Ten Top Tips For Online Training

Like many others, over the past months I have delivered a lot of training online that I would normally have delivered in person. Here are some of the things I learnt.

1.     Breaks

Resolve to take a break of 10 minutes every hour. It is constraining and exhausting being stuck in one position with a fixed gaze. The last course I ran, one of the spontaneous comments made was, ‘what I love about this course is the breaks.’ Well, good to know I’d got something right!

2.     Break it up

The same principles apply as in regular training, break it up. Break out rooms at a minimum, but I also incorporate video input, brainstorming and whiteboard work. I know everyone has their favourite extra tool, but mine is Deckhive with its terrific array of card decks. Powerpoint is no more engaging online than in the classroom, keep it to the necessary minimum

Hot News: 3rd Nov 13.00. Webinar on the Positive Organisational Development Cards.

3.     Sidebar conversations

In live training sessions delegates appear before and after the workshop, or during breaks to pick your brains about their own dilemma or to clarify a point they haven’t understood, or to tell you how the theory or research just presented is wrong, in their experience. These are valuable conversations that, if not accommodated, can easily bore the pants off the rest of the group. Offer to arrive early and leave late, as you would in a classroom, and be prepared to have one-to-one conversations as necessary outside the workshop sessions

4.     Insist on presence

Some workplaces clearly allow people to ‘attend’ meetings or training with their camera off. Hopeless! I know people occasionally need to go dark, if they are eating or if their Wi-Fi is sulking, but as a general rule it is vital that all present can see and be seen. I recently attended an online conference where the ‘attendance’ of fifteen people was revealed, when they were all asked to self-select into zoom rooms, to actually be six. You don’t want to be wasting your breath and you don’t want people missing great chunks of your wisdom!

5.     Make it interactive

I know it can be clumsy when two people speak at once, but I much prefer that risk to the destruction of spontaneity and connection when everyone sits with their mics off, and then fumbles to switch them on as we all bellow ‘You’re on mute!’ at them. Obvious it wouldn’t work for very large groups, but in general I prefer to deal with the chaos than to have to monitor raised hands (another button people can’t always find in a hurry). Keep the large group discussions short, but lively.

6.     Networking is still important

Incorporate networking type questions into your training as morning fire-lighters. Mix the groups up for each breakout session, allowing a few minutes for introductions each time. Do introductions. 

7.     Keep it short

It has pretty much been established that zoom interaction is exhausting. Transferring the two day programme to online delivery needs to be rethought. I have tried two methods. One is to break the material up into maximum four hour chunks, delivered over a period of days, often not sequential, and with plenty of breaks. I won’t do a session longer than four hours. I have also taken material out of the presentation and made it available offline, to be accessed between sessions. I have found LOOM invaluable here as I can record presentations for participants to watch as and when, which we can then discuss in class. I also sometimes provide written material. Keep the workshop time for the interactive, experiential, learning.

8.     Use your positive psychology

Your psychological knowledge is as relevant here as in the classroom. Attend to creating positive mood, to developing relationships, to creating points of connection and high-quality interactions. Think how you can maximise the use of your strengths in this different environment. 

9.     Manage their expectations of you

I don’t know about you but when I’m thinking and talking and engaging with the participants, I find it hard to also monitor the chat bar, or questions feed or be scanning for the raised hand. I make it clear that they are welcome to use the chat bar, but I will only be looking at it in the breaks, if then. I find I still have to talk aloud to organise or sequence my actions sometimes ‘So I’m going to put the link to the app in the chat, then I’m going to share the instructions on screen, then I’ll put you into zoom groups.’ I find it very helpful if a group member feels emboldened enough to ask ‘How long have we got’ before they all disappear into their groups!

10.  Be human

The more comfortable you are dealing with the glitches, mistakes and challenges of working online, the more comfortable your participants with be their own technical adventures, and the less distracted they’ll be by them. You are a training professional or subject matter expert, not an IT wiz. On the rare occasion someone can’t access an app I’m using, I’ve found groups are quick to find a work around, such as screen-sharing, so we can all get on with the task in hand.

 Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Training’ or ‘How To’

It’s OK To Not Feel Great, We’re All In Mourning For Times Past.

I suppose it was that Sunday evening press conference that brought it home to me. It was as Boris articulated the ambition to get people back to work, hung about with caveats and advice to avoid public transport, that the penny really dropped: that ‘getting back to normal’ was a complete pipedream. What he was doing, never mind the rhetoric, was starting to articulate the new normal, which wasn’t going to be a whole lot like the old normal. 

