FREE ARTICLES FROM SARAH LEWIS

A treasure trove of practical advice either written by Sarah herself, based on her experience garnered from over 20 years of helping organisations to change themselves, or by a carefully selected guest author.

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Eight High-Value Ways To Access Our Expertise

1. Use Our Learning and Development Activity Support Card Packs

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

1. Use Our Learning and Development Activity Support Card Packs

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

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

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3. Prepare With Our Practical E-books

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

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4. Pick our Brains

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

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

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

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6. Read Our Books

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

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7. Watch Our Videos

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

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8. Commission a Webinar

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

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

 

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

Other Resources

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

See more How ToTeam Development, Appreciative Inquiry, Card Guides and Leadership articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of the best L&D Tools are available from the website shop.

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How To Increase Your Effectiveness As A Manager With Strengths Cards

Increasingly being an effective manager is about helping others to be their best. People’s natural strengths are at the heart of great performance. While there are great psychometrics around to assess people’s strengths they aren’t always available, suitable, or affordable. A pack of strengths cards is portable, re-useable and infinitely applicable. Below are eight ways managers can use a pack of strengths card to enhance their effectiveness.

Increasingly being an effective manager is about helping others to be their best. People’s natural strengths are at the heart of great performance. While there are great psychometrics around to assess people’s strengths they aren’t always available, suitable, or affordable. A pack of strengths cards is portable, re-useable and infinitely applicable. Below are eight ways managers can use a pack of strengths card to enhance their effectiveness.

 

Ideas For Using Your Strengths Cards

1. Coaching: Creating confidence, resilience, motivation and performance

Coaching for performance is an important part of any manager’s role.  Bringing strengths cards into the coaching conversation can help create a positive focus and stimulate a conversation about an individual’s particular strengths. By exploring past successes and helping an individual recognise the particular personal strengths that consistently underlie their successes, you enhance their self-confidence and resilience as they recognise and own their own particular performance assets. By focussing on how these assets can be realised in future performance, you both create motivation for the challenge and enhance their likelihood of succeeding. 

For example: Ask someone to share their greatest achievement or success in the area under discussion then spread the cards out on the table and together identify the strengths that allowed them to achieve that success and then identify with them the ones that really resonate with them as being an essential contributor of their successes. The strengths they are happy to own.

 

2. Coaching: For personal and career development

Managers are increasingly responsible not just for an individual’s ‘in-role’ performance, but also for their career development. An exploration of an individual’s real highlight moments in their career so far, and an analysis of the strengths at play in those moments, can help someone understand what they need to develop a satisfying career: ever more opportunity to play to, and utilise, their strengths in the service of personally important goals. Assessed from this perspective, different future paths can open up, and existing ones become more or less attractive. 

For example: Invite the person to talk to you about their career highlights, spend some time identifying the strengths that contributed to these highlights then imagine what their future career will look like if they can use these strengths to achieve things that are important to them. Ask them to imagine what will they be doing, where will they be working and who with, how they will be spending their time. Then together you can identify a possible future career goal and how to get there.

 

3. Team Development: Creating an economy of strengths, increasing capability

Team members can find themselves restricted in using their strengths by the division of work by role. In the worst case scenario a particular task falls to someone because it’s ‘in their remit’ despite the fact that they have no natural talent (or strengths) to support them in this task. Usually the result is that the task is done very slowly (or rushed) using tremendous energy and effort (or none) to at best a mediocre standard. Once a team understands all its members natural strengths, they can operate as an economy of strengths, meaning it can allocate and share tasks according to the strengths-fit increasing both the effectiveness and efficiency of the team and the productivity of individual members.

For example: Help each team member to identify their strengths using questions like 'When have you felt most alive at work?' Then follow the processes as above. Once everyone has identified their strength, create a map of the strengths of the members of the team. There will be overlap. Then they can then analyse the tasks the tea has to perform against what strengths are needed for each task and allocate them accordingly.

 

4. Performance Appraisal: Motivating people to be their best

Performance appraisals are meant to be motivating. Too often they are the exact opposite. This is partly due to an over-emphasis on analysing problems and failures in the past, and partly due to an emphasis on creating a list of future tasks. Shifting the focus to helping people identify the best of the past, and the strengths they display in achieving those successes, and then constructing a vision of the future based on how they could access and utilise those strengths even more in the future will help switch the conversation from de-motivating and de-energising to motivating and energising. This is because people find using (and the anticipation of using) their strengths motivating and energising. Use the cards to help someone explore, name and own their particular strengths that allow them to succeed.

