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

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

Money for old rope - so why am I exhausted?

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

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

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

The Graeber hypothesis

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

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

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

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

Your job should seem necessary, if only to you

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

References

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

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

Five Ways To Increase Efficacy And Resilience During Change

It is very easy for people to become demoralised or demotivated during change as work becomes harder (less familiar) and possibly less rewarding (we’re not yet skilled at it). At the same time there is often a sense of loss of past habits or pleasurable activities, and a disruption to rewarding relationships. At the same time the manager can be so distracted and pressurised with all the meetings and decisions to do with the change programme that they are less relaxed and more critical than usual. They may also be around less, removing a valuable source of positive feedback for people.

To counter-act this, to ensure that people maintain good morale, are motivated, effective and resilient, we need to concentrate on helping people maintain a positive emotional state and a belief in their ability to influence things happening in their world.

1. Create Hopefulness

Hope is a future oriented motivating emotion that can be an early causality of imposed change. People lose hope when they no longer believe that they can influence what is happening around them, or the future that is unfolding. By helping them focus on what they can influence rather than what they can’t, you can plant or re-activate the seeds of hope. You can build on this by helping them realise how, by being pro-active, they can influence more than they thought. In this way you encourage hopefulness to grow. Hope makes us more resilient when we are buffeted off track, and increases our efficacy through its empowering nature. Hopefulness is further enhanced when people have a vision of a better future they are moving towards

2. Create dreams of positive future states

Often during change the focus is on what is pushing the change rather than what is pulling the change forward. Push change factors are not always highly motivating beyond achieving compliance with something or escape from something. To generate real commitment to the future, and to activate the energy and motivation that goes with that, people need to feel they are moving towards something desirable. Help people work out how they can create attractive futures in the change process.

3. Redefine success

Another frequent early causality of change a sense of achievement. The existing patterns of effort and success are broken or no longer relevant. And the new patterns are not yet established. During the disruption and transition of change it is often helpful ask ‘In our changed circumstance, what does success look like?’ So for a team that is be disbanded, success criteria can shift towards factors such as ‘Supporting each other to find new positions’ or ‘Creating a great celebration of the team’s achievements before we close’ or ‘Ensuring we look after our clients until the last moment’. The creation of feasible, achievable targets in midst of the general uncertainty helps people focus on things they can do in a motivating way, while lifting mood and so enhancing resilience.

4. Amplify success

This is related to the point above. Successes and achievements can get trampled or overlooked in the frenzy of change activity. To help boost or maintain motivation and morale its good idea to make extra effort to highlight and amplify the good work that is still being done, even as everyone’s attention is focused on the change. Internally this can be done in one-to-one conversations or in team meetings. Publicising continuing good work externally, through newsletters, emails or in other meetings, can also help maintain high morale during difficult times.

5. Encourage savouring

Savouring is essentially the process of taking the time to enjoy or experience a good or pleasant thing. In our busy lives we pass through a lot of moments without really noticing them. When under pressure, we are particularly inclined to do this with good moments as they don’t demand our attention as vigorously as difficult moments. However, taking a moment to savour a tricky conversation well navigated, a potential disaster adroitly averted, the first bite of a juicy peach, is a way of creating little blips of good feeling for yourself throughout a difficult day. It is a way of redressing the balance of good to not-so-good moments: a balance that is key to our sense of well-being which is in turn related to our sense of efficacy and resilience. Redirect your attention to ensure you notice and savour good moments and courage others to do the same.

Information on a further four factors that help create efficacy and resilience during change, and much more about the need to do change differently and guidance on how to do it, can be found in my new book Positive Psychology and Change.

Other Resources

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

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

See more Change, Resistance To Change and How To articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

How To Increase Your Effectiveness As A Manager With Strengths Cards

Increasingly being an effective manager is about helping others to be their best. People’s natural strengths are at the heart of great performance. While there are great psychometrics around to assess people’s strengths they aren’t always available, suitable, or affordable. A pack of strengths cards is portable, re-useable and infinitely applicable. Below are eight ways managers can use a pack of strengths card to enhance their effectiveness.

Ideas For Using Your Strengths Cards

1. Coaching: Creating confidence, resilience, motivation and performance

Coaching for performance is an important part of any manager’s role.  Bringing strengths cards into the coaching conversation can help create a positive focus and stimulate a conversation about an individual’s particular strengths. By exploring past successes and helping an individual recognise the particular personal strengths that consistently underlie their successes, you enhance their self-confidence and resilience as they recognise and own their own particular performance assets. By focussing on how these assets can be realised in future performance, you both create motivation for the challenge and enhance their likelihood of succeeding. 

For example: Ask someone to share their greatest achievement or success in the area under discussion then spread the cards out on the table and together identify the strengths that allowed them to achieve that success and then identify with them the ones that really resonate with them as being an essential contributor of their successes. The strengths they are happy to own.

2. Coaching: For personal and career development

Managers are increasingly responsible not just for an individual’s ‘in-role’ performance, but also for their career development. An exploration of an individual’s real highlight moments in their career so far, and an analysis of the strengths at play in those moments, can help someone understand what they need to develop a satisfying career: ever more opportunity to play to, and utilise, their strengths in the service of personally important goals. Assessed from this perspective, different future paths can open up, and existing ones become more or less attractive. 

For example: Invite the person to talk to you about their career highlights, spend some time identifying the strengths that contributed to these highlights then imagine what their future career will look like if they can use these strengths to achieve things that are important to them. Ask them to imagine what will they be doing, where will they be working and who with, how they will be spending their time. Then together you can identify a possible future career goal and how to get there.

3. Team Development: Creating an economy of strengths, increasing capability

Team members can find themselves restricted in using their strengths by the division of work by role. In the worst case scenario a particular task falls to someone because it’s ‘in their remit’ despite the fact that they have no natural talent (or strengths) to support them in this task. Usually the result is that the task is done very slowly (or rushed) using tremendous energy and effort (or none) to at best a mediocre standard. Once a team understands all its members natural strengths, they can operate as an economy of strengths, meaning it can allocate and share tasks according to the strengths-fit increasing both the effectiveness and efficiency of the team and the productivity of individual members.

For example: Help each team member to identify their strengths using questions like 'When have you felt most alive at work?' Then follow the processes as above. Once everyone has identified their strength, create a map of the strengths of the members of the team. There will be overlap. Then they can then analyse the tasks the tea has to perform against what strengths are needed for each task and allocate them accordingly.

4. Performance Appraisal: Motivating people to be their best

Performance appraisals are meant to be motivating. Too often they are the exact opposite. This is partly due to an over-emphasis on analysing problems and failures in the past, and partly due to an emphasis on creating a list of future tasks. Shifting the focus to helping people identify the best of the past, and the strengths they display in achieving those successes, and then constructing a vision of the future based on how they could access and utilise those strengths even more in the future will help switch the conversation from de-motivating and de-energising to motivating and energising. This is because people find using (and the anticipation of using) their strengths motivating and energising. Use the cards to help someone explore, name and own their particular strengths that allow them to succeed.

For example: Invite the person to share when they have been most excited about their work or what they are working on (not whether it succeeded or not). Spread the cards out and together identify the strengths that underpin these most motivated moments. Help them identify future goals, targets or projects that create the same sense of excitement because they will call on the same strengths. Help align these to organisational priorities - so everyone wins.

5. Motivating Mirco-moments

Effective managers know that every interaction with someone acts to motivate or de-motivate them, to encourage change or to support the status quo. By increasing your strengths spotting skills, and your appreciative ear, you can increase the motivational encounters your staff experience with you. By understanding your people as a profile of strengths (rather than as their job profile) you can notice when they are using their strengths, or help them access them when they aren’t. With an appreciative ear you can help them notice what they did right, or what went well, even in difficult situations.

