Some Challenges Posed by Hybrid Working and How We Can Meet Them

Hybrid working, for many a necessity induced by lockdown, is rapidly becoming a work pattern of choice for the future. Goldman Sachs are one of the few organizations so far to have declared against the trend with their boss David Solomon rejecting the idea of remote working, labelling it an “aberration”. The more common view seems to be that the working pattern has changed for good. Google, for example, expects 20% of staff to work from home permanently in future, while Microsoft is to make remote working a permanent option. This shift towards more flexible working patterns poses some tough questions for managers and leaders.

How is it being done?

1.     Who gets to work in a hybrid way?

An educational organisation I know identified this as a key question as staff began to return to working on the campus after the year of home based working. Each function’s stakeholders had different expectations of instant access, face-to-face contact. It was clear that the same offer of hybrid working couldn’t be made to all staff. How to decide? Nationwide answered this dilemma earlier this year, saying that the 13,000 of its staff who do not work in branches would be allowed to work from wherever they wanted, making for a very clear two-tier role-based system driven by a need for customer access. Is this a fair way to decide? Will staff agree? Which raises a key challenge, whatever route forward is decided, how to ensure it is fair?

2.     How to make it fair?

We know that people’s experience of working from home during lockdown has been highly variable. Some have really appreciated it while for others it’s been a seemingly endless struggle of juggling demands and battling technology. Estate agents report that many people have moved out of the city centres, thrilled at green spaces and lower rents while others, it seems, have experienced extreme pressure on their mental health from isolation or family pressures, and can’t wait to get back to the order and sociability of office life. Any system that assumes the impact of a move to permanent hybrid working is the same for everyone, is unlikely to be perceived as fair.

3.     What will the impact be for the organization?

The big advantages of everyone coming into a central working space tend to be relative ease of communication and information flow (I did say relative!). It is easy to reconfigure the network as needed: call everyone together, split them into small groups, create ad hoc spaces for people to meet and congregate. In this way information snippets get passed on while relationships are stoked and nurtured. Virtual platforms do their best, but they are not the same. The hybrid organization will have to pay special attention to the challenges of connection and communication. It is very easy for those remote from the buzzing centre to miss out on accidental conversations and to quickly feel they’re out of the loop. Once they start feeling disconnected, they can quickly start disconnecting.

4.     How to ensure equality of access to opportunity?

Many of the benefits and perks of working can involve being in the right place at the right time to seize an opportunity, whether that’s an opening to meet a client, a chance to go to a trade show, or an invitation to give a presentation at a meeting. If you hear your colleague or boss fretting about being unable to be in two places at once, you can make the offer to help out. Face to face training sessions often have incidental network boosting benefits that can be nurtured and developed in the coffee break. We can beam colleagues in for the training but enabling them to roam freely in the breaks is impossible to replicate. How to ensure that the more remote workers don’t become out of sight, out of mind when a career-enhancing opportunity arises unexpectedly?

5.     How to ensure hybrid-working doesn’t become hybrid-washing?

It’s no secret that large organizations have spotted a money saving opportunity. HSBC, the UK’s biggest bank, is moving to a hybrid model and plans to cut its property footprint by as much as 40% in the long term, while Lloyds Banking Group has said it will bring in working from home as a permanent lifestyle change, allowing it to cut 20% of its office space. Who will benefit from these savings? It is important that organizations are honest that their motivations to elevate hybrid working from an emergency fix to a modus operandi are multiple and varied and not solely driven by a desire to increase flexibility for staff, if they want the initiative to maintain credibility.

6.     How will the organization continue to develop?

There has been a move over the last thirty odd years to recognize organizations as systems and to work with them as such. Approaches such as Appreciative Inquiry and Dialogic OD are predicated on the benefits of getting the whole system together to address development challenges and opportunities as an inter-connected, inter-dependent living system. How can this be done if people aren’t able to gather in the same physical space?

What helps?

1.     Pay attention to perceptions of fairness

Equity theory and research has made it plain that perception of fairness is key to feeling fairly treated; and that are perceptions of fairness are made by comparison by those around us. We compare what we put and what we get in return against what we see others put in and receive. We also value different things, and so experience their loss or gain differently. My son, who regards work as a necessary evil and values his leisure time highly, had to continue to go into work during lockdown and thought it mightily unfair that many of his mates were on furlough. Many of them though, were bored and lonely, drifting from day to day and would rather have been busy with work. All this means that while stakeholder expectations might dictate who can work away from the central office, attention will need to be paid to the specific impact for individuals. The greater the choice individuals have in accepting changes in their working patterns, the more individual preferences can be accommodated, and the greater the attention paid to perceptions of fairness, then the greater the likelihood of maintaining good motivation and morale.

2.     Make the shift from thinking of physical place to virtual space for development activities

One of the big adjustments for organisational development practitioners was how to run team development, training sessions or organisational change processes in an online environment.  We gathered and shared information on resources and apps and learnt that it was different, but it could be done. Consultant Gwen Stirling-Wilkins moved from thinking that bringing groups together to host and facilitate transformative change was unlikely to be productive, or effective, to writing a book about her experiences of successfully doing just this, leading and delivering a transformational project entirely online with 600+ people from five organizations, none of whom she ever met physically. Her book ‘From Physical Place to Virtual Space’ pulls together all her learning as a pioneer and is highly recommended.

3.     Make use of new online tools to enhance the online environment

There is an explosion of apps attempting to humanise the virtual workspace. From a psychology perspective I want to mention Deckhive, an online training app that has a fantastic and growing set of cards to support all sorts of training and development activity. The card sets include strengths, positive organisational development, motivation, creativity, coaching questions and emotions. They are useful for online coaching, performance reviews, career counselling, team development, training sessions and even organisational development. Moving, flipping and sorting cards on a virtual tabletop is as near as you can get to physically manipulating cards. I find it invaluable in making training sessions as experiential as possible.

4.     Pay attention to the rewards in the environment

There are rewards associated with social environments: smiles, verbal strokes (appreciation, thanks, compliments), shared laughter, physicality, shared non-verbal communication (winks, raised eyebrows, complicit smiles), acts of generosity (‘oh I’ll get these’ at the coffee bar). All these little incidental ‘blips’ of positive emotion have an effect on our sense of mood, wellbeing and morale. It is this continuous drip-feed of mood boosting interactions that is difficult to replicate in a virtual environment. Conscious effort needs to be made to introduce jokes, quizzes, rounds of positive news sharing and other mood boosting and rewarding activities into the online environment. And take a ten-minute break every fifty minutes minimum, if you want to maintain online energy.

