While there can be many answers to this question, I suggest that perspective-taking is an important one of them. Perspective-taking has been defined as the “active cognitive process of imagining the world from another’s vantage point or imagining oneself in another’s shoes to understand their visual viewpoint, thoughts, motivations, intentions, and/or emotions” (Ku, Wang, & Galinsky, 2015, p. 94). Even though perspective-taking (which is a cognitive process) has been argued to be different from empathy (which is understood to have an emotional component,) this distinction does not seem to be universally agreed upon. For instance, Coleman (2007) writes about three different types of empathy – emotional, cognitive, and compassionate, and refers to cognitive empathy as perspective-taking. To clarify my usage in this post, I will consider perspective-taking to be different from empathy, and will use the term to refer to one’s ability to actively engage in the process of understanding someone else’s point of view.

If we consider the context of the US elections, perspective-taking would entail actively seeking out someone with a different political view than one’s own and listening to what they have to say with an open mind and a genuine desire to understand. Interestingly, to really put oneself in someone else’s shoes, one needs to first take off one’s own shoes: It is only by suspending our own judgments and preconceived notions that we can truly take another’s perspective. By demonstrating this skill themselves, leaders can encourage their teams to do the same. This isn’t easy, of course, and given the delicacy of the situation, requires skill.
However, perspective-taking of this sort can be an important step towards a greater understanding of the situation and of the other person, which is crucial for an institution that wants its people to connect and cooperate with one another. In fact, research on perspective-taking indicates that it leads to enhanced interpersonal and intergroup relations.

Perspective-taking has been shown to increase positive connections, enhance coordination, and increase generosity and helping behavior in interpersonal relationships (Ku et al., 2015). Perspective-taking has also been shown to improve intergroup relations by reducing prejudice, stereotyping, and discriminatory views (Ku et al., 2015). Difficult times in an organization can be filled with negativity and a lack of connection among people, and leaders can employ perspective-taking as a tool to infuse more positivity in such situations. Furthermore, perspective-taking can be a critical skill for organizations that value diversity: it can enable leaders to leverage the benefits of diversity while reducing the challenges that arise when people with diverse ethnicities, views, and opinions come together.

It is important to note that perspective-taking is not an unmitigated good and can even have a negative impact. For instance, perspective-taking seems to have different effects in cooperative vs. competitive contexts: it reduces egocentrism and increases moral behavior in cooperative contexts and increases egocentric and self-serving behavior in competitive contexts (Ku et al., 2015). Similarly, if members of a group deeply identify with their group, attempts at understanding another group’s perspective result in an increase in negative judgments about the other group, perhaps because the context appears to be one of competition (Ku et al., 2015). It is important, then, for leaders to be aware of the nuances of perspective-taking so that they can use this tool effectively to foster greater understanding and cooperation in their organizations, while preventing its detrimental effects.

In essence, there are pros and cons to perspective-taking and while the pros seem to outweigh the cons, an effective use of this tool to manage conflicting teams and individuals requires leaders to have a nuanced understanding of how and when to lead from someone else’s shoes.

References

Ku, G., Wang, C. S., & Galinsky, A. D. (2015). The promise and perversity of perspective-taking in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 35, 79-102. doi:10.1016/j.riob.2015.07.003

Goleman, D. (2007, June 12). Three Kinds of Empathy: Cognitive, Emotional, Compassionate. Retrieved December 12, 2016, from http://www.danielgoleman.info/three-kinds-of-empathy-cognitive-emotional-compassionate/

Yashi Srivastava can be reached at: http://yashisrivastava.net

Rebecca Bridges takes time out her busy schedule to talk.

Meet Rebecca Bridges. Wife. Mother. Management consultant at FMP Consulting. Rebecca has also been blind from birth. Knowing the unemployment rate is 70% for people who are blind, how could she grow up with the hope of finding a job that she would enjoy? Is it luck or is it something else?

We have all heard the statistics. According to Simon Sinek, author of Leaders Eat Last, 1 in 3 employees seriously consider leaving their jobs. Of that number, only 1.5% of employees actually leave voluntarily. They feel safer with the job they hate then the unknown. With these types of statistics, I wondered how Rebecca found the courage to fulfill her dream.

You Have to Be Better than Anyone Else

Rebecca remembers her Dad giving her advice as a little girl when she complained that being blind wasn’t fair. “Too bad. You just have to be better than everyone else,” he said. That piece of advice stuck. When talking with Rebecca, she comes prepared for everything.

She didn’t have any inkling that she would go to grad school. Then one day, as she browsed around the Web looking for something that her husband might like, she found a program that changed her life: Organization Development and Knowledge Management from George Mason University. It piqued her interest.

“The program description talked about organizational change and transformation, process consultation, and really meeting people where they are and taking them where they need to go,” expressed Rebecca. “I went to the information session and applied the next day. I was so excited because I had found my calling!”

As she went through the program, Rebecca learned a lot about herself. How she dealt with situations both good and bad. How she dealt with conflict. What kind of leadership style made her unique.

“I really enjoyed the courses that I took as part of the program,” Rebecca said. “I wanted to work with organizations and clients to help them achieve results that were even greater than they anticipated. At the end of my program, consulting seemed like a logical step. I started looking and I found FMP Consulting. It seemed like a good match.”

Did I Get the Job?

When Rebecca went to the interview with FMP, she paid close attention to what she wore. She also thought about their perceptions as she crossed the room. It seems as if her Dad’s voice whispered in her ear. “You just have to be better than everyone else.”

“We have to be more prepared than any other person interviewing. We have to show up with our technology and be prepared to answer any of their questions whether we want to or not,” says Rebecca. “It’s a balance because you don’t want to be too defensive, but you also want to show that you are competent and capable because there are questions that they are not supposed to ask you in the interview process.”

When a week-and-a-half went by after her second interview, Rebecca summed up her courage and called the Human Resources Manager. Her heart dropped when he said there were a couple more things they wanted to know.

“The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I thought, Oh no, this is it. They are looking for something to weed me out today,” said Rebecca.

He started asking me about my technology and how I work with applications such as Excel and PowerPoint. She had two ways to go. Rebecca thought about not answering the questions, but took a deep breath and answered them honestly. She needed to elevate the game because, although it might have seemed unfair or felt uncomfortable, it was important that she provide every assurance within reason that she would be a good fit.

“Whether you think it is fair or not, being blind makes it harder because you need to be more skilled than other people in certain areas. You have to demonstrate your competence and ensure to the hiring manager that you are capable of doing the job. Once you have the job, the other challenge is keeping it. There are a lot of things that are still not accessible to us,” commented Rebecca.

Her husband, Eric Bridges, has put accessibility squarely in his sights. Although relatively new to the Executive Director role, he has been working with the American Council of the Blind since 2007, and he had made some significant progress.

Rebecca thinks of her landing a job with FMP as skill and luck. As a consulting firm, they appeared more accessible to her than a Booz Allen Hamilton or Deloitte, who have thousands of employees. With less than 100 on staff, FMP seemed like they could make a difference in their client’s lives. In fact, Rebecca feels like their organization works really hard to do the things they tell their clients to do. The amazing thing? FMP was the only place she interviewed post grad school.

The Most Important Thing In Her Life? Family

When asked about her biggest achievement, Rebecca laughed and said it was her child. She remembered bringing the baby home, holding him in the rocking chair and thinking, “What in the hell am I going to do now.” She says that little Tyler has been the world to her and Eric since he’s entered their lives. Rebecca proudly says that they have full-time jobs, keep a clean house, and have a child who is fully sighted, fully functioning, and just plain awesome. And they’re both blind.

With respect to her work, Rebecca would like to be there for a long time. It’s important to be gainfully employed doing something you love to do. “No one likes to pay taxes,” Rebecca laughs. But it’s clear that she’d gladly pay them than be a burden on society. She is now looking at getting her PMP certification.

“At the end of it all, I want to look back and say that I had jobs doing what I enjoyed and I contributed to the well-being of individuals and organizations,” remarked Rebecca.

So… now I’m wondering. How many more people who are blind are out there looking for work and not finding what they want. Is it because they aren’t as prepared as Rebecca is at being better than her competitors? Or, was she just one of the lucky ones?

We had a great time with Cathy Salit today, CEO of Performance of a Lifetime.  A powerful company with a  funny name.  As you can see from the photos, she engaged a whole class of psychology students by asking them to perform (and groan and stretch).  Their teacher wrote:

Hi Cathy,

    My students and I enjoyed your Webinar.

​They groaned with you, and wrote what they learned afterwards.

Play and performance is so radical, when people get it, it’s life transforming.

Great job.

Rafael​

Cathy spoke about her book, Performance Breakthrough:  A Radical Approach to Success at Work.  Based in a field called Performative Psychology founded by Lois Holzman, Fred Newman and Ken & Mary Gergen from the Taos Institute.  As Dr. Holzman said:  ”We collectively create our lives through performance (simultaneously who we are and who we are becoming).”  Salit has coined this The Becoming Principle.

There are five key fundamental elements of performance she covered.

1)  Choose to Grow.

(This is where we groaned.)  You have to make a choice to grow, because growing is hard work.

2)  Build Ensembles Everywhere

Their work is also based on Lev Vygotsky who coined the phrase ‘zone of proximal development’.  Basically, how we allow children to perform a head taller than they are.  We grow in groups, not alone.  This has been a criticism of positive psychology, that we are only focusing research on the individual.

Her practice, “Say ‘we’ when you would normally say ‘I’.”

