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

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

What is the organisational shadowside?

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

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

What is particular about these organizations?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In addition,

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

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

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

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

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

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Positive Organisational Culture’ 

Appreciative Inquiry: working with a system in sections

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

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

How will it work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inherent issues with this approach

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

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

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

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

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

Some ideas of ways forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflections on the discussion

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

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

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

Energy state transformation is the key to Appreciative Inquiry effectiveness

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

What is 'energy' in an organisaitonal setting?

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

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

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

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

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

A language for Appreciuative Inquiry interventions

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

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

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

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

Sarah Lewis

Guest Blog - Giving and gratitude, some ideas for a (scientifically) happier Christmas by Ilona Boniwell of Positran

Ilona is the head of Positran, experts in the psychology of positive transformations

Christmas past

I am dreaming of a lovely family Christmas, and I don’t mind if is white or grey. I do, nevertheless, mind whether it works out or not, as well as how humanly and psychologically messy it will end up being.

Last Christmas our teens decided to surprise us by setting up a casino in the living room, dressing up as croupiers, and getting the adults (that’s me, my husband, my husband’s ex and his best friend) to be the clients. As lavish, extravagant and original as that might sound, the enjoyment of the process was rather affected by the fact that in preparing the casino set-up, the teens did not check the rules of the proposed game and a few minutes into it started arguing over the way forward. In fact, at one point, the only way forward was to end the game.

The previous Christmas one of the teens made a fuss over receiving a “wrong” version of a GoPro camcorder for a present. This left a sour taste in the mouth, and almost erased all other magical moments of that year’s celebrations, including the memory of our one-and-a-half year old Theodore delivering presents to their rightful recipients, tumbling and falling over, rising up and toddling again…

Two Christmases ago Hugo went down with a virus and my husband spent most of the feast in his bedroom trying to bring the fever down. As Hugo started showing signs of recovery, we stepped out on the terrace wrapped in warm blankets sipping mulled wine and saw Flip, our dog, collapsing into the pond having seizures. Flip was gone before the festivities were over, diagnosed with incurable brain cancer.

You won’t be too surprised if I tell you that I feel a little weary of Christmas. And I suspect I am not alone. A friend of mine is already freaking out over her in-laws coming to stay for a week and I overhead a colleague complaining that she always ends up as the one cooking Christmas meals for her family of fifteen. And, as far as blended families are concerned, no wonder it gets messy dividing the Christmas between Mum and Dad who, in turn, are dividing it between their parents and in-laws.

Ideas

For me, the two Christmas secrets are “giving” and “gratitude”. Once the pillars of religion and spirituality, nowadays these acts are also amongst the best evidence-best interventions known to modern science.

How often do you go out of your way to help someone else, a friend, colleague or stranger perhaps? Take a few minutes to think about it. Maybe you ran an errand for your elderly neighbour, helped a busy mum carry her buggy up some steps or donated blood. Doing kind deeds frequently not only boosts your mood temporarily, it also leads to long-lasting happiness as well as making other people feel good too. So it’s a brilliant win-win activity, plus it needn’t cost you anything.

Researchers suggest a number of reasons why doing kind acts for others makes us happier. They make us feel more confident, in control and optimistic about our ability to make a difference. They may make us more positive about other people and enable us to connect with them better (a basic human need), which contributes to our happiness. What scientific studies also show is that acts of kindness have more impact on well-being if we do a variety of different things, rather than repeating the same activity.

“Wait a minute”, you might think, “this sounds nice, but when it comes to Christmas, it is pretty hard to think of acts of giving without putting a hefty price tag on them.” Well, allow me to disagree. What about home-made cakes and pies as Xmas presents for your neighbours? Or playing your kids’ favourite board game (even if it does bore you a little)? And as far as children and teenagers are concerned, I always insist that they do not buy presents for us. My favourite present from Jason one year was a voucher entitling us to twenty hours of help of any nature.

