They are unusual and everyone sees it.  They clearly care about the company and the people within. These “good guys” are good organizational citizens.  They are the people who do things beyond the formal duties of their role – like lending a helping hand to a co-worker, being an evangelist for their company, or organizing a team lunch. They are strong team players, keep the spirits of others high, maintain goodwill around them, and are actively involved in company activities… you get the idea.  And, as I am sure you are already grasping, they tend to be happier [on average] than their counterparts.

Why are they happier?

One reason these citizens extraordinaire might be happier than you?  It’s all in how they approach their work.  You see, according to Amy Wrzesniewski, a researcher at Yale University, how you view your work makes a big difference.  Follow along, because this is interesting… According to Wrzesniewski, you can have one of three orientations: job, career or calling.

If you have a job orientation, then your work is a means to an end.  You do what you must, but you have your sights on the weekend.  You might be a clock-watcher.  Your leisure time is more important than work.
If you have a career orientation, then you approach your work with an achievement mindset, looking for the next promotion and approaching your work as a career.

But, what about a calling orientation?  You fall in this bucket if you think your work is integral to your identity; you go above and beyond just because you want to do it right, and because it intrinsically matters to you.

In Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth, Deiner and Biswath-Diener summarized the characteristics of each orientation in this table below.  Most people can quickly read through this list and see where they fall in their current job.

What’s the practical application? Of course, if having a calling mindset makes you happier and more likely to be a good organizational citizen, then the benefits are obvious.  But there is more, because happy employees take fewer sick days, are more punctual, more creative, stronger interpersonally, more effective decision makers, and they change jobs less frequently.  The benefits are definitely a two-way street.

Let’s say you are onboard, and asking how you might be happier at work.  To up the odds, use your strengths.  People who use their strengths at work are happier. There are many studies to support this, but in the spirit of illustration, a study of 214 university students by Govindji and Linley in 2007 showed just that – people who used their strengths more reported higher levels of subjective well-being [i.e., happiness] and psychological well-being [i.e., fulfillment].

So, start by understanding what your Signature Strengths are. You can take a free test here. Once you know what your Signature Strengths are, you can let this information help you make better informed career choices, and start using your strengths right away in your life and work. This may be exactly where good organizational citizenship steps in – it might be that in order to use your Signature Strengths, you will be doing things that go beyond your job description.  It may require you to join a committee, or help out in a new way.

The steps to integrate your strengths are pretty basic:

1. Know your top 3-7 strengths
2. Think of ways you can use those in your current job
3. Try to do this as often as possible

In fact, the more new ways you use your strengths, the better. Seligman, Steen, Park and Peterson found that people who used their strengths in a new and different way every day reported higher levels of happiness and lower levels of depression, and it stuck over time. What’s not to like about that?

This blog was originally published on Delivering Happiness.

 It was dark in the theater. The crowd was hushed waiting for the big reveal. The musical was Sweeney Todd, and my college audience had heard from their friends about what happens when the first victim gets the ax (or in this case, the razor). The seat and foot on the trick chair drop, and the actor falls through the roof of the second floor set to the crash pad below.

I had the good fortune to play Mrs. Lovett, and I had also sourced the barber’s chair for this production. At the time, I was backstage waiting for an entrance. I heard the moment in the music, and then I heard screams. Just like we rehearsed.

But these weren’t the screams of an actor playing a character who was just killed. These were real screams. The chair had failed, and the actor was bloodied. It was chaos, there was fog on the stage so no one could really see what was going on, the orchestra didn’t know what had happened so they kept playing, and the actor who had bloodied shins and a possibly broken nose was trying to live by the “Show must go on” rule. He kept singing and moving to his next entrance.

The other actors, technicians, and musicians knew this was the one exception to the rule. The stage manager stopped the show and went into action. Everyone involved with the production was on high alert. It was a wonderful example of teamwork as a group strength, and also teamwork as an individual strength. Each person abandoned his or her ego for what the production needed at that moment. The tech people filled in for each other’s duties while the actor was taken to the hospital. The orchestra was waiting poised for their instructions. Even a doctor in the audience offered to come back stage to give medical help.

If you’ve ever been in an artistic production you know that there can be many egos involved. But you also know that the best experiences for both actor and audience occur when people set status aside and do what must be done for the good of the production.

What is the Character Strength called Teamwork?

In Character Strengths and Virtues, Peterson and Seligman define the character strength of teamwork (with related synonyms of citizenship, social responsibility, loyalty) as

• Working well as a member of a group or team; Being loyal to the group

• Doing one’s share

In the circumplex model of character strengths that Peterson describes in his primer, teamwork is a heart based strength (as opposed to head) focused on others (as opposed to self).

When using the word teamwork, people frequently fail to differentiate between concept of high performing teams and what it means to have the individual signature strength of teamwork. The Sweeney Todd example shows both, but sometimes it is difficult to even identify it as a strength.

