Can we take positivity too far?

Many years ago, there was a period of dislocation in my work life and I was suddenly scrabbling to relaunch my independent career with no work on the horizon. At the time we had very little savings and I was the main earner for our household of four. I was feeling worried and anxious.

A friend, who lived abroad, was briefly in the country and we had a chance to catch up. She asked how I was, and I started to explain my financial worries and work concerns. Abruptly she cut across me to say, ‘But when you’re working you earn good money, right?’

I can only assume this was meant make me feel better, but it had the opposite effect. I felt like I’d been slapped across the face and got the clear message that she wasn’t interested in hearing about my feelings and problems. It being clear that I wasn’t going to get the sympathetic hearing I was seeking, I moved the conversation on. But I never forgot the experience, it hurt.

When this happened, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what had gone wrong, given that her comment was, relatively speaking, correct. I didn’t know how to name what had happened, but I can now identify it as an experience of ‘toxic positivity.’

Toxic Positivity

Toxic positivity insists on ‘looking on the bright side’ but in a way that is disconnected from the current context, that dismisses the validity of someone’s current feelings in favour of a demand that they have ‘happy emotions.’

As well as doing it to others we can do it to ourselves, feeling we have to be positive about everything all the time. This can spill into a belief that we have to deny feelings that are difficult to deal with such as anger and hurt, that we should be happy all the time and at if we aren’t, something is wrong.

In his recent book Sukhvinder Pabial examines how our awareness of the many benefits of positivity, and desire to help people experience positivity, can, through a misinterpretation of the idea of positivity and abuse of the idea, spill over into toxic positivity and more.

The Positive Continuum model

This model (reprinted with the author, Sukhvinder Pabial’s permission) starts by identifying how when we are working effectively with positivity, events can be helpfully reframed in a more positive way, creating motivation and inspiration and enabling people to move on.

A lot of coaching works to reframe like this. The hurt or difficult situation is acknowledged, and empathy demonstrated, before a sensitive attempt is made to help the person start to look at the situation differently. Importantly, this helping isn’t based on ‘telling’ people there is a silver lining, but by helping them to find, see or create such for themselves. Appreciative Inquiry works at a similar way for coaching and larger systems.

Toxic positivity by contrast is defined as ‘uncalled for solutions and lack of empathy,’ which characterises the response of my friend to my situation. While it might arise because someone is short on empathy, I wonder whether this behaviour is sometimes exhibited by people, perhaps aspiring practitioners, who have grasped a general message about how ‘feeling good is good for you’, but lack the skills to apply it in a given situation.

Relentless Positivity

Sukhvinder extends the model to identify yet another positivity position, that of ‘relentless positivity’ which is ‘persistent and unregulated positivity’.

There was a fad a while back for organizations to issue statements such as ‘there is no such word as “can’t” in this organization!’ This would be an example of a culture of relentless positivity. Bad news is just unacceptable and not heard. As Sukhvinder explains, it is pushed back against with ‘we have to make this happen’, and ‘we must find solutions’ type statements.

There is a fantastic example of this: the film documentary of the fiasco of a the Fyre festival: FYRE: the greatest party that never happened. For those who haven’t yet seen it, the organiser resists all the attempts of experienced festival organisers to highlight various problems and issues that need to be addressed, insisting everything will work. He resists all attempts to call off the festival in good time to limit the PR damage and in the event nothing works and it’s a disaster, so he ends up cancelling it so late some guests have already arrived. That is relentless positivity in action.

I have occasionally come across an organisational culture that demonstrates relentless positivity in another way where its just not permissible to have, or to acknowledge in others, difficult feelings. You could call it happy, clappy. This type of culture makes it very hard to have reconciling and healing conversations as the feelings that need to be named and addressed to affect restoration of a relationship can’t be acknowledged in the first place!

The time continuum

These positions are represented across a timeframe. So ‘reframing’ is a specific activity in a specific context. Toxic positivity can be a repeated, habitual way of responding when others experience problems and difficulties, while relentless positivity is a sustained culture or way of behaving that denies the possibility of the non-positive outcome.

