted, shamed, harassed etc. person. But does it do any further damage?

The research answer is clear. Yes, it does.

What does it mean for business?

First some facts and figures. 60% of women report workplace sexual harassment. But an estimated 90% of incidents go unreported. Meanwhile approximately 94% of organizations have a policy about this in place. Hmm the maths is beyond me but, put these figures together, and I would say the policies just aren’t working.

There are psychological explanations for this, but common sense reveals them just as well. Speak up and you open yourself to other dangers. Danger of victim-shaming. Danger of job loss. Danger of escalation of the problem. Equally unhappy witnesses can find it too risky, too hard to find their voice for similar reasons. This isn’t individual aberrant men, or individual cowardly women, this is a workplace culture matter.

As for all change, first the business case needs to be made.

Business case for tackling workplace sexual harassment

Here are the costs of creating, allowing, facilitating or ignoring an environment where targeted and opportunistic sexual harassment is the norm.

Effects on the individual

While recognising that these vary person to person, these are common consequences...

·      Decreased psychological wellbeing.

·      Increase in depression and anxiety.

·      Social identity threat, the devaluation of a person’s social identity in a specific context (let’s call this not being taken seriously at work or being treated like a child).

·      Feeling silenced, unable to speak up about the abuse. This is associated with higher depersonalisation and emotional exhaustion. Burnout in other words.

For the business this means health costs, possibly employment costs if people quit, and decreases in performance. And I’d hazard that all those other things that help organizations excel, commitment, citizenship behaviour, being unpaid ambassadors of the brand, suffer.

Effect on the team

·      Decreased workgroup productivity and performance

·      Increased task conflict

·      Increased interpersonal conflict

·      Decreased team cohesion

For the business this all adds up to a loss of team functioning, productivity and performance

Effect on the organization can be Increased workplace withdrawal

·      Absenteeism

·      Failure to complete work

·      Avoiding other people at work

·      Not attending meetings

·      Not meeting deadlines that others rely on

·      Skipping work altogether

·      Failing work relationships

·      Avoiding certain areas at work

·      Avoiding certain people

·      Not joining certain project teams

·      Quitting

The business costs are clear to see

All of these survival-in-a-hostile environment behaviours have an effect on organisational social capital, goodwill reserves, productivity, profitability and general effective functioning.

In this way, sexual harassment at work effects everyone at work. Your bonus is at risk because of your colleague’s harassing behaviour. Your ability to shine at work is adversely affected if you can’t get stuff done, or you can’t attract a star to your special project. Your future reputation may be at risk when your association with an abuser later comes to light.

Protect your assets, learn how to intervene effectively. This is known as bystander intervention.

Effective Bystander Behaviour

I called out some unwanted touching when I was running a three-day workshop one time. The guy in question was ‘handsy’ with the young women on the course. Arms round shoulders, many hugs etc. It didn’t look right. I asked the young women about it. No, they didn’t like it, but he was a manager, and they weren’t, what could they do but grin and bear it? My male co-facilitator backed me, as did our employer, to do something.

We spoke to the man, just asking him to cease and desist. He vehemently denied there was a problem, he was just a touchy-feely friendly guy, everyone knew that! He chose to leave the training rather than change his behaviour. We spoke to the women in Human Resources at the company. Yes, they said, he’s well-known for this. They were glad we had called it.

What happened to the man after that I don’t know.

For myself, I do know it wasn’t a comfortable thing to do. I do know I couldn’t have not noticed it, felt uncomfortable about, felt compelled to try to stop it, because of my strong sense of right and wrong in this area. And I also know it went a whole lot better, and I felt a whole lot safer taking him on (he was a big chap) with another big man sitting beside me. And I was lucky to be working for a company that backed me.

A supportive culture

We could call this a supportive culture I was working in. One that was willing to take the risk of upsetting a client, a colleague who was willing to take the risk of disrupting the workshop, evoking emotional discomfort. The workshop went fine after that, by the way, and we didn’t lose the client. And I felt good about what I’d done.

This is known as bystander behaviour. With all those conditions in place I felt able, as a bystander (from memory he didn’t try it with me, but then, I was in a relative position of power), to call him out.

Eli Kolokowsky and Sharon Hong, from whose article the factual information in this one is gleaned, recommend training in effective bystander intervention as the way forward in this area. But along with the training in ‘how’ to intervene, people need everything in place that I had

·      A set of values that doesn’t see causal harassment as acceptable behaviour

·      Supportive colleagues

·      Supportive employer

To give them the courage to intervene.

Causal sexism, sexual harassment and abuse is everywhere. On the streets, on the buses, and for many in their homes. All we want is for women to be able to feel safe and to be able to give their best to work, and to themselves.

