Hybrid working, for many a necessity induced by lockdown, is rapidly becoming a work pattern of choice for the future. Goldman Sachs are one of the few organizations so far to have declared against the trend with their boss David Solomon rejecting the idea of remote working, labelling it an “aberration”. The more common view seems to be that the working pattern has changed for good. Google, for example, expects 20% of staff to work from home permanently in future, while Microsoft is to make remote working a permanent option. This shift towards more flexible working patterns poses some tough questions for managers and leaders.
Boosting your resilience and adaptability
Lockdown is easing, but that doesn’t mean we are going back to normal. We need to think instead of ourselves as moving forward in to a new normal. This new normal involves living with the reality of coronavirus: a winter surge is predicted by many experts. Navigating this new normal will take resilience and adaptability.
What helps us be more resilient and adaptable?
Resilience can be defined as having the resources, mental, physical or experience-based, to cope with unexpected, difficult or adverse situations.
Being adaptable means being able to flex our expectations and behaviour when circumstances change.
For both resilience and adaptability, being resourceful is key.
It’s OK To Not Feel Great, We’re All In Mourning For Times Past.
I suppose it was that Sunday evening press conference that brought it home to me. It was as Boris articulated the ambition to get people back to work, hung about with caveats and advice to avoid public transport, that the penny really dropped: that ‘getting back to normal’ was a complete pipedream. What he was doing, never mind the rhetoric, was starting to articulate the new normal, which wasn’t going to be a whole lot like the old normal.
The Habits of Highly Creative People
I have recently been reading ‘Daily Rituals’ by Mason Currey. He has collected together short accounts of the daily rituals of some well-known creative people, past and present. His collection includes writers, philosophers, artists and composers. Most are male and white. It makes interesting reading and I thought I would distil my observations from it for you. I’m not sure how, if at all, it relates to positive psychology but perhaps you will be able to find a connection?
10 Top tips for keeping up morale
Many of us are having to manage more anxiety than normal, as well as drastic changes in our daily lives. There are two key principles which it is useful to bear in mind: Managing anxiety takes mental strength and energy, and, that the state of our morale affects the state of our immune system. (At this point I have to say this doesn’t mean that anyone who becomes ill wasn’t positive enough. Absolutely not. Rather just that we know that keeping our spirits up is important to supporting our immune system. It’s not a guarantee of perfect health!)
Using Lego in Appreciative Inquiry
I recently posted some pictures on Twitter and Linkedin of a leadership development session I ran with a colleague where we used Lego to conduct an Appreciative Inquiry. This stimulated some interest and requests for more information on what we did, so I thought I would explain in a little more detail.
Appreciative Inquiry: working with a system in sections
Over the years I’ve had a number of requests to run an Appreciative Inquiry event for a system that is unable to come altogether at the same time in the same space. I have found ways to accommodate this, but I have never felt the process to be entirely satisfactory. Just recently I have had two more requests like this, so when I heard the UK Appreciative Inquiry Network was coming together in December, I decided this was a great challenge to take to the group.
A group of six of us had a great conversation about this challenge: How to design an AI event for a whole system that is unable to come together for a day or more in the same space at the same time?
Nuggets from The Positive Psychology in Practice Conference in Utrecht 24-25 October 2019
Is Mindfulness the new opium of the masses?
What does ‘Evidence based practice’ mean for practitioners in the field?
Are you a practitioner, keen to practice in an evidence-based way but with little time to keep up with the research? Maybe you find scientific papers unreadable? Or perhaps you support the aim in principle, but find it hard to set up gold-standard science-based evaluations of your interventions with your clients? You are not alone.
The Benefits of Feeling Good and How to Reap Them
Emotional states are an overlooked resource in the workplace. How we feel affects how we work individually and together as well as our resilience to stress and our creativity. Unlike other resources to help our staff in these straitened times, positive emotional states are a zero-cost, renewable, source of energy. And they make a difference to those around us.
Why coaching isn’t as easy as people think, and something to help
And so it has come to past that from time to time I find my self teaching groups ‘coaching skills’. Sometimes this is groups of managers, sometimes fledging professional coaches, and sometimes people with post-graduate coaching degrees or similarly impressive credentials. And yet, for all these groups, one of the hardest challenges seems to be developing the skill of asking questions rather than more tempting options like: offering solutions, giving advice, sympathising, sharing their own experience, or in some other way failing to inquire.
A Client’s write up of an Appreciative Inquiry Event
This account of a recent one-day Appreciative Inquiry Event by Alan Brunstrom of ECSAT. He wrote it for their internal use and copied me in. I thought it gave a very good sense of the client experience and asked if I might share it on my website.
I hope you find it useful in creating a sense of how these events come about, how they are experienced, and what they can produce.
Love the money, hate the job? The effect of bulls**t jobs on happiness
Many of us have noticed a strange paradox but been unable to put a name to it. We believe that a job that doesn’t demand too much of us should mean we have plenty of energy left over for our real interests. Furthermore, we anticipate that if that job not only doesn’t demand much of us but also pays us very well, then we should experience happiness: we have beaten the system! We are being paid for doing practically nothing, what could be a better arrangement?