5.     Review and revise

For many organizations going hybrid so extensively is going to be a new experience. Treat it as an experiment. Don’t assume you are going to get, or have got, it right first time. As the pressure on everyone to work from home all the time lessens, take time to discover what you, as an organization, have learnt so far about what works and what doesn’t. Plan how to build on that, then review how the new arrangements are working for everyone after six months: is the work pattern working for clients and stakeholders? Does the new work pattern feel fair? Is everyone getting fair exposure to opportunity? How are the work patterns impacting the organization (look for the unexpected consequences, good and bad) How are they impacting individual, team and organisational growth and development?

The shift over the last twelve months to hybrid working patterns has been emergency driven and ad hoc in execution. We have the opportunity now, as the ship steadies, of transforming them into intentional, strategic, thought-through beneficial ways of working that offer a win-win for people and the organization. This won’t happen by accident or by assuming what’s worked for the last twelve months will be good enough for the next. Instead we need to take stock, learn, re-negotiate the possible and launch pro-active plans that recognize the complexity of the opportunity, and the challenges it holds.

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Positive Psychology in Business’ ‘Positive Psychology at Work’, ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ and most recently ‘Co-creating Planning Teams For Dialogic OD’. 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 ‘Coronavirus’

Boosting your resilience and adaptability

Lockdown is easing, but that doesn’t mean we are going back to normal. We need to think instead of ourselves as moving forward in to a new normal. This new normal involves living with the reality of coronavirus: a winter surge is predicted by many experts. Navigating this new normal will take resilience and adaptability.

What helps us be more resilient and adaptable?

Resilience can be defined as having the resources, mental, physical or experience-based, to cope with unexpected, difficult or adverse situations. 

Being adaptable means being able to flex our expectations and behaviour when circumstances change.

For both resilience and adaptability, being resourceful is key.

How can we discover and expand our resourcefulness to boost our resilience and adaptability?

Our resourcefulness is boosted by both personal and contextual factors.

Personal resources

Our Strengths

One of our biggest sources of personal resources is our own unique strengths. Strengths are the attributes that are at the heart of our best self. They are the things that are natural for us to do and that seem easy to us. We each have our own set of strengths.

It’s important to know our own strengths as using them boosts our confidence and gives us energy, allowing us to recover more quickly from setbacks. We are likely to solve a problem better if the solution uses our strengths.

Our workshop Understanding our strengths and how they help  with resilience will help you identify your strengths and how to use them to boost your resilience

Our previous experiences

Sometimes, when we are stressed or anxious it is hard to believe that we can cope, we feel so helpless right now. In this situation, it can be really helpful to remember other times when we did cope, when we got through a tricky situation or when we turned a situation around. Being in the grip of the present can prevent us from accessing resources from the past: our knowledge, our skills, our experience. Appreciative Inquiry is a change process that is built on the understanding that resources from the past can help us in the present and in the future.

Our workshop Enhance your adaptability to increase your resilience will introduce you to Appreciative Inquiry as a way of increasing our adaptability.

Boosting our resilience by building our HERO abilities

Our HERO ability made up of our states of hopefulness, optimism, resilience and confidence (efficacy). Add these four things together and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In other words, although resilience is part of our HERO abilities, it is also boosted if we can boost our sense of hope, optimism and confidence.

Our workshop Extending our resilience by boosting our HERO abilities will help you identify your own HERO abilities and how to use them to boost your resilience.

Social resources

Our social networks extend our resourcefulness. Our network contains people who find easy what we find hard. They can be a source of inspiration, uplift, practical advice, useful contacts and many other resources that help us cope. Exchange your strengths across your network.

And at work?

Organisational resilience is about all of the above, and, about social capital. The social capital of an organization reflects its connectedness. It’s about how easily information flows around the organization and how much trust there is. Both these factors make it much easier for organizations to be resilient and to adapt quickly. These positive organizational development cards have lots of information about the features of the best organizations

Our  workshop Boosting our organizational resilience will help you identify ways to boost organisational resilience

A few quick tips for boosting your resilience and adaptability in the new normal

• Follow safety instructions, but more importantly, understand the principles and apply them in different situations so you can be active in keeping yourself safe

• Manage your energy and look after yourself. Having to suddenly adapt our behaviour means we can’t run on habitual lines, so it takes more energy even if you seem to be achieving less. Go easy on yourself, adjust your expectations and standards

• Re-prioritise, and then do it again when things change again. It’s very easy to assume the priorities stay the same even as the situation changes. They don’t. So take the time to think about what the highest priorities are now, in this situation within these constraints, with these resources.

• Redefine your goals so you can succeed in the new situation. This is very important.

• Create and recreate structure for yourself. Structure really helps because it reduces decision-making, which is taxing. So keep evolving new structures to your day or your life as things change.

If you are interested in learning more about resilience and adaptability, we are running 4 three-hour live virtual development workshops on the subject. You can also access a video interview of two psychologists talking about resilience both generally and at work.

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Coronavirus’

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.

The Habits of Highly Creative People

I have recently been reading ‘Daily Rituals’ by Mason Currey. He has collected together short accounts of the daily rituals of some well-known creative people, past and present. His collection includes writers, philosophers, artists and composers. Most are male and white. It makes interesting reading and I thought I would distil my observations from it for you. I’m not sure how, if at all, it relates to positive psychology but perhaps you will be able to find a connection?

1. Most have strict routines, a few more of a binge pattern

2. Most are early risers, some are not

3. Not a few get up and work for a few hours during the night, dividing their daily sleep into two distinct segments

4.Almost all emphasis the power of graft and routine over muses and inspiration

5. Most are men

6. A high proportion seem to have someone to ‘do’ for them. Particularly preparing food. Many are woken at ungodly hours with a cup of something by someone who regularly gets up even earlier to perform this service.

7. An alarming number use stimulants ranging from excessive amounts of coffee to amphetamines

8. A high number include an hour or more’s walk in their daily routine

9.  Most have a daily goal of input (number of hours sat at desk) or output (number of words or pages)

10. Almost all had a quiet space, separate from the living space

11. Despite living the life of a monk, many had friends willing to fit into the two hours a day put aside for such frivoliites

12. Many describe the agony and the estascy of the creative life. Most experience the creative process as hard, for a few it seemed not so.

13. Some induced health problems through their dedication to the creative life

14. Few are satisfied with what they achieve

What I take from this is.

·     All books are written one word at a time

·     That a little done every day adds up

·     Habits of work trump moments of inspiration

·     That no one ever said the creative life was easy

And that the ability to organise a life free from alarums, anxieties, disruptions and the general mess of the human condition helps createconditions conducive to concerted concentration. Oh and that having someone to ‘do’ all the boring bits of maintaining body and soul (shopping, cooking, cleaning etc.) helps create time.

Choices must be made and habits formed.

So what’s your excuse?

Love to hear your views on positive psychology and creativity, organisational life and creativity, modern life and creativity, gender and creativity.

What would you advice a young person keen to engage on the life creative?