For example: Invite the person to share when they have been most excited about their work or what they are working on (not whether it succeeded or not). Spread the cards out and together identify the strengths that underpin these most motivated moments. Help them identify future goals, targets or projects that create the same sense of excitement because they will call on the same strengths. Help align these to organisational priorities - so everyone wins.

5. Motivating Mirco-moments

Effective managers know that every interaction with someone acts to motivate or de-motivate them, to encourage change or to support the status quo. By increasing your strengths spotting skills, and your appreciative ear, you can increase the motivational encounters your staff experience with you. By understanding your people as a profile of strengths (rather than as their job profile) you can notice when they are using their strengths, or help them access them when they aren’t. With an appreciative ear you can help them notice what they did right, or what went well, even in difficult situations.

For example: Spread the cards out and think about one of your staff and about the most clear memory you have of being impressed with something they did at work. Look at the cards, and think about what strengths the staff member was using when they did this. They will have been motivated both by their success and the very process of using their strengths so if you spot the next time they are using these strengths and mention it, they will be motivated by the fact that you can see when they're at their best. Practice ‘spotting’ the different strengths as you encounter your staff at work, you’ll soon get the hang of it!

 

 6. Elevate mood to elevate performance

As a generalisation people perform better when they feel better. This isn’t about job satisfaction, this is about momentary states of wellbeing. When people feel good they are more curious, more tenacious, more sociable, and better able to cope with complexity. They have more energy, they are more generous with others. Having a conversation with an individual or a team that is focused on past or present successes is likely to elevate mood in the moment. By going a step further and identifying the strengths at the core of the success you are increasing the likelihood of a replication of these success, as people understand better what made them possible. This is also likely to elevate mood.

For example: Have a session where members of a team are asked to recount a time when another team member made a big contribution towards the success of the team. Use the cards to help people offer feedback to each other about the strengths they were struck by in this person's account. Take it from there.

 

7. Leadership: Know thyself

It is well known that effective leaders recognise their own shortcomings, and work to limit the damage they can cause. It is less appreciated that great leaders also know their strengths, and how to use them well. When a leader knows, and owns, their strengths they are more able to work to use them wisely and judiciously. They also better understand that other people don’t have this strength: that what is easy for them can be harder for others. They can become more forgiving of others. They can gather people around them that can help them exercise their strengths appropriately, and ameliorate their weaknesses. Use strengths cards to help leaders understand their own strengths and develop control and skill in using them, and to understand that other people are blessed differently.

For example: Sit down with the leader of one of your teams and explore with them which of their strengths contributed to a recent success of the team (see point 1). Then go a step further and ask them to name someone who also contributed to this success and explore their strengths. It should dawn on the leader that the reason they were both instrumental in this success wasn't just that they had some of the same strengths, which were suited to the job at hand, but also that they had some different but, in this context, complimentary strengths and so each to some degree offset the weaknesses of the other.

 

8. Recasting Problematic Behaviour: Strengths in overdrive

Sometimes difficult behaviour is caused by an out of control strength. The person who never gets their own work done because they are too busy helping others: empathy in overdrive. The person who seems to want to have a say in every issue whether it concerns them or not: leadership in overdrive. Understanding that sometimes people aren’t in control of their strengths, that their very strengths are the things that leads them into trouble gives us a different place to go with the conversation. We can recognise the strength as a general asset, then focus on how to use it wisely. Strength plus skill in using the strength is key to great performance.

For example: This is a damage limitation exercise - someone has caused problems and needs to be told that they need to modify their behaviour. What you can do is start the conversation not with the problems they've caused but by investigating their strengths (see point 1.) and then have a look at the cards and see if the behaviour in question can be recast as a strength in overdrive, then you have somewhere different to take the conversation and should have a better chance of getting an actual genuine attempt to modify behaviour and not just sullen temporary withdrawal.