3) Listen!:  The Revolutionary Way to Have a Conversation

Apparently, most people only listen 20% of the time.  This is the fundamental point of improvisation (the methodology of POAL’s work).  While we didn’t have time to do the ‘yes, and’ exercise I recommend you looking it up.  If we all really listened, how amazing would our conversations be?  A great Ted talk in this regards is Ken Robinson’s.

The practice?  Perform being curious.  Even if you’re not.

4) Create with Crap

“Option A is not available.  So let’s just kick the shit out of Option B.”  Sheryl Sandberg

This is my favorite section and comes out of the listening for ‘offers’.  In improv, an ‘offer’ isn’t always something you want.  How do you create with something you don’t want?  Cathy gave a good example of empathy when you get the crying person in your office after a performance review.

The practice?  She encouraged participants to make a poem from their ‘crap’.  Send your “Create with Crap” poem to stories@performanceofalifetime.com.

5)  Improvise Your Life

1. Say “Yes, and” (and mean it!)

Yes means you accept what your partner gives you, ‘and’ means you add to it.

2. Make the other person look good

If you don’t do this in improv the scene dies.  Same is true for making your boss look good.

3. Celebrate mistakes and failures

We learn by failing.  As Beckett said, “Fail fast.  Fail better.”

4. Follow the follower

If you are following each other then you can really build rather than try to dominate a ‘scene’ (or a meeting).

5. Delight in curveballs

Take what you weren’t expecting and run with it.  I wasn’t expecting tech glitches in the webinar but we rolled with them!

Wrap up:

Performance is all around us.  We don’t wake up in the morning with a script.  So take a risk.  Even if it is a small one in your workplace.  And write us back to tell us what you decided to do!  See below for more ways to stay in touch with Cathy.

And you can follow @CathySalit on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  

We’ll be posting some of her questions to webinar participants in another blog post.

We play a role in our own stress and angst, sometimes causing it where none really needs to exist. We bring our histories, good and bad, to our daily interactions and this affects our perceptions. Albert Ellis (1962), the father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), identified that much of the stress experienced in life comes not from the stressful events in our lives, but from our interpretation of the event. This makes sense – if the activating event were causal, then everyone’s responses would be the same.

Enter the ABC Model Exercise, which is described in greater detail in ”The Resilience Factor” by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté. This exercise can be trained within an organization to increase skills to unearth underlying beliefs that affect our interpretations. If we can become aware of and begin to control our internalized communication, we can significantly alter how we are impacted by stressful events.

The ABC Model can be taught and utilized in our organizations. By modeling new behavior or, even better, training our teams to stop and consider their underlying beliefs (also known as “the stories we tell ourselves”), we can increase resilience and reduce the related fallout.

The ABC Model

Below is an example of the ABC Model exercise, which can increase our skill to detect thoughts in the midst of adversity and can help us understand its emotional impact. ABC stands for the following:

A:   Adversity or activating event

B:   Beliefs – the thoughts that run through our minds (consciously or unconsciously) when we face an adversity or an activating event

C:   Consequence – the result of the belief, which can be behavioral or emotional, or both
A-to-C Connections

Sometimes, when faced with adversity, we jump right from the adversity to the consequence, called an A-to-C Connection.  Here is an example, moving from A to C:

We are having a weekly staff meeting and an employee arrives ten minutes late (adversity), right in the midst of sharing an important development. I become angry and make a sarcastic remark to the employee in front of the entire team (consequence).

Dissecting the Steps

A: An employee is ten minutes late to a staff meeting

C: “I am mad” and the whole team knows it because of my sarcastic comment.

In this example, I have decided that anger is a result of the tardiness. That is an A->C connection. But, if we dig deeper, we will see the underlying belief:

B: “This employee is disrespecting me.” We can see what really had transpired was A->B->C.

Consider the above example again, but now consider the intervening the belief:

We are having our weekly stuff meeting and an employee arrives ten minutes late (adversity). I think, “This employee is disrespecting me” (belief). I become angry and make a sarcastic remark to the employee in front of the entire team (consequence).

Once we understand this underlying belief, we can potentially use this information to debunk the belief. This can be done with FAT Thinking.

FAT Thinking

FAT thinking is (F)lexible, (A)ccurate and (T)horough thinking. In moments of challenge, we can consider other options (be more flexible in our thinking), challenge the veracity of our own thoughts (be more accurate in our thinking) and consider additional information (be more thorough in our thinking). In the example above, we could ask ourselves the following:

In this case, I might ask, “Does the employee really disrespect me?”

1. Flexible: Is there another way to look at this situation? Perhaps his last meeting ran late. Maybe an important call from a client came up.
2. Accurate: Am I sure this is true? Given other possibilities, perhaps I should ask him what happened after our meeting before jumping to conclusions.
3. Thorough: Is there more information I can consider? Upon further contemplation, I might recall that we have visiting clients or recall that the employee’s wife recently had a baby.

In January 2010, we phoned each other after watching a PBS documentary called This Emotional Life. There was one scene where a middle-aged husband was recently fired from his job and on top of this, could barely sleep and rarely connected with his wife because of their difficulties parenting a newborn child. What does psychology have to offer to help a person dealing with so many stressors at one time? In this PBS special, a positive psychology coach taught him to keep a journal so that he could record three bits of daily appreciation. Telling someone who is experiencing hardship to be grateful may or may not be the wisest approach. There is certainly research evidence suggesting that daily gratitude can boost happiness but reframing misfortune as opportunity can also come across as invalidating and Pollyanna-ish. Isn’t there more research that could potentially have informed this particular case? We thought about all of the great scientific research that people ignore because they were not written by academic celebrities who give TED talks, write popular books, and go on public speaking tours. And from this, our book was born…..

Buy on Amazon

We know why some people don’t buy our new book - “The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self – Not Just Your “Good Self” – Drives Success and Fulfillment”

We expose some of the flaws in modern thinking about how to live a fulfilling life and how to become a great leader. We hate to burst the bubble on the happiness industry but human beings cannot will them to happiness. There is no switch to shut off sadness and turn on happiness. There is no dial to turn for feeling less anxious. But even if there was…your desire to turn the dial or flick the switch would cause unintended, new problems.

Consider those moments when you dare greatly:

-  The feeling you get when you see someone being bullied and you commit to say something and put a stop to it.

-  The feeling you get before sending that blog post, doubting where there is any worth to those written words and why the world needs one more voice to add to the chatter.

-  The feeling you get when you stand in line for the high diving board before you are alone staring at the water below.

-  The feeling a public speaker gets between the time they are introduced and the time they go on.

-  The feeling of hugging a disappointed child.

These are not happy moments. And yet, they are some of the most meaningful moments. What you do in response to these feelings and thoughts will determine what you accomplish in your life, how much fulfillment you acquire. No single moment matters. The pattern does. Do you pursue what matters most to you despite the presence of pain? Or will you wait until the anxiety, anger, self-doubt, and sadness disappear?

Negative emotions are not a sign of weakness. Reducing negative emotions or increasing positive emotions should never be the goal of living. Because emotions are signals from the mind and body for what just happened. They offer information about what to do next. Woe to the human being that ignores the intuition offered up to us from tens of thousands of years of evolutionary carving. We ask you to put a moratorium on asking, “how does this make me feel” in hopes of gaining positivity. Instead, consider asking, “what does this do for me?”

You are vulnerable because you are strong. You are about to enter the arena. You are about to risk failure. You are about to push boundaries. To do anything less is to give up on your personal growth and what makes us feel fully alive.

We love and hate uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Robert and I grew tired of advice to smile more, laugh more, relax more, even when there are reasons to feel somber or frustrated. We grew tired of advice to use strengths more and feel grateful more often, even when there are real obstacles that cannot be ignored such as how to find a new job, how to start tough conversations with a disrespectful romantic partner, and how to raise a baby – because the truth is, nobody knows what they are doing as a first-time parent.

With 15 years of experience as psychologists, Robert and I synthesized decades of work, hundreds of studies, leading to a compelling story about how to become emotionally agile – where we use emotions as tools to work toward goals that are most meaningful to us; socially agile – where we are kind but selective about how we act depending on the situation being confronted; mentally agile – where we recognize that mindfulness and mindlessness are both beneficial and by learning this, we can be better decision-makers, better relationship partners, and more efficient and effective in work, love, and play. We turned scientific knowledge into a series of stories. If you want to follow the breadcrumbs about the science behind the advice, you can turn to the 50 pages of endnotes in the back.

If you want to know how to be happy, engaged, with a sense of meaning and purpose, you cannot prematurely rule out the advantages of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that are uncomfortable and socially undesirable. We all have biases about what we want to feel and how we should behave. We learn this from our parents and friends. We learn this from the culture we identify with. We want to gain approval from other people, so we try to put on a happy face and talk about our kind, selfless motivations. This makes sense. Your relationships and the work you create to improve the world will both be unsatisfactory without the support, knowledge, and wisdom of other people.

But here we offer the simple message that you don’t need to choose between feeling good or bad, being kind or selfish, being mindful or mindless. Your evolutionary birth right is to be psychologically flexible. You were born with a complex personality with various emotional shades for a reason. To get the best possible outcome in a situation, you will have to deviate from positivity (some of the time). To develop the healthiest relationships, you will have to deviate from positivity (some of the time). To create great work that matters, you will have to deviate from positivity (some of the time).

Learn how.
Learn when.
Learn why.

By doing so, you will become bigger, stronger, agile. And as a person that harnesses the different sides of your personality, you will end up becoming whole with a happier, fulfilling life.