For example: Spread the cards out and think about one of your staff and about the most clear memory you have of being impressed with something they did at work. Look at the cards, and think about what strengths the staff member was using when they did this. They will have been motivated both by their success and the very process of using their strengths so if you spot the next time they are using these strengths and mention it, they will be motivated by the fact that you can see when they're at their best. Practice ‘spotting’ the different strengths as you encounter your staff at work, you’ll soon get the hang of it!

 6. Elevate mood to elevate performance

As a generalisation people perform better when they feel better. This isn’t about job satisfaction, this is about momentary states of wellbeing. When people feel good they are more curious, more tenacious, more sociable, and better able to cope with complexity. They have more energy, they are more generous with others. Having a conversation with an individual or a team that is focused on past or present successes is likely to elevate mood in the moment. By going a step further and identifying the strengths at the core of the success you are increasing the likelihood of a replication of these success, as people understand better what made them possible. This is also likely to elevate mood.

For example: Have a session where members of a team are asked to recount a time when another team member made a big contribution towards the success of the team. Use the cards to help people offer feedback to each other about the strengths they were struck by in this person's account. Take it from there.

7. Leadership: Know thyself

It is well known that effective leaders recognise their own shortcomings, and work to limit the damage they can cause. It is less appreciated that great leaders also know their strengths, and how to use them well. When a leader knows, and owns, their strengths they are more able to work to use them wisely and judiciously. They also better understand that other people don’t have this strength: that what is easy for them can be harder for others. They can become more forgiving of others. They can gather people around them that can help them exercise their strengths appropriately, and ameliorate their weaknesses. Use strengths cards to help leaders understand their own strengths and develop control and skill in using them, and to understand that other people are blessed differently.

For example: Sit down with the leader of one of your teams and explore with them which of their strengths contributed to a recent success of the team (see point 1). Then go a step further and ask them to name someone who also contributed to this success and explore their strengths. It should dawn on the leader that the reason they were both instrumental in this success wasn't just that they had some of the same strengths, which were suited to the job at hand, but also that they had some different but, in this context, complimentary strengths and so each to some degree offset the weaknesses of the other.

8. Recasting Problematic Behaviour: Strengths in overdrive

Sometimes difficult behaviour is caused by an out of control strength. The person who never gets their own work done because they are too busy helping others: empathy in overdrive. The person who seems to want to have a say in every issue whether it concerns them or not: leadership in overdrive. Understanding that sometimes people aren’t in control of their strengths, that their very strengths are the things that leads them into trouble gives us a different place to go with the conversation. We can recognise the strength as a general asset, then focus on how to use it wisely. Strength plus skill in using the strength is key to great performance.

For example: This is a damage limitation exercise - someone has caused problems and needs to be told that they need to modify their behaviour. What you can do is start the conversation not with the problems they've caused but by investigating their strengths (see point 1.) and then have a look at the cards and see if the behaviour in question can be recast as a strength in overdrive, then you have somewhere different to take the conversation and should have a better chance of getting an actual genuine attempt to modify behaviour and not just sullen temporary withdrawal.

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

Other Resources

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

See more How To, Team Development and Leadership Skills articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

Positive Deviance: Learning from, and creating, exceptional performance

This blog article has an accompanying article on positive culture, and an accompanying case study on culture change

What is positive deviance and why is it a good thing?

Positive Deviance is an exciting methodology emerging from an understanding of organisations as complex adaptive systems. It helps organisations learn from those who manage to achieve better than normal outcomes from within the same resource constraints as their colleagues.

It is one of Kim Cameron’s distinguishing features for flourishing organizations: they both learn from and create positive deviance. Flourishing organizations are interested in exceptionally good performance and they learn from it. Some of the earliest examples of how learning from positive deviance can make a real difference comes from community work.

For example... 

For instance an early example of positive deviance was in a poor Vietnamese community. In this community there were many starving children yet some families were doing better than others in feeding their children. A positive deviance investigation by the villagers themselves revealed that the more successful families were taking shrimps and crabs from the rice fields i.e. had realised an additional source of protein. Some others were spreading their rice ration out over 24 hours, which is better for young children. These were things that theoretically everyone could do but not everyone did. These are positive deviance strategies. Of course there were also other factors such a having a rich relative who sent supplies. However these strategies are not available to others and so are known as true but useless (TBU) strategies. A key factor for the success of the intervention (i.e. achieving behaviour change) was they got the villagers themselves to do the investigation.

Positive Deviance investigations are being used very successfully to reduce super-bug infection rates in some hospitals. 

It is a very effective way of ‘growing’ a better culture. By recognising that small variations in performance always exist and by focussing on and amplifying the variations in a positive direction the whole organization can be encouraged to move in the direction of the best.

Appreciative inquiry as a methodology works on the same principle of identifying  positive deviance, learning from it, and increasing its presence in the organization.

When might investigating positive deviance be the way forward in an organisation?

With thanks to Lisa Kimball from Plexus

When…

• There is some existing deviance e.g. some people are doing better than others in a similar situation (performance variation across team or division)
• It’s a really intractable problem
• It involves behaviour change
• Everyone knows what to do, they are just not doing it
• The situation is bathed in data. It really helps if the groups can keep track of the changes they are making and their impact
• There is top leadership support. This means top leadership support the process through releasing resource, being responsive to early efforts and initiatives, and tracking, recording and amplifying results.

How to do positive deviance

1. Ask about success
2. Compare best to near best to tease out small differences that make a difference
3. Encourage peer to peer inquiry (and analysis) into success
4. Identify strategies for success (discounting TBU factors)
5. Support with behaviour change strategies
6. Support with top leadership resources: interest, budget, encouragement, action

This blog article has an accompanying article on positive culture, and an accompanying case study on culture change

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

Ten Tips for Effective Strategic Development

This blog article has two accompanying case studies: Making Strategy Real and Open Space For Strategic Development

What is Strategy?

Organisations often think of strategy as a plan for achieving a specific future. This plan is created by a small group of people who then inform others of the vision of the future and how it will be achieved.

A Compass, Not An Alien Artefact

This process can result in the production of a strategic document that appears opaque if not irrelevant to the rest of the organization. I have sat with many a group attempting to ‘decode’ the strategic document just handed down from on high into something that is meaningful, useful or compelling in their local context. Generally the connection, the relevance, is more created than uncovered.

Strategy is the lodestar of organization: it creates direction and holds things together. Without a sense of the over-arching purpose, direction and values of the organisation it is difficult for people to prioritise amongst the many competing demands on their time and energy. A good strategy acts like an internal compass for all employees, enabling them to prioritise their activities against a common understanding of ‘the most important things’, even when working in isolation.

It is possible to create strategy in a way that understands it not as a plan handed down by omniscience others, but as a co-created organizational story of future direction and intent. Here are some tips for working with strategy in this way.

How To Build Your Compass

1. Invert the usual process

The usual pattern for strategic development is that a small group of people design ‘the strategy’ which they then attempt to get the rest of the organization, the large group, to adopt. It is quite possible, as our case study ‘Making Strategy Real’ shows, to invert this process by involving a large group of stakeholders in initial strategic conversations, which a small group then write up as the strategic document. This approach allows data analysis, theme identification, creation of new initiatives, commitment to outcomes, common vision, motivation and energy for change to be created simultaneously rather than in staged sequences. Given this, change is likely to happen much more quickly.