Maybe the workplace could become a safe space for women?

With many thanks to

Kolokowsky, Eli, and Sharon Hong. "Bystander Intervention: A Positive Approach to Sexual Harassment Prevention." Positive Organizational Psychology Interventions: Design and Evaluation (2021): 141-157.

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 ‘Diversity/Equality’ 

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

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

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

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

Why do men get selected more often?

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

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

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

The mistaken appointment of narcissists and psychopaths

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

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

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

What happens when they become leaders

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

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

Going forward

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

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

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

So, in essence, we need to

• Stop using confidence as a proxy for competence

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

• Avoid prompting narcissists and psychopaths to positions of leadership

• Stop looking at leadership potential through a gendered lens

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

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

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Thought Provoking’ 

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

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

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

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

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’ 

Optimism

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

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

The three P’s

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

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

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

The benefits of being optimistic

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

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

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

Can we learn to be more optimistic?

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

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

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

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

1.     See setbacks as temporary

2.     Don’t over-generalize

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

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

5.     Acknowledge your own contribution

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

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Positive Psychology’ 

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’ 

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

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

Mental Fatigue

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

Emotional Drain

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

Social Tiredness

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

Sensory Overload

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

Creative Exhaustion

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

Spiritual Fatigue

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

Physical Tiredness

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

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

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Positive Psychology’ 

How a dose of humility helps leaders succeed

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

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

Creates space for others to develop

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

Increases team resources

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

Supports good team relationships

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

Enhances team performance

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

Complements leadership drive

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

Enhances resilience

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

So, what does this mean for you?

As a leader

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

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

·      Learn to use it in appropriate situations

o   To strength the team

o   To repair any damage to relationships

o   To improve team performance

o   To help others be their best

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

As a consultant or coach

·      Recognize this as a potential leadership strength

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

·      Assist them in learning how to exercise humility skilfully

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

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

 Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Leadership’

What Is The Most Effective Way To Achieve Organisational Change? New Research Results

Ever felt that the traditional approach to change doesn’t deliver the results you hoped? Wondered if there is a better way?  Well interestingly Bradley Hasting and Gavin Schwarz[i] recently published a lengthy paper comparing the effectiveness of two different approaches to organisational development. One is the traditional mode, known as diagnostic, and the other a more recently developed approach, championed particularly by Bushe and Marshak[ii], known as dialogic. 

Diagnostic vs Dialogic

The diagnostic mode is the traditional approach to change: gathering information, making a diagnosis, then planning and implementing an intervention. Diagnostic approaches are typically prescriptive and linear, recommending a sequential sets of activity. They are essentially a variant of Lewin’s orginal freeze, unfreeze, refreeze model of organisational development.

The dialogic mode refers to the large group, social constructionist approach to change like Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space and World Café. Dialogic processes follow newer theories of complexity science, suggesting that organizations are permanently in flux and change, and that the art of change is to help bottom level changes amplify and accumulate to become substantial changes over time.

The table below highlights the findings of the research. As you can see traditional, diagnostic methods alone didn’t do terribly well, reflecting in fact the commonly quoted figure that ‘70% of change efforts fail.’ Interestingly not only are dialogic approaches much more effective, but the most effective approach of all was to start with a diagnostic approach (that is to identify the topic and gather information) and then to oscillate with the dialogic approach. This approach delivered a 93% success rate – phenomenal!

How can we help organizations to reap the benefits of this joint approach?

 Help is at hand: The Bushe Marshak Institute has published a unique series of dialogic OD guidance books. Each book is written by an expert in the field. I am very pleased to have been asked to contribute one on working with dialogic teams, as below

 This book, distilled from my many years of helping organizations embrace dialogic approaches to change, such as appreciative inquiry, gives guidance from the point of entry through to setting up the first dialogic event. To take the planning group from their habitual diagnostic approach to something more dialogic, a lot needs to happen: this book explains what. The guidance is enlivened with a warts and all account of a less-than-prefect-but-we-got-there-in-the-end case-study. 

My experience of working in this blended way fully supports Hastings and Schwarz’s findings. Many of my assignments have come off the back of diagnostic activity such as staff surveys or customer feedback or performance assessments. While these create the awareness of a need for change, they don’t always create excitement, energy and motivation for the possibilities of the future; rather the emphasis can be on fixing the problem. Instead, taking the diagnostic as a springboard, I work dialogically using Appreciative inquiry and other approaches to creating better futures in an empowered and participative way. 

This book shares all the lessons I have learnt on how to help planning teams see the opportunity offered by more a dialogic approach, and grasp it, so opening up possibilities and exciting futures for their organizations.