I had already known this but somehow this tangible evidence of the confusion, the uncertainty, the ‘suck it and see’ nature of the concessions, helped clarify for me what was, and wasn’t, going to be possible in this new normal. Essentially the virus wasn’t going anywhere, so neither was the life-and-death threat posed by other people. We were just being invited to increase our risk-taking a notch, while staying alert against an invisible danger (a perfect recipe for anxiety I would have thought).

 As I was coming to terms with this my mood started to slip,  I realised I was having an unusually low week. I was exhausted for no good reason, very slow, everything was a bit taxing. I was realised that I was pre-occupied with what I still couldn’t do: hug my (grown up) children, go out for Sunday breakfast, walk along the closed off river path (when will that be considered safe to open?). It dawned on me that I was in a mild state of mourning,  I was mourning these losses. Realising that was this was what I was doing was very helpful, and in fact once I worked it out and gave myself permission to feel sad about these loses, I started to feel better.

I doubt I’m the only one, and this is a plea that we allow ourselves to mourn what we are losing, even those of us unaffected in a more direct way by the virus. Mourning is not a zero-sum game. We are not taking anything away from those whose losses have been greater than ours, those who have lost their loved ones, those separated from family members who need them, those currently battling the illness. We can feel compassion for them and still have our own sense of loss. We are all paying a price as we try to keep each other safe.

To feel sad that you won’t be going on that holiday this year, or visiting relatives for an extended stay, or to a huge festival, or football matches, or concerts or theatres for the foreseeable future is not being disrespectful to anyone else’s losses. It’s the little pleasures in life that make up the days: meeting your dog-walking friends, your drinking or skateboarding mates, five-minute chats with vaguely known neighbours, exchanging a few words with the postman, watching the world go by outside a café. These things are important and the loss of them is real.

And even when these things return they won’t be the same. The carefree days of jostling amongst each other, complaining about being crushed under strangers’ armpits on the tube, or fighting our way through overcrowded market streets, or sitting so close to the neighbouring table we can join in their conversation, are over. If we do venture back we will carry the knowledge that any stranger could be our unwitting assassin. This knowledge does not make for relaxation. 

I want to be able to have a big boozy meal with my family, in my garden, where we kiss and hug and sample each other’s drinks, have illicit puffs of the smokers’ cigarettes, and share the food. It’s not going to be happening anytime soon it seems. And that makes me sad, and that’s OK.

My sadness makes it clear to me what is really important to me, but that I can’t have right now. And  then I turn my mind again to all the joys I have in my life; my garden, my husband here with me, my college course, my work, books to read, Netflix’s new series Schitt’s Creek, and my slowly advancing tapestry. 

This week I went for a walk in the park at the 2-metre distance from my daughter, and we for a while sat on the grass and chatted 6’ apart. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t like it was, but the sun shone, and we had a good catch up and if that’s the best it can be then let’s make the most of it.

Everyone has the right to feel a little sad about things right now, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. My advice? Allow yourself your sadness, if you do, it will be easier to turn towards what you can influence, what you can do even in these straitened circumstances to brighten up your life, to bring yourself a little joy.

What kind of conversation are you having today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guest Blog - Talent and determination get you there, but how do you get them? by Saira Iqbal of Zircon Management Consulting

Zircon Management Consulting is an award winning Business Psychology Company specialising in Talent Management

We know it's important, where does it come form?

One of the most successful men I know grew up in the roughest streets of Bristol, and shared a cramped bedroom with his five brothers until he could  leave the family home and ‘escape’ to his second choice university.  Now a multi-millionaire cabinet minister, each of his milestones made it more and more apparent that his success was no simple stroke of luck.

There were no useful networks that his working class parents were a part of, there was no private school education to teach social poise; but there was drive that came from great ambition and pure determination.

There is a lot of research to suggest that importance of ambition and determination to success (McCann, 2015; Meier, 2011; Rath & Conchie 2008), yet little evidence on how we can develop these attributes.

If ambition, and determination are core principles of success, then why do some people have it in droves, whilst others pay no attention to life’s opportunities?

Why do some have an immense hunger to pursue their aspirations, whilst others are satisfied with living in the moment and focusing on the day as it comes?