10 Top tips for keeping up morale

Many of us are having to manage more anxiety than normal, as well as drastic changes in our daily lives. There are two key principles which it is useful to bear in mind: Managing anxiety takes mental strength and energy, and, that the state of our morale affects the state of our immune system. (At this point I have to say this doesn’t mean that anyone who becomes ill wasn’t positive enough. Absolutely not. Rather just that we know that keeping our spirits up is important to supporting our immune system. It’s not a guarantee of perfect health!)

Bearing these two key things in mind, here are ten tips for managing anxiety and keeping your spirits up

1.      Count your blessings

The new science of positive psychology has proved the benefits of the old adage of, when you are feeling low, counting your blessings. The exercise they have designed is known as the ‘three good things’ exercise. At the end of each day, identify three good things that have happened during the day. It’s good practice to write them down. Doing this regularly helps train your brain to look for the positives amongst the gloom, to find the silver linings if you like. For instance today in the paper there was a report on the positive effect of the lockdown for wildlife.

2.      Reasons to be cheerful

In addition, you might like to think each day of a good outcome of the current crisis- a reason to be cheerful. I’ve been doing this and putting them out on twitter. Today mine is going to be: Lockdown means chance of being hit by a bus – zero!

3.      Gallows humour

Which brings me to my next tip, the use of humour, specifically ‘gallows’ humour. I worked as a social worker in child protection for many years. Gallows humour was crucial for getting us through the sadder and tougher times. It exists for a reason. To make the unbearable bearable, to restore functionality quickly when a collapse into despair isn’t helpful. Be aware it doesn’t travel; it is very specific to the moment. And some people appreciate it more than others. Laughing in the face of death is a well-known coping mechanism, it works for me in small doses. Laughter reduces threats to size.

4.      Humour generally

There is lots of evidence that laughing is good for us and for our immune system. Whatever rocks your funny bone. Remember, this all may be no laughing matter, but, also, we don’t have to be solemn to be serious. Laughing is a good coping mechanism

5.      Managing your news feed

We are being offered 24-hour, worldwide updates. Following all this is not likely to do you any good. You can’t influence things other than by taking the sensible precautions we’ve all been told about. So take positive control and  limit your daily diet. Personally I read the paper rather than watch the news. One benefit of this is that there is less ‘emotional contagion’ from the page than from a person, so less transmission of anxiety. I listen to classic FM rather than my usual preference of Radio Four. I leave the room when dear beloved is getting his evening fix of doom and gloom from the evening TV news.

6.      Have a worry half-hour

This is a time-honoured technique of ‘allowing’ yourself a specific allotted time to worry as much as you like. So if you need to, spend 15 to 30 minutes allowing yourself to name all your worries. Write them in a ‘dear diary’ if you have no one at home. Or arrange a mutual strictly focused and time limited phone call with another ‘worrywart’. And when your time is up, stop, close that box and move on with your day knowing you have another half hour of worry time allocated tomorrow. With any luck doing this will reduce the likelihood of doing your worrying in the small wee hours, which is the worst possible time to do it.

7.      Get into flow

Find things to do that ‘take you out of yourself’. When we are completely absorbed in things we are in a state of ‘flow’ and when we are in this state we are not focused on our feelings. It’s like getting a holiday from your worried self. For me writing, gardening, and complicated cooking (or these days ‘creating from what we have got to hand’) all offer me productive escape time. This is usually more effective than mindless TV watching (where half your brain is still ticking along thinking about it all). A good, complex film though, is a different matter.

8.      Eat well and exercise

You are no longer at the mercy of the snack bars, train trolleys, airline catering etc. as you skedaddle from one place to another. Make the most of it to eat healthily. Lots of fruit and vegetables are good for immune system. Exercise is very important to both mental and physical health. You know the rules about keeping your distance. Put your face mask on and get out there and yomp for an hour somewhere green.

9.      Phone a friend

Social contact is another thing that is very important to our wellbeing. I am fortunate that I am marooned with dear beloved. Even so, I am resolved to talk on the phone to at least one person who isn’t him every day. You might want to talk about the situation, that’s fine. However, I would suggest you also ask them about their plans for the day, what they are hoping to achieve during this period of lockdown. In other words, try to help them see a silver lining. Ideally you will both come away from the phone call feeling slightly better not even worse!

10.  Have longer-term projects on the go

‘Wise people’, someone once said ‘prepare for the worse while hoping for the best’. Once you’ve done what you can to prepare for the worse, then turn your energy to hoping for the best. Starting projects suggests an optimism about the future that becomes self-reinforcing. Uncertainty can act to paralyse us. By pro-actively starting a project we can break out of that paralysis. The hardest part is getting started, but one you do it will draw you forward. Apart from total house rearrangement, I’ve started a new tapestry kit. These take me years to complete. But every evening I can admire the couple of square inches I’ve completed and feel I’m making progress.

And finally, I try to remind myself that, while Coronavirus is a new and scary threat, we live with our mortality all the time and habitually take precautions to increase our chances of staving it off. I cross at the lights, I avoid eating bad food, I get my flu jab,  etc. None of these guarantee my continued survival but they are habits that help. Our new temporary habits of social distancing, hand washing are really just more of the same.

Oh and chocolate! A little bit of chocolate with morning coffee just gives my morale a quick boost!

Stay well,

Sarah

Using Lego in Appreciative Inquiry

I recently posted some pictures on Twitter and LinkedIn of a leadership development session I ran with a colleague where we used Lego to conduct an Appreciative Inquiry. This stimulated some interest and requests for more information on what we did, so I thought I would explain in a little more detail.

On this occasion my colleague was a trained Lego Serious Play practitioner, this was beneficial as she had some unusual and very helpful Lego pieces. It is possible to buy these specialist pieces online in the Lego Serious Play shop, however they are not necessary for the purposes of Appreciative Inquiry.

I have used Lego in Appreciative Inquiry sessions many times using a big box of Lego bits that were once my sons’ spaceships and pirate boats. The usual assortment of bricks, bases, people, maps, treasure-chests and the like, that accumulate in any Lego-using household, is perfectly adequate.

Here’s how I use Lego in Appreciative Inquiry

Before we start the Appreciative Inquiry process proper, I ask the participants to construct a model that is a representation of how things are now. So, for instance on one occasion, a person who was on a project team, but only part-time, chose to include a boat with figures at either end looking in opposite directions. This conveyed very clearly his sense of being pulled in two directions by his change-project manager and his business-as-usual manager.

We then do the Discovery process as usual. As we move to the Dream stage I ask them to create another model of ‘how things could be’, using their discovery conversations as a springboard to imagine this future state. Depending on context I may suggest they do this as individuals or as a group.

