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.

Book Review – Holocracy The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy: Brian Robertson (Originally published in AI Practitioner)

Why this book?

This book claims to offer an alternative way of organizing that breaks away from the command and control model or as Brain calls it ‘the predict and control’ model. This seemed sufficiently in line with our aspirations to warrant further investigation.

Brief account of the book

The book has noble, honourable and inspiring intentions: it offers holocracy as a ‘new operating system’ for organizations that will create a ‘peer-to-peer distributed authority system’. This operating system creates empowered people who are clear about the boundaries of their authority, about what they can expect from others, and are able to be highly effective in their roles.

In this model the organizing process itself becomes the ultimate power, more than any individual, and every individual can have a voice in designing and altering the process. It is a flat system of roles and links that delivers high autonomy. It is predicated on a system of roles (essentially disembodied job descriptions), decision-making circles (meetings by another name) and a process of links. It bravely attempts both to relieve leaders of the pressure of the demand of omnipotence, and to make it possible for weak signals of dysfunction, lack of alignment, gaps in accountability, missed opportunities etc. to be attended to promptly and effectively by empowered individuals. It offers a clear process for distinguishing working in the business from working on the business. It presents a view of strategy as ‘dynamic steering’ by simple rules or principles towards a general purpose. In this way it attempts to simulate evolutionary development processes and indeed sees itself as an evolutionary model.

Holocracy - Too much to ask?

Reading this book was an interesting experience. The book is a ‘how to’ book and it sets out the process model in great detail, describing the purpose of key facilitator roles and the process of key tactical and governance meetings (circles in the terminology of the model). It’s not hard to tell that the author and originator of this model has a software development background. My initial impression reading it was reminiscent of getting to grips with the complex board games of Allies and Axis that my sons and husband loved to play some years ago: a complex set of rules about the properties and powers of various pieces and cards subject to the rules of the dice. In the early stages as much time was spent consulting the rule-book as playing the game. As I read on I realised there was a strong binary flavour underpinning much of the process, an ‘if this then that’ logic driven by an implicit flow chart of binary decision-making. The author’s argument is that these tight constraints work to create an empowered freedom within them. However it is noticeable that much of the instruction reads ‘no discussion allowed’ as the process is strictly followed. In essence he is trying to programme out the negative aspects of the human element in this organizing process and to create an organisational process that functions effectively despite the emotional and relational wayward behaviour of people. This takes a lot of discipline on the part of all the players; which is to say it takes organizational energy.

The author is honest enough to point out that this new process doesn’t always ‘take’ in organizations despite various people’s interest, energy and support. He identifies that the key challenge, which is also at the heart of the model’s power, is the need for those with current power in the system to give it up. The author is of the opinion that after an initial period of painful discipline, the benefits will become clearer to all and the process will become more self-maintaining. It is clear that not all organizations make it over the hump. Similarly, while initially he took a whole-system ‘all or nothing’ approach to implementation, he has since softened his views and in this book he offers a chapter on holocracy-lite possibilities that offers guidance on how to implement parts of the process.

In summary

The book is well written, offering a clear and detailed explanation of the holocracy organizing process with a worked case study and anecdotes from experience used to illuminate how the various meetings and roles work.

My take on the model presented

This model is likely to appeal to those who have great faith in rationality and like highly structured, detailed and disciplined processes. In this sense it reads as very bureaucratic. It put me in mind of LEAN, another process that, in theory, makes perfect sense, however in practice often takes a lot of energy to maintain. Both demand great human discipline. Robertson is clear that the role of facilitator ‘requires that you override your instinct to be polite or ‘nice’ and that you cut people off if they speak out of turn’, amongst other skills and abilities. In this way it is trying to programme out the emotional irrational human decision-making influences such as ego, fear and group think, to create a less contaminated system of governance.

In many ways this model seems aligned to Appreciative Inquiry and co-creative ways of thinking. For example it is more wedded to biological than mechanical metaphors, it prioritises adaptability over predictability, and it is focused on releasing collective intelligence within a leader-ful organization. However, it seems to work against human nature, or human psychology, rather than with it. It is this constant fight against core features of human systems that, in my opinion, is at the heart of the gap between the promise of these kinds of models and the frequent experience of the lived reality.

However, I do think it offers a real, well thought out, and to some extend tried and tested alternative to our current creaking-under-the-strain-in-the-modern-era command and control organisational model. It will be interesting to see to what extent it is adapted across the organizational domain and I would love to hear from anyone who has either direct experience of working in an organization based on this model, or who has attended training on it.