Where can I learn more?

The Organizational Development Network is hosting a session on ‘Getting Ready for a Dialogic Intervention’ on Thursday October 7th at 1700 UK time. See details here

[i] Hastings and Schwarz (2021) Leading Change Processes for Success: A dynamic Application of Diagnostic and Dialogic Organisational Development. The Journal of Applied Behavioural Studies 1-29.

[ii] Bushe and Marshak (2015) Dialogic Organizational Development.Berrett-Koehler

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’

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’

Is Mindfulness the new opium of the masses?

This seems to be what Ronald Purser is suggesting in his book McMindfulness. It’s an interesting read with some impressive statistics about the size of the Mindfulness industry ($4 billion anyone?), an account of its development and some nice juicy gossip about some of the insiders.

What I want to pull out is the bare bones of his critique of the industry. It is perhaps important to note that he happily acknowledges that practicing mindfulness can have benefit. Indeed he himself is a practicing Buddhist. What he objects to is the argument that teaching people one by one to be mindful, stripped out from its spiritual trappings, will somehow make the world a better place. He describes this belief as ‘Magical thinking on steroids.’ Rather he suggests that mindfulness practice acts as a band-aid to help people survive the difficult work and societal conditions many live under in our neoliberal economies. Here’s the gist of the critique.

• By decoupling the practice of mindfulness from its spiritual roots and home of Buddhism, the modern mindfulness industry has jettisoned the ethical dimension to the practice. This cultural appropriation and mutilation leaves, he suggests, nothing more than basic concentration training. There seems to be a fond belief that ‘ethical behaviour will arise ‘naturally’ from practice.’ He suggests there is no evidence as yet of this.

• The faith that, as CEO’s practice mindfulness, there will be a trickle-down effect on the world, so it will become a better, kinder, nicer place is somewhat misplaced and not supported by any evidence. He says

‘Trickle-down mindfulness, like trickle-down economics, is a cover for the maintenance of power.’

• There is a colourful, impressive-looking plethora of neuro-science brain pictures produced to support the pitch that this new improved stripped-down version of ‘pure mindfulness practice’ is strictly science-based; no dodgy dippy-hippy or God-embracing beliefs here, thank you, this is a strictly secular, science-backed methodology. The neuro-science, he argues, effectively obscures the very weak research base to support an argument of effectiveness.

• As the mindfulness industry has grown, so have the overblown claims of what it can be good for, including that it is especially effective at reducing anxiety, depression and stress. One of the 0.25% of 18,00 odd studies that actually reached decent scientific research standards concluded,  ‘that mindfulness was moderately effective at treating a variety of conditions, but no more effective than other active treatments such as drugs or exercise.’

• Mindfulness is now a big business like many others and suffers from the same challenges of staying ethical in a monetary world. He favourably compares Kabat-Zinn’s business prowess to that of McDonalds.

• The stripped downness of the technique, which is it’s USP and key selling point, renders it acontextual, which, amongst other things, means that the known counter-indicators aren’t always adhered too. Mindfulness training in contra-indicated for those who have suffered trauma or are suffering PTSD. Criteria for exclusion include depression, social anxiety, psychosis, and suicidal tendencies. Are all school groups screened? Does anyone check in work-place programme roll-outs?

• This is all occurring in a context where ‘Stress has been pathologized..., and the burden of managing it outsourced to individuals.’ Mindfulness training holds the promise of helping people deal better with stress. This in itself is part of an interesting large debate emerging about the whole ‘Me Inc.’ culture where we are all encouraged to focus on shining up every aspect of our self-care to produce a better me. So we can work harder, faster, longer without burning up. He says

‘Mindfulness-based interventions fulfil this purpose by therapeutically optimising individuals to make them ‘mentally fit’, attentive and resilient so they may keep functioning within the system.’

•  And, most damningly of all, he argues that the academic-science mindfulness complex is a servant of neoliberalism. That rather than encouraging people to challenge overwork, underpay, or  insecure,  or dangerous work; or any other form of workplace stress, it instead helps people put up with it. Mindfulness advocates, he argues, are providing support to the status quo; he criticises this stance: ‘the political naïveté involved is stunning’. But its’ adherents believe it is an apolitical practice. He doesn’t explicit say this, but I read it as, in effect, it is tolerated, indeed positively embraced, by organizations because it supports the status quo.

 What particularly interests me I suppose, is that some of these criticisms, if not all of them, can be extended to the whole positive psychology field.