Dr. Todd B. Kashdan is a professor of psychology and senior scientist at the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University, and Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener is a researcher and trainer, and both authored the new book, “The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self – Not Just Your “Good Self” – Drives Success and Fulfillment”.

Early research regarding negative emotion has been generally agreed upon – negative emotion alerts us to danger, problems and focuses attention on self-preservation and problem solving. However, understanding the reasoning for positive emotion has been less clear, even dismissed, until recently. Martin E.P. Seligman, Barbara Fredrickson, and Christopher Peterson, for example, have shown biological reasons for positive emotions and how they relate to human survival and well-being. In my experience as a leader, I have witnessed the results of positive emotion and its effect on wellbeing in the workplace.

Positive emotion affects our workforce is the most basic way – our health.  Research studies conducted by Ellen Langer and Alia Crum showed that simple changes in mindset can have dynamic and self-fulfilling effects on health. And this can be seen even at the cellular level. Steven Cole and Barbara Fredrickson’s joint study on the effect of emotion on the human genome found that high levels of positive emotion affects us at the immune cellular level, reducing inflammation and correlating with a strong expression of antiviral and antibody genes. In turn, good health means reduced absenteeism for the workforce.

Positive emotion is also linked to more innovation, better problem solving, and to a more connected workforce. According to Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden and Build theory, positive emotion leads to greater creativity, openness, and better problem solving.  Our thinking becomes more holistic and we build new skills.

Negative emotion also plays an important role in well-being.  Negativity constrains our experience of the world ­– narrowing attention and increasing analytical thinking.  In emergencies, for example, we need to bring a narrower focus to the table. In fact, optimistic thinking is sometimes associated with underestimation of risks.

Achieving Balance: Fredrickson popularized the positivity ratio—the ratio of positive emotions to negative emotions as measured over time. To flourish, Fredrickson recommends a positivity ratio of about 3 to 1***.  The positivity ratio plots as a U curve showing that a higher positivity ratio is healthy and productive up to a certain point and then declines. In the workplace, I have witnessed this when excessive fun and games leads to decreased productivity.  Sometimes, more often in tight knit groups, Groupthink occurs and members “go along with the group” to avoid disrupting group harmony, leading to inferior decision making. The key is a high positivity ratio without extremes, with 11:1 being the upperbound positivity ratio for flourishing.

Emotions (both positive and negative) are contagious. According to Sigal Barsade, a professor at the Wharton School of Business, we can catch moods.  It only takes one of five employees to affect or “infect” the group. So, it is important to understand where excessive negative and positive emotions are originating in the company.

Ultimately, emotions have many implications for well-being in the workforce and should be examined. Considering human emotions in workplace and reflecting on the implications in policies and programs will improve well-being in the workplace.

***Most studies have shown the Positivity Ratio for flourishing to be between 3:1 to 4:1 including studies by Marcel Posada, John Gottman, and Robert Schwartz. Fredrickson has also acknowledged that the nonlinear dynamic model developed by Losada has been questioned, but evidence in recent years fortifies the Positivity Ratio Theory.

References

Barsade, S. G. (2001, August). Organizational Behavior, “The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion In Groups”. Yale School of Management. New Haven, CT.
Crum, A. (2014, 09 04). Mindset Matters: Toward a Positive Health Psychology. MAPP 10 Class at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Fredrickson, B. (2014, 09 06). Positive Emotions: Tiny Engines of Positive Psychology. (B. Fredrickson, Performer) MAPP 10 Class at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House.
Greenberg, M., & Maymin, S. (2013). Profit from the Positive: Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Peterson, C. (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Seligman, M. E. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. New York, NY: Free Press, a Division of Simon and Schuster.
Seligman, M. E. (1990). Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York, NY: Vintage Books, a Division of Random House.

 Join our Hacking Creativity Webinar on September 24 at noon EST.  Register here.

I believe everyone has the potential to be creative when given the time, freedom, and autonomy. And, combined witha subtle dose of inspiration,  that creativity may turn into full-blown innovation.

In business, creativity used to be reserved for the designers, marketers, and artistic talent that represented the antidote to buttoned-up organizational cultures. In today’s  increasingly ubiquitous “VUCA” environments, where volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity have seeped across industry verticals, creativity is no longer reserved solely for the hip folk clad in skinny jeans.  The ability to innovate across the corporate value chain – from strategy formulation to go-to-market execution – is a pre-requisite for market competitiveness. Those who do it best relish an ascent up the corporate ladder with increased reputational capital: they are the leadership game-changers.

Armed with this insight, a group of six students from the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program sought to collide the frontier of positive psychology—or the scientific study of human flourishing—with the science of creativity. The mash-up was an interdisciplinary take on two emergent fields that are garnering increased popularity in the corporate world.   The team learned that at the intersection of positive psychology and creativity emerged some interesting insights that are both actionable and accessible.

For example, consider  Adam Grant’s (2013) research in the best-selling book,  Give and Take.  Grant’s research displays a strong link between collaboration and creative character. A recent study conducted by Baer (2012) found more of the same, suggesting that creativity and implementation are regulated by people’s ability to network and the number of strong relationships they hold. Lucky for the team, collaboration – or rather, relationships at large – is shown to be one of the most important contributors to one’s overall happiness. Here we begin to see a picture emerge where positive psychology and creativity can, indeed, tango together. And this is just the beginning – many more insights continued to unfold, illuminating the commonality between these seemingly disparate fields.

In fact, another example near and dear to a positive psychologists heart is positive emotional states. Fredrickson’s (1998) ground-breaking broaden and build theory posits that positive emotions contribute to an upward spiral of more positive emotions, open-mindedness, increased scope of attention, out-of-the-box thinking, and increased problem solving.  And yet, the plot actually thickens when creativity is examined  further. Negative emotions also have the power to boost creativity. One study of 161 employees found that creativity increased when both positive and negative emotions were running high (George & Zhou, 2007). In short, they appeared to be using the drama in the workplace positively. It turns out that finding ways to turn negative moods from creativity foes to allies can be a deceptively simple strategy: don’t resist the resistance. There is no need to turn that frown upside down after all.

As we stumbled across findings such as these we went right to the creativity core. We coupled the time-tested definition of creativity—the generation of novel and useful ideas (Amabile, 1988; Oldham & Cummings, 1996)—with Einstein’s famous quip that we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. Putting the two together, and making sure to stay true to the big “A” in MAPP (application),  a sixty- minute webinar was designed, “Hacking Creativity,” that explores the intersection of these fields in an intriguing, insightful, and all together imaginative way.

Baer, M. (2012). Putting creativity to work: the implementation of creative ideas in organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 55(5), 1102-1119.

Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What good are positive emotions?Review of General Psychology, 2, 300-319.

Grant, M. (2013). Give and take: A revolutionary approach to success. New York: Viking Press.

George, J. M., & Zhou, J. (2007). Dual tuning in a supportive context: Joint contributions of positive mood, negative mood, and supervisory behaviors to employee creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 50(3), 605-622.

Oldham, G. R., & Cummings, A. (1996). Employee creativity: Personal and contextual factors at work. Academy of management journal, 39(3), 607-634.

If you are interested in learning what the team discovered, and howto leverage it against creativity-starved challenge, come join us on September 24^th at noon EST.  We look forward to sharing the result of our efforts to concoct a distinctive creativity and happiness tonic.  Go here to register:  https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/119275815.

As a corporate communications trainer I work with many people on a short term basis.  Over a two day session I can see an enormous impact on their personal and professional growth.  Invariably I am always asked, “Does this training really work?”  Aside from the pile of positive evaluations I have received I do not have a scientific answer for them.  Implementing well-being measures can bring scientific rigor to my field and can fine tune the work we do to serve the client in the most effective way possible.

I. Corporate Training

The company we work with has a policy requiring their high performing women, after a selection process, to take part in our training.  It is this training program that I will be evaluating.  We work with high performing women in cohorts of 20-25 at a time.  They are involved in programs that meet approximately three times over the course of the year.  In the interim my company provides individual executive coaching, 360 feedback and on the job assignments.  During our training sessions we help them focus on how to be strategic in their careers, how to become known internally, how to develop business, how to promote their accomplishments, give them interaction with successful role models and how to incorporate the ‘do’s and don’ts’ of executive presence.  We specifically focus on the specific technical skills theater professionals use to project presence.  We look at voice, physicality, word choice, non-verbal communication and energy.  We also focus on how to combat performance anxiety when giving a presentation.

II. Goals of Well-Being Measures in Training

Because of the number of trainers and the different content of our training, we divide the training sessions that occur in multiple offices all over the country.  But since we only see them one or two times in a year, how do we know the training has had a lasting impact?  The primary goal with incorporating well-being measures would be to determine the impact of these training programs on the participants and what specific elements were the most effective.  Our secondary goal is to discover if adding these skills to their ‘professional tool belt’ added to their level of subjective well-being at work by testing job satisfaction, productivity, resilience and positivity.

Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., Schimmack, U., & Helliwell, J. (in press) mention a meta analysis of sixteen studies (as cited in Petty et al., 1984) that examined the association between job satisfaction and job productivity.  In this study they found that the correlation between these two variables was .31. Other studies mentioned had a similar numerical correlation.  Diener again clarifies that a simple correlation does not tell us about the “direction of causality” (in press).  The majority of the studies reviewed by Diener, et al. reveal that job performance affects satisfaction.  If this is the case, then there is a stronger need for the training programs we do.  The better these women perform (i.e. the more efficient they are with managing teams, the more clients they are able to serve, and the more work they sell) the more satisfied they will be which can lead to higher profits for the company (as cited in Harter, Schmidt, & Keyes, 2003).