This means that as we come to the Design and Destiny elements of the process, they have both an ‘as is’ model and an ‘aspirational model’. So now I can ask people ‘How did this (the as usual model), become this (the aspirational model)? At which point people start moving or removing or adding bits of kit. Questions like, ‘What is that you’ve just taken off?’ encourages them to tell the story of change. For instance, someone might say, ‘Well this is all the stuff that gets in the way, the silly restrictions that mean we can’t do our job properly.’ To which you might say, ‘Tell me more, what sort of things are you thinking of?’ or, ‘Tell me how you got rid of them?’ or ‘What difference does removing that piece make?’

Fun yes, but it’s about helping people articulate a hopeful story

Obviously, the questions you ask, or encourage participants to ask each other, are context dependent, but the ambition is always to help people articulate a story of change; a story of how they got from there (the present) to here (the future). Once such a story has been constructed in the imagination like this, it exists as a possibility that can then be developed, questioned, robustly tested for feasibility etc. But until we have created such an account through the use of imagination and metaphor, it can be hard to articulate as a lived, grounded, hope-fuelled feasible course of action.

There are many ways of helping people articulate their inspirational futures and their story of change. Lego is particularly challenging to heave around which means that, if I’m travelling on public transport to an assignment, I often chose to use something else. However, when I am in a position to use it, I find there is something about the very tangible and concrete actions of manipulating a Lego model that can be a very powerful generator of hope, and of a belief that change really is possible.

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

More blog posts categorised as ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ and ‘Events/Workshops’

Appreciative Inquiry: working with a system in sections

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

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

How will it work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inherent issues with this approach

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

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

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

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

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

Some ideas of ways forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflections on the discussion

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

Other Resources

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

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

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

Nuggets from The Positive Psychology in Practice Conference in Utrecht 24-25 October 2019

When I return from a conference, I like to pull out the key nuggets of learning. Here are some from my two days in Utrecht last week.

·     1 in 6 professionals are suffering from elements of burnout. Happiness is made up of Connections, Actions and Recharge. It could be the lack of one or more of these contributes to burnout.

·     With other people we laugh 30x more often than when we are our own.

·     Patrick Van Hees

·     1/3 of medics burnout

·      Salmaan Sana

·     The behaviour of people says something about them, not you

·     Top three positive emotions – comfortable, satisfied, energised

·     Top three negative emotions- frustrated, stressed, anxious

·     Titia Niehorster

·     The brain perceives negative self-judgement as a form of threat, and the brain doesn’t distinguish real from imagined.

·      Toni Jarlstrom

·     Of every 20 people not going into work for mental ill health reasons, only 1 tells the truth

·     In the UK there is a suicide every 2 hours

·     Gratitude, Connection, Awe, Vulnerability and Authenticity all impact on wellbeing

·      Vikki Barnes

·     In coaching you get client / coach attunement through synchronicity of body movement. Synchronicity at a non-verbal level impacts on client levels of safety. While the client has the capacity to influence how the coach shows up. This attunement happens as a subconscious level.

·     Tunde’s research in the area is really interesting

·     Tunde Erdos

·     Happiness is an inside job

·     Compassion is the giving part of empathy

·     Dr Randall Birnberg

·     We are 500% more productive when we are in flow. We are 340% more effective at problem solving when we are in flow. Knowledge workers are the most likely to experience flow.

·     In flow, the prefrontal cortex shuts down inessential functions to focus, inner our self- consciousness: the inner critic is silenced

·      Donna Churchman

·     The pillars of happiness: Pleasure (the hedonistic layer), Purpose (the durable meaning pillar), Getting Results, Flow and Relationships

·      Dr Ron de Jong

·     The RAW model of flourishing – Resilience, Achievement, Wellbeing

·     Miriam Akhtar

·     Children laugh 300x a day, adults 15.

·      Bente Adriaens

·     Six factor model of wellbeing: personal growth, purpose in life, environmental mastery, autonomy, positive relationship with others, self-acceptance.

·     Moving from a Doer to a Leader involves including delegation, vision, asking for help, sel- awareness, thinking with Doing in your leadership circle of time and activity.

·      Odile Carru

·     If we numb ourselves against ‘difficult’ emotions then we numb all emotional responsiveness, we can’t be selective

Nathalie Marcinkowski

Is Mindfulness the new opium of the masses?

This seems to be what Ronald Purser is suggesting in his book McMindfulness. It’s an interesting read with some impressive statistics about the size of the Mindfulness industry ($4 billion anyone?), an account of its development and some nice juicy gossip about some of the insiders.

What I want to pull out is the bare bones of his critique of the industry. It is perhaps important to note that he happily acknowledges that practicing mindfulness can have benefit. Indeed he himself is a practicing Buddhist. What he objects to is the argument that teaching people one by one to be mindful, stripped out from its spiritual trappings, will somehow make the world a better place. He describes this belief as ‘Magical thinking on steroids.’ Rather he suggests that mindfulness practice acts as a band-aid to help people survive the difficult work and societal conditions many live under in our neoliberal economies. Here’s the gist of the critique.

• By decoupling the practice of mindfulness from its spiritual roots and home of Buddhism, the modern mindfulness industry has jettisoned the ethical dimension to the practice. This cultural appropriation and mutilation leaves, he suggests, nothing more than basic concentration training. There seems to be a fond belief that ‘ethical behaviour will arise ‘naturally’ from practice.’ He suggests there is no evidence as yet of this.

• The faith that, as CEO’s practice mindfulness, there will be a trickle-down effect on the world, so it will become a better, kinder, nicer place is somewhat misplaced and not supported by any evidence. He says

‘Trickle-down mindfulness, like trickle-down economics, is a cover for the maintenance of power.’

• There is a colourful, impressive-looking plethora of neuro-science brain pictures produced to support the pitch that this new improved stripped-down version of ‘pure mindfulness practice’ is strictly science-based; no dodgy dippy-hippy or God-embracing beliefs here, thank you, this is a strictly secular, science-backed methodology. The neuro-science, he argues, effectively obscures the very weak research base to support an argument of effectiveness.

• As the mindfulness industry has grown, so have the overblown claims of what it can be good for, including that it is especially effective at reducing anxiety, depression and stress. One of the 0.25% of 18,00 odd studies that actually reached decent scientific research standards concluded,  ‘that mindfulness was moderately effective at treating a variety of conditions, but no more effective than other active treatments such as drugs or exercise.’

• Mindfulness is now a big business like many others and suffers from the same challenges of staying ethical in a monetary world. He favourably compares Kabat-Zinn’s business prowess to that of McDonalds.

• The stripped downness of the technique, which is it’s USP and key selling point, renders it acontextual, which, amongst other things, means that the known counter-indicators aren’t always adhered too. Mindfulness training in contra-indicated for those who have suffered trauma or are suffering PTSD. Criteria for exclusion include depression, social anxiety, psychosis, and suicidal tendencies. Are all school groups screened? Does anyone check in work-place programme roll-outs?