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 Book Reviews and other Emergent Change, Leadership Skills and Organisational Development Strategy 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.

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

Why this book?

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

Brief Account of the book

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

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

The big point - 'Age Of Transcendance'

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

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

In Summary

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

My take on this book

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

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

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

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

Other Resources

Much more about the links between creating positive workplaces and enhanced productivity and profitability can be found in Sarah’s new book Positive Psychology and Change

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

See more Book Reviews and other Leadership Skills and Positive Psychology articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

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

Elicit Success Stories

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

Develop A Success And Achievement Strategy

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

Positive Inductions

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

Educate Leaders and Mangers about Key Research

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

Help People Identify Their Strengths

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

Move Towards Being An Economy Of Strengths

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

Advertise Your Strengths

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

Encourage Good Relationships At Work

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

Find Your Positive Energy Network Nodes

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

Other Resources

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

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

See more Positive Psychology articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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.

Eight High-Value Ways To Access Our Expertise

1. Use Our Learning and Development Activity Support Card Packs

Over the past year we have assembled a range of card packs to support development activities from coaching to strategy development. In particular we have our own Positive Organisational Development Cards that condense the wisdom of positive psychology into questions and action suggestions across twenty themes, from leadership to positive emotions. We also have a selection of Strengths Cards suitable for groups across the organisation. And we have a range of other cards to enable work with Values, Behaviour, Expertise and Emotional Intelligence. While many have free downloadable pdf guides, all are highly versatile, easily portable and great value!

Click Here

2. Play The Happiness at Work Game

We are very proud to be the sole European distributor for this excellent learning and development tool. Packed with practical ways to apply positive psychology to work place challenges, the game format encourages valuable in-depth discussion of the different ideas, approaches and options. The challenge cards outline common workplace situations, while the answer cards offer a wide range of behavioural tips to encourage greater happiness or wellbeing, reduce stress levels, improve performance and strengthen their relationships. A wonderful feature of the game is that some of the answer cards suggest that you ‘do it now’, allowing participants to experience the power of the suggested activity in the moment. This in turn facilitates deeper connection and learning in the group. Save yourself the cost of a facilitator and self-facilitate yourself a great team development session.

Click Here

3. Prepare With Our Practical E-books

We are developing a range of practical e-books to support first line managers with some of the early challenges of management. In PDF format they are instantly downloadable, offering instant help! Each book contains easy to follow guidance and words of advice. In addition practical pull-out planning tools are included to support preparation, and to ensure that purpose and success criteria are clarified before the event. These can be photocopied and used again and again. So far we have one on Courageous Conversations and another on Great Meetings with more under development. Less than the price of a meal out, they allow you to save on training costs and encourage self-directed learning. Let us know about any other topics you think would be valuable.

Click Here

4. Pick our Brains

We recognize that sometime you just want to ask the expert a few questions about something you are planning to do or something that is bothering you. You don’t necessarily want to engage a permanent coach, you just want to spend up to an hour of your time getting high quality advice quickly. Our ‘pick our brains’ service is designed precisely to meet this need. Save yourself time and money by speaking to us directly.

Click Here

5. Buy An ‘Off the Shelf’ Learning And Development Session

If you have the facilitation and training skills but just aren’t familiar with a particular topic area than this off the shelf session is for you. At present we offer The Complete Positive Strategic and Leadership Development Kit, The Complete Positive Team Development Kit, The Complete Positive and Appreciative Coaching Kit and The Complete Leadership Team Culture Kit, with more under development. We supply facilitator notes and any of our tools that you need for the session plus a useful carrier, pen and notebook.  Once you have the kit you can use it again and again, saving the cost of an external facilitator every time.

Click Here

6. Read Our Books

Sarah has written two books that distil her knowledge and experience of working with organizations. Positive Psychology at Work gives practical advice about leadership, performance, workplace culture, and team development for example. While Positive Psychology and Change is focused on large scale organisational change, offering practical advice on applying positive psychology to the challenge and introducing dialogue methodologies such as Open Space, Simu-Real and Appreciative Inquiry. In addition Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management is targeted at both those new to Appreciative Inquiry and more experienced practitioners, to extend their practice. Gain access to Sarah’s extensive experience at a fraction of the price of having her come in!