As a child you probably remember having to write thank-you letters to the friends and relatives who gave you birthday and Christmas presents. As an adult this is probably not something you do as frequently, if at all. It’s not that you’re not thankful for the things you have in life, just that you don’t often stop to think about it.

In fact, expressing your gratitude for something, or someone, whether in writing or verbally, is one of the simplest but most effective ways of increasing your happiness. Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it, but there is overwhelming empirical evidence that people with a grateful disposition are more enthusiastic, joyful, attentive, determined, interested, helpful, optimistic and energetic than those who aren’t. Not only that, but grateful people have been shown to be less depressed, anxious, lonely, envious and materialistic. In an internet sample of over 5000 adults, gratitude was one of the top five character strengths consistently and robustly associated with life satisfaction. So if you want a tried and tested method to increase your happiness, what are you waiting for? There are numerous ways to express your gratitude. One of the most famous positive psychology interventions, the Gratitude Visit advises you to” Think of a person you feel grateful to for something that they have done for you in the past. Write a letter to them, describing what they did and what effect it had on you and your life. Once you have finished, give this person a ring and arrange an appointment to see them, preferably in their house. When you meet, read your letter out loud to the recipient”. Researchers explain the effects of gratitude by the fact that it promotes the savouring of experiences and does not allow people to take the positive aspects of their existence for granted, thus counteracting hedonic adaptation.

This year, I might just drop the usual Christmas cards, replacing them with the dancing and singing Christmas emails and instead put a whole lot of empty cards by the Christmas tree for my family to write some thank you and appreciation messages to each other. The plan is to hang them on the tree and read them out loud when the time comes. Let’s just hope it all works out as expected…

And if this doesn’t work out? Well, I would have to take refuge in “three good things”, an iconic positive psychology technique that prompts us to focus and be grateful for the things that went well. Given that its positive effects last as long as six months, it might keep me going until the summer.

Ilona Boniwell

Read more on happiness boosting interventions in Ilona’s book “Positive psychology in a nutshell” (The Open University Press)

Browse: I’m sure you can think of lots of kind things to do once you put your mind to it, but in case you need some ideas, why not take a look at the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation website www.actsofkindness.org

Visit www.positran.co.uk and click on “strengths cards” if you are looking for an original present for your loved one.

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

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

Elicit Success Stories

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

Develop A Success And Achievement Strategy

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

Positive Inductions

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

Educate Leaders and Mangers about Key Research

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

Help People Identify Their Strengths

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

Move Towards Being An Economy Of Strengths

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

Advertise Your Strengths

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

Encourage Good Relationships At Work

To encourage positive relationships at work, help people to be actively positive in their response to other people’s good news. This means not just saying ‘that’s great’, but actively inquiring into how they did it, how they feel and how they hope to build on it.

Find Your Positive Energy Network Nodes

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

Other Resources

The book itself - Positive Psychology At Work, published by Wiley.

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

See more Positive Psychology articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

Five Top Tips for Having Great Meetings

Many people find meetings challenging. These five tips will help your meetings be more successful, enjoyable and productive.

You can purchase our E-booklet that will take you through preparing for and running a great meeting in a step-by-step way here

1. Start with something positive

How? Ask everyone a question like ‘What’s been your greatest success, big or small, since we last met?’ or, ‘Which of your achievements over the last month are you most proud of?’ or ‘Which of your staff do you feel most grateful too, and why?’

Why? Because sharing good news boosts mood (and shares resources) which enhances creativity and problem-solving abilities

2. Ask more questions than statements

How? Consider the question to which your statement is an answer, and ask the question rather than make your statement. So, if you are thinking ‘that won’t work’ ask ‘What might be the downsides and how could we guard against them’. If you are thinking ‘We need to raise sales.’ Ask ‘How can we turn this around?’ or ‘How can we improve revenue?’