 

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

 

Other Resources

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

See more How To, Team Development and Leadership Skills articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

 

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

 

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

Save smart - make savings and improvements without the hidden costs

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

Save smart - make savings and improvements without the hidden costs

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

 

1. How can we learn from our best performers?

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

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

 

2. How much is this saving costing us?

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

Other Resources

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

See more articles on Leadership in the Knowledge Warehouse.

 

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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The Distinctive Nature of Co-creative Change

How is it different, why is it better?

Co-creative approaches to organization change such as Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space, and World Café have some very distinctive features that differentiate them from more familiar top-down planned approaches to change.

How is it different, why is it better?

Co-creative approaches to organisational change such as Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space, and World Café have some very distinctive features that differentiate them from more familiar top-down planned approaches to change.

 

1. Change is a many-to-many rather than one-to-many process

In co-creative change a lot can happen in a short space of time as conversation (and change) takes place simultaneously amongst people in various groups rather than relying on a linear transmission from top to bottom. It can feel messier and less controlled but the benefits of active engagement, participation and commitment far outweigh these concerns.

2. They work on the understanding that the world is socially constructed

By allowing that we live in social worlds that are constructed by interactions in relationship, these approaches recognise that beliefs, and so the potential for action, can be affected by processes or events. The co-creative change processes allow people to experience each other, and the world, differently and so adjust their mental maps of their social world, creating the potential for change.

3. Conversation is a dynamic process

Co-creative approaches to organisational change recognize that conversations and events take place in a dynamic context of mutual and reflexive influence. I act and speak in the context of what you are doing and saying and vice versa. This means that conversation is not a passive process for conveying information but is rather an active process for creation, and so holds the potential to create change.

4. Organisations are about patterns so changing organizations is about changing patterns

All of the above culminates in the understanding that organisational habits, culture, ways of being are held in place by the habitual patterns of conversation and interaction. Change these and you change the organization.

5. Change can occur at many levels simultaneously

Rather than being focused on rolling out a pre-designed planned change, these approaches are much more focused on growing change from the ground up. A useful metaphor to convey this is that of by encouraging of lots of different plants to flourish on the forest floor by changing the bigger context, such as clearing part of the canopy to allow in more light.

6. They connect to values to gain commitment

These approaches connect to people’s values as well as their analytic abilities. Appreciative Inquiry discovery interviews, for instance, quickly reveal people’s deep values about their organization and allow people with divergent surface views to form a meaningful connection at a deeper level that aids the negotiation of difference.

7. They create hope and other positive emotions

Appreciative Inquiry by design, and the other approaches by intention, focus on creating positive emotional states in the participants, particularly hope. Hope is a tremendously motivating emotion and is key source of energy for engaging with the disruption of change. By building hope in the group that the situation can be improved, these processes create great energy for the journey ahead.

8. They encourage high-quality connections and the formation of high-energy networks

These are two concepts from positive psychology and increasingly research is demonstrating that they have a positive effect on creativity, problem-solving and performance. The co-creation change methodologies are highly relational and facilitate the development of meaningful relationships particularly across silo or functional boundaries, increasing the ability of the whole organization to change in synchronisation with itself.

9. They allow people to feel heard

The very essence of the co-creative approaches is the emphasis on voice and dialogue as key components of change. As people are engaged with and have an opportunity to input to discussions about the need for change from the very beginning, and are also able to influence the design of change, they feel their voices and needs are being heard by the organization as the change unfolds. This greatly lessens the challenges of overcoming resistance or getting buy-in.

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

 

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

 

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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Positive Psychology and Change: Evidence Based Practice

Research in positive psychology over the last 15 years and earlier has given us a robust set of data about what flourishing organizations, organizational practices and people look like and how to create them.

We now have enough theory, research and practice from work in Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Psychology to know how and why these interventions work. We can also work out how to combine them to create robust, effective approaches to change that are suitable for organizations grappling with the challenges of the twenty first century.

 

Why it works

Research in positive psychology over the last 15 years and earlier has given us a robust set of data about what flourishing organizations, organizational practices and people look like and how to create them.

 

How to do it

Appreciative Inquiry has extended its methodology from the original 5D summit model to include the SOAR approach to strategic development, Appreciative coaching, positive performance processes and many more appreciative practices to tell us how to do it.