2. Create positive energy for change

Large group co-creative approaches such as Appreciative Inquiry or SOAR create energy for the change right from the start. However, if the organization is doing strategy more traditionally all is not lost. We know that inducing positive mood states and helping people identify their strengths helps people engage with change, even if it is imposed rather than self-generated. So create opportunities for groups to identify what they are doing that points in the new direction, the successes they are achieving, the changes they are making, and the resilience they are demonstrating as well as the endless opportunities for identifying shortfalls, delays etc. Spend time helping people identify their strengths and working out how to apply them every day.

3. Recognise that strategy is what people do

Strategic becomes a ‘lived’ process as people make different decisions, moment-by-moment, to those they made in the past. While big ‘strategic’ events are important for various reasons, it’s micro-moment differences and decisions that add up to change. Every conversation, every decision, every action is either pointing towards the desired future direction or away from it. However habitual behaviour, aligned to past strategy, is strong. Therefore attention has to be paid at the granular level to the language used and the way things are talked about, as well as to what is being done, to create new patterns.

4. Use ‘word and deed’ to create new organizational fields

Drawing on quantum physics, Wheatley identified that effective leaders implement new strategy by their words and deeds. They choose words and deeds that fill the conversational, meaning or  social space with clear and consistent ideas about the new strategy, for example how the customers are to be served. This kind of behaviour creates a new system ‘field’, one strong in congruence, influencing behaviour in only one direction. In effect they create a field of influence that make certain behaviours more likely.

5. Help people understand what ‘strategically aligned behaviour’ looks like

People often have difficulty translating the words on the page of a strategic document into ‘what it means for us’. One way to help people create a stronger vision and sense of what the new strategy looks like is to seek out early examples of behaviour that is ‘pointing in the right direction’ and to pro-actively amplify and broadcast these stories. These are stories that exemplify ‘yes, this is what we want, this is what we mean’. It’s hard for people to imagine things they have never experienced. Sharing stories that act as models of what is required helps people to ‘get it’.

6. Recognise strategy as an emergent process

Strategy becomes a lived reality in an organization through an emergent process. People have to feel their way into ‘doing’ the new strategy. Sometimes organizations act as if strategy can be dictated and people can start working in this new and different way with never a false step being made. This expectation hampers progress as people are afraid they will make a mistake, whilst also quickly creating the sense of things going wrong. Recognising the enactment of strategy as a discovery process, with false starts, blind alleys and a general iterative ‘two steps forward, one step back’ process, helps greatly in creating and sustaining momentum for change.

7. Retell the story of strategy around the organization

The strategic ‘story’ needs to be shared in many different ways in many different contexts with many different groups. We work out what we mean by what we say through this process of telling and retelling. The creation of strategy is not a uni-directional communication process, it is a collaborative co-creating dialogue process. Organisational understanding of what the words on the paper mean in practice emerges through shared dialogue.

8. Create a strategy that is both familiar and different

We can conceptualise strategy as a fiction. It is a fictional account of a possible future. Ideally it is a co-authored story (see point 1) but often it is a story created by some people that they need others to believe. To grasp and hold our interest stories need to be both credible and unfamiliar. Appreciative inquiry is perfect for this. The articulation of the best of past in which we recognize ourselves offers the ‘credible’ part of the story, while the following three stages, dream, design and destiny, offer the generative part of the story. During these phases, the organization creates a picture of itself that is built on the familiar yet is importantly different, new.

9. Make the strategy tangible

The way this is usually done is to produce a report. The printed word is more tangible, carries more weight, than just words. When we hold the document in our hands we can see that we have done something, much more so than when we emerge from a dialogue event with ‘just’ different ideas in our heads. The challenge is to go beyond just a document. How else can the organization make the new strategy tangible? Pictures, logos, diagrams are all part of this process. Encouraging people and groups to physically model (with Lego or plasticine for example) the past and the future, and then talking about the difference, can help with this.

10. Strategy is a verbal activity

Finally, as a summary of most of the above, it is important to recognise that strategy is a verbal activity. How we talk is different to how we write. The written strategy document is unlikely to be a direct source for effective verbal explanations. Different groups and different people need different approaches if they are to ‘get it’. Ideally the talking comes before the writing, so people can see their words in the document. But it is quite possible to reverse the process, helping groups create a verbal account of the handed down written word. Which I believe brings me back to where I started.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

Five Ways to Get Your Team Working More Effectively

Teams are the building blocks of organizations. Teams are groups of people who work together to achieve things, but not all groups are teams. Teams are characterized by interdependencies, in other words team members have to work together to get things done. While this interdependency creates the potential for the whole to be more productive and creative than the sum of the parts, it can just as easily be a recipe for frustration and conflict. How can you help your team get the most out of working together?

Create a positive working culture

Very few people like to be in an atmosphere that is critical, hostile, unfriendly or cold. Yet many teams manage to create precisely this culture because they overly focus on achieving the task and fail to account for basic human nature. Research over the last 10 years has convincing backed up what many of us intuitively knew, a good working atmosphere makes a huge difference to a team’s productivity. What the research found is that the key to the difference between high performing and low performing teams is the ratio of positive to negative comments in team meetings. Interestingly this doesn’t need to be in balance, it needs to be weighted in favour of positive comments, at least by a ratio of 3:1.

A number of things seem to happen once this magic ratio is reached and even more so if the ratio moves closer to 6:1. There is more positive affect ‘good feeling’ generated by the group when they are together. When people feel good they are more able to think well, be creative, and to work with others. In addition people become more willing to contribute ideas, and to work with goodwill through the moments of uncertainty, disconnection or confusion in the conversation until something new emerges. The benefits continue beyond the immediate team meetings, as team members’ actions in their own domains are more in sync with their colleagues, and so the departmental interface issues are lessened.

Help people play to their strengths

Many people have put much effort into attempting to address their weaknesses over many years to little avail. I know this because I meet them at their 360 feedback sessions somewhere mid-career where they say ‘yes, that always comes up as a weakness, I do try...’. This is usually a depressing conversation for both parties.

Recent thinking is that attending more to our strengths will reap greater benefit in terms of performance improvement. This is because when we are using our strengths work feels effortless, we are energised and confident, we are engaged and probably experience moments of flow. Feeling like this we are more able to be generous and patient with others, so the benefits flow onward. Strengths are an expression of highly developed mental pathways and neutral connections that take minimal effort to enact. Help your team members discover their true strengths and then find ways as a team to utilize everyone’s strengths to achieve the team task. Think of your team as an economy of strengths, and work out how to create extra value by trading your strengths.

Create commonality amongst team members

Teams are often made up of people with different skillsets and areas of expertise that tend to see the world, and the priorities for action within it, differently. This can lead to a great awareness of difference, and the differences can come to be seen as insurmountable. Yet at the same time there will be areas of commonality amongst team members, often in the areas of core values and central purpose.

A very productive way to access these commonalities is through the sharing of stories. When people are asked to share personal stories of their moments of pride at work, or moments of achievement or success, or the part of their job that means the most to them, they are expressing their values and sense of purpose in an engaging, passionate and easy to hear form. The listener will undoubtedly find that the story resonates with them, creating an emotional connection at the same time as they begin to see the person in a different light. In the best scenarios as people share their highlight stories a sense emerges in the room of ‘wow, these are great people I’m working with here, I’d better raise my game!’

Move from the habitual to the generative

Groups can get stuck in repeating dynamic patterns. When this happens listening declines as everyone believes they know what everyone else is saying – they’ve heard it all before. And so does the possibility of anything new happening. To break the patterns we need to move from rehearsed speech (which means exactly what it says, speech that has been thought or said so often it just tumbles out) to generative speech (which is the delightful sensation of hearing ourselves say something new).