Our recent white paper, Winning Attitudes, addresses this very issue. Our interviewees often described adversity, loss, pain and rejection as being the core, pivotal moments that changed the way they viewed themselves and the world around them, helping create the drive they needed to succeed.

 “The loss created the drive.” Clive Jacobs, Entrepreneur, Holiday Autos, Travel Weekly (UK) and The Caterer

“The terrain to success is not a motorway, it is a swamp with ups and downs.” Jeremy Snape, Founder, Sporting Edge

“My father used to put me down, that drove me to prove myself. It gave me determination and focus.” Clive Jacobs, Entrepreneur, Holiday Autos, Travel Weekly (UK) and The Caterer

“You need to have survival mentality.” Adam Freeman-Pask, Olympian, Rowing

Is adversity a necessary prerequisite? 

Similar to the experiences our interviewees shared, the aforementioned cabinet minister, after facing adversity and financial issues in his childhood, often stated that ‘he had to find a way out’. He knew ‘there was more out there for him’. His drive came from a psychological desire to move away from his childhood experience.

Taking this even further, one may ask, ‘does there need to be some type of adversity in order for success to happen?’

McCann (2015) suggests that using adversity as a means for success is a ‘Move From’ mind-set, where the biggest driver is a fear of failure. Success factors such as Burning Ambition, Dogged Determination, Unwavering Belief and Maximising Opportunities, are often triggered from a moment in adversity – such as a disadvantaged childhood.

Whilst specific events can result in a fear of failure, it is the winning mind-set that keeps us going: The Winners among us never give up. They persist, and are determined and unwavering in the pursuit of their goals and their dreams. It is their response to these adverse circumstances that ultimately results in a positive outcome.

“You need to keep going in one direction and strive. If there is a bump in the road, go around it.” Nicola Murphy, CEO, The River Group

“I was determined not to be dependent or reliant on anyone.” Clive Jacobs, Entrepreneur, Holiday Autos, Travel Weekly (UK) and The Caterer

I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. –Jimmy Dean on “Good Morning America,” ABC.

Some surrender.

Others gain a thirst to win.

You may need to battle your circumstances, but it is your attitude that determines whether you will allow your situation to make you kneel over and give up, or rise up through every blow, so you can win the war.

To read more about what makes up a Winning Attitude from the point of view of 42 business savvy corporate CEOs and edgy entrepreneurs, committed Olympic and sporting stars through to charismatic media personalities, please take a look at our White Paper.

Written by Saira Iqbal of Zircon

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.

Making your own mission

Anyone who has ever tried to assemble flat pack furniture will know that vague or unclear instructions can be of as little use as no instructions. Yet how many times do we receive requests from higher management to ‘Increase employee engagement’, ‘heighten brand awareness’, ‘Improve office culture’ or ‘Streamline work processes’. Indeed we may be guilty of issuing such directives. Orders such as these that do not have specific measurable outcomes, or direction as to how management wants them to be fulfilled, they are mere vague desires disguised in management jargon.

Negative Outcomes

Unfortunately, it is not often appropriate or good for one’s career to highlight these concerns to those who issued these vague objectives. but leaving them unaddressed leads to negative outcomes such as:

·      Lack of focus and motivation in individuals

·      Deterioration in office culture

·      Low morale

·      Uncoordinated or unproductive actions

·      Teams working for mutually exclusive goals

·      Loss of confidence in leadership

·      Loss of ambitious staff

These effects of unclear goal setting in an office environment can result in lost revenue and employee dissatisfaction.

Case Study

To help us understand the potential consequences of poor mission setting, and to see what a leader who finds himself in this situation can do, let’s examine the actions of Colonel Richard Westley, O.B.E., M.C., who  found himself in exactly this situation in 1995 during the genocidal war in Bosnia.

Just like the now infamous town of Srebrenica, Gorazde is small Muslim Bosniak town in the mainly Christian Serb south of Bosnia. In 1995 British Army sent a small group of troops under United Nations authority to Gorazde. Their orders were twofold:

·      Serve as the eyes and ears of future N.A.T.O./U.N. action

·      To protect the civilian populations of the designated safe areas against armed attacks and other hostile acts, through the presence of its troops and, if necessary, through the application of air power, in accordance with agreed procedure

There were no planned future actions by N.A.T.O. or the U.N. at that point and so no direction as to what information to prioritise gathering. And through the vague terminology ‘serve as the eyes and ears’, no direction as to what kind of intelligence gathering to focus on. It also did not specify what ‘other hostile acts’ included, what the ‘agreed procedure’ was or most importantly give any indication as to how the mere ‘presence’ of several hundred lightly armed peacekeepers will deter several thousand heavily armed and highly motivated Serbs. Especially considering that the ‘application of air power’ turned out to be non-existent.