Why? Statements tend of offer people a binary position of either agreeing or disagreeing. Questions encourage people to engage in a different way which can produce a richer conversation, with more room for nuance, opinion shift and resourcefulness

3. Think beyond the boundaries of the group

How? Ask questions that bring other stakeholders to the topic under discussion into view, for example ‘How might finance react to that suggestion?’ ‘How would we accommodate customers who...?’ ‘What will marketing need to know to create a great pitch for us?

Why? Because considering the needs and perspectives of the whole system even when it is not in the room leads to better, more sustainable, decision-making

4. Focus on the people who are there not those who aren’t

How? Start the meeting on time (unless known exceptional circumstances that are affecting a large proportion of the group, in which case rearrange if only by 15 minutes). Make the most of the people present. Assess if the meeting will be able to fulfil its purpose, or do something else that is still valuable. If not, then explain and let people go do something useful with their time.

Why? Because it is very easy to get caught up on people who are late or absence and to end up taking frustration out on those present, or to have an hour’s meeting because that is what was planned in the hope that others will appear or because it was scheduled for an hour. So those who came on time have their time wasted waiting for others or in an ineffectual meeting, and, get berated for the sins of others for their trouble.

5. Find positive things to say about ideas presented and people present

How? Thank people for attending. Look for the positive in what people say ‘Well that is an unusual idea, tell us more about what you are thinking?’ as well as lots of ‘good thinking?’ ‘good idea’ etc.

Why? Because lots of reason shows that people generally thrive in a positive atmosphere and creativity improves. A positive atmosphere requires a ratio of positive to negative expressions and emotional responses of about 3:1 or higher. Left to our own devices with our well attuned critical faculties meetings can fail to achieve this tipping point of positivity.

Other Resources

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

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

See more Leadership Skills 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 Keep Your Employees Engaged At Work

Engaged employees are a business imperative: they perform 20% better and give 57% more discretionary effort [1] Organizations with a high level of engagement have better quality, sales, income and turnover, profit, customer satisfaction, shareholder return, and business growth, and success. [2] It is estimated that currently only 19% of employees are highly engaged in their work, while active disengagement cost the UK economy between £37.2bn and £38.9bn a year [3].

Organizations often struggle to understand what creates engagement. Positive psychology research is revealing that employee engagement is primarily a psychological and social process. There are a number of steps organizations can take to increase engagement.

1. Create a positive culture

Actively introduce processes that increase positivity. For example by starting meetings with praise for last week’s achievements; celebrating successes; and creating a work climate of hope and good humour. Introduce ways of measuring people’s experience of positivity at work.

2. Learn to affirm the best

Recognize and develop best practice. Encourage virtuous organizational behaviour such as helpfulness. Recognize team and individual strengths, initiative and innovation, both formally through appraisal processes, and informally by leadership interest and focus.

3.  Turn strengths into talents

When people are able to use their strengths they are more engaged and perform better. Introduce processes that help people get to know and own their strengths, using psychometrics or best-self feedback. And help them develop their strengths into high performance talents.

4. Help teams play to individual strengths

The most productive teams are able to share the team tasks according to strengths, so encourage team members to swap tasks that fall in their weakest areas for those that play to their strengths.

5. Help people re-craft jobs around their strengths

Make the job fit the person, rather than trying to make the person fit the job, most outcomes can be achieved in more than one way. Help people find a way of maximizing their ability to use their strengths and talents, and minimizing the time they spend struggling with tasks for which they have no aptitude.

6. Create opportunities to experience flow

Flow is a psychological state so rewarding that people risk life and health to achieve it (think of mountaineers or starving artists). Find out where people experience flow in their work. Help them recognize it. Help them work out how to increase their opportunities to experience it.

7. Create reward rich environments

People are motivated and engaged by the opportunity to obtain rewards. Many things can be rewarding for people in their work environment: praise, appreciation and thanks, smiles, and opportunities. Create work environments full of small and easily won rewards that are salient to them.