To help the team make the shift you need to ask questions, or introduce activities that mean people need to think before they speak, that brings information into the common domain that hasn’t been heard before. Positively or appreciatively framed questions as suggested above are particularly good for this. So too are imagination based questions, or example ‘If we woke up tomorrow and we had solved this dilemma, how would we know, what would be different?’ ‘If we weren’t spending our time locked in this conversation, what might we be talking about?’ Or ‘as if’ questions ‘If we discuss this as if the customer was in the room with us, what will we be saying?’ Sometimes just getting people to all switch from their habitual seating pattern breaks old and creates new dynamics.

Create Future Aspirations

When teams suffer a crisis of motivation or morale it is often associated with a lack of hope. A lack of hope that things can get better, a lack of hope in the power and influence of the group or the leader, a lack of hope or belief in the possibility of achieving anything.

Hope and optimism are both great motivators and also key in team resilience. In hopeless situations we need to engender hopefulness. Appreciative Inquiry as an approach is particularly good at doing this as it first of all discovers the best of the current situation, unearths the hidden resources and strengths of the group, and then goes on to imagine future scenarios based on these very discoveries about what is possible. As people project themselves into optimistic futures clearly connected to the present, they begin to experience some hopefulness. This in turn engenders some motivation to start working towards those more aspirational scenarios of how things can be.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help Top Teams and how we can help your organisation with Engagement.

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

‘I wouldn’t have started from here’ - The Challenge Of Bringing Emergent Change Insights To Planned Change Projects

Planned Change - The good and the bad

When organizations decide they need to make changes in the way they work, their culture or their IT system they often default to a planned change approach. Typically LEAN specialists and programme managers if not already present are hired and the process of organising a top-down driven change process begins.

This approach has its strengths. It often reveals scope for improved efficiency, but more tellingly, it presents change as a problem of data and logic and makes change look manageable, sequential and what I can only describe as ‘tidy’. Unfortunately it also leads straight to the ‘how to get buy-in’ and ‘how to overcome the resistance to change’ conversations.

Planned change approaches inadvertently encourage people to give up trying to contribute to the change conversation or to influence how it happens. They can become passive, demotivated and demoralised, waiting to be told what to do. It is when the downsides of this approach become apparent that people find their way to me, presenting their challenge as a problem of dis-engagement, poor morale, people needing support during change.

Bringing in Emergent Change

We know that emergent, dialogic, psychological, and co-creative approaches to change such as Appreciative Inquiry, World Café, and Open Space act to motivate, engage and energise people and connect to their desire to influence their own future, to be part of the change process. The challenge is how to bring them to the party when the planned change process is already in full swing: when one’s first thought upon engagement is, ‘well I wouldn’t have started from here’ – but here we are.

How To

There is an art to bringing value from our perspective under these circumstances. We need to work at the interstices, in the gaps that emerge in the planned change process. In working with this challenge, there are some principles for engaging that I have found useful.

1. Work with who you can, where you can

You may not be able to get ‘the whole system in the room’, that doesn’t mean you can’t work in these ways with the bits of the system you can gain access to. Use all opportunities to help people start to understand change as an emergent phenomena that they can influence, even as planned change is unfolding all around them. Bring your appreciative questioning style and your positive focus on strengths and good affect to all opportunities. Work wherever you can, with whoever you gain access to the move the focus to: what we can do, what we can influence.

     2. Adapt processes to fit the opportunities

I have used Appreciative Inquiry approaches working with parts of the system over a series of events, pulling it all together through another series of events (multi-events for one process); with one group in small chunks of time over time (one event split over time); and have developed one-day ‘roadworthy’ Appreciative Inquiry processes when unable to negotiate the longer time I would have desired. I have found Appreciative Inquiry to be an incredibly robust process that acts to re-energise, re-motivate, re-engage the disillusioned, disengaged and demotivated time after time.

    3. Encourage awareness of possibilities of local influence and control

Help people and groups focus on what they can influence. Usually the idea that top management ‘has got it all planned out’ is a myth. Top management don’t have brain space to attend to every last detail. If people want good decision making in their own area they need to seize the initiative and start presenting ways forward. Help groups focus on what is important to them in the change and on how they can influence the wider system. Once again Appreciative Inquiry is great for this. It is these conversations that start to rekindle hope, optimism, motivation to engage.

     4. Keep bringing key ideas to the fore

These are some of the ideas that need encouragement and reinforcement as planned change swings into gear, and that you can bring to any conversation or situation you are able to negotiate entry to:

• Volunteerism - people are being pushed around enough already, try to make any specific events you are able to run optional (and very attractive!).
• Co-creation – always ask ‘who else can we usefully involve in this?’ Encourage leaders to take questions to their teams in a co-creative (e.g. not just consultative) way. I find the notion of ‘drawing on the collective intelligence’ often helps with negotiating more involvement by lower level staff.
• Positivity – focus on creating positive affect, it really helps create resilience during a difficult time. Encourage others to recognize the continuing importance of positive mood boosts. Many ‘rewarding’ experiences disappear during change as people go ‘heads down’ and pleasurable interactions can lessen.
• Strengths – people are more energised, engaged, motivated etc. when they can use their strengths to achieve their objectives. Help groups focus on identifying these and working out how to draw on them: individual strengths, group strengths, organisational strengths.
• Hope and optimism - In my experience these can be early casualties of planned change. Using appreciative techniques helps people focus on the best of the past and their hopes for the future. Hope is also part of the ‘building resilience’ challenge.
• Pro-activity – encourage people to take responsibility for how they are engaging with the change and the effect they are having on others around them. It’s the antidote to the ‘being done to’ feeling that can be so strong during planned change
• Leaders’ face – be mindful always of leaders’ face. They are (usually) doing their best to do the best for the organization, and they are doing it the only way they know how. As we help people make sense of what is going on, we need to help them recognize this.
• Story and Choice – Unhelpful stories often emerge during change about the motivation for change in general and to explain leaders’ behaviour in particular. These are often stories of blame, inadequacy, deficit and deceit, nefarious motives and so on. We can remind people that there are many truths about a situation, and situations are often paradoxical. We can remind them that they have a choice about the story they choose to tell, both to themselves and to others and that the telling of stories has impact for action.
• Amplifying success – in change people get so focused on what isn’t working they lose sight of the fact that they are still achieving things. Bringing these to the fore helps with morale, pride etc.

See Case Studies of how introducing emergent change into planned change can work in practice

Case Study - Making The Virtual World Visible

Case Study - Cultural Change

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at the tools we use to foster Emergent Change.

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

Using your Positran Strengths Cards

According to Professor Alex Linley, “a strength is a pre-existing capacity for a particular way of behaving, thinking, or feeling that is authentic and energising to the user, and enables optimal functioning, development and performance” In fact, the strengths concept is so central to positive psychology nowadays, that the knowledge and utilisation of one’s strengths is considered to be one of the most direct routes to personal and professional fulfilment.

So what is the value of strengths and how can they be applied to help us live our life to its fullest? Research has demonstrated that by simply following our strengths, we can gain insight and perspective into our lives, generate optimism, confidence and even enhanced sense of vitality. More importantly, strengths appear to have a preventative mechanism in terms of buffering against certain types of physical dysfunction such as allergies, diabetes, chronic pain and even some mental disorders. Finally, strengths help build psychological resilience, whilst the use of signature strengths in work, love, play and parenting generating positive emotions. Finally, the strengths approach is argued to be at the heart of successful psychological therapies and coaching.

So how can you use these cards to identify, develop and use the strengths to the max? The following activities can be carried out in one-to-one conversations and sessions, within a family circle, with friends, and of course, in many training and team building situations. These activities are written with the end-user in mind, so if you are a coach or a therapist, please note that by “you” we actually mean “your client”.