• This is all occurring in a context where ‘Stress has been pathologized..., and the burden of managing it outsourced to individuals.’ Mindfulness training holds the promise of helping people deal better with stress. This in itself is part of an interesting large debate emerging about the whole ‘Me Inc.’ culture where we are all encouraged to focus on shining up every aspect of our self-care to produce a better me. So we can work harder, faster, longer without burning up. He says

‘Mindfulness-based interventions fulfil this purpose by therapeutically optimising individuals to make them ‘mentally fit’, attentive and resilient so they may keep functioning within the system.’

•  And, most damningly of all, he argues that the academic-science mindfulness complex is a servant of neoliberalism. That rather than encouraging people to challenge overwork, underpay, or  insecure,  or dangerous work; or any other form of workplace stress, it instead helps people put up with it. Mindfulness advocates, he argues, are providing support to the status quo; he criticises this stance: ‘the political naïveté involved is stunning’. But its’ adherents believe it is an apolitical practice. He doesn’t explicit say this, but I read it as, in effect, it is tolerated, indeed positively embraced, by organizations because it supports the status quo.

 What particularly interests me I suppose, is that some of these criticisms, if not all of them, can be extended to the whole positive psychology field.

 I believe we have a moral obligation to recognize that we work in a political, economic and social context. I don’t believe big organizations or corporations to be inherently bad, but I do believe that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that very good people can, like the proverbial frog, find themselves doing very bad things if the conditions are right. We must be on our guard against a complacent belief that, because we believe ourselves to be good people, we are incapable of doing harm.

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking and Book Review articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

What does ‘Evidence based practice’ mean for practitioners in the field?

Are you a practitioner, keen to practice in an evidence-based way but with little time to keep up with the research? Maybe you find scientific papers unreadable? Or perhaps you support the aim in principle, but find it hard to set up gold-standard science-based evaluations of your interventions with your clients? You are not alone.

Psychology, following medicine and other applied disciplines, has become very keen on the idea of evidence-based practice. And I’m all for it, in principle: it’s a hard idea to argue against. I religiously peruse the contents page of the academic journals that thud onto my doormat, rarely finding a title that gets my juices going. I thought the failing was mine, until I  read Joanna Wilde’s book ‘The Social Psychology of Organizations’.

In this book she brilliantly explains how ‘scientific knowledge’ and ‘helping practice’ relate to each other. She suggests it is somewhat optimistic to hope that laboratory methods and facts can be just plonked down in the field and have positive impact; rather, there is a translation process involved if we are to get the best from the research.  

Exploring this further Joanna mounts a spirited defence of the evidence-base that practitioners can call upon; an evidence base that is different, but no less valid, than the science evidence base.

We are not scientists, we have to problem solve not experiment

She offers a number of interesting ideas to help us be evidence-based in our practice in complex system fields.

• She notices that we are in a subtly different business to science: we aren’t seeking primarily to establish knowledge, we are primarily seeking to help. We are working in a different context to different ends to scientists.

• Given this, the intervention is judged  by impact, and not by the facts it generates. This shifts the focus of the evaluation question subtly from ‘does it work?’ to ‘does it help?’

• Our practice is client-centric, not knowledge-accumulation-centric. She suggests that practice is the process by which knowledge from one situation is converted into a different form designed to be effective for the particular situation at hand. The situation at hand  often being a WICKED problem.

• A WICKED problem is defined as ‘a complex problem that is evolving and can not be completely solved.’ WICKED problems offer a sharp contrast to  the type of bounded problem required in scientific work. What works in one context may not work in another, and what can be tightly investigated in one context may not be trackable in another. The practice is specific to the context.

• She notes that in contrast to conducting experiments, what practitioners do is

o   Engage with WICKED problems, with an awareness of problem mutation

o   Access and use a wide range of evidence from multiple sources

o   Work in relationships

o   Design interventions, monitoring emergence, enabling course correction

o   Focus on the impact in context

• She suggests that field knowledge is based on broad observation and ‘evidence by experience’. Our evidence base exists, but it extends beyond experimental results.

• Some examples of ‘immediate and evolving  (sources of ) evidence’ that are field specific include:

  • Emerging events in talk and context

  • Practitioner experience and authentic intuition

  • Stakeholder comments

In other words, we are cognisant of data emerging in the moment and attempt to form hypothesis of ‘what is going on here?’ against which we can select our possible next action.

We are not detached observers

This is a key difference: how we engage with and work with our clients is key to our practice. Scientists, on the other hand, generally work to keep themselves out of the science. We, or at least I, am well aware that I am monitoring the effectiveness of my practice almost on a moment to moment basis. In my head I have a set of criteria against which I am evaluating the conversation: is it moving productively forward? Is it enhancing or at least not damaging relationships? Are they ‘hearing’ what I’m saying? am I ‘getting’ what they are saying? And of course fundamentally ‘does this seem to be making a positive difference? Is it helping the situation?’

Sadly the answer to these questions isn’t always yes. But that’s ok because I can try something else. After all as Wilde so succinctly note, ‘Intervention practice requires the capacity to work in real time with uncertainty.’ And ‘For those of us that have built a career as practitioners, it is the dynamic nature of translating emerging knowledge into changing complex environments that makes the work engaging and rewarding.’ And all the while I’m building up my practice evidence base.

This isn’t to say that laboratory work isn’t valuable. It is and we need to be able to work with trust in the scientific disciples we draw from. But few of us have the time, patience or skill to critique the papers. To be honest, we rely on the academic refereed paper system to ensure that for us. We want to be able to take it and run with it. This sounds interesting, how can I apply it here? How might it help?

I love Joanna’s work and regard this book very highly. What I have presented here is a much simplified and reduced part of a much richer and more complex argument about the relationship between science and practice. If you are interested, I encourage you to invest in the book. It’s great.

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking and Book Review articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

The Benefits of Feeling Good and How to Reap Them

Emotional states are an overlooked resource in the workplace. How we feel affects how we work individually and together as well as our resilience to stress and our creativity. Unlike other resources to help our staff in these straitened times, positive emotional states are a zero-cost, renewable, source of energy. And they make a difference to those around us.

Did you know?

• That 20-30% of business performance can be determined by the mood of employees

• That back in the 1930s it was discovered that workers who experienced positive emotional states demonstrated an 8% increase in efficiency compared  to the output of workers in a negative emotional state

• That employees experiencing positive emotions are more helpful to customers, more creative, more attentive, and respectful of one another

• And that daily experience of positive emotions influences an individual’s readiness  to engage in particular organizationally beneficial behaviours (i.e. what we sometimes call organisational citizenship behaviours, beyond the constraints of our job description )

Did you also know?

• That Alice Isen and her colleagues found that positive emotions facilitated cognitive flexibility, intrinsic motivation, promoted patterns of notably unusual thought e.g. creativity, boosted receptivity to new information, and improved problem solving.

• And that furthermore, that they had an impact on social relations by facilitating inclusion, promoting helpfulness, generosity and social responsibility and reducing conflict.