8. Understand goal seeking

Before you set goals for someone you need to understand what they find rewarding. For example some people find public recognition rewarding, while others just like to know that what they have done has been helpful.

9. Help people find meaning in their work

People are very good at finding meaning in what they do. Everyone wants to believe we are spending our time valuably. Help them by making it clear why their work is important, what it means for them, you, the department, the organization, a better world.

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 Engagement, Leadership Skills 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.

[1] Corporate Leadership Council 2004 Driving performance and retention through employee engagement: a quantitative analysis of effective engagement strategies. Corporate Executive Board

[2] Stairs, M. and Gilpin, M., 2010. Positive Engagement: From Employee Engagement To Work Place Happiness. In Linley, P. A., Harrington, S. and Garcea, N. (eds), Oxford Handbook Of Positive Psychology And Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[3] Flade, P., 2003. Great Britain's Workforce Lacks Inspiration. Gallup Management Journal, 11.

Why We Need To Do Change Differently

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

So Why Do We Need To Do Change Differently

1. Because the old ways are too slow and hard

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

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

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

3. Because organisational growth is a systemic phenomena

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

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

4. Because relational reserves are key to change resilience

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

5. Because we need to conceive of successful change differently

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

6. Because mistakes can be costly

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

7. Because change needs more buyers and less sellers

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

8. Because we need to use our intelligence

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

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

Other Resources

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

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

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

Seven Tips for Running Your Own Training Session

How do we make training stick? We know that investing in the human capital of our workforce by upping their skill level is vital to any organisation, but if you've ever sat through a boring training session - or when that brought back unpleasant memories of school - you know that there is high significant chance this time and money will be wasted. Here I list and explore seven tips to help your training sessions be impactful and enjoyable, for you and your trainees.

1. Step out of the expert role

Often we are asked to run a training session due to our expertise in an area. Strangely this can be a challenge as we encounter what is known as the ‘expert problem’. Essentially our own knowledge and skill are so integrated that we can’t easily separate out the elements to construct a good training path; and we have forgotten how new and challenging this all is to the novice. The danger is that we inadvertently overwhelm or confuse with our expert knowledge.

The trick is to step out of the expert role. Resist the pressure to download everything you know about the subject, and instead focus on co-creating a learning experience with your participants. The old adage ‘start where your people are at’ still holds true. Establish their baseline of knowledge and skill and go gently from there. It can help to think of yourself as ‘A Guide from the Side’ rather than a ‘Sage from the Stage’.

2. Limit the Teacher Talking Time

If you love your subject and know lots about it, you will have lots to say about it. One of the hardest challenges is deciding what not to share rather than what to share. People learn better when they are active in the process. Try to limit yourself to short bursts of input followed by some participant activity. Get them to work with what you are sharing, to roll it around in their brain, to manipulate it. In this way the learning is much more likely to stick with them. When I am designing a workshop, keen to share this amazing field, I constantly have to remind myself that, sometimes, ‘less is more’.

3. Ask Good Questions

Questions tickle the brain, questions trigger thought. Pepper your training with good questions and encourage people to engage with them in discussion before you build on that foundation with your own knowledge. Having discussed the question themselves people are keen to have their knowledge validated by you, the expert. We learn by linking new information to what we already know. By helping people bring what they already know to the fore you make that foundation accessible. People learn as much by hearing what they think about something as hearing what you think. When people hear themselves saying new things, making new links, seeing new possibilities the brain really fires up with learning.

4. Grow the Engagement

Not everyone loves learning, or being in a classroom type situation. Memories of school can cast long shadows. The transfer of information is a relational activity. It needs engagement from both parties. To grow the engagement you need to be positively responsive to any tentative sign of engagement, for example a first question, complaint about the room/challenge to your knowledge. Deal with the content in as generous a manner as possible and appreciate the engagement. As people see that you are supportive, encouraging and not in anyway punitive, they will get braver about expressing their views. In a word: Be generous with the peanuts.