The Shadow Side

I was coaching a new manager in a governmental organization, and we were at a bit of an impasse. She described a crushing workload and an unbelievable work ethic (not the common perception of government employees) that led her to working nights and weekends, often until early in the morning. She was balancing being a new manager, her previous work duties, and going back to graduate school. We spent a few sessions probing around values and discussing the benefit of self-care.

See your place in the big picture

The light bulb didn’t go off for her until we looked at her VIA strengths and realized that teamwork was a top strength. Doing her share was a top value. She put it above her own well-being.

What ended up working for her was exploring the concept of a shadow side of the strength. After she could see her strength clearly and the signs of overuse, she was able to adjust her behavior to avoid burnout. Then she could see that delegating work actually served her team.

How do you spot someone with a top strength of teamwork? Watch for someone with the ability to identify with team goals and sometimes put them ahead of personal gratification, just as my client did. It involves being able to see the big picture as well as one’s place in it.

Building Teamwork

Today I’d like to discuss one way to build teamwork as a character strength. Come back tomorrow or three more ways that build this strength in yourself and those you lead, thus enhancing the teams in which you participate.

Approach 1: “We” Before “Me”

Performance of a Lifetime is an organization in New York City that uses improv to teach skills of listening, teamwork, and collaboration. In his recent book To Sell is Human, Dan Pink describes some of their work. One exercise is called Predator/Protector. Each person picks two people in the room, one her protector, one her predator. Then all try to place their protectors between themselves and their predators. What results is usually a flurry of running around the room, people bumping into one another and furiously trying to save themselves from this imaginary threat.

Teamwork in the hive

Then the facilitator stops the group and asks the participants to start again and pay attention to how the group is doing. On a second try, all of a sudden, the movement slows down and finally comes to a stop when people take into account the rest of the group and ultimately achieve their goal.

If we are paying attention to how the group is doing, we are letting go of ego, disregarding status and building a better team. David Sloan Wilson has shown that oftentimes people put the ‘we’ before the ‘I’ even though it may be economically irrational to do so.

As NYU professor, Jonathan Haidt, and colleagues say, “We are hive creatures.” During your next team meeting take a director moment. Stop and view the meeting from the balcony and ask yourself, “How is the group doing?” You might ask the team directly to disregard rank or position and ask them to comment on what they see going on in the room.

Come back tomorrow for three more ways to build teamwork as a character strength in yourself and others.

And if you haven’t yet, you can find out what your character strengths for free here.

References:

Haidt, J., Seder, J. P., & Kesebir, S. (2008).  Hive psychology, happiness, and public policy.  Journal of Legal Studies, 37, S133-S156.

Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Peterson, C., (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Pink, D. (2013).  To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others. Riverhead Trade.

Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

VIA Institute on Character.  Teamwork as a top character strength.

Wilson, D. S. (2015). Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others (Foundational Questions in Science). Yale University Press. Publication date: January 13.

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.

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.

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.

Dr. Kim Cameron is the William Russell Professor of Management & Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and the co-founder of a field called Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS).  POS was separate in its origins from Positive Psychology (and pre-dates positive psychology).  I had the honor of having him as my advisor for my MAPP capstone at the University of Pennsylvania.  Louisa Jewell and I couldn’t ask for a fairer or tougher advisor.  I decided to interview him to see what he’s been working on.

What subjects are businesses are most attracted to?

Bottom line is the driver, of course.  All business executives say “If I don’t achieve profit, return to share, then I’m not doing my job and I will not last and nor will the organization.”  Their interest is:  ‘Is there any pay off for implementing these practices – from psychology and organization research?  If I adopt a positive approach, does it matter?’ What is ironic is that if you express gratitude only in order to get a payoff, then it is a manipulation; it is not true gratitude.  Gratitude has inherent goodness. On the other hand, we have found that gratitude really does add value to the bottom line in organizations; there is a tangible benefit, even though we don’t need a payback.

You’ve been studying this for a long time.  Tell me about what you’ve discovered over the last 10 years?

There is a lot of compelling evidence – across industries, continents, sectors—that positive and virtuous practices pay off.  Organizations make more money, are more productive, achieve higher quality, produce higher customer satisfaction, and create higher employee engagement.  Moreover, evidence suggests that these relationships are causal—when virtuous practices improve, organizational outcomes improve as well.

How do you bridge the gap to goodness?

Most people I’ve met believe and understand that kindness is better than abuse and helpfulness is better than selfishness.  It is not surprising to people when you identify them.  The middle part of that argument is that putting kind people together doesn’t make for positive or high performing organizations because dynamics of organizations are so complex.  That is where Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) is important in addition to the positive psychology literature.  Just applying findings from positive psychology is insufficient because organizational dynamics are different.  On the other hand, a great deal of evidence exists that findings from positive psychology have applicability in positive organizations.