• While Fredrickson and colleagues established, amongst other things, that positivity enables people to see new possibilities, bounce-back from setbacks, connect more deeply with others, and reach their potential.

So it seems feeling good can be good for us at work. In addition,

• Research highlights that resilient individuals use positive emotions in the face of adversity by finding positive meaning in ordinary events or within the event itself. This means that, even as everything looks gloomy, that can still appreciate the beauty of a sunset, or, they can extract some learning or benefit from the difficult situation if only ‘well, I won’t make that mistake again!’

• And also that, the cultivation of positive emotions such as compassion, courage, forgiveness, integrity, and optimism prevents psychological distress, addiction, and dysfunctional behaviour.

So how can we help each other feel better at work?

Cameron identified six key positive practices that correlate with reduced turnover, improved organisational effectiveness, better work environments and better relationships with management. These are: 

• Caring friendships

• Compassionate support for colleagues

• Fostering a culture of forgiveness

• Fostering respect, integrity and gratitude

• Inspiring each other at work

• Emphasis on meaningful work

In essence, how we relate to each other and how we work with each other. So how can we put that into practice?

Here are five ideas for how to create micro-boosts of positive feeling and energy

1. Sharing a joke or having a  laugh together

2. Cardio-vascular exercise, in my experience 20 minutes of swimming or circuits can do it

3. Meditation, personally l’m finding that the 55+ Pilates class induces a very zen-like state as I try to move muscles I didn’t know I had

4. Sharing a deeply meaningful conversation with a real connection, if only briefly

5. Being with your pet

And at the group level, in work

1. Asking each other positive questions; inquiring into the best of our work and steering away from the moan-fest

2. Constructively responding to each other’s good news

3. Bringing in unexpected treats (could even be healthy treats!)

4. Knowing three things about each of your colleagues’ out of work life, and finding a common point of connection

5. Celebrating everyone’s success as a group success, and group successes as everyone’s

 We can’t prevent difficult emotions like anger, jealousy, fear, stress, anxiety and so on from arising. And as has long been established they have their psychological role: calling attention to a need for help; telling us there is something we aren’t happy about that we need to address; giving us energy to stand up for ourselves, or allowing us a cathartic moment. And no one is saying we should deny, suffocate at birth or otherwise suppress these feelings. But when they have served their purpose and we need to move on, we sometimes need someone to help us do that.

 Other times, it’s just good to experience a blip of positivity, and look at all the benefit it brings.

With great thanks to Suzy Green, Michelle McQuaid, Alicia Purtell and Aylin Dulagil for much of the information above which I cribbed from their excellent chapter ‘The psychology of positivity at work’ in Lindsay Oades, Michael Steger, Antonella De Fave and Jonathon Passmore’s excellent book The psychology of positivity and strengths based approached to work’ published by Wiley Blackwell in 2017.

Other Resources

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

See more Positive Psychology articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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

Why coaching isn’t as easy as people think, and something to help

And so it has come to past that from time to time I find my self teaching groups ‘coaching skills’. Sometimes this is groups of managers, sometimes fledging professional coaches, and sometimes people with post-graduate coaching degrees or similarly impressive credentials. And yet, for all these groups, one of the hardest challenges seems to be developing the skill of asking questions rather than more tempting options like: offering solutions, giving advice, sympathising, sharing their own experience, or in some other way failing to inquire.

Inquisitive questioning - harder than it looks

Not everyone struggles, some do manage to frame questions. A lot of people have been exposed to the basic idea of the difference between open and closed questions. What people aren’t always so aware of is the difference between low information and high information questions. Without this distinction a supposedly ‘open’ question can smuggle in a clear suggestion of action for the client to engage with. This means the coach is doing the work of finding a way forward rather than the client. The coach, wittingly or otherwise, is engaging in problem-solving for the client.

Examples

‘Do you think it would be a good idea if you said something about this?’

This can be recognised as a closed question, inviting a yes or no response.

‘What do you think will happen if you say something about this?’

This is a more open question, although I can hear ‘I don’t know’ response forming in the air.

‘How about if you say something about this?’

On the surface it looks like an open question, it doesn’t invite an obvious yes or no; but look more closely and the embedded suggestion is still there.

‘I think you should say something about this, what do you think?’

Now we are clearly in the territory of advice giving.

 ‘If you say something about it, won’t that make it harder for them to do it again?’

This might still be a question, but now, as well as the embedded suggestion, we have the hypothesis that is underpinning the suggestion. In this way we are learning a lot about what the coach thinks, what sense they are making of the situation, but very little of what the client thinks. However you change the opening word or the grammar  of the sentence, as long as it still contains the phrase ‘say something about it’ you are at the very least making a suggestion and quite possibly giving advice.

Suggestions can be helpful, but be aware of what you’re doing

Shibboleths exist to be transgressed. There are plenty of occasions when making suggestions or giving advice might be a good, helpful, appropriate therapeutic move to make within the coaching relationship. I’m interested in the difficulty people can experience when they actually don’t want to make a suggestion or offer advice, so they attempt to ask questions, and yet fall into the traps above.

 This happens because it is very hard to ask a ‘content-free’ question: a question that doesn’t smuggle in the coach’s own problem solving but rather actively engages the client in finding their own way forward. And that is because we are problem-solving creatures.

The problem solving ape

We hear someone describe their problem, challenge or opportunity and ideas and emotions rush to our brain. Stimulated by what we hear, we ask ourselves how we would feel, what we would want to do, be tempted to do, feel obliged to do, who else we would tell and on our brain goes engaging with the information we are hearing. We want to attend to this information yet also bear in mind our coaching training. And many times we solve this dilemma by framing the obvious way forward that is pulsating in our mind, as a suggestion embedded in a question.

What can be done to help develop the skill of inquisitive questioning? Coaching Cubes

It seemed to me that at times, particularly perhaps when we are training coaching skills, that it might be an idea to help people with this challenge of creating content-free questions.

To this end I devised a set of coaching cubes: large squeezy coloured dice that have a content free question on each side. They are broadly based around a coaching structure that covers:

• Exploring the positive aspects of the situation

• Identifying key people

• Creating shifts in perspective

• Illuminating ideas, values and energy sources

• Creating movement and identifying first steps.

The cubes are designed to help people practice inquiry-based coaching. And they seem to work.

During the debrief at a recent workshop using the coaching cubes, a woman said, with obvious sincerity, ‘it is such a gift not to have to be thinking of the questions!’

 So, if you train coaching skills or if you want support in your practice to help you ask different sorts of questions, or if you just like the idea of having a tangible soft tool in your coaching session, please do investigate them further here, I’d love to hear what you make of them.

Other Resources

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

See more Coaching  and Positive Psychology articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their 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

A Client’s write up of an Appreciative Inquiry Event

This account of a recent one-day Appreciative Inquiry Event by Alan Brunstrom of ECSAT. He wrote it for their internal use and copied me in. I thought it gave a very good sense of the client experience and asked if I might share it on my website.