Diener, et al. (in press) clarify that if there is a causal effect of job satisfaction on performance, it is likely to be confounded with other variables such as the relation between pay and performance and the self-esteem of the employee.  From anecdotal comments I believe that the pay and performance correlation is at a high enough level to be satisfactory for the women, but I would need to evaluate this.  We would also need to include self-esteem measures before and after our training programs to verify the satisfaction to performance connection.  Here I would draw on Dianne Tice’s estimable work in this area (Tice, D., Gailliot, M., 2006).

In addition to retention of skill building and increased job satisfaction, I would like to evaluate resilience after our programs.  These women work incredibly long hours and I believe resilience is the one factor that keeps women at the firm versus stepping off of the work treadmill for jobs that have fewer hours.  This is something that I would like to evaluate.  While we can add facilitating disputation and the ABCDE method to our programs in the future (Reivich, 2003), I would like to evaluate the base level of resilience these women have and if it increases after our programs that are not addressing resilience directly.  In union with this, I would also like to evaluate positivity.  Based on Barbara Fredrickson’s work, I see that positivity also leads to higher functioning teams and to more profitable teams (2009).  If we can test for baseline positivity and compare to the results we find in successful teams, perhaps we can also add a training session on positivity to our programs.

III. Measurements

Currently we have subjective written evaluations after every two day session.  The questions included are:  What worked well in Section A, B, C?  What did not work so well in Sections A, B, C?  What would you improve for next time?  And our one quantitative measure:  Rank the effectiveness of this program on a scale of 1 to 10.  Our goals are not only to analyze the impact of the programs on a subjective level but on an objective level as well.  In addition to the questions we currently ask about the qualitative impact of the programs, we wish to add their level of positivity, their resilience, their level of job satisfaction after these programs (controlling for self-esteem) and to analyze the objective results of well-being measures.

Their resulting job performance can be objectively analyzed in a number of ways.  We currently do measures across the firm to discover the retention and promotion percentage for the women who have gone through our programs.  Job retention, in this instance, is measured by the number of women who stay at the firm from the previous year.  These numbers have grown with each year of the program, which is impressive, but we still need more rigor in order to determine the reliability of our programs.  I would like to add a quantitative measure evaluating profitability for our high level women that records how much business they sell after our programs.

In order to obtain the subjective and objective measures, I propose that we create a scale that covers the subjective measure and is specific to the training and the firm.  I will draw on Diener, et al’s The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) as a model and adjusting to use with more narrow questions (1985).  We will have to get a baseline before the beginning of the year-long program and follow up with one at the end when we look at the objective measures of success.  In addition, we will design a scale tailored to each specific program to determine the effectiveness of each element of the training session.  And finally, we can obtain self report and 360 feedback at the end of our year long program to assess which training elements were retained over the course of the year.  After obtaining the information about job satisfaction, productivity, resilience and positivity we could then use that information to decide which programs to retain the following year.  If there was one element that particularly resonated with the women we might be able to add on the job assignments or personal coaching around the issue.  In addition, we would have further follow up on the most salient elements to see how we could tailor those programs to the women’s needs.

IV. Objections 

The number of measures proposed above is ambitious.  It will take patience on the part of the participants and a certain amount of our precious training time to have the participants fill out these evaluations.  Email after the session is an option, though with busy schedules it is more effective to capture their information at the training session.  It is also difficult to decipher which exercises or sessions were the most effective for which people.  It would be impractical to give a survey before and after each two hour session.  While resilience and positivity can add to the effectiveness of these professionals alone and in teams, our programming does not specifically address these issues.  An evaluation of these elements might be the basis for designing future programs for the women.  And finally, the objective measures might leave out productivity that cannot be measured in goods and services sold.  The work these women do in mentoring each other and leading teams may or may not lead to an increase in the company’s receivables at the end of the year, but it does add to employee retention which is a major goal of our programs.

V. Conclusion 

Well-being measures can be an effective tool for highlighting what is effective in corporate communications training programs.  To determine what specific sessions impacted our participants in the realms of job satisfaction, job productivity, positivity, resilience, retention and promotion would be a boon not only to our company but to the field of training and development.  Too frequently we have been accused of lacking rigor in our research and our outcomes have been questioned.  In order to combat these accusations and remain effective for our clients we will have to employ both qualitative and quantitative measurements of well-being assessments.

References

Diener, E., Emmons, R., Larson, R. & Griffin, S. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale, Journal of Personality Assessment, 49(1), 71-75.

Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., Schimmack, U., & Helliwell, J. (in press).  Well-Being and Policy, Chapter 4:  Contributions of Well-Being Measures; Chapter 10:  Work, the Economy, and Well-Being: Policy Examples.

Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking research reveals how to embrace the hidden strength of positive emotions, overcome negativity, and thrive. New York: Random House.

Reivich, K., Shatte, A.  (2003). The Resilience Factor: 7 keys to finding your inner strength and overcoming life’s hurdles. New York: Broadway Press.

Tice, DM. (2006). How Self-Esteem Relates to the Ills and Triumphs of Society. In Self-esteem   issues and answers: A sourcebook of current perspectives.  (pp. 412-).New York, NY, US: Psychology Press.

Martin Best

See Webinar Recording from Martin Best' recent PBDC presentation

Technology has transformed old structures into a lattice of interactions that is as vibrant as a Kandinsky painting. The industrial and service ages have passed, and we’re now in a creative age where more and more of us are accountable for leading.

Three essentials will help leaders thrive in this ‘new now.’

First, Authenticity: we must know our real selves. We are authentic when we are true to our purposes, beliefs and values. When we demonstrate them in actions and words, great changes can happen.

In 1608 Galileo told the truth about the universe. Authority punished him for it, but he made it possible for Newton to shift our understanding from myth to mechanics.

A new economics, and enlightenment, followed. We are their heirs.

In 1794, Immanuel Kant wrote that Authenticity is maturity: leaders drive change when they have courage to use their own understanding, to go public.

Emerson later warned that society and corporations conspire against maturity, because they make us comfortable with language that conceals truth. Leaders must still fight this conspiracy.

Then, Empathy: Empathy releases our power to be authentic. We deepen our awareness that we are born into relationship with everything and everyone. We cannot be fully human if we live without human relationship.

In 1953, Buber showed that leaders must make real choices about their physical, mental and emotional attitudes, so as to let their relationship with people and the world come alive.

When we let Authenticity and Empathy fuel our imagination, we become Creative. Like great stories of old, the enriched strategic narratives we create can connect people to their own purpose and passion and release innovation.

Creativity comes from imagination and lives in language, speech, and persona. These embodied powers engage others, and elevate goals into purposes.

These powers are our birthright, and leaders in this creative age can use them to reshape the world.

en*theos International Day of Happiness Virtual Conference

Kathryn: Getting back to the personal of this, what’s the most interesting thing that you learned about yourself in the course of doing AI summits?

Shannon: Oh that’s a great question. A number of things, I think one of the things I learned is that even though I’ve had all of this training in positive psychology I still too have a negativity bias and I have not been cured of that. I was doing an AI summit leading into strategic plan for an organization recently and the AI summit was great because the positivity principle is built in and really started to design the strategic plan and I started to slip into “well the lease is up in 2017 and what if we lose it” and then I had to jolt myself out of it and say “wait a minute Shannon, that goes against all of that principles.” So even I have to keep applying the principles. I also think what I’ve discovered is that I used to think that I had to do the heavy lifting in facilitating something like this. I had to do all the work, I had to do all the prep and what you realize with this process is that there is the collective wisdom of the people in the room and if you are open to accepting and working with what people in the room have to say the process really, in some ways leads itself, the real work is leading up to and designing the guide, what questions are you going to ask, that takes a lot work, but once you are in the day it really starts to sing and I stopped worrying about being the expert in the room and suddenly everyone in the room was the expert and then the process went much better.

Kathryn: How interesting. So let me ask you a different aspect of that question. How has being involved in AI affected the way you live your life and out of that what could our listeners take away from this whole process and the principles that are involved in AI, what could they take away that would help them increase the tonnage of happiness in the world.

Shannon: Well one of the things I’ve taken away is I usually end an AI with the question, “What’s the smallest change you can make that would have the biggest impact?” And I think since its still January and people may have New Year’s resolutions on their mind I think that’s a great way to think about any goals that you’re setting, maybe even if it’s your goals for the day or could be your goals for the year is what’s the smallest thing you could do would have the biggest impact? Because we tend to think to implement whole system change and it takes so much work and our lives are so busy and for me I’ve revamped my New Year’s resolutions and instead of having a list of 20 things that I want to do, I have those 20 things, but I focus what are the top three things. The three things that can have the biggest impact and one of them is sleep. I realized that would have the biggest impact. Half an hour would have the biggest impact. The other thing is done is I have two children and my three-year-old at night instead of just having a story and going to bed or singing a song, I try to ask her what’s the best thing about your day, what was the best thing that happened? To orient her to what’s working and she doesn’t have the concept of time yet, so she’ll remember something from Christmas or New Years, but it gets her thinking about what was working during the day and hopefully will work as far as it, when she comes up with challenges at school, people who are challenging, well what are their strengths, what are they good at, how could you use your own strengths to work through the situation. So I’m trying to integrate it with my children as well.

Kathryn: Okay integrating it with your children who are small as seven years old that’s terrific. So are there any other ideas most of us are not going to be going to AI summits, but we go through our lives, we interact with our families, we interact with our team-workers, what are some of the small ways that some of these principles could show up in daily life.