In addition other co-creative methodologies such as Open Space, World Café and SimuReal offer clear processes for applying positive psychology to organisational change challenges

 

How it works

An increasing awareness of the psychology of group and human behaviour, and the influencing factors on that behaviour means that we know that these co-creative methods work through psychological processes such as the creation of new narratives and the reconfiguring of patterns of relationship. The influence on behaviour of dynamics such as imagination, metaphor, and identity are positively affected by positively applied co-creative change approaches.

 

What you get

From the application of science through the co-creative processes influencing group dynamics what you get is higher-level organisational transformation. Change at the level of highly energised shared aspiration, shared hope, keen interdependency understanding, community level thinking, energy-less synchronicity, and future oriented action. Such transformation pulls people over obstacles and set backs towards a better future.

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

 

Other Resources

Sarah’s new book Positive Psychology and Change explains all this and more. Available now from Amazon and Wiley-Blackwell.

See more articles on Positive Psychology in the Knowledge Warehouse.

 

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

 

 

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Jem Smith Jem Smith

Black Swan Leadership for the VUCA world

A new phrase has entered the leadership lexicon ‘VUCA’ standing for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, it’s used to describe the context in which many leaders are trying to offer effective leadership. Uncertainty creates new challenges and demands a new understanding of leadership

A new phrase has entered the leadership lexicon ‘VUCA’ standing for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, it’s used to describe the context in which many leaders are trying to offer effective leadership. Uncertainty creates new challenges and demands a new understanding of leadership

 

The Challenges of leading through uncertainty are many:

  • How to keep up morale and motivation in an atmosphere of increasing despondency?
  • How to maintain a sense of moving forward when the future is uncertain?
  • How to create hope and optimism in a general atmosphere of pessimism?
  • How to remain pro-active while reacting to events you can’t control?
  • How to keep your best people while they wonder how safe the ship is?
  • How to stay closely attuned to changes in the business environment while focussing on getting the best from your organization?
  • How to be flexible enough to respond to changing situations while still making plans and doing things?
  • How to continue to get the best from people while they are distracted for concerns for their own future?

While some of these challenges are about business acumen, most are about knowing how to lead and manage people when you can’t give them what you think they want, a rosy picture of the organization’s, and their, future.

Many leaders become paralysed by their inability to give clear, far reaching answers about the future and so try to avoid such conversations altogether. Alternatively they offer false hope and promises, which are rapidly spotted as such by those they seek to reassure.

So what can you do instead?

Become a black swan leader, able to hold contradictory ideas in mind at the same time, such as being prepared and being flexible

Be honest with people that you don’t know for sure what the future holds - At the same time be optimistic about possibilities

Engage and involve people as much as possible in making the decisions that CAN be made

Develop the ability to act ‘as if’ you knew what to do for the best - While at the same time being flexible enough to change tack when new information comes in

Recognise that everything you say and do as a leader has meaning for your followers, there is no such thing as a neutral transmission of information or ‘doing nothing’ - So make sure you manage the meaning you create by how you communicate and by what you are focus on

Help your people make the most productive and useful sense of what is happening

Act ‘as if’ they both have a future both inside the company and out. - So ensure that they realise that the projects do are doing will increase the likelihood of the company surviving, and, increase their market worth

Don’t make promises you can’t keep

Find someone outside the organization (a coach for instance) with whom you can have the ‘dark night of the soul’ conversations, don’t burden or scare your staff with these - Yet at times be prepared to be honest that you too have doubts and uncertainties about the future, your future

Be prepared to listen to people’s concerns about the future and offer what you can to help them feel better

Try to ensure that people continue to feel that they have choices about what they can do

Find ways that people can be pro-active in dealing with the needs of the business and their concerns

Recognise that you have a wealth of expertise, intelligence, skill and resource in your organization to help meet the challenges ahead

Don’t feel because you are the leader you must have all the answers

Be your best authentic self

Recognise and encourage the value of positive emotions – laughter, playfulness, passion

Create stories of hope, possibility and good futures that are accepting of current realities

People know you can’t fortune tell. What they want is that you acknowledge how they feel and work to help them feel better about things so that they can pro-actively do things to help make a good future more likely.