I hope you find it useful in creating a sense of how these events come about, how they are experienced, and what they can produce.

ECSAT Futures Day

On 13thFebruary ECSAT hosted a unique event, inviting everyone who works at the Centre to contribute their ideas and vision for our individual and collective futures. More than two thirds of those based here joined in, producing a wealth of proposals that also revealed a remarkable amount of shared thinking.

The day was based on the “Appreciative Enquiry” approach, which has already been used successfully by the NAV Directorate. This focuses people’s minds on positives (“What works well here?”, “What would I like to see and do more of?”) rather than on negatives. Moderated by external consultant Sarah Lewis, the method is bottom-up not top-down, with the Head of Centre introducing the event but management otherwise present as participants not leaders. It also cuts across ESA’s normal Directorate boundaries, including both staff and contractors from every team in ECSAT.

Most people were pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was, enjoying the opportunity to network and share ideas outside of their usual teams. The morning sessions were especially enjoyed (it’s always nice to dream without constraints) but the most significant results emerged from the more challenging afternoon sessions, when different ideas competed for attention and support. 

It was striking that a few themes emerged consistently from many different teams, even down to how people in separate rooms represented them graphically. Strongest among these were the concept of ECSAT as an Innovation Centre; and the desire for a Visitor Centre that would become a destination in its own right (above and beyond the current plans for the ECSAT Phase 2 conference centre).

Nine individual topics - some but not all related to these big themes - attracted champions and supporters who are willing to drive them forward. Here they are, along with their conveners (who you can approach if you’d like to know more (The names have been removed for website publication, as requested by Alan):

·      Visitor Centre for exhibitions and education 

·      Makerspace at ECSAT 

·      Autonomous vehicles connecting the Harwell Campus 

·      ESA Skunk Works (project management for New Space)

·      Contractors’ Community 

·      Oxford Airport Flights 

·      Kids’ Day@ECSAT 

·      Virtual Campus 

·      Open Lectures 

These topic groups are now busily developing their plans. These are self-driven and not a wish list for management action, although most of them will bring forward specific actions, requests and justifications to the appropriate managers as and when decisions and resources are needed. To make that process more efficient,(another removed name)is coordinating between them to identify any commonalities.

More details, including lots of photos from the day, are available on the dedicated esaconnect forum. If you have any inputs or questions, or would like to propose additional topics, feel free to contact the topic leaders or simply post them on the forum.

We aim to convene a short follow-up meeting in early June, so that everyone can hear how the various groups are getting along – details to follow.

Thanks to all those who took part for their active and positive contribution!

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.

Evaluation from an Appreciative perspective

People who are interested in the Appreciative Inquiry approach sometimes struggle to understand how they can apply it to the challenge of assessment or evaluation.

How does evaluation work?

To engage with this question, we need first to consider the nature of evaluation. There are two key ways of understanding evaluation. The first sees it as a measurement of change in something real. This suggests that any change to be measured exists independently of the measurer and is an impersonal fact of the world; that ‘knowledge’ exists independently of the knower. 

We might note that were this actually the case then medical research would not so value the double-blind protocol where neither the subject nor the experimenter knows who got the active drug and who the placebo. This design is the gold standard in medical research because of a recognition that a researcher’s knowledge can influence their measurement, albeit unconsciously. So while it is often useful to act ‘as if’ change can be understood in this ‘separate from the actors’ way, it is a convenient fiction not an undeniable truth.

Alternatively, we can recognise change as socially constructed. We can recognise that the change we see is dependent on who is looking and how they are looking. We can recognise that the relationship between the context and the actor is systemic: each affects the other. What we choose to search for affects what we find; what we find affects how we behave in the future. In this understanding awareness of change becomes something that we create through our ways of looking; and we make choices about our ways of looking.

We can further understand assessment and evaluation across two dimensions, creating 4 quadrants. 

We have choices about whether we are mainly focussed on the past or the future; and on assessment or development. We could also consider whether we are mainly interested in learning or control.

Different models of evaluation for different situations - the test isn’t everything!

This useful model allows us to consider different evaluation approaches for different situations. For example, if we are assessing against clear standards, such as assessing someone taking a driving test, then our focus will be on the bottom left quadrant: past/ assessment.

Since much of our assessment, evaluation experience is located in this quadrant, for example exams, tests, and, sad to say, even performance appraisals, many people are unaware that it is only one of at least four ways of thinking about assessment.

On the other hand I am currently involved in helping a group create a ‘strengths-based’ peer review process. This is a conscious decision to create a different evaluation experience.

The model above allows us to see that if the main point of our review is to improve the service in the future then the focus of our process lies in identifying development for the future; and is at the learning end of the control/learning spectrum.

For further information on how to create a systemic appreciative review you are referred to

Appreciative Peer Review: A procedure in the November 2017 Blog of the International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry, translated from the original Dutch article by Wick van der Vaart. https://aipractitioner.com/2017/11/09/appreciative-peer-review-procedure/

Embedded Evaluation by Mette Jacobsgaard and Irene Norlund in the August 2011 edition of aipractitioner. https://aipractitioner.com/product/embedded-evaluation/

This article is also indebted to Systemic Appreciative Evaluation by Malene Slov Dinesen in the Aug 2009 edition of aipratitioner https://aipractitioner.com/product/ai-practitioner-august-2009/

Strengths and the Imposter Syndrome: The generative power of world cafe

Last year I ran an evening event I called a Learning Network Event. The purpose of the evening was to provide a space for those interested in positive psychology to share and learn from each other in a gently facilitated way. We used a world café process to stimulate conversation and to ensure cross-pollination amongst those present.

During the event I had a really powerful experience of the cross-pollination potential of the world café process when I had a 'shiver down the spine' moment as I suddenly saw a link between two conversations in which I was involved. 

In the first one we were discussing 'imposter syndrome': one of our group was currently doing a Ph.D. investigation into this common yet disturbing workplace phenomena. It’s a very interesting topic which resonated with those present. 

A short while later I was part of a conversation talking about how knowing our strengths allows us to understand better how we can be a success at our jobs - especially when we don't fit the 'template' for the role. We realised that knowing our strengths allows us to construct an authentic story about how we are succeeding, that may stand in contrast to the dominant story of what is required to succeed in the role. 

During this conversation a story was shared of by one person who was involved in sales. She talked about how understanding her strengths helped her recognise it was her relational strengths that enabled her to be good at sales even though she didn't see herself as a 'typical salesperson'.

Around this point of the evening I had my brain tingling moment as I put two thoughts together. I swear I could almost feel the neurons firing as I realised that we can pull these two thoughts together and put forward an argument about how imposter syndrome might arise. 