Shannon: Well if you’re at work, one thing I also say is usually people have a lot of meetings whether it’s two persons meeting or group meetings and one thing I like to do is start and end the meeting with something that’s working. So opening with a question of “what was working this week, what went well this week”, to orient people towards things that are already going well as opposed to start, “alright what happened, what do we have to fix,” which tends to be the case. And the same thing with family members because I find that family members we tend to get into this rut of “well this person died, and Aunt Mary you know, she just had surgery,” so trying to have family interactions start off with how can you give positive feedback even, sort of like positive gossip, how do you start that, how do you have a holiday where you’re focusing on the strengths? I’ve had my family taken the strengths survey, try to do a strengths tree, so trying to integrate some of those little principles, positivity principle and what kinds of questions you asked. I think the principle of asking an unconditionally positive question is a great one because if you phrase it in a way that there’s no way to answer it in a negative way, if you say “how was your day”, you would be like, “well let me tell you about the…” If you ask “what was the best part of your day” then you’re forced to answer in a positive way.

Kathryn:  Ok and you have tried that out with your family small and large?

Shannon: I have.

Kathryn: And then what happened?

Shannon: It reoriented them and then my husband started to use it on me, so I would come home and say “can you believe what happened to me” and he would say “what was the best part of your day”, alright, touché’.

Kathryn: And then what happens when he asks that?

Shannon: And then what happens, when I get over the “ugh, he’s using my own principle to against me”, then I think OK what was the best part of my day and it is totally shifts my energy, shifts my mood and I spend less time ruminating on what didn’t go well.

Kathryn: Ok alright that sounds like definitely something to take home. So what’s next for you, what is your dream right now?

Shannon: Well I have some small steps and some dreams too. A small step is I’m giving a talk on Appreciative Inquiry to project managers so hopefully helping them figure out these similar things, how can they integrate this work into their lives. I love the Peter Drucker quote, who is the management guru, “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths that makes our systems’ weaknesses irrelevant” so my goal is how can I help people create an alignment of strengths that makes their weaknesses irrelevant and my big dream is doing larger AI summits, so doing AI summits on veteran hiring since we’re in DC. It would be fantastic to do one for the entire city of DC, considering some of the challenges our city has gone through recently. It would be great to bring everybody together and figure out what are our strengths and how can we leverage those.

Kathryn: I’ve got a possibility for you, why don’t you take on Congress? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could discover and dream and come up with a way for Congress to really work for us? So there you are in DC, maybe that’s in the back of your mind. So we’re just about to the end of our time. I would like to end with a question, what’s the most important thing that you would like for listeners to take away from today’s call? You know what I just realized I forgot a question that I really wanted to ask which is, Shannon what suggestions do you have for AI practitioners so you can leave the other question, leave it on the burner, but first let us know what you’d like to say to AI practitioners.

Shannon: Well practitioners or facilitators, trainers, coaches, one thing I would say is that the times where I have seen it work the best is when you get all of the stakeholders in the room and that means everyone who was even peripherally involved within an organization. So I did one for a school and said “we’d love to do an AI, but we don’t want to have the students there.” And I thought how is that going to work, the students are an integral part of the school and they refused. So I tried to do pre-summit interviews to get their voices in the room and in the end it was successful, but it wasn’t as successful as it could’ve been if we’d had everyone in the room. So I think that’s one thing I would say and the second is push for the most amount of time that you can, some say they can give you a day, we can only give you six hours, well only five hours and then at the end they were not happy that they didn’t quite get as many results as they wanted, but they kept cutting the time. So that’s the second thing. The final thing is follow-through. It’s really about following up on all of the groups and asking the stakeholders to jump in and to engage because you can have a great day where everyone is leaves and they are happy, but if you don’t follow up on what they need to do and what they are committed to it’s part of those action items done. So those are my few suggestions.

Kathryn: So something before, something during and then something after, but definitely the something after to make sure that the delivery actually happens. Alright thank you, so now I’m back to my last question, what would you most likely listeners to take away from this discussion?

Shannon: I think my suggestion would be to ask yourself what is the smallest change you could make that would have the biggest impact, so that’s your homework. And if you are at a loss, think of one question a day that you could frame as an unconditionally positive question. So either a question to ask yourself or a question to ask someone else in your life and just notice what the response is. So just one question a day that’s my take away. I think once you see the impact of that one question it will spur you on to do it more and more.

Kathryn: Thank you so much Shannon and thank you for bringing us all these ideas for World Happiness Day.

Shannon: Thanks so much.

en*theos International Day of Happiness Virtual Conference

Kathryn: Tell us a little bit more about the process; you said the process is very organized so that makes it kind of keep things on track. So maybe you could lead us through what happened with the Cincinnati Summit.

Shannon: Sure. So first you know there is a maybe 25 minutes of what is this principle, what’s the process of Appreciate Inquiry, what are we taking people through just to orient them, you don’t want to have more than about 30 minutes of it because then peoples energy tends to wane. What you want to do is immediately get them into one-on-one interviews. So you have people in tables of eight usually and you have them find a partner and you asked them they have a program guide in front of them and generally they are asking “you what is a high point moments you have involved in this organization? So what’s a high point moment living in Cincinnati in one of those cities?” Then a continuity question, “what’s something you want to keep?” So this city is going to change, what’s one thing special you want to keep? And then usually it’s a vision of the future question of “if anything was possible, what would you want to create?” And you have people talking and because they’re engaging with each other they are energized, they are enlivened, they are already feeling valued, they are discovering the strengths of each other and you’re also required to report back to the table for the person you’re interviewing, so you have a job to do.

Kathryn: So you’re listening?

Shannon: Right, so then the table discusses what are the commonalities, what are the root causes success and they flipchart and someone is leading, someone is keeping time, someone is going to report out and you have the whole table talking. So you go from 2, to a table of eight, to each table, if there’s time, reporting back to the whole. And you realize when the whole room reports back that there is lots of variety in strengths and high-point moments and then there’s a lot of diversity as well and it really energizes the whole room and it’s a process that builds, so that’s the first part of how it works.

Kathryn: That’s the discovery step. Okay great.

Shannon: And then you get into a playful mode of dreaming of the future, so based on what these strengths are, Cincinnati has 52 neighborhoods and that’s one of their strengths, their strong character of their neighborhoods. And then it’s what is your vision of the future but not just let’s write it down, let’s flip chart it out, it’s let’s create a play, let’s do something performative. So people would get to tap their creativity and you can think “really? this is frightening”,  what are people actually going to do when you sit them down at a table, there’s balloons, silly putty, there’s flexible straws and what’s fascinating is that people really get into it, they get excited to get to play and so much positive emotions generated and then they get to perform it in front of a room and they get raucous applause. And their voices are heard and it’s much more memorable when you see someone singing opera about how Cincinnati has come together and united, so it’s is a really playful way to get out your vision of the future.

Kathryn: So I’m just going to risk a little question here, do you remember anything at all from the performance that you were involved in?

Shannon: I remember taking on an Irish accent and we wanted to convey a strength-based city and one of those strengths was the diversity of the city and so I was the Irish character, I am not sure where that came from.

Kathryn:  Okay alright, I can imagine you doing that. So that’s the dreaming part.

Shannon: Right. Then you get into the second two parts of it, and that’s design and delivery and I love the way that David explains this because he talks about this he calls the first two Ds the ecstasy and then next two are the laundry, ecstasy and the laundry.

Kathryn: Right, right after the ecstasy then the laundry I think that’s a book by John Kornfeld. That’s a great takeoff on that. Great so tell us about the first bit of the laundry.

Shannon:  The design is, he talks about rapid prototyping so organizations like Ideo that have created so many new products they instead of having a long process, they say, “let’s do it really quickly, let’s create a prototype of something physical and what would it look like”. And at this point you’re voting with your feet and you are voting on a topic area you are really interested in and people are getting to choose where they want to go. And each group, each topic group, gets to vote on within that what’s the one top idea, they brainstorm what ideas they can create first as far as what their vision is and then they pick one, and then they try to design a prototype that they are going to report out to the room about. So it’s another way of getting your voice in the room and actually creating something in the space.

Kathryn: So do you remember any of the designs, any of the rapid prototypes that came out of Cincinnati or Cleveland?

Shannon: I remember the Strengths Based City Initiative because the VIA survey that I mentioned before they’re actually housed in Cincinnati, they’re from Cincinnati Institute. The Strengths Based Cities Initiative created a whole vision, a map of the 52 neighborhoods in Cincinnati and created street signs like Strengths Way, all sorts of different ideas of how they could apply the strengths so they used some of the tools from the table in the dream portion to create that visual and it was a much more powerful way to convey something when they got up and reported back to the room than if they were just talking as a recorder.

Kathryn: Right okay so now we’ve gotten through the design part, how about the delivery part, the last, putting the laundry on the lines to dry.

Shannon: Exactly. Well that’s the challenging part, that’s where the rubber meets the road. This is where the practical people in the room really take off, they like the fact that you’re writing down who are the names of everybody in the group, what’s their email addresses, who’s going to take on which initiative,  what are you going to do in the next one month, three months, six months, one year in order to make these things happen. And what’s fascinating is that when I run an AI summit usually people think that someone else is going to do the work. The last moment of a two-day summit and everyone said well the board of this organizations, I am sure the board is going to do it, and I said “no, that’s the point of AI’s, you are going to take it on, you are part of this process and you have ownership.” So people do have ownership and you find the people who are really willing to engage and because the process has been engaging from the beginning, you have people who really step up and who say, “you know what, I’m going to organize a mini summit and we’re going to do it three months from now and I’m going to find a space, I will get some food donated” and it becomes really engaging process because people really step up to the plate and make things happen.

