Here are my picks of the best of the Positive Psychology At Work LinkedIn group this month – Join here

Sarah Lewis: Bite-Sized from Positive Psychology at Work: Appreciative Inquiry and Team Development

I work a lot with team development. I come across a number of team development myths – two key ones being
Storming is a necessary condition for team development, and,
Blood on the carpet is necessary for conflict resolution
understandably these beliefs, particularly for a team in trouble, can produce a lot of anxiety when a team day is suggested.

Appreciative Inquiry offers an approach to effective team development that neatly side steps this desire to and anxiety about confronting issues head on by switching focus to what is working and what is wanted. In my experience this leads to many issues dis-solving (rather than being continually re-solved)

Top tips for team development from an AI perspective might be
Create Positivity – inquire into sources of pride, celebrate success, foster mutual appreciation, offer recognition, use humour.
Build Commonality – discover and dream together around the positive core of the team
Capitalize on Difference – reframe conflict as an expression of difference, and as such a valuable team resource.
Build Value from Strengths – think of the team as an economy of strengths, work out how to get the best value for everyone from the individual strengths in the team
Value Relationships – create genuine acceptance and appreciation of the uniqueness of each individual

I followed my own advice with a deeply stuck and very anxious group yesterday and we had a very productive day with the group becoming energised and genuinely generative in the afternoon, proposing their own changes to shift the difficult group dynamic. Small shifts, but shifts which over time will amplify into a different dynamic.

Jim Moss • Love this, I wish I had more time to comment right now, but I’ll leave it at that.

Terry Bruns • I agree, Sarah, nice post, especially the top tips and the last sentence about small shifts over time will amplify into a different dynamic. Thanks for the post.

Leanne Lowish • I agree and in my experience unless some of the elephants in the room are named teams will resist going to positivity and will find it superficial so I think its a balance and each team will differ and its knowing when to move into appreciating as staying too long in the conflict can be demotivating especially when we consider Gottmans research on relationships where he found that 69% of conflict is unresolvable!

Elizabeth Maher • Sarah, love your comprehensive post. I have always found appreciative inquiry, applied in a sincere and trustworthy manner, to yield productive, profitable and positive outcomes.

Sarah Lewis • Thank you all for your kind comments. It encourages me to keep producing these bite-sized posts. Re Elizabeth’s comment. In the UK there is a minor scandal going on as it has been discovered that the Job Centre ( Government service for job seekers) was getting people to find in a ‘strengths’ questionnaire that was delivering spurious results. Apparently this was an attempt by the ‘nudge unit’ (another Government body attempting to apply behavioural research on a macro-scale to nudge people into desired behaviour) to produce placebo effects as people were given a seemingly random list of their strengths.
In these ways is cynicism born.

Nona Hall-Sandoval: A great Ted Talk on Positive Psychology

Showed this video to my psychology students last night introducing them to positive psychology…what a treat to see the positive response.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXy__kBVq1M&feature=player_embedded

Sarah Lewis: Building a positive workplace

Nice little article that popped up through google.

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2013/04/29/6-ways-to-build-a-more-positive-workplace?

Here are some of the messages Sarah has received over the past month from around the world:

Hi Sarah,

I am a leadership development and organisational change practitioner working here in Sydney in my own business. I do lots of leadership development work as a coach, facilitator and program designer which to me is core to organisational change. I discovered “Positive Psychology at Work” last year and after reading many change books over the years, was delighted that you have put together a meaningful and practical guide for effective change – thank you!  I have been using AI lightly for a few years and positive psychology heavily informs both my coaching practice and team work development along with leadership programs.

I am fortunate to do work with an (airline subsidiary) in Australia who have been on a journey toward culture change and I have been using your book as a core ‘text book’ underpinning the work we are doing, and to date we are achieving some positive results!

Thanks again for your contribution to change in the world!

Cheers,

******************

Hi Sarah,

Sorry about the delay,  but just to say thank you for your presentation at the University  last Thursday, and for being so generous with your insights.

I love the positive psychology approach and find it really changes the energy in the room, and I will be ordering your second book on amazon.

In the spirit of generosity if I can share anything with you I would be more than happy.

Responses to the question ‘What were the three most useful thing you learned’ following a recent workshop run by Sarah

‘That a group of people doing the same thing is not necessarily a team.’

‘How a change in language can change the atmosphere from negative to positive.’

‘You don’t need to ‘storm’ to form a strong team.’

‘People are more motivated by a positive goal.’

‘The difference that ratios of positive to negative makes to performance.’

‘That the ‘forming, storming, performing’ model is old hat and probably inaccurate.’

‘The ‘inquiry’ aspect – start with a question, not a problem, and [a] team will engage.’

‘Capitalize on differences; make these work for you.’

‘A high performing team has 3 positive comments to every negative.’

Here are some of my favourite posts, replies and links on the Positive Psychology At Work LinkedIn group this month…

Dr. Colleen Georges: Found this so inspirational: http://positivesharing.com/2013/01/100-years-old-and-happy-at-work/. It goes to show that happiness at work isn’t about age, salary, or status–its about attitude

Kimberley Seitz, PhD • Kudos to the organization that helps hire and maintain older workers so that they can do what they love and be productive in the process.

Dr. Colleen Georges – Resume Writer & Career Coach • I loved that the average age worker at the factory was in the mid-seventies

Sarah Lewis • Absolutely, gives us all hope!