Could it be that part of the reason we experience imposter syndrome is because we don't 'see ourselves' as being like the kind of person who usually succeeds in this role; that we have no understanding of how we might succeed and so see ourselves as 'imposters' - getting by on luck and chance? 

If so, then understanding our strengths and how they relate to our abilities in our role can help us construct a story about how it is possible for us to be 'good at this' or 'a success at this' that makes sense to us and feels authentic. Might knowing our strengths and understanding how they help us to succeed be an antidote to the debilitating, anxiety-inducing, vulnerability-creating experience of feeling like an imposter liable to be exposed for the fraud we are at any moment?

For me the event demonstrated the power of world café to produce genuinely generative conversation: I had a new thought and for me that is one of the best feelings in the world!

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

Appreciating Change Coaching Cubes

How Coaching Cubes Support the Coaching Process

The aim of coaching is to develop an individual’s own resourcefulness. Coaching helps someone stuck in their thinking or unsure of their ability or hesitant to seize an opportunity, as well as those grappling with a challenge or feeling puzzled and confused. Coaching helps them develop their own answers and their own way forward. One of most effective techniques to help someone develop their own thinking is to ask them questions. Good questions prompt new thoughts, bring previous experiences to bear on present dilemmas, shed new light on the issue, and prompt plans for action. This Coaching Cube set introduces 36 carefully worded and targeted questions suitable for use in any coaching situation.

Introduction to the Coaching Cubes

The Coaching Cubes are designed to be used and rolled as dice. They are squidgy, robust, and bright, bringing a fun, tactile, and colourful edge to the coaching process. Each coloured cube is themed as below.

The Green cube explores the positive aspects of someone’s work and life, positively affecting perspective and mood.

The Blue cube identifies peopleimportant to the situation, stimulating context-aware thinking.

The Orange cube creates shifts in perspectiveto throw new light on the topic, revealing new insights and possibilities for action.

ThePink cube illuminates ideas, values and energy, the powerhouse for energised possibilities

The Purple cube creates movement,facilitating energised action

The Red cube clarifies first steps, thebeginning of feasible, effective, motivated and energised change.

Using your Coaching Cubes

The cubes are designed to be versatile. Here are seven suggestions for how and when you can use the Coaching Cubes to add value to the coaching process

1)    To Support the Coaching Process from beginning to end

The cubes can be used to shape a whole coaching session from ‘exploring the positives’ with the Green cube right though to ‘deciding on actions’ with the Red cube. Alternatively, at any point in the conversation they can be used separately or all together, revealing a choice of 1-6 questions at each ‘throw’. 

2)    To facilitate Self-Coaching

Want to work on an issue of your own? Roll a cube and answer the question, roll another. Make notes on the thinking and ideas generated as you go. You will soon experience a shift in your thinking and new ways forward will begin to appear.

3)    To help someone relax into the process

Perhaps you are working with someone who finds the intensity of one-to-one coaching uncomfortable. Using the cubes as dice gives them something to handle and focus on, while lessening the requirement for eye contact. 

4)    To promote ownership of the process

Actively involve the person you are working with. Let them select which dice to roll or question to answer to encourage active participation and engagement.

5)    To support Peer Coaching or Coaching skills training

The coaching cubes offer an instant resource to inexperienced or trainee coaches. One of the hardest coaching skills to learn is that of developing generative questions. By using the cubes the participants can access thirty-six useful questions.

6)    To get a session moving again

If the conversation runs into a dead end, roll all the dice, look at the six questions together and ask your client ‘which of these are you most drawn to engage with right now?’ and pretty soon you will find yourself back in a productive place.

7)    To move on from ‘Why don’t you’, ‘yes but’ conversations

Even the most experienced coaches occasionally find themselves being drawn into this unfruitful exchange. Break the cycle by rolling the dice and asking questions that don’t contain any advice!

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)

Did you know: seeking happiness can make people unhappy?

While we recognise that in general happiness is a crucial ingredient of well-being and health, happiness is not valued to the same extent by everyone. For some people it is a ‘nice to have’ while for others it is the stuff of life, a state to which they constantly aspire. Goal pursuit theory suggests that if we value something and actively pursue it we should experience more of it. So if we value happiness and pursue it, so we should experience more of it.

However, there is a sting in the tail. The more highly we value something, the higher the standards are likely to be against which we evaluate our achievement of it. So, for instance, if I value academic excellence and strive hard to achieve it, I’m not going to be very satisfied with just a ‘pass’ grade – it hasn’t met my standards of a great mark.

Importantly, while my disappointment with my mark doesn’t change my mark, if my goal is to achieve happiness, my disappointment with the level of happiness I am experiencing DOES affect my level of happiness. To be disappointed is incompatible in the moment with feeling happy. Of course, expectations are context specific: most people don’t expect to feel happy at a funeral, but might well expect to feel happy at a party. 

If I’m at a party and DON’T, as I expected I would, feel happy, then I am likely to feel disappointed. And the feeling disappointed will lower my happiness. If I had not had any expectations of feeling happy then I wouldn’t feel disappointed by not feeling happy and, paradoxically, might actually feel happier than the disappointed person!

In other words, by valuing happiness very highly, and making it a goal and measure of value, we product the very circumstances that raise the likelihood of disappointment and adversely affect our chances of achieving happiness: The pursuit of happiness may cause decreased happiness.

Considering all this, Mauss, Tamir, Anderson and Savino (2011) concluded ‘that valuing happiness is not necessarily linked to greater happiness. In fact, under certain conditions the opposite is true. Under conditions of low (but not high) life stress, the more people valued happiness, the lower were their hedonic balance [ratio of positive to negative emotional states], psychological well-being, and life satisfaction, and the higher their depressive symptoms.’

In short, an overly focused pursuit of happiness is unlikely to lead to greater happiness. We need to recognize that we experience all sorts of emotions and while happiness can be encouraged by the way we live our lives it can’t be produced to order: it is not a guaranteed outcome of any activity. 

I wonder if the reported huge increase of reported depression in the world is in any way related to this strange paradox. Have we somehow, with our twenty-first century interest in and emphasis on happiness, raised expectations about how much happiness people should feel, maybe even to the extent that all non-happy feelings are experienced as strong failure and disappointment? My mother used to say to me ‘I don’t mind what you do (as a career she meant) as long as you are happy.’ For her happiness was the goal and measure of success. Even then I struggled to understand the advice as I didn’t understand how to ‘be happy’ I didn’t know what made me happy. Finding that out has been a life-long journey.

My father, conversely, pointed out to me long before it became a poster slogan, ‘happiness is a journey not a destination’, or to paraphrase John Lennon ‘Happiness happens while you are concentrating on something else,’ or finally my own thoughts: happiness is a happy by-product of the life lived and the choices made. 

This article is based on the research and article byMauss, Tamir, Anderson and Savino (2011) Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, Vol 11, No. 4, 807-815