Click Here

7. Watch Our Videos

These are a completely free resource. Only a few minutes long they take short topics and explain them in plain English. For example we have videos addressing How to Work with Skeptics, Planning in Uncertain Times, and Why You Should Ask Appreciative Questions.

Click Here

8. Commission a Webinar

This can run in real time or be sent pre-recorded. It can be the whole session or part of a session. It can be a presentation or it can include questions and answers. Or we can organise a google-plus hangout. And we are willing to engage with any other favourite technology of yours to facilitate our ‘presence at a distance’ in your training session. Have Sarah or any of our other experts be part of your session at a fraction of the price of flying her in!

Click Here

And of course, if you would like us to come to you to help with your change process, or to run an in-house training or development session, we would be delighted to help!

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, Appreciative Inquiry, Card Guides and Leadership 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 the best L&D Tools are available from the website shop.

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.

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

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

Thank You Makes A Difference

We are all taught that it is polite to be grateful, but does it make any other difference? Recent research suggests yes, including in the workplace.

Most people feel gratitude a lot and it makes them feel good to feel grateful

Gratitude motivates reciprocal aid giving

It can be considered as an emotion, a behaviour and a personality trait

As an emotion

As an emotion, it acts as a moral barometer, drawing attention to help received; it can encourage a behavioural response (offering help) and the expression of gratitude can act as an effective positive reinforcer to the behaviour for which it is expressed.

How likely we are to feel grateful also seems to relate to our estimates of the value of the help, how costly it was too provide and whether it was altruistically intended.

Expressing sincere gratitude can raise happiness levels for up to a month. Conscious cultivation of feelings of gratitude by identifying three good things about your life each evening is very self-reinforcing and increases happiness levels. The effects seem very durable.

As a personality characteristic

As a personality characteristic it seems that some people feel much more gratitude than others.

People who express extensive gratitude are more likely to have higher levels of happiness and lower levels of depression and stress

It has one of the strongest links with mental health of any personality variable

As an aid to social relations

Gratitude is uniquely important in social relationships, contributing to an upward spiral of helping and mutual support.

People who do not experience gratitude may not notice they have been helped and may not reciprocate, thus decreasing the likelihood that they will receive help in future.

Grateful people are seen as more empathetic, agreeable and extroverted. They are more likely to be seen as helpful and unselfish with others.

Those who express gratitude are more likely to see the world as friendly and hospitable

So the moral of the story for managers is…..

1. Be grateful.
2. Encourage others to be grateful and to directly express their gratitude sincerely to anyone to whom they feel grateful.
3. Encourage people to notice when they have been helpful and to express their appreciation of the help.
4. Offer help to others to encourage the creation and maintenance of mutual reciprocity.

To learn more about positively reinforcing behaviour through effective use of rewards, such as gratitude and appreciation see more information on our website.

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 Organisational Culture 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

How To Improve Compliance In Organizations

When people don’t comply with legal requirements organizations can face penalties and fines running into the thousands. To take just a few recent examples:

In November last year a Greater London pizza manufacturer was fined £15,000 after failing to respond to warnings about an unsafe doorway.

Also in November Hertfordshire County Council accidentally faxed details of two cases it was dealing with to a member of the public and was fined £100,000 for breaching the Data Protection Act.

Sheffield-based A4e was similarly fined £60,000 for losing an unencrypted laptop with the details of thousands of people.

While in December Osem UK, a kosher food company owned by Nestle, was fined £27,372 for not complying with the packaging waste regulations.

And in January this year The UK’s biofuels watchdog fined three companies a total of £60,000 for failures to comply with environmental legislation designed to reduce carbon emissions from the transport sector.

Many compliance breaches occur in HR and at present the compensation limit for Unfair Dismissal is £65,300 while the compensation limit for Breach of Contract is £25,000. Over 20% of all UK business are fined due to non-compliance issues. Non-compliance can be a costly business.

To avoid these penalties organizations put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that people comply with regulations and requirements however many psychological factors work against them.

1. The overwhelming attractiveness of short-term goals in an immediate context

Faced with the choice between achieving an immediate, positive outcome now against incurring a probable negative outcome some time in the future, people are drawn to the short-term immediate outcome. Smoking is a classic example. We know full well that at some time in the future it may have a negative consequence, but right now we really want that nicotine hit. Similarly in organisational terms we know that taking a shortcut through the length process of getting rid of someone in the organisation opens us up to the risk of a possible financial penalty, but the short term attraction of solving our problem right now can be overwhelming.