Defining the Mission

However, he and his immediate superior knew the risks of not having a clear mission and decided on a simple solution; to make their own. This lead Colonel Westley and his immediate superior to devise their own, more specific objectives:

·      To prevent any Serbian encroachments into any part of the U.N. outlined Safe zone of Gorazde, with force if necessary

·      To prevent any Bosniak forays out of the U.N. safe zone of Gorazde

·      To establish a strong psychological presence to both sides by operating on both sides on the exclusion line (i.e. patrolling outside the safe zone and establishing freedom of action, showing they won’t be bullied)

·      To prevent civilian casualties as much as possible

·      To neutrally liaise between the two sides when possible

·      To update U.N. command to any developments in and around the safe zone such as troop build ups, violations of the safe zone or humanitarian emergencies

What this meant in practice was the decision to change from peace keepers to peace enforcers. By redefining their mission in this clearer and more aggressive way, adopting a  stance to actively hold the ring between the two forces come what may, and to protect civilians at any cost, it removed any doubt in the ranks as to why they were being deployed far from home somewhere they had never heard of.  It also allowed the British to establish a stronger defensive position and gave them a stronger negotiating position.

This contrasts with other UN peacekeepers in the area who:

·      Were constrained by U.N. agreed procedure in the threat of force and use of force to counter Serbian violations

·      Suffered a progressive loss of morale caused by an inability to influence events

·      Gave full initiative to the Serbian forces in the region and emboldened them

·      Undermined U.N. military credibility in the region

·      Became overly dependant on negotiation

Opposing Outcomes

Around two months after the British deployment the Serbs attempted to capture Gorazde and then Srebrenica. At Gorazde, they encountered immediate and effective resistance on the ridges around the town at the extreme edge of the exclusion zone from prepared and motivated British troops.  This gave the Bosniak soldiers of Gorazde time to move up to these ridges out of their own exclusion zone, relieve the British peacekeepers and protect the town themselves. It is important to note that Colonel Westley was aware that firstly the small U.N. force would never stop the Serbs on their own and secondly that whoever controlled the ridges around Gorazde, but between the two exclusion zones of both Serbs and Bosniaks, controlled Gorazde.  So, he called on Bosniak forces as soon as fighting began to prevent a massacre, against U.N. procedure.

However, in the proceeding months at Srebrenica, another European force had allowed the Serbs to take 30 of their soldiers hostage to use as human shields against air power, allowed them to seize several observation points around the town without resistance, and, allowed high ranking Serbian officers into the town which spread discord and did not fully enforce the exclusion zone around the town. This meant that when the Serbs chose to seize the town and murder all the males, the peacekeeping force were in no position to resist and had lost the will to do so. As unfortunate or tragic as these actions look in retrospect at each stage the UN soldiers were attempting to follow their vague orders while not overstepping them, and were being constrained by U.N. procedure. Remember they were only to protect the safe area’s ‘through the PRESENCE of its troops’, not explicitly through their actions. 

Redefining over Interpreting the Mission

Colonel Westley pursued a smaller but more defined mission while giving himself more freedom of action and was thus able to focus on and prepare for the worst eventualities. Whereas as the other force dissipated their effort on several contradictory aims meaning they achieved none of them and lost focus on the main goal of preventing ethnic cleansing. Proving that interpreting an instruction is not the same as redefining it. Interpreting a mission in your own way is a refinement of a flawed instruction and will inherit many of those original flaws, redefining a mission is a paradigm shift resulting in a completely new mental framework in which to address the problem.  

This is an extreme example but a common outcome of unclear goal setting and a heroic but simple example of how to avoid that fate. Individuals, teams, departments and companies all work better towards a clear, defined and measurable goal. So, when you receive that next aspirational contradictory pie in the sky instruction from upper management, or indeed if you are in danger of issuing it, don’t ignore it but redefine it.

Redefine in a way that’s

·      Concise,

·      Easy to understand,

·      Measurable and

·      Achievable,

So, doing a few things right is a lot better than doing many things wrong.     

Other Resources

The book itself - Positive Psychology And Change, 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, Leadership, Leadership Skills and Though 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.