Kathryn:  Let me ask you, that’s the 4Ds now let’s just do a quick review. So there was dream, oh sorry, I skipped Discover, how terrible that would be, so there’s Discover where people learn about themselves and think about their strengths, there’s Dream where they lift the top off and just come up with anything, there is Design which is where they start prototyping and then Deliver which is where things start to happen. Ok alright what a great way of remembering and I can remember the 4Ds. Getting back to the personal of this, what’s the most interesting thing that you learned about yourself in the course of doing AI summits.

en*theos International Day of Happiness Virtual Conference

Kathryn: Good morning Shannon, thank you for joining me here we are in celebration of world happiness day. Before we jump into your topic, Appreciative Inquiry, could you tell us a bit about yourself?

Martin Seligman with Shannon Polly

Shannon: Sure, thanks for having me Catherine. I am a positive psychology practitioner, I’m a coach, a facilitator, trainer, speaker and I live in Washington DC. I have my own consulting company call Shannon Polly and Associates and I also found an organization called Positive Business DC and our mission is to increase the tonnage of happiness starting in the nation’s Capitol, but not limited to the nation’s Capitol, so my passion is around helping individuals and organizations learn how to flourish by using training and positive psychology practices.

Kathryn: Alright thank you, so tell us a little bit about Appreciative Inquiry, those are very powerful words, what do they mean when you put them together?

Appreciative Inquiry

Shannon: That’s a very good question; appreciative is usually we think of it as looking at something that’s good and that we would like to look at, something we appreciate. Appreciative also means to appreciate, to raise in the value so when we look at what is working, what’s good, we also elevated, we raise it in value and inquiry means to ask questions. So together it is how are you constructing unconditionally positive questions and what does that lead you to discover. So it’s a process, it’s a change management process discovered by or created a theory founded by David Cooperrider from Case Western Reserve in the early 1980s and he was working with organizations and you know the traditional way of working with organization is to do a SWAT analysis. You know it’s a very defined way of what’s the problem, what’s the root cause analysis, let’s brainstorm some solutions and you know develop a treatment plan. And he really flipped that on its head and said you know if you keep looking what the problems are in the organization, you become an expert in the problems. What if we looked at what’s working in an organization, what strengths does an organization have and how can we leverage those strengths to create a vision of the future because there’s some principles that AI follows that show that we really, we really follow what vision of the future we create and one of those is that we live in a world that our questions create. So every action is preceded by a question. So if you are questioning your life is you know “what’s wrong with me?”, well you are going to find things that are wrong with you. If the question is “what’s right with me? What’s working?”, that’s what you’re going find and that’s what you can leverage.

Another principle of AI is that is the poetic principle that what we focus on grows so wherever you put your attention that’s what’s going to grow. So that’s why Appreciative Inquiry wants to focus on what’s working. And the third is this the Simultaneity Principle, so change begins the moment you ask the question. So the moment you ask the question “what’s wrong with me?” usually our energy drops and we get very serious and you know our vision contracts, but if the first question is “what’s working in this organization I would leverage it?”, change begins the moment you ask that question too.

The fourth principle is the Anticipatory Principle and that is it positive images actually pulls us forward, it’s like heliotropic effect in plants, plants grow towards the light and we’re similar. We like to grow towards what’s with possible, what inspires us. And the final principle is the Positive Principle, that positive emotions lead us to positive actions.  There is a lot of research from Barbara Fredrickson, out of UNC Chapel Hill that the Broadmanville Theory that when you engender positive emotions, it leads people to see more, people are more creative, they are more collaborative, they are less racially biased, it leads to better health, all sort of things.

So Appreciative Inquiry takes all of these processes and in psychology which tends to look at just the individual person because that’s easier to test, AI looks at an organization as a whole and how you can leverage that, so I think that is one of the major distinctions is that it just doesn’t focus on an individual, it focuses on an organization or people as a whole.

Kathryn: Wow, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it explained quite so clearly, so thank you Shannon. Alright so how did you get started with appreciative inquiry?

Shannon: Well I was a student of David Cooperrider’s in the MAPP program of University of Pennsylvania and…

Kathryn: And what does MAPP stand for?

Shannon:  MAPP stands for the Master of Applied Positive Psychology, so it’s a terminal master degree at the University of Pennsylvania. There is only one master program of its kind in the United States and that was founded by Dr. Martin Seligman and Dr. Cooperrider was a guest lecturer and probably one of the most inspiring lecturers we had and he started taking us through what’s known as the “Four D” process. So it’s discovering the strength of an organization, dreaming of the future, designing the future, so based on what you want to create and what you want to have happen and then delivering what the future is. He took us through the process, he just didn’t lecture, he gave us an experiential view of it. And I think from that moment everyone in the room wanted to try it out themselves.

Kathryn: So can you tell us about a time when you tried it out, what happened and what was it like?

Shannon: Sure, well I did a sort of a smaller version of summit, sort of two of the four D’s with Westin Hotels, and my co-facilitator Jeremy McCarthy and I coupled it with the VIA strengths survey is a character strength survey that you can find on Viame.org, and so what we did is because AI focuses on strengths, we decided to give people a little grounding in that, just to help reorient them from the negativity bias and to help them get the specific strength to talk about. So we had them take the survey, we started off the day with a little mini-lecture about strengths and this specific survey and then we launched into the discover portion of it. We had people interview each other and what’s interesting is that I wasn’t quite sure what we would get out of it, we had a limited period amount of time and the manager of the hotel said “you know we just wanted to have, you know what we would really love you know the numbers that customers wants number to go up” and I thought I’m not sure that just doing discover and dream is really going to help you there but you know we’ll try.

Kathryn: Might as well.

Shannon: And what was fascinating is that all throughout the day, he was so amazed that people who were temporary workers were standing up and speaking or taking the microphone, were engaging and at the end of the day one of the most powerful piece of feedback was someone wrote “I didn’t know how much longer I would be working here but I’m so inspired by this vision of Westin’s future, that I’m going to stay”. And that was a really powerful moment because it made me realize that when you really engage all the stakeholders and you make everyone’s voices important, it’s amazing what you can accomplish.

Kathryn: So that was a small group, I’ve heard that AI can be used with small groups, you know maybe family size groups and big groups like you know entire organizations at once. What do you know; I mean what can you tell us about how AI works with different size groups?

Shannon: Well I have been involved with small and medium size group, I have also been a part of summits for the entire city of Cleveland and the entire city Cincinnati so for those summit they were between 5 and 800 people in one room for about three days. And you would think that it would be complete chaos just trying to have people self-organize those groups and what’s interesting is that the process is so well structured and loose at various times that it allows for that flexibility and actually having more people means that you get more ideas and more creativity in the room. So I’ve actually seen a whole city summit of Cincinnati engage people more than a group of say 20 and didn’t have all the stakeholders involved because it was too insular.

So I would say that organizations tend to be scared to have too many people. I think we need to have just the right number of people. I would say have all the stakeholders if you can in a room because that’s where you going to get the most creativity, the most generative ideas and collaboration.

On our January 16, 2013 blog, I gave an overview of cognitive bias (our tendency to filter information through our own past experiences, likes, and dislikes) and surmised that it can lead to judgments that are faulty.  We have been exploring how these biases affect the ability to lead and make good decisions.

In the 6th in our series, I wanted to talk about Bandwidth Bias.  This is the tendency to go with the crowd.  It can also be called “groupthink” and when it turns negative, it can be a “mob mentality.”   And this can happen in groups large and small.  It can happen in your family, in your department or team at work, or across an entire culture.

Why does this happen?

We like to conform.  We like to fit in.  Consider the famous experiments by Solomon Asch, psychologist from the 1950s, who conducted experiments where participants were part of vision exercise where they had to gauge line lengths and compare them.   Participants made these assessments in a group with others.  Although these “others” were assumed to be participants, they were not.  They were in on the experiment and would knowingly give incorrect answers.  The result was the tendency for participants to provide incorrect answers as a result of being influenced by the intentional wrong answers of the group. In fact, 75% went along with the group at least one time with answers that were clearly not right.

What else did Asch learn from his experiment?

1. The number of people present had an effect.  The larger the number of people, the more people felt the need to conform.
2. If even one other person gives the actual correct answer, the need to conform is lessened.  Think social support.
3. People cite not wanting to risk ridicule as a reason for conforming or that they doubted their own judgment

How does this impact business?

Teams can jump on the bandwagon to support team members even when they see a flaw.  Or sometimes, it can cause a sudden release of similar products that are not well received in the market.   It can cause the recruiting of candidates that are not as strong simply because their alma mater has prestige.  Or it can cause your company to pass on the perfect candidate because they fear their extended unemployment is more meaningful than it is.

What does this mean for leadership? -

1. Create a culture where employees can dissent
2. Assign someone to be the devil’s advocate – not to be belligerent and petty, but to find logical arguments and unseen consequences
3. Hire people in your organization that do not think like you do
4. In a brainstorm or discussion, stop and ask, what can go wrong here?  What contingency should we prepare for?  What are other alternatives?  Ask these questions even when you all agree you have the perfect answer.  The goals are to get you and your team thinking critically.  

Have other suggestions on how we can lead to avoid this or other cognitive biases?  Comment below. We’d love to hear your ideas.

RTKL won the competition

This is unlikely a surprise – we feel better when we are in better environments.  And this absolutely applies to our workspaces.  Well, Marcia Moran and I got to see some interesting samples of great workspaces on Monday night when we went to a fun event sponsored by DesignLab.  Their idea was to hold a contest for architects and have them give people a “glimpse into the future of office space.”  Vornado, the landlord, gave six different firms suites on a single floor in Crystal City.  Then, they invited the community in to tour the space and vote on their favorite suite.