2. The belief that success recognition depends on goal achievement

We usually congratulate people on the achievement of a goal, getting that job, getting promoted, making that sales figure etc. We are not overly practiced at recognising process towards a goal, except when we know we are in a teaching situation, for instance when helping our children learn to read. Here we offer praise and celebration at every possible point; if we waited until they were fluent readers before we offered a word of praise or encouragement they would long since have given up.

If we set a goal of perfect compliance, and offer no reward or encouragement or celebration of success until it is achieved, we are unlikely to reach the goal.

3. A lack of alignment of organisational objectives

All too often in a particular context within the organization it can appear as if choices have to be made between being compliant and ‘getting things done’. These two organisational demands appear to people to pull in different directions: some classics are: filling the job quickly by ‘just appointing someone’ and going through a proper recruitment and selection process; keeping production going and taking downtime for regular machine maintenaince checks; and, dutifully recording every contact with a client, however short, and getting on with the next task. Given these conflicting priorities, people usually consider ‘getting the job done’ by far the most important.

4. Actions speak louder than words

It is a truism that what people do, or how they behave, is a clearer indication of their belief system than what they say. People in organizations watch who actually gets recognised, praised, promoted and rewarded, and assume their behaviour to be that which the organization truly values. So if an organization preaches adherence to standards of practice, but rewards those who achieve goals by any means, then people will see little value in being the mug who adheres to standards and gets left behind in the race to the top.

5. People are strongly influenced by local culture norms of behaviour

The classic recent example here was the MPs expenses scandal. Spoken more or less loudly by everyone involved was the fact that ‘everyone was doing it’. In practice it was highly condoned by the organization. It was a well accepted ‘bending of the rules’ to correct a perceived injustice over MP’s pay. It is highly likely that there was an underlying message of ‘you’re a fool to yourself if you don’t’. It is a highly principled person who can clearly see the wood for the trees here.

This sort of situation exists in many organizations where the left hand doesn’t allow itself to see what the right hand is doing. So one part of the organization can say ‘hand on heart’ we are complying, while another part is busy bending rules to produce outcomes.

What can be done?

1) Strengthen weak feedback loops

In essence the negative effects of non-compliance need to be brought nearer to the action of non-compliance. Many organizations do understand this and have internal mechanism for coming down heavily and immediately on breaches of compliance. However too much of this can create a very coercive environment, which ultimately leads to people hiding breaches, errors, mistakes etc.

So, in addition, the positive consequences of compliance need to be brought much more strongly into view. To take our smoking example, helping people visualize a healthy older age, still able to play sports, play with their grandchildren, clean lungs, more money to help their children, well flowing blood, breathing easy etc. brings the long term benefits of healthy living now more clearly into view. As we can see it also connects to their values, in this example family.

In the work setting it is likely to be: being able to feel proud of where you work, knowing you are helping the environment, that work is fair, reputation, prizes and recognition.

2) Reward effort and progress as well as achievement

Again some organizations already do this. Have charts that demonstrate levels of compliance in different areas, congratulate people who come to ask how to do it right, publicise best enquiry of the week. Essentially celebrate when things get better and when they go right. Highlight the benefits of doing it right at every opportunity.

3) Move from either/or to both/ and

Help people understand the highest priority is, for example, creating a sustainable business, and that compliance and task achievement are both important for this overarching goal. Therefore their challenge is always to be thinking how can we do what we need to do - right?

4) Model what you want

The lead has to come from the top otherwise your compliance officers have a thankless task. If senior management don’t truly believe that compliance is an important investment in a sustainable future that affects everyone, and not just a bureaucratic inconvenience, then why should anyone else?

For leaders it can be very tempting to pull rank to bypass procedures. Just remember that people take their cue about what is important from what you do more than what you say. If you are aligned in word and deed, then the message is very powerful.

5) Build the culture to support your objectives

You want to create a culture where people do the right thing when no one is watching. For this to happen there needs to be good alignment between organisational values and practices. And people need to know what is required of them, and how to spot when they are being asked or being led into being mis-aligned, and what to do about it.

Sarah spoke at the inaugural conference of Governance, Risk and Compliance and  found there was a lot of interest in this topic of the psychology of compliance. 

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 Performance Management 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

The Hidden Costs Of Rudeness

We all know rudeness is an unpleasant aspect of life, did you also know it has a cost attached? Two researchers, Porath and Erez (2011), have spent years exploring the effect of rudeness on people at work, this is what they have found:

Between 1998 and 2005 the percentage of employees who reported experiencing rudeness once or more in a week doubled from almost 25% to almost 50%. Indeed in 2005 25% of employees reported experiencing rudeness at least once a day.