Working with the need for convergence in a divergent conversation

Appreciative Inquiry and other co-creative methodologies are essentially divergent ways of working together; the emphasis is on the value of diversity and variety. Such ways of working can trigger a pressure to converge on a few key points very early in the process, indeed sometimes before the event has even begun. This pressure can be the expression of various different needs, for example:

• The need for sense of coherence and co-ordination
• The need for sense of moving forward or making progress
• The need for a reassurance that there is a degree of commonality amongst the differences and divergence being expressed (that the group isn’t going to splinter)
• A request for amplification of points of agreement (a visibility of commonality)
• A need for a convincing story for other audiences of the value of the day
• A desire for a record of the intellectual learning, to accompany the experiential learning of the participants
• A request for tangibility
• A demand for a guarantee that something different will now happen

At its root this is often a request for a reassurance that there is a positive, sustainable momentum to action that won’t die the moment the session ends; this fear is often based on prior experience of away-days. There is often a fear that the day is ‘just a talking shop’ and that unless clear outcomes and actions are written down ‘nothing will happen’.

In addition, our ‘emergent’ ‘exploratory’ ‘unfolding’ description of how the day will run can feel very alarming to those commissioning our work, such as leaders, used to much more controlled ‘facilitation’. A focus on the need to converge can be a request for reassurance that the ‘complexity and diversity’ they are agreeing to work with can, in the end, be drawn back to somewhere safe and contained.

Ways to moderate this demand, so that it doesn’t distract from the day’s activities include:

• Bringing the leaders and other audiences into the event so they experience the change in the room, in the system, in the moment. This reduces the reliance on ‘planning’ as the driver of change.
• Working to help leaders understand that their role in this kind of change is to ‘ride’ the energy it produces; to co-ordinate activities rather than to command and control them. This reduces their feeling of needing to understand everything all at once.
• Working with leaders on their unchallenged or unquestioned stories of leadership, helping them behave differently around change and leadership. This can help reduce anxiety about being solely responsible for achieving change.

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

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

The second is the need to create a tangible or visible record of the level of agreement.

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

How to create create some very tangible or visible record of the level of agreement.

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

A few further helpful hints

• Everything is everything else. In this instance how you work with commissioners and leaders from the beginning affects the helpfulness or otherwise of the hunger for convergence later on.
• Life is always a compromise
• That the leader focused on how convergence will be achieved is essentially asking:

‘How will I, and my organization, survive the diversity, complexity, confusion, multiplicity and richness, you are proposing to unleash? Please reassure me that we won’t fly apart, that it will be safe, that it will be productive’

This is a very reasonable request for reassurance. It is a strong sign that the person wants to go forward yet has concerns. The is challenge in offering sufficient reassurance so that we are able to continue moving towards the day, while maintaining sufficient freedom of movement to be able to work with the balance of need in the room on the day.

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

Seven Helpful Things To Know About Achieving Change In Organizations

The plan is not the change

All too often those involved in creating the plan for change believe this to be the most essential part of the process, worthy of extended time and effort, while implementation is seen as ‘just’ a matter of communicating and rolling out the plan. Plans are a story of hope. Change happens when people change their habitual patterns of communication and intervention in a meaningful and sustainable way.

The map is not the territory

Any map of an organization is going to contain inaccuracies. Therefore any plan based on that imperfect map is going to be subject to corrective feedback where the assumptions of the map proved faulty. Unexpected reactions or effects of implementing the plan therefore should be embraced as giving useful information about how things are, rather than interpreted as a mistake in the planning.

A natural response to a burning platform is blind panic

People do not make great team decisions when they are panicking. They don’t even make good personal decisions. Creating fear and anxiety as drivers for change can have unhelpful consequences in producing self-orientated, unthinking survival behaviour. Better to create positive emotions in change that encourage creative, complex and group orientated thinking.

The path to the future is created not uncovered

Sometimes in change we act as if the future lies there waiting for us; we have only to uncover the path and follow it. Believe instead that the future is in a constant state of creation, that our actions today affect tomorrow; that how we understand the past affects how we conceive possibilities in the future, and we begin to see the creation of the future as an activity that takes place in a constant present.

Resistance is a sign of commitment

Resistance to change is often labelled as problematic. Instead it should be viewed as a sign of engagement, of commitment. There are many truths in organisational life and they don’t always align well. Some people may hold a different view about what is best for the organization. If they are prepared to risk conflict then they care enough to let you know. Be much more aware of unspoken disagreement disguised as compliance; undealt with now, it will surface as soon as the chips are down.