1. Who am I?

Simply identifying your signature strengths can significantly enhance your well-being levels (Seligman et al., 2005). Looking in the cards in front of you, pick the top five you feel are most authentic to you. When you are doing this, think about:

•  Does this strength reflect who you really are?

•  When you are demonstrating this strength, do you truly enjoy yourself?

•  Are you energised during and after its use?

2. Strengths introductions

In groups of no more than 5-6, looking at the cards in front of you, pick three that you consider to be your top strengths. Have a brief look at the description and strengths questions at the back. Introduce yourself to the group giving concrete examples of using these strengths (not just “I think I am a creative person”). Each member of the group takes turns to do the same.

3. At your best

Please turn to the person on your left and ask them to describe a situation when they were at their personal best. What did it feel like? Ask them to describe the beginning, the middle and the end. They need to reflect on the personal strengths displayed throughout the event and pick them up from the strengths pack. Once they have finished, please switch the roles and do the same yourself.

4. Strengths nominations

Nominate one or more other strengths for other people in the group, giving concrete examples of when you saw them using this strength. This exercise is contagious; you will see the whole group nominating strengths for each other within minutes. It can be quite emotional as well.

5. Strengths sort

This exercise is best done on your own or one-to-one with a coach or a friend. Create five piles in front of you and place each of the cards from the pack into one of the piles.

1) Not me – a card that you see in front of you is neither your strength, nor your potential, competence or weakness. It simply does not apply to you.

2)  My strengths are the strengths that you already are aware of and use frequently, which, in turn, enable you to be and perform at your best.

3)  My potentials are strengths that you may not be able to express on a daily basis due to your environment and work situations. However, when you do display them you derive energy and satisfaction from exhibiting these attributes.

4)  My competences are the behaviours that you have, over time, learned to do well, however you do not derive pleasure or energy from performing them. In fact, quite the opposite, they seem to suck the energy out of you, even when the results are perfectly satisfactory.

5)  My weaknesses encompass the behaviours that you just can’t do well and that seem to drain you. These attributes can create issues and need to be managed so that they do not hinder your success in life

Next, pile by pile decide what to do with the outcomes. Are you using your strengths well (see strengths-based work) or are you over-using them? How can you develop your potentials (see strengths stretch)? How can you minimise the use of your competences (if they drain you, they can’t be that good for you)?

Finally, what would you like to do with each of your weaknesses? You can try to develop them (see activate your strengths), ignore them (if you can get away with it), or find creative ways to compensate for them (by using strengths partnering, for example).

6. Strengths stretch

You can try using your top strengths and potentials in a new way every day, for at least one week. Infusing your daily life with variety in how you express your strength has a lasting effect on increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms for up to 6 months (Seligman, et al., 2005). You can see some suggestions for strengths stretch on the back of your strengths cards, or generate some new ones with your coach.

7. Make a beautiful day using your strengths

Try some other creative ideas around incorporating strengths into your daily live, for example, creating ‘a beautiful day’ or going on a ‘strengths date’. To create a ‘beautiful day’, use your top strengths to create the perfect day (or even half day). Thus, if your top traits are love of learning and curiosity, your day might include a trip to a favourite museum or a few hours with a book that you've been meaning to read. If the capacity to love crowns your list, you might spend an evening with old

friends or summon family for a dinner. You can also take your ‘strengths day’ further and design a date with your significant other in such a way as to enable both of you to be within your strengths zone.

8. Strengths-based work

Examine how much you are able to exercise your top strengths in your current job. If you could start it all over, what job would you chose, taking your top strengths into account? For example, if your top strength is kindness, would you like a job with some form of mentoring element in it? If you are not using your strengths in your current job to the full, brainstorm together with your coach or your group/team how you can bring them in a little more, or how you can change your role somewhat to reflect your strengths better.

9. Activate your strengths

You can also choose five of your weaknesses (or lesser strengths) and try to cultivate them throughout the next seven days. Monitor the positive emotions, such as vitality, excitement, authenticity, etc., that you experience trying to put these lesser strengths to work. See some suggestions for activating activities at the back of the cards, or try to brainstorm some new ones with your coach or group.

10. Strengths partnering

This exercise is best done with your existing team. Introduce yourself to the group with both your strengths and some of your weaknesses that you prefer not to develop, if at all possible. Listen carefully to each other, examining how the strengths of one can compensate for the weaknesses of another, and vice versa. You might have to be creative in finding tangible solutions that could work for your team. 

Using Your Positive Organisational Development Cards: 10 Ideas To Get You Started

So you've got some of our Positive Organisational Development Cards - now what? We have produced a list of 10 ideas for ways in which you could use the cards to add value to your work with different audiences.

In General

You can use these cards in a number of ways to stimulate discussion; create commonality and motivation; and to identify agreed action. Some general ideas are:

• Use the cards as they stand, the questions and the action points
• Use a rating scale ‘To what extent is this present in our team/organization/group at the moment on a scale of 1-10? What would we like to be? How can we move towards this?’etc.
• As a prioritizing tool. ‘Which five of these are most key to our future success/our development/our strategy?’
• As playing cards. Each person has some. Someone starts by laying down a card they think is important (to the topic under discussion) explaining why they think so, the person who thinks they can build on this with one of the cards in their hand lays it down with ‘yes and...’. This is a cooperative card game, with no winners or losers.

With Senior Executives

1) Leadership

Use the Authentic Leadership card as a stimulus to the initial discussion.

Ask them to identify what other cards they see as being relevant to being an effective, positive leader (e.g. affirmation and positive deviance, mindfulness, engagement, virtuous practices, positive energy networks and strengths). Use the questions to stimulate discussion and the further notes to create possibilities for initiatives or personal development

2) Organisational Culture

Take the five culture cards (pink). For each card consider and discuss the questions and then make a rating for each concept (where are we now?) on a scale of 1-10. Then ask – Where do we want to be? Look at the action points and pick a few as a basis for planning how to start moving in the right direction

Leaders and Managers in General

3) Using micro-moments as a leader

Select the cards that leaders can have an impact on in every engagement they have (e.g. positive deviance, virtuous practices, authentic leadership, high quality connections, positive emotions, flourishing, mindfulness). Use the questions to stimulate discuss to raise awareness of the importance of these concepts to creating a positive organisational atmosphere. Then use pointers for action to help create action resolutions.

4) Performance Appraisal

The yellow cards (with the possible exception of the Appreciative Inquiry card) form a good basis for a performance appraisal conversation. Also include the blue cards engagement and flow and maybe the flourishing card. The key question is ‘When you do you experience this at work? What are you doing, who is around?’ and so on to help them learn about when they are at their best.

Alternatively, you can spread the cards out and ask them to pick a few cards that exemplify what they would like more of in their work. Or what they find most exciting at work e.g. using strengths, being affirmed, having great conversations and so on.

5) Career Counselling

Pick a few appropriate cards like affirmation, strengths, positive deviance, authentic leadership, engagement, generativity, and ask them which of these features might be important to them in a job or their next career move? How can they find out whether a job or organization offers these? Alternatively get them to pick the five that seem most important to them to allowing them to give their best at work.

Groups – Development

6) Culture / Organisational Development

Take the pink culture cards and add any others you like, such as positive deviance, affirmation and flourishing, asking ‘What is important to us in our culture? Where is this already present?’ and so on, use the questions on the back of the card as well. Get the group to make a current rating of where the organization is, then use the suggestions on the cards to stimulate discussion of actions to increase positivity of the culture. These cards help individuals identify what they can do to move things forward.