Surveys reveal that after experiencing rudeness most people lose time and focus, make efforts to avoid the person, work less and slack off more, and think more about leaving the organization.

Experiments by Porath and Erez have demonstrated direct adverse effects of experiencing or even just observing rudeness on cognitive performance e.g. problem-solving, flexibility of thinking, creativity and helpfulness. Experiencing rudeness also increases a propensity to aggressive and violent thoughts and actions.

In addition 94% of people get even with the rude person, or with their organization (88%)

It seems that ‘processing’ the rude encounter engages brain resources so that less is available for attention and memory, making us temporarily ‘less clever’.

These affects occur even in a culture of habitual rudeness, in other words even if a level of rudeness or incivility is normal in your organization it doesn’t mean people are inured against the effects.

Rudeness has a contagion effect: it makes us less likely to help people not even involved in the incident, and to be ruder and more aggressive than we might have been.

So, a culture of rudeness in an organization has hidden costs of:

Reduced performance

Poorer problem solving

Rigidity of thinking

Less ‘citizenship’ behaviour e.g. general helpfulness

Reduced creativity

People avoiding contact with certain others (who might have information they need)

Heighten tendencies to aggressive words or even actions

‘vendettas’ of getting even being played out in the organization

The effect of this on suppliers and customer relationships, as well as internal relations, is not hard to imagine.

Politeness pays

Interestingly Kim Cameron and others at the University of Michigan have been examining the effect of ‘virtuous behaviour’ on employees and organizations. They have found a similar but polar opposite effect, that is, the more people experience virtuous behaviour from others – helpfulness, forgiveness, generosity, courage, honesty support etc. – or indeed just witness it, the more likely they are to demonstrate such behaviour themselves. Such behaviour also has the effect of raising levels of ‘feeling good’ which is strongly associated with flexible and complex thinking, creativity, good team work and so on.

How much are poor manners costing your organization? And what can you do about it?

1. Create a culture of civility and politeness, led right from the top

2. Treat ‘manner’ of management as a performance issue, as well as outcomes

3. Keep stress levels down for people – stressed people are more likely to ‘lash out’ at others

4. Have a code of conduct that makes it clear that people have a right to be treated in a civil manner, and act on complaints

5. Taking bullying seriously

6. Help those who have a hot head to develop compensatory tactics, particularly the ability to eat humble pie and to seek forgiveness after an uncontrolled outburst

7. Encourage managers to recognise power as a privilege, not a stick with which to beat others

8. Beware those who are deferential to those above them and demonic to those below

9. Emphasis that difficult issues can be tackled without resorting to shouting or belittling, and model how

10. Beware of the hidden costs of the ‘high performer’ who is also known to be consistently aggressive and rude to his or her staff: the cost of the means might actually outweigh the benefits of the ends

Further resources

Christine L Porath and Amir Erez (2011) How rudeness takes it toll. The Psychologist Vol 24, No 7

Cameron K (2008) Positive Leadership: strategies for extraordinary performance. Berrett-Koehler. San Franciso

Lewis S (2011) Positive Psychology at Work. Wiley

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 Leadership and Performance Management 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

How ‘Change Management’ Can Be A Hindrance To Achieving Organizational Change

We are constantly told that, in today’s world, change is a permanent feature of organizational life. Given this is it surprising the extent to which organizations struggle with the concept of change in organizations. Myths abound. Working with organizations I constantly hear the refrain ‘people don’t like change’ and ‘change is hard’. Neither of these statements are necessarily true, as we see below. What is true is that the way we understand organizations, understand change, and go about achieving change can make the job much harder than it need be.

Part of the problem is that our ideas in this area are outdated. We think and act as if the organization is a perfectly designed and aligned machine that we can plan to reconfigure, and then just systemically and mechanically set about reconfiguring. The organization is not a machine; it is a living system of people with its own internal logic and ways of behaving. We need to work with the dynamic, inventive, thoughtful nature of our organizations, not against it. In the same vein, our views of leadership can be a hindrance to achieving fast, responsive and adaptive change. We act sometimes as if we expect our leaders to be all seeing, all knowing, all powerful. They’re not. However they are increasingly expected to introduce changes in work practices, routines and structures as part of their leadership role. Unknowingly they have often picked up some unhelpful ‘rules of thumb’ about implementing change at work. Here we expose the fallacious thinking behind five of them.

