Posts Tagged ‘positive psychology at work’
Background
The organisation is an ex-MOD facility, a big engineering employer in the local area, with an enviable steady state history and past protection from commercial pressures, which is now experiencing accelerating change. It has already passed into commercial ownership and is beginning to adapt to commercial pressures. At the point we are asked to help they have just been acquired by a new owner, and no one is quite sure what their plans might be. A new Managing Director has been appointed with a very different focus and orientation to the previous one. There is a new leader in this particular unit. And the end is in sight for the product on which this team works – no one is quite sure what this means for them.
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Tags: acting appreciatively, appreciating change, appreciative enquiry, appreciative inquiry, business psychology, Case Studies, case study, employee engagement, facilitation, leadership, positive psychology, positive psychology at work, sarah lewis, team development, uncertainty
Posted in Appreciative Inquiry, Case Studies, Change, Leadership, Positive Psychology |
Many leaders are currently facing the challenge of leading in conditions of great uncertainty in an unpredictable environment. Yet much leadership and change guidance is predicated on the assumption of a relatively stable or foreseeable future – for which plans can be made. Here are some principles to help leaders continue to offer leadership even when firm plans are hard to come by.
1. Keep Leading
When researching his book ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ Atul Gawande turned to the airline industry for case-studies on how to prepare emergency checklists. He discovered that these pioneers in the creation of a checklist for every scenario had quickly learnt that the first instruction on every list had to be ‘keep flying the plane’. Similarly, all may be in turmoil about you, but ‘keep offering leadership’ has to be at the top of your checklist.
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Tags: acting appreciatively, appreciating change, business psychology, leadership, management, positive psychology, positive psychology at work, sarah lewis, uncertainty
Posted in Leadership, Positive Psychology |
As we note above, and much further research is confirming, happiness has many benefits. One easy way to introduce this into the work place is by opening a meeting with a ‘success round’. Very often in meetings we plunge straight into the business of the day. By starting the meeting by giving people a chance to share a recent success we not only boost people’s mood in the moment, we also prepare them to engage more productively with what ever is to follow, and we learn lots about what makes our colleagues tick.
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Tags: acting appreciatively, appreciating change, business psychology, change, change techniques, employee engagement, leadership, management, positive psychology, positive psychology at work, practical application, sarah lewis
Posted in Employee Engagement, Leadership, Positive Psychology |
While much research confirms that successful outcomes can foster happiness, it has tended to be seen as a one-way linear relationship: you have to be successful to be happy. But might it be more of a circular relationship? A virtuous circle where being happy makes it more likely you will succeed? In 2005 Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ed Diener and Laura King pulled together all the research they could find that addressed the question: does happiness contribute to success?
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Tags: appreciating change, business psychology, employee engagement, leadership, positive psychology, positive psychology at work, sarah lewis
Posted in Employee Engagement, Leadership, Organisational Development, Positive Psychology, Research |
I recently used the cards with the CIO Board of a large international company about to embark on a new IT strategy that essentially involves cultural change in the organization, and in their relationship with the organization. This is the first time I have used them.
The board is a relatively new team.
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Tags: ac cards, acting appreciatively, ai, ai at work, appreciating change, appreciative enquiry, appreciative inquiry, business psychology, change, employee engagement, od, organisational development, positive psychology, positive psychology at work, positive psychology cards, psychology, sarah lewis, sarah lewis cards, strengthening teams, strengths-based, team development
Posted in Change, Organisational Development, Positive Psychology Concept Cards, Team Development |
Ways to use Positive Psychology Concept Cards: Ten ideas to get you started
General
You can use these cards in a number of ways to stimulate discussion; create commonality and motivation; and to identify agreed action. Some general ideas are:
- Use the cards as they stand, the questions and the action points
- Use a rating scale ‘To what extent is this present in our team/organization/group at the moment on a scale of 1-10? What would we like to be? How can we move towards this?’etc.
- As a prioritizing tool. ‘Which five of these are most key to our future success/our development/our strategy?’
- As playing cards. Each person has some. Someone starts by laying down a card they think is important (to the topic under discussion) explaining why they think so, the person who thinks they can build on this with one of the cards in their hand lays it down with ‘yes and…’. This is a cooperative card game, with no winners or losers.
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Tags: acting appreciatively, ai, appreciating change, appreciating change cards, appreciative enquiry, appreciative inquiry, business psychology, change, employee engagement, facilitation, leadership, management, od, organisational development, positive change, positive psychology, positive psychology at work, positive psychology cards, practical positive psychology, psychology, resistance to change, sarah lewis, sarah lewis cards, strengthening teams, strengths, strengths-based, team development, working with strengths
Posted in Appreciative Inquiry, Change, Organisational Development, Positive Psychology Concept Cards, Strengths, Team Development |
Introducing the Positive Psychology Concept Cards
The concepts reflect key findings from positive psychology research of things that make a positive difference to organisational life. Each card lists the benefits of the concept, provides three questions to stimulate discussion, and is followed by three pointers for development. Each is introduced briefly below, arranged in four groups.
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Tags: appreciating change, appreciating change cards, appreciative enquiry, appreciative inquiry, business psychology, employee engagement, leadership, management, positive psychology, positive psychology at work, positive psychology cards, practical positive psychology, psychology, sarah lewis, sarah lewis cards, strengthening teams, strengths-based
Posted in Positive Psychology Concept Cards |
I recently met Dr. Gervase R. Bushe (Professor of Leadership and Organisational Development at the Beedie School of Business, Simon Frasier University, Vancouver), a leading expert on Appreciative Inquiry and associate with numerous consulting groups, as well as author of ‘Clear Leadership: Sustaining Real Collaboration and Partnership at Work’ (Davies Black: London), and gave him a copy of my book. He was very complimentary and gracious enough to send me an endorsement which I have included below.
Endorsement of ‘Positive Psychology at Work: How Positive Leadership and Appreciative Inquiry Create Inspiring Organizations’. By Sarah Lewis, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
Reviewed by Gervase R. Bushe
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Tags: ai, appreciating change, appreciative enquiry, appreciative inquiry, endorsement, gervase bushe, gervase r. bushe, leadership, management, positive psychology, positive psychology at work, psychology, sarah lewis
Posted in Positive Psychology |
Barack Obama famously crowd-sourced the finance for his election campaign, a powerful example of the ability of new technology to create a great aggregate result out of lots of small voluntary actions. But this process is not as new as it seems: Sir James Murray used a similar approach to creating the Oxford English Dictionary, a project he began in 1897.
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Tags: acting appreciatively, ai, ai at work, appreciating change, appreciative enquiry, appreciative inquiry, business psychology, crowd sourcing, employee engagement, facilitation, large group change, positive co-creation, positive psychology, positive psychology at work, practical positive psychology, psychology, sarah lewis, volunteer principle
Posted in Appreciative Inquiry |
Sarah Lewis is a consultant and facilitator who has been working with organisations (public and private) for almost twenty years as the head of Appreciating Change (formerly Jemstone Consultancy). She specialises in using Appreciative Inquiry and other positive psychology techniques to help organisations change to meet new challenges without developing ‘resistance to change’ from their employees. She is highly respected and well known in her field and is the author of two books in this area: ‘Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management’ and ‘Positive Psychology at Work’.
In January of this year Appreciating Change first began offering fellow change practitioners the chance to attend a series of one day masterclasses presented by Sarah on a variety of themes where they can draw on her vast practical experience and knowledge in the field of organisational change.
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Tags: ai, appreciative enquiry, appreciative inquiry, masterclasses, positive psychology, positive psychology at work, sarah lewis
Posted in Events |