Take the green cards and repeat the process. These give ideas as to how to create cultural change at the collective level.

7) Identifying our strengths as leaders and managers

Start with the strengths card, identifying what strengths are and working with the questions and suggestions on the back. You can then delve further into the individual and collective strengths using a strengths card pack (such as the Strengthscope cards or the Positive Insights strengths cards), or work with rest of the positive psychology concept cards to identify organisational positive psychology strengths. E.g. as an organization we are good at... ‘affirmation’ and the evidence is....

From here the discussion can move to how to build on the strengths we have and, how to discover hidden organisational strengths.

8) Divisional Groups or Teams – our local culture

Use the cards to help the group address the question of what kind of atmosphere do we want to create in our local part of the organization? How can we do this?

9) During Redundancy and Other Difficult Times

Take green cards and positive emotions and high quality connections as a basis for a discussion on, ‘How can we consciously work to boost all of these in our organisation even as we have to do this difficult thing?

Take yellow cards and ask ‘How can we build these into our process for doing what it is we have to do?’

10) Increasing Motivation and Morale

Take positive deviance, positive energy networks, positive emotions, flourishing, strengths, engagement and appreciative inquiry cards as a basis for discussion asking, ‘How can we increase these in our organization?’ Use green cards to help identify collective processes to engage and motivate.

These are just 10 ideas to help you get started, I hope you find them useful, please do write and let us know how you do use the cards, and any ideas you have for improvements to them.

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

Introducing The Positive Organisational Development Cards

The Positive Organisational Development Cards each cover a key concept from the field of positive psychology. 

The concepts reflect key findings from positive psychology research of things that make a positive difference to organisational life. Each card lists the benefits of the concept, provides three questions to stimulate discussion, and is followed by three pointers for development. Each is introduced briefly below, arranged in four groups, to help you follow them and get an idea of any you aren't familiar with as well as to help explain them to your audiences.

Presence Concepts (or Strengths) - Blue

Employee Engagement is positively related to: wellbeing and attendance, employee retention, effort and performance, quality, sales performance, income and turnover, profit, customer satisfaction, shareholder return, business growth, and success. According to research, only 19% of employees are highly engaged at work. For an engaged employee, job performance matters.

High Quality Connections are conversations that are generative in nature, affirming and life enhancing. They boost motivation, trust, innovation and information flow. They are particularly important for people who are excluded from more purposeful 'bonding or socialising activities’ e.g. causal workers, temps, interns - boosting stickiness and motivation to perform

Positive Energy Networks are mutually energizing, motivating and affirming, with a particular positive and affirming person as the node point. They are generative, they add value. Being part of such a network is highly motivating, encouraging individual commitment, performance and resilience.

Flow is the psychological state experienced when challenge and skill are sufficiently matched in an area of interest to produce complete task absorption. When 'in flow' people are working at their best, using all their abilities to achieve the task. Flow states are highly motivating.

We are displaying Mindfulness when we are paying attention in the moment to our internal state or the external world. Mindfulness and attentiveness require being present in the moment. They enhance the quality of interpersonal interactions and the thoughtfulness of decision making. In the mindless state induced by efficient routines, we can miss important signs of change.                  

Collective Concepts (or Strengths) - Green

Social Capital is the hidden capital of group relationships. Social capital releases the potential of investment capital. Social capital affects trust and information flow, and speed of adaptation. It is a basic requirement for a flexible, flourishing organization. High social capital promotes organisational resilience.

Collective Intelligence draws on the accumulated resourcefulness of the whole organization. Within organisations there is a huge, intelligence held by the whole workforce, not just a select few. In today's competitive world relying on a few key people for knowledge, innovation and decision-making is ineffective.

The degree of Connectivity amongst a group is a measure of their alignment. High connectivity promotes self-organization amongst a group, which reduces management cost. Well-connected organisations exhibit lower level, faster, better problem solving and decision-making. High performing teams demonstrate high connectivity.

Four key states characterise people's Psychological Capital: hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience. Together these affect performance and satisfaction. Because these are states rather than traits they can be learnt, as can the ability to self-create them. These states are related particularly to motivation and performance at work.

Resilience refers to the ability to bounce-back from adversity. Resilience contributes to post-traumatic growth. Resilient people find sources of positive emotion even in difficult or upsetting situations. Resilient people and organisations are able to return to a functioning, productive state quicker following trauma or adversity.

Cultural Strengths - Pink

The Abundance Bridge includes excellence, exceptional performance, generosity, brilliant and benevolence. Flourishing organizations invest in building their abundance bridge as well as closing their deficit gap. While attending to the deficit gap prevents unacceptable performance, attention to the abundance bridge promotes exceptional performance.

Authentic Leadership is made up of four key attributes: openness, integrity, self-reflection and balanced judgement, that underlie surface style differences. Life experiences are more important than innate abilities in achieving formal leadership positions: leaders are made. Authenticity is a key defence against corrosive, demoralising organisational cynicism.

Positive Deviance is about learning from success and building towards excellence. It means paying organisational attention to building the abundance bridge as well as to lessening the deficit gap. Positive Deviance is one of the attributes identified as distinguishing flourishing organisations. Very few organisations really pay attention to learning from their successes.

Virtuous Practices are strengths such as patience, helpfulness, gratitude, appreciation, forgiveness, and humility that characterize the most successful and life enhancing places to work. Strong patterns of virtuous behaviour are a distinguishing feature of flourishing organizations. People are inspired by the virtuous behaviour of others, creating virtuous spirals of mutual benefit and increasing social capital.

Flourishing is a state of growth and abundance. Flourishing organisations exhibit positive deviance, affirmative bias and virtuous behaviour. Flourishing individuals experience positive emotions, engagement or flow, meaning, positive relationships and accomplishment. Flourishing organisations and individuals are likely to be more successful.                           

Appreciative Strengths - Yellow

To experience Affirmation is to be valued for who you are and what you bring. When we are affirmed we see ourselves reflected positively in the eyes of others. Affirmation aids personal growth. Affirmation is nourishment for the soul. Affirming the best in people, teams and organisations enhances performance.           

Appreciative Inquiry understands the organisation as a living system and develops it through growing more of the best. Appreciative Inquiry offers a positive psychology approach to organisational development. By working with the whole system, Appreciative Inquiry creates rapid, coordinated, energised change.                                

Generativity is a source of change: new, compelling ideas, generated by the group, garner commitment and energy. Generativity occurs when people come together: combining knowledge, inspiring each other and creating new possibilities and generating energy for action. High quality interactions promote generativity                                              

Positive Emotions include things like pride, joy, interest, serenity, awe, and excitement. When feeling good people are more likely to be creative, engage with others, manage complexity, be tenacious, and deal with ambiguity and novel information. The magic ratio of positive to negative experiences is 3:1 or above.

Strengths are the natural abilities developed over your life course. Using strengths feels effortless and highly engaging and energizing. Strengths underpin many aspects of performance at work. They are the source of motivation, development, high performance. Strengths are the most efficient source of excellence                 

More information on all of these concepts can be found in Lewis S (2011) Positive Psychology at Work. Wiley Blackwell, as well as many other positive psychology books.

'How do you create a sense of urgency in positive approaches to change?'

This was the question posed to me recently by an HR Director taking up a new post with a big change agenda. He was attracted to the idea of positive change, but working with an organization with a long and successful history, he was challenged about how to galvanise the workforce into engaging with the necessary changes. I thought it was a great question and it has stayed with me.

It has long been known that negative emotions such as fear, despair or anger can act as a spur to change. Leaders and change consultants have sometimes built on this knowledge by deliberately creating these emotions at work, by ‘creating the burning platform for change’.