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

Not True. 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: taking the first steps, reviewing progress, learning from experience and involving those who know the detail in their areas.

This ‘all-seeing’ belief leads to exhaustive energy going into detailed forecasting and analysis of every possible impact and consequence of possibilities often leading to paralysis by analysis. It slows things down, allows rumours to fill the information vacuum, and creates feelings of disempowerment. Worse of all it disregards the huge knowledge base that is the organization; wasting organizational assets.

You can control the communication within the organization about change

Impossible! People are sense-making creatures who constantly work to make sense of what is happening around them. This means it is not possible to control communication in this way. 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 different or corrective perspective.

This ‘control’ 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 management. And when the carefully chosen words are finally broadcast, leadership is often dismayed to discover that they don’t work to create a shared sense of the meaning of the change.

To communicate about change is to engage people with the change

Not necessarily. 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…?’ People have to use their imaginations and creativity to start visualizing 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.

The belief that communication alone equals engagement 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.

That planning makes things happen

Sadly no! How much simpler life would be if it did. Creating plans can be an extremely helpful activity as long as we realize 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.

This belief in ‘plan as action’ fuels a plethora of projects and 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’. A much more energizing alternative is to bring people together to start exploring ‘the change’ and generating ideas for action, and then to write documents that create a coherent account of the actions people are taking.

That change is always disliked and resisted

No. 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.

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

So, what is the alternative? Once we give up the idea of the leader or leadership team as all knowing, of change as a linear and logical process of compliance, and of people as passive recipients of information, we can start to work in a much more organization friendly way with change. Many new approaches that focus on achieving collaborative transformation are emerging such as Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space and World Café. These approaches recognize organizational change as a collective effort, as a social process that can be inspiring and dynamic with leaps of understanding as well as being messy and confusing at times. They work with the best of the human condition – the importance to us of our relationships, our imagination, our ability to care and to feel and to create meaning in life. In this way they release managers and leaders from the impossible responsibility of foreseeing all possibilities and instead liberate the organization to find productive ways forward in an ever-changing organization landscape, together.

Other Resources

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

See more about change 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 and Culture change.

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

Forget Carrot Or Stick – Try Nudging

In any organisation there is always a variety of tools available to managers to influence staff towards desired behaviour. This has traditionally been seen as a choice between two general approaches: incentives and coercion, or, the carrot or stick approach.

Now there is a new alternative

This third method utilises the natural inertia of most people when confronted with the choice of accepting the status quo or changing things. Generally they accept the status quo unless the difference between the two in terms of their perception of their own welfare is very large.

By making the desired state of affairs the norm, but allowing employees the freedom to change this if individually they wish, organisations can gain the benefits of the majority of the workforce behaving in the easy ‘default’ way.  While at the same time, through providing choice, they avoid the resentment and active opposition of the few who summon the energy to choose an alternative.

Interestingly this approach, known as ‘choice architecture’, or more colloquially as ‘nudging’, is credited to an economist working at Schipol International Airport in Amsterdam who reduced ‘spillage’ by men in the airport’s urinals by having a picture of a black housefly etched onto the bowl. Spillage declined by 80% as most men are unable to resist aiming at the image, located in the centre of the bowl. Thus he achieved his objective without hectoring passengers with notices or fines or expensive material incentives.

A weightier concrete example of this kind of approach, which also illustrates the kind of situation where it is most appropriate, was the Turner Review’s recommendations on reform of the pensions system for the government. It recommended that the most cost-effective method for providing for old age was for people to save for their own retirement by enrolling in a government-sponsored scheme. In order to realise the economies of scale which would make this cost-effective, however, a large portion of the population would have to be involved. To avoid making this compulsory he recommended simply enrolling workers in the scheme automatically while leaving them the option to opt out if they wished.

Is nudging the right option for your desired behaviour change?

To answer this question you need to consider whether:

•   The behaviour requires the participation of most, but not all, of the organisation to be effective

•   If a significant number of people opt out, it will render the change invalid

This approach offers advantages over more traditional approaches. For examples dictates (stick) might seem petty to some, or cash incentives (carrot) crude and insensitive to others.

Considering these factors should give you an idea of whether choice architecture might be suitable for enabling a change of behaviour in your organisation.

with thanks to Jem Smith, BA., Msc.

Other Resources

More on using  positive psychology techniques to encourage change at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

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