5. Create a Visible Before and After Measure

These days I almost always create a before and after measure for a group session. Take the objectives for the session and turn them into some sort of scale question. Good starters are expressions like ‘To what extent...’ ‘How clear am I...’ ‘How confident am I...’ And ask people to give you their baseline measure on a scale of 1-10 at some point during your ‘beginnings’. It is best to ask people to write down their self-scores individually so they aren’t influenced by any group norms. Record them all publicly, emphasizing that low initial scores are a great sign of potential success for the session. If appropriate, discuss what this starting point tells you. Repeat the exercise that the end of the session.

It is highly likely that scores will have shifted to the right and spreads will have narrowed. In this way you can all see the impact of the session. Again encourage discussion of the shifts and what that means. I find that doing this affirms for both me, and my participants that learning has taken place. It also weakens any sense that ‘nothing happened and it was all a waste of time’ that anyone might be harbouring.

6. Draw out learning

At points during your session, and certainly at the end, encourage people to verbalise their key learning from the session. Questions that do this include ‘One thing I’ll take away from today’ ‘My biggest insight today’ ‘The biggest surprise of the day’... you get the idea. It is also often a good idea to ask a question that helps them focus on how they are going to use their learning immediately after the session. The biggest loss of the learning investment comes at this point of transfer, so encouraging people to think and articulate ‘next steps’ can be very powerful. I often ask ‘What is the thing you can do differently or do different from tomorrow to put today’s learning to work?’ Time permitting I might also ask about opportunities they can see to apply the learning over the next three months

7. Use our Tools to help you

And finally you can use tools and games to help make the sessions lively and interesting. We are developing a range of products to support internally led training. For instance we have a variety of strengths card sets, a happiness at work game, practical e-books, off-the-shelf workshop packs, and free videos. In addition you can pick-our-brains in a one-off coaching session to develop your workshop or you can commission a webinar input. In addition you can read Sarah’s books, packed with information and examples. Of course we are also happy to be commissioned to run a workshop with or for you!

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

Other Resources

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

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

See more Events/Workshops, Learning & Development Tools, Leadership Skills, Team Development 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.

Benefits of being part of the next EU AI get together in Greenwich, London, October 2016

I’m thrilled to announce that I am one of the organising group for the next EU AI network get together to be held in my home town of Greenwich in London on 19th-21st of October.

The Network of practitioners from across Europe gets together twice a year to share experiences, knowledge and skills and to offer mutual support on work and life. The get together is held in the spirit of Appreciative Inquiry, which creates a unique atmosphere and experience. At this event we are hoping to attract positive psychology practitioners as well, to enhance the mix!

Some of the particular benefits of attending this event will include:

• The opportunity to spend time learning through focused dialogue with many experienced practitioners (rather than time in lectures)
• Plenty of purposeful networking time allowing for structured yet highly relaxed interaction with experienced practitioners from all over Europe, through engagement in focused trips and visits
• An invitation to you to regenerate, to flourish and to connect in ways meaningful in your own context as we work with our themes of Regeneration, Flourishing and Connecting
• The opportunity to access a wealth of experience of, and skill in, applying Appreciative Inquiry (and Positive Psychology we hope) in different contexts and countries through interaction with an established community of Peers
• An opportunity to experience the exciting and creative coaching and learning process of the Meta-Saga, developed by one of our founder members
• An opportunity to experience the Open Space methodology, our core meeting process
• And, we really hope, the opportunity to be part of a joint event of Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Psychology Practitioners, linking the two fields and facilitating learning from each other

For more information on the whole event, including confirmation of the venue and prices when available, go here http://www.networkplace.eu and click on Greenwich 2016.

Or to register interest immediately click here, and we’ll keep you informed!

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

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

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

Co-created change...