 

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Working with the need for convergence in a divergent conversation

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few further helpful hints

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

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

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

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

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Seven Helpful Things To Know About Achieving Change In Organizations

The plan is not the change

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

The plan is not the change

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

 

The map is not the territory

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

 

A natural response to a burning platform is blind panic

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

 

The path to the future is created not uncovered

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

 

Resistance is a sign of commitment

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

 

Meaning is created not dictated

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

 

There is no correct answer to the challenge of organisational form

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

 

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

 

 

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

 

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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The Economic Value Of Social Capital To Organizations

Elsewhere on this website we explore social capital as a group or social phenomena that adds value by increasing trust and information flow around an organisation, however it can also be understood from an economic perspective.

 

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

The Economic Value Of Social Capital To Organizations

 

What Is Social Capital?

 

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

 

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

 

 

Why Is It Important In Organisations?            

 

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

 

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

 

Why Don’t Organisations Invest More In Social Capital?

 

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

 

Measuring the Economic Value of Social Capital

 

 

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

 

The Micro-Finance Story

 

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

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

 

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

 

Can Social Capital Be Measured In Organisations?

 

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

 

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

 

How Can We Build Social Capital In Organisations?

 

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

 

Article by Sarah Lewis and Jem Smith

 

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

 

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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Women Make Groups Cleverer! (Evidence for collective intelligence)

Fascinating research on group performance suggests two key things:That the collective intelligence of a group is more than the sum of its parts and that the presence of women in a group is key to high collective intelligence

Fascinating research on group performance suggests two key things:

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

 

How do we know this?

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

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

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

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

 

The Findings

Instead they found:

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

 

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

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

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

 

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking articles in the Knowledge Warehouse.

 

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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Bite - Sized Positive Psychology: The success round

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

Alternatively you might ask:

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

Or:

 ‘So what have we just learnt about ourselves?’

 

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

 

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

 

Other Resources

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

See more How To articles in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

 

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

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Leadership Gratitude Exercise

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

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

 

Objective

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

 

The Exercise

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

1) To their colleagues (individual or collective)

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

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

 

Suggest they might like to start their sentences:

 

 ‘I want to express thanks..’

or

‘I’m very grateful that/for…’

 

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

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

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

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

 

When to use

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

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

 

Other Resources

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

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

 

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

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

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

 

 

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When A Divergent Discussion Must Produce A Convergent Conclusion

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

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

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

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

 

What is this hunger for convergence an expression of?

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Life is always a compromise

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

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

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking articles in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

1. Gratitude enhances resilience and coping abilities

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

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

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

 

2. Gratitude builds and strengthens relationships

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

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

 

3. Gratitude helps develop flourishing organizations

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

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

 

4. Gratitude increases goal attainment

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

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

 

5. Gratitude increases personal wellbeing

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

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

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

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

 

Further reading

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

Other Resources

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

See more about Positive Emotions in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

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

Cognitive research illuminates how our brains make decisions, and how they are different from computers. Compared to computers our brains are slow, noisy and imprecise. And, paradoxically perhaps, this makes them much more efficient than computers,

Proof that brains are more efficient than computers

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

 

 The importance of goals to decision-making

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

 

Brains are oddly efficient

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

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

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

 

How do these principles translate into organizations?

 Drain batteries slowly

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

 

Save space

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

 

Save bandwidth

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

 

Have goals

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

 

Message for leaders

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

Other Resources

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

See more Thought Provoking articles in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

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Positive Org Culture Jem Smith Positive Org Culture Jem Smith

Thank You Makes A Difference

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

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

Gratitude motivates reciprocal aid giving

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

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

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

Gratitude motivates reciprocal aid giving

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

 

As an emotion

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

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

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

 

As a personality characteristic

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

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

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

 

As an aid to social relations

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

Other Resources

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

See more about Positive Organisational Culture in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

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How To Improve Compliance In Organizations

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

2. The belief that success recognition depends on goal achievement

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

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

 

3. A lack of alignment of organisational objectives

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

 

4. Actions speak louder than words

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

 

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

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

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

 

What can be done?