 I believe we have a moral obligation to recognize that we work in a political, economic and social context. I don’t believe big organizations or corporations to be inherently bad, but I do believe that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that very good people can, like the proverbial frog, find themselves doing very bad things if the conditions are right. We must be on our guard against a complacent belief that, because we believe ourselves to be good people, we are incapable of doing harm.

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'.

See more Thought Provoking and Book Review articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

What does ‘Evidence based practice’ mean for practitioners in the field?

Are you a practitioner, keen to practice in an evidence-based way but with little time to keep up with the research? Maybe you find scientific papers unreadable? Or perhaps you support the aim in principle, but find it hard to set up gold-standard science-based evaluations of your interventions with your clients? You are not alone.

Psychology, following medicine and other applied disciplines, has become very keen on the idea of evidence-based practice. And I’m all for it, in principle: it’s a hard idea to argue against. I religiously peruse the contents page of the academic journals that thud onto my doormat, rarely finding a title that gets my juices going. I thought the failing was mine, until I  read Joanna Wilde’s book ‘The Social Psychology of Organizations’.

In this book she brilliantly explains how ‘scientific knowledge’ and ‘helping practice’ relate to each other. She suggests it is somewhat optimistic to hope that laboratory methods and facts can be just plonked down in the field and have positive impact; rather, there is a translation process involved if we are to get the best from the research.  

Exploring this further Joanna mounts a spirited defence of the evidence-base that practitioners can call upon; an evidence base that is different, but no less valid, than the science evidence base.

We are not scientists, we have to problem solve not experiment

She offers a number of interesting ideas to help us be evidence-based in our practice in complex system fields.

• She notices that we are in a subtly different business to science: we aren’t seeking primarily to establish knowledge, we are primarily seeking to help. We are working in a different context to different ends to scientists.

• Given this, the intervention is judged  by impact, and not by the facts it generates. This shifts the focus of the evaluation question subtly from ‘does it work?’ to ‘does it help?’

• Our practice is client-centric, not knowledge-accumulation-centric. She suggests that practice is the process by which knowledge from one situation is converted into a different form designed to be effective for the particular situation at hand. The situation at hand  often being a WICKED problem.

• A WICKED problem is defined as ‘a complex problem that is evolving and can not be completely solved.’ WICKED problems offer a sharp contrast to  the type of bounded problem required in scientific work. What works in one context may not work in another, and what can be tightly investigated in one context may not be trackable in another. The practice is specific to the context.

• She notes that in contrast to conducting experiments, what practitioners do is

o   Engage with WICKED problems, with an awareness of problem mutation

o   Access and use a wide range of evidence from multiple sources

o   Work in relationships

o   Design interventions, monitoring emergence, enabling course correction

o   Focus on the impact in context

• She suggests that field knowledge is based on broad observation and ‘evidence by experience’. Our evidence base exists, but it extends beyond experimental results.

• Some examples of ‘immediate and evolving  (sources of ) evidence’ that are field specific include:

  • Emerging events in talk and context

  • Practitioner experience and authentic intuition

  • Stakeholder comments

In other words, we are cognisant of data emerging in the moment and attempt to form hypothesis of ‘what is going on here?’ against which we can select our possible next action.

We are not detached observers

This is a key difference: how we engage with and work with our clients is key to our practice. Scientists, on the other hand, generally work to keep themselves out of the science. We, or at least I, am well aware that I am monitoring the effectiveness of my practice almost on a moment to moment basis. In my head I have a set of criteria against which I am evaluating the conversation: is it moving productively forward? Is it enhancing or at least not damaging relationships? Are they ‘hearing’ what I’m saying? am I ‘getting’ what they are saying? And of course fundamentally ‘does this seem to be making a positive difference? Is it helping the situation?’

Sadly the answer to these questions isn’t always yes. But that’s ok because I can try something else. After all as Wilde so succinctly note, ‘Intervention practice requires the capacity to work in real time with uncertainty.’ And ‘For those of us that have built a career as practitioners, it is the dynamic nature of translating emerging knowledge into changing complex environments that makes the work engaging and rewarding.’ And all the while I’m building up my practice evidence base.

This isn’t to say that laboratory work isn’t valuable. It is and we need to be able to work with trust in the scientific disciples we draw from. But few of us have the time, patience or skill to critique the papers. To be honest, we rely on the academic refereed paper system to ensure that for us. We want to be able to take it and run with it. This sounds interesting, how can I apply it here? How might it help?

I love Joanna’s work and regard this book very highly. What I have presented here is a much simplified and reduced part of a much richer and more complex argument about the relationship between science and practice. If you are interested, I encourage you to invest in the book. It’s great.

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'.

See more Thought Provoking and Book Review 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

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