Each impressive space was built out and designed by the following firms: RTKL, FOX, OTJ, Perkins & Will, Smith Group, and VOA.  Right away we saw a of “infographic style” drawing on a white board that really captured much of why good space matters when thinking about Positive Business – happier employees translates to a positive impact on morale, culture and even the bottom line.  Here are a few of the nuggets:

It didn’t surprise us.  Anyway, as we toured, we were legitimately impressed with all six of the suites – beautiful, functional, and all very different from one another.  Some commonalities was pleasant lighting, bright and striking colors, lots of community space, use of technology throughout, geared to the comfort of workers, flexibly (many spaces easily converted), sleek lines, and the openness of the suites.  But, yet, each had their own distinct personality – and none of it was commonplace space.

So, are you curious who won?  So were we and the winner was announced today – RTKL. Congratulations, RTKL!

By the way, all these suites are now for lease, so you if you are looking for cool space in the Washington DC area, you can reach out here.  And, if you are just curious to get a glimpse of what the future looks like, check out the suites for yourself, here and enjoy the photos below.

In the fifth in our series, I am expanding on the Illusion of Control Bias – the tendency to overestimate your degree of influence over external events. The classic example is gambling…think someone who is convinced they have a system for choosing the right random Keno or lottery numbers.

This cognitive bias is a particularly interesting bias to me because unlike other biases, this one has an interesting upside.   It can encourage people to take responsibility or to act on something they otherwise wouldn’t. Consider entrepreneurship, which requires real risk taking – the chances of success are stacked against you.  In this case, overestimating potential control over the successful outcome causes the entrepreneur to act in the first place.  And let’s face it, without trying; you would never get there.

But like all biases, there is a definite darker side.   For decision making to lead to optimal results, the leader must be able to accurately assess the situation.  Bad assumptions can lead to not only negative results, but also less inclination to learn from mistakes and decreased sensitivity to feedback.

Wondering if you suffer from this bias?  Think harder in situations where you are particularly familiar.  Familiarity can increase the likelihood of this bias.  Also, if you are very clear on the desired outcome, you may be especially susceptible.

Power can also contribute. According, to Niro Sivanathan, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School, ”Power can over inflate self-esteem to the extent that people believe they have more control over outcomes than they actually do.” Niro’s work explored how individuals cope with the sudden acquisition or loss of power. What he found is that rapid increases in power can prompt people to overreact to their newly enjoyed power with very negative outcomes as a result of the illusion of control.    Niro found that people in power believed themselves to have control over uncontrollable situations, such as predicting the outcome of a die roll.  It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this could lead to leadership and decision making snafus.   Niro’s studies include concrete examples of companies that have collapsed after the overambitious decisions of those ‘drunk on power’, as well as political leaders whose overestimation of their strength has led them into conflict.

What does this mean for your organization?  Try to be aware, especially in situations where you are familiar or are especially clear on the desired outcome.  Also, think about areas where you are estimating effort, time, money and other resources.   Be sure to listen to the facts and measure results as you proceed.  When appropriate, use analytical and process management tools that can help expose blind spots and weaknesses.  And finally, if you have a culture that encourages open communication, use one of the best overall tools of all – listen (one of my favorite positive business skills).  Because as we have all experienced, often, upon looking back, we will see the information was there all along.

Senia Maymin and Margaret Greenberg

For those of you who are thinking that there’s a typo in the title… it’s actually not a mistake. On Tuesday, Margaret Greenberg and Senia Maymin shared insights on how to get more in done 2014 without working more hours. The webinar, entitled Profit from The Positive, took some pages from their book (same title, small pun intended). Attendees gained three practical tools based on the science of Positive Psychology they could apply right away:

• •  Trick yourself into getting started
• •  FRE
• •  FLOW

Surprisingly, although Americans work 8 hours longer than their German counterparts each week, we are not more productive. Even with the technological advancements that have happened in the last 50 years, we have gained only a single hour of ‘extra’ time each day to do… well, whatever. It seems like we’re busy. And we are. But, our devices don’t necessarily make us more productive. So, if technology isn’t the answer to getting more done without working more hours, what is?

Of the three tools, FRE (frequent recognition and encouragement) most caught my attention. During the webinar, Greenberg tells a story about a company’s heavy-handed (and ineffective) approach to improving performance that a large segment of the working population will relate to. I won’t blow the suspense by telling you what happened. The FRE part of the webinar starts at 24:47.

As a long-time fan of Marcus Buckingham’s work, my ears perked up when it became clear Greenberg and colleague Dana Arakawa’s research corresponds with results published by The Gallup Organization. Specifically, I am referencing First, Break All the Rules, which became the backbone for 12: The Elements of Great Managing. Buckingham and Coffman’s research revealed that frequency of recognition or praise directly impacts employee engagement, productivity, and organizational performance.

During their research Greenberg and Arakawa found a 42% differential in productivity related solely to FRE.

I don’t know about you, but the ability to affect people’s performance to that extent really gets me excited. It’s not that you get more for the company (which you do). What you really gain is a culture where it’s okay to express gratitude and thus it’s ‘normal’ for colleagues and managers to appreciate one another. Increased productivity as comes a byproduct of a better company culture and workplace well-being.

Positive Business DC was honored to have Greenberg and Maymin conduct the Profit from The Positive webinar, which was our second online event. Their book, Profit from The Positive: Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business is available in hardcover and electronic versions. To learn more about Greenberg and Maymin’s work, please visit their website and follow them on Facebook.

On our January 16, 2013 blog, we gave an overview of cognitive bias (our tendency to filter information through our own past experiences, likes, and dislikes) and surmised that it can lead to faulty judgments. So much of positive leadership hinges on good decision making, which, of course, affects company culture and workplace happiness. So, let’s expand the discussion.

In the fourth of our series, I am going to talk about the Anchoring Bias. This bias is the tendency to favor a piece of information and “anchor on” or favor that information when making decisions, even though it may have no logical relevance to the decision at hand. With the Anchoring Bias, the information becomes our reference point to evaluate and make decisions. And, as you might guess, this can lead us astray.

One illustrative example is a series of studies that were done in the Real Estate industry. In these studies, before touring a home, appraisal agents were broken into four groups. Each group of agents were given information about the home including a standard MLS listing sheet and comparable prices of houses in the area. The twist is that each of the four groups saw a completely different listing price. After touring the home, they were asked to write the appraisal and then list the factors that went into their pricing. As you might have guessed, the listing price they saw prior to the tour significantly affected the appraisal price…the higher the listing price, the higher the average appraisal price. And these agents weren’t even generally aware of this effect. When asked to list the factors that were important to them in pricing the property, only 8% said that listing price was a top-three consideration.

So what is a leader to do to minimize the Anchoring Bias?

1. Remember experience is important.  But don’t overestimate historical information as a predictor to a successful outcome. Stop to ask yourself if history is relevant from time to time.
2. Watch out for the classic “business-as-usual attitude” during changing conditions.
3. Stop every once in a while, employ a blank slate, and really look at a problem.
4. Check for anchoring in your budgetary processes. For instance, in new markets, clean slate thinking could help.
5. Expand the team to people who can bring fresh eyes to assess and share their opinions to gain better perspective. This is good for teambuilding as well.

We hope that was helpful.  What did we miss?  We’d love to hear some of your tips to avoid anchoring.

It appears as if social science and neuroscience are coming to the same conclusions about human behavior… at least in some instances.

In a Ted Talk entitled Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are, Amy Cuddy speaks about how adjusting your posture for two minutes will change hormone levels, which will either make you more powerful or less powerful. It’s interesting, because the postures Cuddy highlights are clearly instinctive power or submissive moves. The hormones involved? Testosterone (the dominance hormone) and cortisol (the stress hormone).

As people interact with one another, those hormone levels translate to body language. This has serious consequences personally and professionally. As a leader, one of the most important skills I taught my direct reports was how to interpret body language during interviews. Of course, the skill applied to all interpersonal interactions, but it was really during the job interview where we debriefed about what we saw and how we interpreted subliminal clues.

The Effect of Moderating Body Language

What’s interesting about body language, though, is that we frequently forgot to monitor our own. To turn the tables, then, think about the messages that you send. How do you prepare for a job interview? Or interact with your boss on a regular basis? What posture, or status, do you take—peer, subordinate, or power pose?

Before an important meeting, I prepare by envisioning the optimal path the meeting will take and my behavior under perceived circumstances. (Note: ‘optimal path’ is a relative term here. Some of these discussions have been very challenging.) I am purposely trying to regulate body language and chemistry as a means of improving my own behavior, communication, and effecting positive outcomes.

Through the open loop system described by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, in Primal Leadership, we know that we subliminally communicate with the people around us through the biochemicals we emit. By training your brain to react to situations in a certain way, you regulate hormones, which in turn regulates your stress responses and interactions with other people.

For example, you can keep a room full of people on a constructive track when working through really tough, even contentious issues if you have trained your brain to resist certain negative stress reactions. The research indicates that thinking about an action fires the neurons in the same manner as performing the action itself. It follows that you can establish and deepen neuropathways that will produce the predominant thought patterns and behaviors you want to embed. At its core, this is mindfulness.

Primal Leadership also describes the role mirror neurons have in our ability to relate to (and lead) others. One interesting take away from Cuddy’s Ted Talk: When power comes into play, the mirroring neurons appear to go into hiding. When one person pulls a power posture, others assume submissive poses. These reactions would then translate to changes in testosterone and cortisol levels.