As our awareness of the benefits of positivity grows, along with our eagerness to help everyone benefit from experiencing positivity, I find this model very useful in alerting us to the dangers of unthinking and unregulated attempts to ‘be positive’ or to inject positivity into a situation.

My thanks to Sukhvinder for his insights into this interesting area. The model and diagram come from his excellent and highly recommended book The Resilience Handbook, available from our online store.

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Thought Provoking’ 

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

Money for old rope - so why am I exhausted?

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

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

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

The Graeber hypothesis

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

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

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

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

Your job should seem necessary, if only to you

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

References

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

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

How to add life to your years

Mae West famously suggested that it’s not the ‘men in your life’ you need to worry about so much as ‘the life in your men; and as the celebration of another birthday reminds me that more of my life is behind than in front of me, I feel I’d be wise to focus on ‘the life left in my years’ rather than the ‘years left in my life’. And so, I turn to George Valliant for advice.

Valliant has been a key researcher in the Study of Adult Development. This study has tracked 100s of white, American college men since the 1940s, and a similar group of Inner-city men (i.e. different class, culture etc.) tracked since they were school children in the 1950s. Reporting research conducted when the men were in their 70s or 80s, he asks, ‘What predicts a good quality of life, as subjectively and objectively defined, at that age?’

Factors that don’t predict good quality of later life

Interestingly Valliant identifies six factors that, contrary to popular belief, are NOT shown by this study to have any impact of the chances of being classified as Happy-Well at 70 or 80, rather as than Sad-Sick, Prematurely Dead (died after age 50 but before general life expectancy) or Intermediate (neither definitely Happy-well nor definitely Sad-sick, but still definitely alive!). 

·     Ancestral Longevity

·     Cholesterol

·     Parental Social Class

·     Warm Childhood Environment

·     Stable Childhood Temperament

·     Stress

Since these are things we have little control over, their lack of influence on the quality of our old age is good news. Also good news is the fact that the factors that do make a difference are within our control. The less good news (for those of us who are older already) is that these predictive factors need to be in place by age 50 to affect quality of life 30 years later.

Factors that do predict good quality of later life

The factors that are shown to positively predict Happy-Well status at 70 or 80 are:

·     Not smoking or stopping young (best to stop before 45)

·     Mature defences adaptive Coping style. This essentially means you use on ‘all about the other’ coping mechanisms such as altruism, sublimation, suppression or stoicism, and humour, rather than ‘all about me’ mechanisms such as passive aggression, dissociation, projections, fantasy, or acting out, when coping with adversity. Or, as Valliant says, to put it another way you are good at turning lemons into lemonade and not turning molehills into mountains when dealing with the slings and arrows of life.

·     Absence of Alcohol Abuse – e.g. alcohol not causing multiple problems with family, law or life.

·     Healthy Weight – BMI between 22-28

·     Stable marriage – without divorce, separation or serious problems 

·     Exercise. - that burns more that 500 Kilocalories per week, regularly

·     Many years of education - Interestingly this isn’t about the correlation with social class so much as an apparent association with increased self-care, future orientation and perseverance.

Of the first six, at least four need to be present at 50 to reap the benefits 20 to 30 years later.

Unfortunately, we are all subject to the whims of bad luck: being stuck by lightening, injured by the stupidity of others, crippled in an accident, or derailed by malignant genes. So, no guarantees. 

This is undoubtedly a terrific and valuable study, the question for many of us, of course, is how generalisable it is across gender and ethnicity, culture and class? Even so, for now I’ll gamble that it is and be cautiously optimistic that there will be ‘life in my years’ yet.

Most of this is taken from George Valliant’s chapter on Positive Ageing in Positive Psychology in Practice (Joseph, 2015 2ndedition)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. That planning makes things happen

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

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

5. That change is universally disliked and resisted

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

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

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

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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