Mike Scowen: Do you agree that of all the skills of leadership, listening is the most valuable? – and one of the least understood? http://bkcross.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/what-if-today-you-listened-first/?goback=%2Egmr_3886081%2Egde_3886081_member_212821953

Sarah Lewis • An interesting article. The general point about the importance of listening is well made and always bears repeating. What I particularly like though is the first story about helping a learner relax enough to be able to learn.
I was at a ski-ing class yesterday and had a ball – mainly because over most of my adult life I have slowly worked out how to learn while in company. As a child, adolescent and younger adult I was paralysed by performance anxiety, embarrassed by mistakes – guilty even about ‘not getting it’ and so on. A book I’m reading ‘Quiet’ – which I thoroughly recommend to any other introverts out there – has offered two concepts which are helpful. One is the research that shows that this ‘don’t watch me’ – reaction while trying to learn something is common to introverts ( and so makes group learning – like tennis tuition – something of a nightmare). The other thing is the idea of ‘deliberate practice’ which is how introverts teach themselves. Essentially, in the quiet of your own head, you decide which aspects of whatever you want to focus on next and get on and do it – in a concentrating way. The beauty of this ski experience is that it is coaching (not instruction, big difference) based in small groups of four and they stay at the top of the indoor slope and you just keep going round and they offer something you might like to work on each time. It’s like guided deliberate practice. It works for me. Anyway, this article seems more to me about her skill as a teacher, helping someone deal with their learning and performance anxiety through relaxing laughter, changing the frame of the experience. This must be an example of positive psychology at work – right? What do you think?

Mike Smith • Susan Cain the author of Quiet does a very good TED talk. She puts forward that introverts should also have a valuable place in society, yet as a whole we put the emphasis on extroverts. So yes listening is valuable and definitely misunderstood if you are expecting leaders that stand out.

Ryan Samia: If you are going to teach a class on becoming a positive leader, what would be the main 3 key points you would want to share? Thanks!

James E Johnson Johnson • 1. Avoid words that have a “negative feld meaning”
2. Present dichotomies avoid “good/bad”, “right/wrong”
3. Develop positive dicotomies (with a spectrum of possitvilities) for “special situations”.

Stuart Jackson • Everyone leading or teaching in leadership should walk this walk
What is my mastery
What is my autonomy and how do I make decisions
What is my purpose.

Daniel Pink

Works for me both as a leader and mentor / teacher

Look first in the mirror and know yourself

Emanuela Hellum • -Be an optimist
-Always motivate people
-Be inclusive

Mike Smith • People learn by watching and copying. Be the person to copy. Be positive in a genuine manner, show leadership as engaging and deliver at the level the audience can relate to.

Elizabeth Maher • Positive leaders arrive at positive outcomes in the quickest possible time while maintaining a positive team.

Sarah Lewis • Hi Ryan,
I take it you are about to do this? And this is for adult leaders?
1) The Kim Cameron research on Flourishing organisations – their three distinguishing features e..g affirmation bias, positive deviance and virtuous practices and how this is culture they can help build
2) Appreciative Inquiry as a methodology for change that is positive psychology based, possibly including the Higgs and Rowlands work on leadership and emergent change
3) you might want to have a look through the Diane Whitney et al book ‘appreciative leadership’ and the Kim Cameron book “Positive Leadership’. And the Appreciative Inquiry Practitioner did an edition on this which has some great case study storieshttp://www.aipractitioner.com/ai-practitioner-february-2011
Hope this helps, Sarah

Ryan Samia • Thanks for all comments… is there a quick 5minute activity or interaction that will help leaders get the importance of being positive?

Elizabeth Maher • Hi Ryan,

A quick but effective exercise is…..

1. At the start of the session ask each participant to give one word they might use when talking about an underperforming employee.
2. Ask them for one word regarding a good/excellent employee.
3. Hold discussion comparing their experience around both words.

It is most important that all attendees participate
My experience around this exercise is that participants are very surprised at their own performance based on two words thereby promoting buy-in to the importance of being a positive leader.

Do not overwork this exercise . Depending on the size of the group, you should allocate 10 mins max to the exercise.

Craig Rollason • Ask the class “what’s the alternative?”

Jude Smith Rachel: Perhaps We’re Looking at the Wrong Top: There Are Women Everywhere!

At what point will the glorification of big business stop? Time to start concentrating on all of the things we have achieved, and to tune out noises to the contrary. Just saying. What about you? http://gsm.ucdavis.edu/blog-feature/women-top-not-so-much?goback=%2Egde_3886081_member_203420983

Sarah Lewis • This post makes a good business case, with statistics, for the positive effects of diversity
‘A recent McKinsey study found startlingly consistent correlations between diversity and performance: for companies ranking in the top quartile of executive-board diversity, return on equity was 53 percent higher on average, than they were for those in the bottom quartile. At the same time, margins on earnings before interest and taxes at the most diverse companies were 14 percent higher, on average, than those of the least diverse companies.

Companies with more diverse executive teams outperform their peers: fielding a team of top executives with varied cultural backgrounds and life experiences can broaden a company’s strategic perspective. And relentless competition for the best people should reward organizations that cast their nets beyond traditional talent pools for leadership.

Research from Catalyst and others reflects that companies with a strong female representation at top management level perform better than those without. Gender-diverse boards have a positive impact on performance including a 35% higher return on equity, and stronger stock market growth.’
Always useful. And links to the research in the original article

Jude Smith Rachele • Compelling. Good news all around, and plenty upon which to build. Common sense tells us there must be greater participation of women across all of society. It is most important we bring a certain perspective and wisdom (of a female gender kind that is not just reserved for women) into Board rooms. Personally, I’d like to see more femininity rather than women, but, there you go. One step at a time.