Such tactics may well produce energy for change, however there are some drawbacks.

·      The energy may not be accompanied by much creativity: the aim is to avoid, not to create.

·      The energy may not be very sustainable: once the threat is seen to have receded the escape        behaviour ceases and old patterns reassert themselves.

·      It tends to produce more compliant behaviour than active commitment.

·      It can create a very unhealthy and unhappy working atmosphere.

So what is the alternative, how do positive approaches to change create urgency? I think we probably need to rephrase the question to how do they create energy and drive for change? How do they create motivation and momentum for change?

We are drawn towards an attractive future

Rowland and Higgs (2008) in their research into how change actually happens (as opposed to the story we have about how change happens) discovered four key things that made a difference to the success of change efforts. One of these was the ability of the leaders to create a magnetic pull towards an attractive future. This I think is at the heart of the answer to our question.

Positive and appreciative approaches to change major on creating hope, optimism, group cohesion, strong visions of attractive possible future states, desire and ambition. They strengthen relationships, build social capital, create interdependencies and identify shared goals or aspirations. They build trust, illuminate shared values, and have a positive effect on motivation and morale.

In short they create a ‘together we can’ understanding of their collective abilities to influence outcomes. This, combined with co-created aspirations for, and visions of, future states, forms the basis of the energy for change.

The tortoise and the hare

A desire for change created from these more positive emotional states may take a little longer to release, discover, create or build, but it is likely to be more sustainable as a force for change. Working with groups you can see when a particular idea about, or vision for, the future really starts to take hold. It won’t go away. It exerts a continuing fascination, an attraction. This creates its own urgency: a desire to engage others with this powerful aspiration. It acts as a powerful light in the hazy vision of the emerging future, allowing for constant re-orientation. It is a pull towards the future and as such tends to create a much more sustainable energy over time than the push energy created by an awareness of the need to avoid present danger. An awareness of present danger can make us jump fast and without thought. An aspiration to achieve a desirable future state can draw us ever onwards.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at Our Approach to change.

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

Don't be a nodding donkey - how to listen appreciatively

Active Listening as a set of activities

The popular model of ‘active listening’ is often presented as a set of behavioural ‘mechanics’ that if employed judiciously with demonstrate to an audience that ‘listening’ is taking place. The recommended behaviours include: good eye contact; not interrupting, clarifying; summarising; and displaying other visible signs of attending. It is very easy for these behaviours to become de-contextualised; to become a list of ‘to do’ behaviours. At which point it can become the ‘nodding donkey’ school of listening. I certainly have experienced the disconcerting effect of talking to someone who is showing all the right behaviours but behind whose waterfall-mist eyes it is clear that disconnected thoughts are crowding and cascading. I am not being ‘heard’ although he or she may be hearing what I say.

How might the spirit of appreciative inquiry, the desire to ‘grow more of what we want’ help create more effective listening? And how this might help reposition ‘active listening’ as a systemic, dynamic, creative act.

Active Listening as an intention

We need to recognise that listening is always an act of intent: we are listening to some purpose or for some reason. There are many different possible purposes, for example:

•    To bear witness

•    To provide space for someone to think

•    To provide help

•    To provide encouragement

•    To help sort confusion

•    To share an experience

•    To find fault or spot flaws

•    To appreciate

•    To amplify and fan early successes

And so on. Each might require listening for different things. So at a meta-level we could ask ourselves, firstly, what might be our own personal default intent when we listen, and secondly what do we particularly need to be listening for in this conversation, what sort of listening is appropriate here? There is a shift from an emphasis on body language to an emphasis on integrity of intention.

What might help

These things might help in all situations

1    Feeling peaceful in ourselves, aligned in mind and body

2    Not worrying about ‘the next thing to say’ or ‘getting it right’

3    Allowing that whatever kind of listening shows up is the right kind

4    Recognising that intense listening can be full of activity – asking many questions, reformulating a lot, re-acting. It is not necessarily a passive activity.

5    Having the ability to say ‘I’m not able to offer you my full attention, or to listen well right now because…( I’m getting anxious about time, I’m distracted by…)’

6    Recognising that the concept ‘I must to 100% present’ is precisely that, a concept that may be unobtainable at any given time

 In general, in a spirit of appreciative listening we might find ourselves listening for:

What is working?

What are the resources available here?

What good is in this?

What is the broader picture, and how can we connect to that?

We might ask ourselves questions such as:

What arouses my curiosity in this?

What do I connect to?

What excites me in what is being said?

What can we grow from this?

Thanks to the other participants in the source conversation for this line of thought, Madeline Blair, Suzanne Quigley, Pauline Doyle, and Claire Lustig-Roche, which took place at a Blore AI Retreat event hosted by Anne Radford in the UK in 2011. 

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

Why make organizational change so hard for yourself? 5 myths busted

Leaders and managers are increasingly expected to introduce changes in work practices, routines and structures as part of their management role. Myths abound about the challenges of doing this. Here we lay five to rest.

1. You can't implement the change until you have thought through every step and have every possible question answered. 

This belief leads to exhaustive energy going into detailed forecasting and analysis of every possible impact and consequence of possibilities: in the worse cases leading to paralysis by analysis. While one group is over-worked another is dis-empowered as they ‘wait’ for the change. It slows things down, allows rumours to fill the information vacuum, and leads to a downturn in motivation and morale. It is a key contributor to the much-heralded organisational resistance to change.

The ambition is a chimera, it is impossible in a dynamic complex system for one part to map every linkage. In many situations it is sufficient to have a sense of the end goal, or key question, along with some shared guiding principles about how the change will unfold. For example ‘ We need to produce our goods more efficiently’, or, ‘How can we cut our process times?’ With these in place leaders can call on the collective intelligence of the organization as it embarks on learning by doing: creating shared sense of possibilities, taking the first steps, reviewing progress, learning from experience and involving those who know the detail in their areas.

2. You can control the communication within the organisation about change 

This belief leads to embargoes on information sharing, 'until we have decided everything' (see above) and much investment in finding 'the right words' to convey the story of the change. Meanwhile people are free to make their own sense of what is happening uninhibited by any corrective input from those initiating change.

It is impossible to control inter-personal communication and sense-making, we can only seek to influence it.  People are sense-making creatures who constantly work to make sense of what is happening around them. By withholding information we convey something, usually distrust or secrecy. But more than this, in this day and age with so many communication channels instantly available to people, there is no chance of being aware of everything that is being said about the change. Instead leaders need to focus on making sure they get to hear what sense is being made of what is going on so that they can contribute a wider, more informed, different or corrective perspective.

3. To communicate about change is to engage people with the change

This belief leads to an over-emphasis on communicating about 'the change'. Staff hear managers talking endlessly about how important this change is, how big it is, how transformational it will be, yet no one seems to know what the change actually means for people. To be part of this scenario is to suffer a confused sense of 'but what are we talking about?' This in itself is usually symptomatic of the fact that at this point there is only a fuzzy picture of what this much-heralded change will mean for people: much better to get people involved in finding out.

To believe this is to confuse intent with result. People start to engage with the change when they start working out what it means for them, what it ‘looks like’, where the benefits or advantages might be, how they can navigate it, what resources are there to help them. They find out through exploration and discovery. They become more engaged when they are asked questions. “How can we implement this here?’ ‘What is the best way of achieving that?’ ‘What needs to be different for us to be able to...?’ ‘How can we positively influence this process?’ People have to use their imaginations and creativity to start visualising what their bit of the world will be like when 'the change' has happened. Everyone needs the opportunity to create rich pictures of what the words and ideas in the change mean in their context. The answer to the question 'What might it mean for us?' is jointly constructed and evolves as new information emerges.