And yet, after an initial sense of triumph, it can slowly become apparent that the logic - lots of money for little work equals happiness and a fulfilled life - doesn’t work out. Instead we feel, well, that something isn’t right. That despite the income we aren’t happy at work.
Evaluation from an Appreciative perspective
Strengths and the Imposter Syndrome: The generative power of world cafe
Last year I ran an evening event I called a Learning Network Event. The purpose of the evening was to provide a space for those interested in positive psychology to share and learn from each other in a gently facilitated way. We used a world café process to stimulate conversation and to ensure cross-pollination amongst those present.
What kind of conversation are you having today?
In many workplaces conversation is regarded as an adjunct to the real work of getting stuff done. All too often a request for a conversation is experienced as an interruption, a distraction from real work. Seen as a necessary evil, the objective is to complete the conversation as quickly as possible so all involved can get back to work. While the topic of conversation may be regarded as important, the quality of conversation doesn’t even register. This is very unfortunate as the quality of any conversation will have an impact beyond the moment.
Appreciating Change Coaching Cubes
How Coaching Cubes Support the Coaching Process
The aim of coaching is to develop an individual’s own resourcefulness. Coaching helps someone stuck in their thinking or unsure of their ability or hesitant to seize an opportunity, as well as those grappling with a challenge or feeling puzzled and confused. Coaching helps them develop their own answers and their own way forward. One of most effective techniques to help someone develop their own thinking is to ask them questions. Good questions prompt new thoughts, bring previous experiences to bear on present dilemmas, shed new light on the issue, and prompt plans for action. This Coaching Cube set introduces 36 carefully worded and targeted questions suitable for use in any coaching situation.
Introduction to the Coaching Cubes
The Coaching Cubes are designed to be used and rolled as dice. They are squidgy, robust, and bright, bringing a fun, tactile, and colourful edge to the coaching process. Each coloured cube is themed as below.
The Green cube explores the positive aspects of someone’s work and life, positively affecting perspective and mood.
The Blue cube identifies peopleimportant to the situation, stimulating context-aware thinking.
The Orange cube creates shifts in perspectiveto throw new light on the topic, revealing new insights and possibilities for action.
ThePink cube illuminates ideas, values and energy, the powerhouse for energised possibilities
The Purple cube creates movement,facilitating energised action
The Red cube clarifies first steps, thebeginning of feasible, effective, motivated and energised change.
Using your Coaching Cubes
The cubes are designed to be versatile. Here are seven suggestions for how and when you can use the Coaching Cubes to add value to the coaching process
1) To Support the Coaching Process from beginning to end
The cubes can be used to shape a whole coaching session from ‘exploring the positives’ with the Green cube right though to ‘deciding on actions’ with the Red cube. Alternatively, at any point in the conversation they can be used separately or all together, revealing a choice of 1-6 questions at each ‘throw’.
2) To facilitate Self-Coaching
Want to work on an issue of your own? Roll a cube and answer the question, roll another. Make notes on the thinking and ideas generated as you go. You will soon experience a shift in your thinking and new ways forward will begin to appear.
3) To help someone relax into the process
Perhaps you are working with someone who finds the intensity of one-to-one coaching uncomfortable. Using the cubes as dice gives them something to handle and focus on, while lessening the requirement for eye contact.
4) To promote ownership of the process
Actively involve the person you are working with. Let them select which dice to roll or question to answer to encourage active participation and engagement.
5) To support Peer Coaching or Coaching skills training
The coaching cubes offer an instant resource to inexperienced or trainee coaches. One of the hardest coaching skills to learn is that of developing generative questions. By using the cubes the participants can access thirty-six useful questions.
6) To get a session moving again
If the conversation runs into a dead end, roll all the dice, look at the six questions together and ask your client ‘which of these are you most drawn to engage with right now?’ and pretty soon you will find yourself back in a productive place.
7) To move on from ‘Why don’t you’, ‘yes but’ conversations
Even the most experienced coaches occasionally find themselves being drawn into this unfruitful exchange. Break the cycle by rolling the dice and asking questions that don’t contain any advice!
How to add life to your years
Mae West famously suggested that it’s not the ‘men in your life’ you need to worry about so much as ‘the life in your men; and as the celebration of another birthday reminds me that more of my life is behind than in front of me, I feel I’d be wise to focus on ‘the life left in my years’ rather than the ‘years left in my life’. And so, I turn to George Valliant for advice…
Did you know: seeking happiness can make people unhappy?
While we recognise that in general happiness is a crucial ingredient of well-being and health, happiness is not valued to the same extent by everyone. For some people it is a ‘nice to have’ while for others it is the stuff of life, a state to which they constantly aspire. Goal pursuit theory suggests that if we value something and actively pursue it we should experience more of it. So if we value happiness and pursue it, so we should experience more of it. However, there is a sting in the tail…