Meaning is created not dictated

I can not dictate to you how you are to understand things; I can only suggest. If I am unable to create a shared meaning with you then we are not aligned. All too often organizations try to dictate how their actions are to be interpreted by all. Better instead to have many conversations that assist groups in the organization to interpret and re-interpret what is happening through the prism of their own many contexts, and to co-create meaning together.

There is no correct answer to the challenge of organisational form

Organizations are engaged in an endless challenge to organise themselves in an optimal form. Since the tensions within organizations are irreconcilable any solution is only a temporary truce. Constant adaptation within organisational form is healthy, anomalies to the norm may add value for a time, a complexity of forms may aid flexibility. Essentially though, as has been said before, change is a constant organisational activity and continual small changes are usually more adaptive than 3-5 yearly big lurches.

Appreciating Change specialises in helping organizations achieve positive, rapid and sustainable 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

The Economic Value Of Social Capital To Organizations

The Economic Value Of Social Capital To Organizations

What Is Social Capital?

Positive psychology understands social capital as a group or social phenomena that adds value by increasing trust and information flow around an organisation, however it can also be understood from an economic perspective.

From this perspective it can be defined as a combination of the number of relationships some one has, the economic usefulness to them of those relationships and the quality of them: effectively, how well known someone is, in what circles, and with what degree of affection. It is the social capital in an organisation that means that we care about the effect our work will have on the next part of the production chain, rather than slinging substandard work over the functional line saying, ‘done my bit, their problem now’.

Why Is It Important In Organisations?            

It is the social capital of an organisation that influences the return gained on the value of the financial and intellectual assets. It is what makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts. It is social capital that releases organisational good citizen behaviour, high-level motivation and that ‘good feeling’ about work. Social capital is the antidote to the ubiquitous silo mentality that permeates most larger organizations: the tribal mentality that can act against the fullest realisation of the potential value of the organisational assets.

An organisation can purposefully invest in this valuable source of capital like any other. And as with any other investment, it is possible to identify the areas of investment likely to create the greatest return, and therefore carefully target investment activity. For instance it is probably not going to boost an organisations’ social capital if it invests in helping the canteen staff to get to know the board as much as it would to invest in building social capital within the board (which isn’t to say that the first option doesn’t have some value, and in some situations might have the greater value).

Why Don’t Organisations Invest More In Social Capital?

Often leaders can intuitively see the value of social capital, however an inability to quantify this capital, and the return on their investment, prevents them from taking the risk of investing in it. Interestingly intellectual capital, a similarly non-physical form of capital, does show financial returns that can be directly attributed to it on the balance sheet e.g. licensing revenue and royalties; these returns can be used by leaders to justify the initial investment they made in developing intellectual capital. At present no such mechanism exists for capturing and measuring the return on social capital investment.

Measuring the Economic Value of Social Capital

It is tempting to conclude from this that social capital can never exist in the financial sense in the way that machines, buildings and patents do; that it is not worth leaders making the additional effort to try and identify its effect on the balance sheet. Recent developments in economics suggests such thinking can be challenged. Social capital not only exists as a factor in economics, but exists to such a real and definable extent that it is now used by banks as collateral for loans, particularly micro-loans.

The Micro-Finance Story

Billions of dollars have been lent to (and repaid by) tens of millions of people in areas of the world where social capital is the only form of capital available, and not just in the third world: if you’re reading this in London, Manchester, Birmingham or Glasgow, to name but a few places, this is probably happening within a few miles of you.

Social capital is the basis of micro-finance, the practice of lending very small amounts of money to the very poor. It has already revolutionised development policy across the world. The problem, identified by Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh in the 1970s, was that the poor couldn’t borrow money from commercial sources not because they couldn’t pay it back but that they had no incentive to do so. This was because they had no collateral that could be repossessed if they defaulted. As a consequence no private lenders were prepared to lend them money.  Yunus’s experience with the Grameen Bank, and that of other micro-finance institutions, is that the poor, properly incentivised, have the highest repayment rates in the world when lent small amounts, almost 97%.