4. That planning makes things happen

This belief in ‘plan as action’ fuels a plethora of projects, roadmaps and spreadsheets of interconnection, key milestones, tasks, measures and so on. People can invest time and energy in this fondly believing that they are 'doing change'.

Planning is a story of hope. Creating plans can be an extremely helpful activity as long as we realise that what they do is create accounts and stories of how the future can be. Until people translate the plans into activity on the ground, the plans are just plans. For example I might develop a really detailed plan about emigrating to Australia, including shipping and packing and visas and job prospects and everything you can think of, but until I do something that impacts on my possibilities in the world, for instance by applying for a visa, then planning is all I have done. Plans are an expression of intention. Things start to happen when intention is enacted in the wider world.

5. That change is universally disliked and resisted

This much repeated and highly prevalent belief leads to a defensive and fearful approach to organisational change, inducing much girding of loins by managers before going out to face the wrath of those affected by the change.

If this were true none of us would emerge from babyhood. Our life is a story of change and growth, of expansion and adaptation, of discovery and adjustment. Do you wish you had never learnt to ride a bike? That was a change. Had never had a haircut? That was a change. What is true is that change takes energy, and people don’t necessarily always have the energy or inclination to engage with change. It is not change itself that is the issue, it is the effect imposed change can have on things that are important to us: autonomy, choice, power, desire, satisfaction, self -management, sense of competency, group status, sense of identity and so on. If we attend carefully to enhancing these within the change process then there is a much greater chance that it will be experienced as life-enhancing growth like so many other changes in our lives.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more about how we can help to change your organisation's Culture.

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

What engaged employees want and how to find out if they're getting it - from a report by Roffey Park

A three-part model

Roffey Park research suggests that there are three key components to employee engagement: my job, my organization, my value. Their report ‘The human voice of employee engagement: understanding what lies beneath the surveys’ gives a full and readable account of the factors that make a difference. A key finding is that pride is at the heart of employee engagement.

People want:

• To be treated as individuals
• To be consulted and informed about things which affect them
• To feel valued for themselves and what they do
• To be supported with work issues
• To have clear and fair process for performance evaluation and development

 They want their leaders to be:

• Strategic
• Visible
• Communicative
• Trustworthy

They want a good relationship with their manager. Effectively they want to be able to feel pride in themselves, their work, and their organization. When they do, they are highly likely to be engaged employees.

Finding out what lies behind the survey data

One way to help explore employee engagement survey data is to assemble focus groups of organisational members and to ask them to record on post-its the immediate feelings they experience when someone asks them the questions

 ‘Where do you work?’

 ‘Who do you work for?’

‘ What do you do?’

These post-its are then organized, by question, under red, amber and green headings (traffic lights), and a discussion takes place.

The beauty of this process is that this raw data can be presented to the senior decision makers not able to be present at the focus group. It allows them to get a real feel for the sentiments, practicalities, and personalities behind the bland statistics of the engagement survey results: what they should treasure, what they should notice, and what they need to change.

This article is based on information shared by Roffey Park at the ABP conference 2011

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Not only can we help you understand what your results mean using processes such as that outlined above, we can also help you to grow employee engagement and pride in your organization by working in an appreciative and strengths based way with your people. Find out more about how we can help you with Engagement.

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

Performance management and appraisals - common pitfalls and how to do it successfully

The good news is performance management works

‘A hospital that appraises around 20% more staff and trains about 20% more appraisers is likely to have 1,090 fewer deaths per 100,000 admissions.’[i] Many other studies have also found this strong relationship between performance management, appraisals and organisational performance. How come then, it is a disliked process in so many organizations? It’s hard to do well

Performance Management is hard to do well. Some common difficulties identified in research include

Ø  Poor quality performance discussions between managers and staff members

Ø  Standardised, jargon filled, prescriptive and overly detailed paperwork

Ø  Line managers lacking competence and commitment to the process

Ø  Employees having a poor understanding of the goals or point of the process

Ø  Rating and pay agendas dominating the discussion, driving out time for performance feedback and development planning

Ø  Lack of follow up or practical action between formal reviews

Many of these problems arise because of a failure to recognise that it’s a social process.

Too often it is seen as a human resources owned and driven technical process. Understanding performance management as a social process helps us to realise that the important and key components are the quality of the relationship and the communication. From this perspective the paperwork trail becomes a supporting mechanism rather than the driving mechanism.

As one of the managers in the Institute for Employment Studies said ‘its about having communications and good one-to-one conversations.’[ii]

What does this mean for managers? What helps?

1. Recognize, and use, the power of positivity

Feeling good accesses many useful personal and organisational qualities – creativity, complex thinking, sociability, resilience and so on. Appraisal conversations are a good opportunity to create some positivity. To do this they need to contain a ratio of at least 3:1 positive to negative experiences for both parties. This means time should be spend genuinely seeking out and paying attention to things that have gone well, successes and achievements over the last time period. At the same time it’s an opportunity for employees to express their appreciation of their manager’s support and guidance over the period.

2. Use positive psychology based appraisal processes

Increasingly practitioners are creating positive appraisal processes for the regular review meetings. For example the enthusiasm story that asks a manager prior to the meeting to think about when they are most enthusiastic about this employee, when they have seen them at their best. The best self-reflection encourages the appraise to understand their strengths and attributes as seen by others. The feed-forward interview encourages the appraiser and the appraisee to focus on building forward from the best of the past.

3. Recognize performance appraisal as an ongoing activity

 In addition, managers should be praising good work as it happens, not waiting until the formal ‘appraisal event’. The diamond feedback process is effective here. In the same way, of course, they should be dealing with problems in performance as they arise. In this way the ‘formal’ appraisal becomes a punctuation point in an ongoing discussion that pulls everything together that has been happening over the last period, and links it to future activities. Formal appraisals really shouldn’t contain any surprises.

4.Learn about success from studying success

One way to help develop a more positive feel to appraisal activity is to spend at least some time focussing on learning from success. There is a common misconception that one can only learn from mistakes and failure. It is true they are important sources of learning – about how to avoid failure. They don’t necessarily teach about success. Studying success tells us about what success looks like and how it is achieved.

5. In building relationships it’s quality not quantity that counts.

Research shows that the quality of our connections and interactions with others vary enormously. What people really value are the high quality connections where they feel something important is happening in the moment of the conversation. In general these are two-way conversations where each is able to build on the other’s contributions to create something new (as opposed to experiencing a one way downloading of information for example). Each party is left feeling refreshed, energised, valued and recognised. They can be fleeting moments. Over time they build to a resilient relationship that can withstand strain, such as the strain of having to give feedback on poor performance. Use your micro-moments of interaction well.

6. It’s a culture not an event

Performance management needs to be seen as a cultural process. The organization needs to create a culture where reviewing group and individual performance after events becomes an unexceptional habit. As each meeting, project or presentation finishes quickly ask how it was for people and if there was anything different they would like to see next time. After a sales pitch review with colleagues how it went. As it becomes part of normal organisational life for everyone to review their own and, when invited, colleagues performance, so the ‘appraisal’ meeting will become less of a ‘dead’ event.

7. Link it to the mission

Make it clear to everyone how these conversations relate back to the organisational purpose so people can see performance management has a bigger purpose than just ‘improving’ them personally.

8. Use the three top tips

Keep it simple

Equip the managers

Avoid forced distribution curves

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more about how we can help you with this and other aspects of Leadership.

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

[i] Songs of Appraisal Michael West http://www.bit.ly/West06

[ii] http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2011/08/performance-management-fine-intentions.htm