1. Calls on the organization’s collective intelligence

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

2. Creates active participation

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

3. Involves people actively in the decision-making

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

4. Builds social capital

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

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

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

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

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

7. Understands social networks as the heart of organizations

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

8. Recognises the importance of dialogue as words create worlds

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

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

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

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

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

11. Utilises imagination as the pull for change

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

12. Calls on the whole power of systems

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

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

Other Resources

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

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

See more Change, Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

Save smart - make savings and improvements without the hidden costs

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

1. How can we learn from our best performers?

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

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

2. How much is this saving costing us?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Resources

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

See more articles on Leadership in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

When A Divergent Discussion Must Produce A Convergent Conclusion

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

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

What is this hunger for convergence an expression of?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is always a compromise

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

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

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking articles in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

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

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

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

1. Gratitude enhances resilience and coping abilities

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

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

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

2. Gratitude builds and strengthens relationships

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

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

3. Gratitude helps develop flourishing organizations

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

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

4. Gratitude increases goal attainment

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

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

5. Gratitude increases personal wellbeing

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

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

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

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

Further reading

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

Other Resources

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

See more about Positive Emotions in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

Why We Should Make Decisions In Our Organizations Like Brains Not Computers

Proof that brains are more efficient than computers

Cognitive research illuminates how our brains make decisions, and how they are different from computers. Compared to computers our brains are slow, noisy and imprecise. And, paradoxically perhaps, this makes them much more efficient than computers, but only because brains have one big advantage over computers: they have goals.

 The importance of goals to decision-making

Essentially life consists of billions of choice points. Choice is about value: what do we value over what? Having goals makes choice a lot easier: it makes it possible to assign values to options, as some have more value in terms of our goals than others. If I am trying to get to London, and have come across a signpost labeled Dublin one way and London the other, one sign has much more value to me than the other.  So we make choices based on those values. Goals allow us, in times of uncertainty to act efficiently and not waste energy.

Brains are oddly efficient

Brains possess all the characteristics of highly efficient computational machines. Efficient computational devices, like brains, follow four principles

•  Drain batteries slowly
•  Save space
•  Save bandwidth
•  Have goals

It is the enactment of these principles that make them (relative to fast, quiet, precise yet goalless and energy guzzling, wasteful computers) slow, noisy, imprecise and yet highly efficient.

How do these principles translate into organizations?

 Drain batteries slowly

This means avoid high-energy spikes in decision-making by using slow and soft processes that use minimal energy. The implication for organizational life would be to aim for soft, slow decision-making (a pattern of small groups of people making small decisions frequently) rather than patterns of spiky decision-making (infrequent decisions involving everyone).

Save space

This dictum suggests that our computational device should have as few (message or information carrying) wires as possible, and those should be shorter rather than longer. This suggests understanding organizational communication as network rather than pyramid based. So communication (and decision-making is based on short, local messages rather than lots of long ‘wires’ to get the same message from the top to the bottom of the organization and tight ‘knots’ where decisions get made.

Save bandwidth

The dictums here are: stay off the line, don’t repeat yourself and be as noisy (as in random) as possible! This suggests to me that the centralized bombardment communication process of constant repetition of ‘the message’, broadcast across the organization, offering exact and precise instructions, at regular and predictable intervals, is highly inefficient. Instead information needs to be offered in local contexts in different ways, when appropriate.

Have goals

In efficiency terms this means: having a view of the destination but being imprecise about how to reach it; creating mental models; and making ongoing adjustments. In organizations this could mean creating rich mental models of the goals and using local guidance and expertise to achieve them, making ongoing adjustments. This describes an emergent change approach.

Message for leaders

• Create goals to act as a valuation system for decision-making
• Create rich mental pictures of goals
• Leave goal achievement processes imprecise, work with local knowledge, adjusting plans as options emerge
•  Devolve decision making to the lowest level
• Encourage frequent, small-scale local decision-making and innovation
• Spread the message locally, contextually, and opportunistically; don’t waste energy broadcasting to the nation
•  Use the emergent approach to manage, lead or ride change

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking articles in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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