Yunus incentivised individuals by making possible future loans to others in the village conditional on the repayment of the loan by each borrower. In other words, he secured the loan against each villager’s social capital. If she defaulted, none of her friends or neighbours would get loans and she (the vast majority of micro-finance customers are women) would be persona non grata in the village. This suggests thatfor a particular individual her stock of social capital must be worth more to her than the value of the loan or she would not repay it. A Bangladeshi villager making the decision to repay a $20 loan is making a sophisticated calculation about the value of an intangible asset: her social capital. This clear behavioural indicator of choice suggests that a financial value can be put on an individual’s social capital.

Can Social Capital Be Measured In Organisations?

The micro-finance experience suggests that social capital can be measured.  The question is how can organisational leaders find a way of making such calculations for the stock of social capital in their organisations?

There is not a yet a clear answer on this. We can begin to recognise the social capital in organisations by reflecting it in our ways of talking about our organisation. For example referring the member of staff who takes time to contact colleagues to check out their needs and expectations, or who takes the time to let others know something has changed so they don’t waste their time, as invaluable, doesn’t help us recognise the value she adds. On the other hand saying she, and her actions, are valuable, starts to lead us to ask the right questions about ‘How valuable?’, and ‘How can we measure that?’ and ‘How much value does that behaviour add?’

How Can We Build Social Capital In Organisations?

We may not yet know how to measure social capital in organisations with any financial precision, but we do know how to invest in it and build it. Organisational development activities developed over the last few years, based on an understanding of the organisation as a living human system, act to increase social capital. Appreciating Change is an expert in these social capital investment activities.

Article by Sarah Lewis and Jem Smith

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

Women Make Groups Cleverer! (Evidence for collective intelligence)

Fascinating research on group performance suggests two key things:

1. That the collective intelligence of a group is more than the sum of its parts
2. That the presence of women in a group is key to high collective intelligence

How do we know this?

Researchers worked with 699 people, divided them into groups of 3-5 people and set them various tasks. The wide range of these tasks was designed to measure all sorts of different aspects of intelligence. These included visual puzzles, brainstorming, making collective moral judgments, and negotiating over limited resources. They also measured the individual intelligence of everyone. They then tried to see how the individual intelligence scores related to the team performance scores. 

When they did a factor analysis of the group performance scores and the intelligence measures, they found one factor that accounted for 43% of the variance and that was not related to either average intelligence of group members nor the maximum intelligence score. It seemed to be something over and above a simple aggregate of intelligence. They consider this factor to represent a measure of the group’s collective intelligence, with collective intelligence defined as ‘the general ability of the group to perform a wide variety of tasks’. The suggestion is that collective intelligence is an emergent group phenomenon that is a product of more than just existing intelligence in the group.

They ran three different studies of this type and compared results. The findings held. On each occasion collective intelligence was found to better account for group performance than measures of individual member intelligence.

So if individual intelligence doesn’t account for group intelligence, what does? The researchers moved on to examine a number of group and individual factors that might be predictors of collective intelligence. Interestingly many of the factors that are thought to be associated with group performance, such as group cohesion, motivation and satisfaction, didn’t predict group performance.

The Findings

Instead they found:

• That there is a group factor of collective intelligence, conceptually similar to the idea of the individual factor of general intelligence, that has a global effect on performance on many different tasks, and accounts for 43% of the variance in performance. It also is strongly predictive of performance.
• That collective intelligence is not strongly correlated with the average or maximum intelligence in the group.
• That collective intelligence is strongly correlated with the average social sensitivity of the group members. This is the strongest predictive factor of group collective intelligence, which, in turn, is a strong predictor of group task performance on a wide range of tasks.
• That collective intelligence is strongly correlated with the equality of distribution of turn taking.
• That collective intelligence is strongly correlated with the proportion of women in the group.
• It is suspected that the last correlation is related to the others e.g. that the presence of women tends to increase the social sensitivity and the equality of turn-taking in the group.

What to do to improve or enhance the collective intelligence of your project or work groups?

• Help the group recognize that collective intelligence in group decision making and performance is an emergent phenomena of group interaction patterns.
• Help the group recognize that the emotional life of the group is as important as its intellectual life.
• Ensure their discussion processes allow all voices to be heard, and that people take turns to talk, and to listen.
• Ensure that the group is mixed by gender.