Posture, Cell Memory, and Hormones

By now, you may have figured out that chemistry is where social science and neuroscience dovetail rather nicely. According to Cuddy, adopting a power stance for as little as two minutes increases testosterone by 20% and decreases cortisol by 25%. A sustained submissive posture produces a 10% decrease in testosterone and a 15% increase in cortisol.

“When you think about power, people tended to think only about testosterone, because that was about dominance. But really, power is also about how you react to stress. So, do you want the high-power leader that’s dominant, high on testosterone, but really stress reactive? Probably not, right? You want the person who’s powerful and assertive and dominant, but not very stress reactive, the person who’s laid back.” —Amy Cuddy

If you’ve read Candace Pert’s work*, then you know that cells have memory. You also know that every cell in the human body has neuroreceptors. It follows, then, that whatever posture you choose to take in an effort to mimic or produce an emotion will naturally change your body chemistry and you will start to feel that emotion. Feelings. Thoughts. Physiology. They’re intertwined and together, they drive behavior and attitude.

As Cuddy puts it, “Fake it ’til you make it”… or really, become whoever it is you’re striving to become. These inner body relationships are something to think about before going to work tomorrow, walking into the next meeting with your boss, and even preparing for your next performance evaluation. Attentively changing your body language can make you a super star… and über promotable.

*Note: Pert was the first neuroscientist to discover neuroreceptors in the brain and wrote Molecules of Emotion.

As an entrepreneur owner-manager, do you ever wonder, “Hmm…will I ever get this business to achieve a wealth creation event, someday? It sure would be nice to think that all of the passion, effort, and sweat, not to mention cash I have risked in this business, would result in a capital gain where I could get some serious chips off the table, and get out of my day-to-day responsibilities. Now that would be a great goal to achieve.” Wouldn’t it?

Or would it? For seasoned, successful owner-managers, does the fun and flourishing in life come from achieving goals or striving for goals? Can the entrepreneur’s life arc mature to the point that you achieve a wealth building transaction, and then possibly take another step forward into a whole new arc of achievement? We believe it can. Yet, virtually every friend/client of ours has underestimated just how much upheaval, sense of loss, change in role, potential loss of purpose, and confusion of identity can happen after an owner-manager achieves a successful wealth creation transaction. And the identity change isn’t usually merely the owner-manager—it is often an identity change for the entire family. An owner-manager’s whole community of relationships will change. These are issues to be taken seriously. It is hard work and it’s challenging but it’s worth it to be painfully honest with yourself now, to think through issues in advance that will so unmistakably affect the future quality of your long life.

What we are saying is this: since medical technology is changing at an exponential rate, it’s likely you will live a long time—much longer than you thought. If you are 45 or 50, you may just be reaching middle age. Literally. The old concept of freedom from work, having no work to do, has been a persistent ideal throughout human history. Yet Aristotle said the two most prevalent causes of human misery are these: one, not having the right sort of work to do that calls upon one’s abilities and develops oneself; and two, having time on one’s hands to kill or burn. The happy individual then, in the Aristotelian definition, is one who enjoys the work he is doing, and has no time to kill or burn. This is consistent with our experience—for an owner-manager to have a successful capital gain transaction, he must have clarity on what he will be striving for in the next chapter. Why? Because, if the capital gain is the “end of striving,” could that be the end of fun, the end of wellbeing? It has to be seen as the end of this chapter of striving and now the owner-manager’s attention and energy properly goes to the next chapter of striving for purpose and meaning.

In finance, the difference between the future value and the present value is known as “discount.” In psychology, the difference between where you ideally want to be in your life compared to where you are today is called “discrepancy.” Regardless of whether you think discount or discrepancy, do you have a plan for what the next chapter will look like for you personally and how it will advance you towards where you want to be? If so, great. But if not, it is essential to have one before embarking on an engagement to capture a capital gain. Experience shows if you are prepared for the “Simultaneity of the Personal Transition and the Professional Transaction”, your stress will decrease markedly and this clarity of insight will influence your decision making to an outcome that is ultimately in your best interest.

————————————–

Here is more info on Mr. Worrell’s new book:

If you want to have a capital gain and a positive legacy someday, what are the half dozen actions you should take right now?

So many of the people we meet are true experts in what they do.  But when the time comes to realize a capital gain, many entrepreneurs find themselves thrust out of their comfort zone into the realm of the private transaction market.  All the thoughtfulness, fearlessness and leadership they’ve exercised throughout the process of building a successful company does nothing to help lead them down this new path.  The business aspect of this kind of transaction is difficult enough to understand and navigate.  But then there is the psychology of it all.  How do you make the right decisions that not only provide the highest quality of wealth but also the right decision that leads to positive legacy, for both you and for those to whom you are handing your life’s work?

These questions – along with a myriad of others entrepreneurs ask or need to ask as they consider a capital gain event – are reflected upon, and ultimately answered by author Pete Worrell in this book.  Worrell artfully illustrates the psychology involved in creating the legacy of a company and how best to handle the “passing of the torch”.

But it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble!

This book is a no-cost, no-permission guide for boosting individual, team, and business performance. Whether you lead three employees or 3,000, this book shows you how to increase productivity, collaboration, and profitability using the simple, yet powerful tools from the new field of Positive Psychology.

Featuring case studies of some of the most forward-thinking and successful companies today – Zappos, Google, and Amazon to name a few – Profit from the Positive provides over two-dozen evidence-based tools that “business schools will be teaching in ten years” (Shawn Achor, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage).

Learn how to GET MORE DONE, WITHOUT HAVING TO WORK MORE HOURS by:

1. “Outsourcing” yourself
2. Setting habits instead of goals

Learn how to BEAT YOUR COMPETITION by:

1. Hiring for what’s NOT on the resume
2. Quitting

Learn how to BOOST YOUR TEAM’S PRODUCTIVITY UP TO 40% by:

1. Recognizing the Achoo! effect
2. Previewing—not just reviewing—performance

The best part?  These strategies don’t cost a dime to implement!  You will not need to hire an expensive consulting company or go through internal red tape to secure permission to begin implementing these tools today.  Trained by Dr. Martin Seligman, known as the father of Positive Psychology, Greenberg and Maymin translate the scientific research and finally make it accessible to the business world.

So, what is Positive Psychology?  (If you’ve been reading our blog for a while then you know…but just to clarify….)  First, let’s be clear about what it is not: Positive Psychology is not positive thinking. Positive Psychology researchers have studied topics such as productivity, resilience, motivation, collaboration, and much more.  In short, they seek answers to questions that every business leader wrestles with.

Readers of Malcolm Gladwell, Chip and Dan Heath, Marshall Goldsmith, and Dan Pink will especially enjoy the book.  In fact, Marshall Goldsmith (NY Times best selling author of Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There) endorsed it, saying: “Put it on your nightstand, bring it on the plane with you—however you do it—read this book. Profit from the Positive gives actionable steps for managers’ biggest burning questions. As a 21^st-century leader, you cannot do without it.”

Profit from the Positive has been endorsed by bestselling authors including Gretchen Rubin, Tony Hsieh, Adam Grant, and Chris Brogan. These no-cost, no-permission tools have been successfully implemented by business leaders, managers, entrepreneurs, executive coaches, and human resource professionals at companies ranging from Google to Aetna.

We only recommend the best here at Positive Business DC.  And we’re happy to know that really good books can help the business world increase their positive practices.  Read it.  Give it to that HR manager you know.  You’ll be glad you did.

For more information, please visit www.ProfitFromThePositive.com.

For interviews, review copies, webinars, or more information, please contact:

Senia Maymin, Coauthor, Profit from the Positive, LLC:  Phone: (415) 480-4190 / senia@profitfromthepositive.com

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Margaret Greenberg is a sought after executive coach by Fortune 500 companies.  In 1997, after a fifteen year career in corporate HR, she founded The Greenberg Group, a consulting firm dedicated to coaching business leaders and their teams to achieve more than they ever thought possible. A pioneer in the field of positive psychology, Greenberg also designs and leads workshops, webinars, and conferences for business audiences and is an expert on creating strengths-based organizations.  Greenberg’s research has been featured in the popular Gallup Management Journal and she is a regular business contributor at www.PositivePsychologyNews.com.  She has also been interviewed by national media outlets in the US (Entrepreneur Magazine) and Canada (The Globe and Mail).   She holds a BA in Sociology from the University of Hartford, a Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Pennsylvania, and is recognized by the International Coach Federation as a professional certified coach.  Greenberg lives in Connecticut with her husband and two dogs. They have two grown daughters.  For more information, visit Greenberg’s website at www.TheGreenbergGroup.org.

Senia Maymin, PhD, has been featured in the media—including PBS’s This Emotional Life, Business Week, Public Radio International, and USA Today—primarily for her work as a positive psychology executive coach.  When entrepreneurs and executives seek far-reaching productivity improvements, they call on Maymin as an executive coach and workshop leader. Maymin founded and is editor in chief of a research news website featuring more than 1,000 articles by over 100 authors.  Additionally, Maymin oversees a network of coaches that specialize in positive psychology methods. She has worked in finance on Wall Street and in technology as cofounder and president of two start-ups. Maymin holds a BA in Math and Economics from Harvard, a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA and PhD in Organizational Behavior from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She speaks Russian, French, and Japanese. She lives with her family in California.  You can visit the research news website at www.PositivePsychologyNews.com, the coaches network at www.PositiveCoaches.net, and Maymin’s website at www.senia.com.