 

1) Strengthen weak feedback loops

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

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

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

 

2) Reward effort and progress as well as achievement

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

 

3) Move from either/or to both/ and

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

 

4) Model what you want

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

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

 

5) Build the culture to support your objectives

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

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

 

Other Resources

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

See more about Performance Management in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

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The Hidden Costs Of Rudeness

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Reduced performance

Poorer problem solving

Rigidity of thinking

Less ‘citizenship’ behaviour e.g. general helpfulness

Reduced creativity

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

Heighten tendencies to aggressive words or even actions

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

 

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

 

Politeness pays

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

5. Taking bullying seriously

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

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

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

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

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

 

Further resources

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

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

Lewis S (2011) Positive Psychology at Work. Wiley

 

Other Resources

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

See more about Leadership and Performance Management in the  Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

Not True. In many situations it is sufficient to have a sense of the end goal, or key question, along with some shared guiding principles about how the change will unfold. For example ‘We need to produce our goods more efficiently’, or, ‘How can we cut our process times?’ With these in place leaders can call on the collective intelligence of the organization as it embarks on learning by doing: taking the first steps, reviewing progress, learning from experience and involving those who know the detail in their areas.

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

 

You can control the communication within the organization about change

Impossible! People are sense-making creatures who constantly work to make sense of what is happening around them. This means it is not possible to control communication in this way. By withholding information we convey something, usually distrust or secrecy. But more than this, in this day and age with so many communication channels instantly available to people, there is no chance of being aware of everything that is being said about the change. Instead leaders need to focus on making sure they get to hear what sense is being made of what is going on so that they can contribute a different or corrective perspective.

This ‘control’ belief leads to embargoes on information sharing, ‘until we have decided everything’ (see above) and much investment in finding ‘the right words’ to convey the story of the change. Meanwhile people are free to make their own sense of what is happening uninhibited by any corrective input from management. And when the carefully chosen words are finally broadcast, leadership is often dismayed to discover that they don’t work to create a shared sense of the meaning of the change.

 

To communicate about change is to engage people with the change

Not necessarily. People start to engage with the change when they start working out what it means for them, what it ‘looks like’, where the benefits or advantages might be, how they can navigate it, what resources are there to help them. They find out through exploration and discovery. They become more engaged when they are asked questions. “How can we implement this here?’ ‘What is the best way of achieving that?’ ‘What needs to be different for us to be able to…?’ People have to use their imaginations and creativity to start visualizing what their bit of the world will be like when ‘the change’ has happened. Everyone needs the opportunity to create rich pictures of what the words and ideas in the change mean in their context. The answer to the question ‘What might it mean for us?’ is jointly constructed and evolves as new information emerges.

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

 

 

That planning makes things happen

Sadly no! How much simpler life would be if it did. Creating plans can be an extremely helpful activity as long as we realize that what they do is create accounts and stories of how the future can be. Until people translate the plans into activity on the ground, the plans are just plans. For example I might develop a really detailed plan about emigrating to Australia, including shipping and packing and visas and job prospects and everything you can think of, but until I do something that impacts on my possibilities in the world, for instance by applying for a visa, then planning is all I have done. Plans are an expression of intention. Things start to happen when intention is enacted.

This belief in ‘plan as action’ fuels a plethora of projects and roadmaps and spreadsheets of interconnection, key milestones, tasks, measures and so on. People can invest time and energy in this fondly believing that they are ‘doing change’. A much more energizing alternative is to bring people together to start exploring ‘the change’ and generating ideas for action, and then to write documents that create a coherent account of the actions people are taking.

 

That change is always disliked and resisted

No. If this were true none of us would emerge from babyhood. Our life is a story of change and growth, of expansion and adaptation, of discovery and adjustment. Do you wish you had never learnt to ride a bike? That was a change. Had never had a haircut? That was a change. What is true is that change takes energy, and people don’t necessarily always have the energy or inclination to engage with change. It is not change itself that is the issue, it is the effect imposed change can have on things that are important to us: autonomy, choice, power, desire, satisfaction, self-management, sense of competency, group status, sense of identity and so on. If we attend carefully to enhancing these within the change process then there is a much greater chance that it will be experienced as life-enhancing growth like so many other changes in our lives.

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

 

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

Other Resources

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

See more about change in the Knowledge Warehouse.

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

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Forget Carrot Or Stick – Try Nudging

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

 

 

Now there is a new alternative

This third method utilises the natural inertia of most people when confronted with the choice of accepting the status quo or changing things

 

 

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

 

 

Now there is a new alternative

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Is nudging the right option for your desired behaviour change?

To answer this question you need to consider whether:

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

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

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

 

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

  

with thanks to Jem Smith, BA., Msc.

 

Other Resources

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

Appreciating Change Can Help

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

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

Read More