For further information see Woolley A W Charbis, C F, Pentland A, Hashmi N, Malone T W (2010) Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. Science Express. www.scienceexpress.org/30 September 2010

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

Bite - Sized Positive Psychology: The success round

Much research has now confirmed happiness has many benefits. One easy way to use positive psychology to bring these benefits into the work place is by opening a meeting with a ‘success round’. All too often in meetings we plunge straight into the business of the day. Starting the meeting by giving people a chance to share a recent success not only boost people’s mood in the moment, it also prepares them to engage more productively with what ever is to follow. As an added bonus,  we learn lots about what makes our colleagues tick.

The exercise is very easy. Essentially as you open the meeting you say something like:

‘Before we plunge into the agenda, let’s just take a few minutes to reflect on what is going well at the moment. What I’d like is for us all to take a moment to think of a recent success we’ve experienced at work. It doesn’t have to be anything huge, just something that gives you a little glow of achievement or success. Then I’d like us to share them.’

Depending on the size of your group you can do this as a whole round, or just ask people to do it in threes or fours and then share a few examples across the groups.

What you do next is up to you. You could just say

‘thank you, its great to hear so many good things are happening even as we ….(are experiencing challenges of some nature)’

Alternatively you might ask:

 ‘Who else needs to hear about any of this good news and how can we do that?’

Or:

 ‘So what have we just learnt about ourselves?’

You may have other ideas of how to build on what you hear.

Either way you should find that the meeting goes a little better for this early investment. And over time you may notice that people start noticing their ‘reasons to be cheerful’ more of the time, ready to bring them to your meeting, and that in turn the group’s sense of themselves becomes more positive.

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 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

Leadership Gratitude Exercise

I used this recently with a group of managers as part of a workshop on positive and appreciative leadership. It is an effective way into the virtuous practices aspect of flourishing organizations and into the topic of authentic leadership. It could just as well be used as an exercise in individual executive coaching or development.

Objective

The brief moment of reflection on blessings that the exercise invites helped these leaders remember that they are connected to, and dependent on, many others. Some left resolved to make their (previously somewhat hidden?) sense of gratitude and appreciation more obvious. This exercise could be built on with individuals with the suggestion of the keeping of a gratitude journal. (The clue is in the title, it’s a journal in which you write down things you are grateful for everyday. This exercise is proven to lift mood in a short space of time).

The Exercise

Form people into groups of 4-6 people and invite them to introduce themselves. Then invite them each to share three things they feel grateful for

1) To their colleagues (individual or collective)

2) To their organization as a whole, or the leadership of their organization

3) And finally offer them a free choice (anything or anyone of their choice to whom or for which they feel grateful or gratitude)

Suggest they might like to start their sentences:

 ‘I want to express thanks..’

or

‘I’m very grateful that/for…’

And encourage them to enlarge on what difference the thing they are grateful for, or person they are grateful to, has made to their lives.

Once everyone has been around and shared their stories encourage the group to reflect on the experience of the exercise and, as ever, their learning from it.

Feedback from the recent workshop included the observation that it was easy to overlook the things that one is grateful for amongst the hurly-burly, frustrations and challenges of organizational life and that to reflect on reasons to be grateful was both a pleasant and a humbling experience.

In addition people commented on the value of taking time to experience gratitude, noticing that this led, in some cases, to a resolve to say something to someone. In a coaching session one could build on this to suggest that they write the person a gratitude letter, and then arrange a time to read it to them. This again is proven to be an excellent mood boosting exercise.

When to use

It worked well as an opener to a session exploring what leadership is and means. It could also be used:

• As an exploration of virtuous practices in flourishing organizations
• In workshops focused on authentic, ethical and moral leadership
• As part of individual or executive coaching

Other Resources

More on using Positive Psychology techniques at work can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles about positive psychology and leadership in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

When A Divergent Discussion Must Produce A Convergent Conclusion

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

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

What is this hunger for convergence an expression of?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is always a compromise

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

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

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking articles in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

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

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

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

1. Gratitude enhances resilience and coping abilities

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

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

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

2. Gratitude builds and strengthens relationships

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

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

3. Gratitude helps develop flourishing organizations

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

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

4. Gratitude increases goal attainment

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

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

5. Gratitude increases personal wellbeing

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

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

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

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

Further reading

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

Other Resources

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

See more about Positive Emotions in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

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

Proof that brains are more efficient than computers

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

 The importance of goals to decision-making

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

Brains are oddly efficient

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

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

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

How do these principles translate into organizations?

 Drain batteries slowly

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

Save space

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

Save bandwidth

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

Have goals

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

Message for leaders

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

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking articles in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

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