How do you institutionalize forgiveness?

We conducted a study ten years ago about an organization that downsized.  A lot of harm was produced, abuse escalated, family life plummeted, and morale markedly declined.  The question was: how does an organization design itself to manage forgiveness after a major trauma like this?  We found that when you institutionalize forgiveness, it does not mean to forget, to minimize, or to deny being upset or angry.  It means to look forward with an optimistic outlook and to adopt a positive attitude.  It means forgiving the harm and moving forward instead of holding onto a grudge.  We discovered that organizations that institutionalize forgiveness flourished after downsizing.  80% of companies maintained low scores of measures of forgiveness and, consequently, did not flourish after downsizing.

What do you do to help organizations implement these practices?

There are at least 20 tools, techniques, and interventions that create positively deviant outcomes.  One common tool is the use of positive energy networks.  For example, we have investigated the positive energy of leaders in various business units.  We have discovered  that if you are at the center or hub of a positive energy network, your performance is four times higher than if you are at the center of an influence network or an information network.  This is just one tool that is available.  There are many other tools and techniques that assess, foster and enhance positive outcomes.

I know you’ve written about this in your upcoming book:  Practicing Positive Leadership:  Tools and Techniques That Create Extraordinary Results.  What about research?  Companies can be hesitant to pay for that.

Business is hesitant to pay for research unless we can show a clear and compelling bottom line impact.  Doing a serious controlled experiment in an organization is difficult.  That’s why we use longitudinal methods.  We measure changes in organizations’ scores on positive practices—or the extent to which they have institutionalized certain practices—and then assess certain outcomes a year or two later.  If outcomes change, we can presume a causal direction.  Compelling evidence has been produced that positive practices produce positive outcomes.*

What do you think about hiring for well-being?

It’s similar to the prescription I often make, that people should be hiring for positive energy as well as individual well-being.

How do you assess positive energy?

There are attributes of positive energizers not typical of de-energizers.   Energizers are trustworthy, they pay attention, they build and foster confidence in others, they are unselfish, and they can solve problems.  Others who are not positive energizers are:  selfish, self-aggrandizing, not mindful, and only see obstacles.  However, those selection processes are never 100%.

What do you think the future of POS in business?

We are in the very early stages of expanding and broadening POS.  It is separate in its origins from positive psychology.  We have found lots of synergies since and we are trying to expand Positive Business.

What would expanding Positive Business look like?

This means that positive behaviors (well-being and happiness) will be taken seriously:  positive finance, positive accounting, positive marketing, and positive law.  How would that differ in an organization than the standard production line?  Well, we are beginning to find some people who have written books or have adopted a different approach norm.  Could you produce a difference if you changed the whole nature of the enterprise?  These are steps in the future to expand to other domains of scholarship but the principles are universal.  We need evidence for that.  And we’re finding people who are excited about positive/virtuous practices.

Thank you so much for your time.  I look forward to reading your upcoming book, Practicing Positive Leadership: Tools and Techniques That Create Extraordinary Results. It’s available for pre-order for those who want it as soon as it comes out on September 2.

Cameron, K. (2013). Practicing Positive Leadership: Tools and Techniques That Create Extraordinary Results. San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler.

Cameron, K. (2008). Positive leadership: Strategies for extraordinary performance. San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler.

Cameron, K. & Spreitzer, G. (2011). The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship. Oxford University Press.

Cameron, K. (no date). Leadership Through Organizational Forgiveness. Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship.

But it will be worth it.  I’ve been to the first two and each time I’m learned as much as going to a graduate level course and made good connections (and gotten jobs) from/with the people I’ve met.

The IPPA website as such press worthy quotes as:  ”Presentations, workshops, and poster sessions will feature leading-edge research, as well as applications of positive psychology in a variety of fields – from business to education to medicine. Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss the latest research, insights, and ideas, and interact with other people who focus on studying what is best in life and how to create more of it. The internationally diverse audience will consist of researchers, clinicians, educators, students, business owners, coaches, consultants – anyone committed to the science and practice of positive psychology.”  Which is all true, actually.  There are a few crazies there, but most are students and consultants and wanna be consultants and some researchers.

Martin Seligman and Shannon Polly

What am I looking forward to?

While talks and discussions will cover a wide range of topics, the Congress will feature a particular emphasis on these five themes:

1. Positive Development across the Lifespan
2. Positive Environments, Sustainability, and Conservation
3. The Healthy Body and the Healthy Mind
4. Work and Well-Being
5. Creativity and Evolution

Featured speakers include Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Richard Davidson, Barbara Fredrickson, Martin Seligman (whom I’m excited to see), and anyone whose written a book you’ve seen on your way through Barnes and Noble.  (Does anyone go to bookstores anymore?)

The workshops (for which they charge a fee) fall under three categories:

• •Master Lecture Series, featuring leading scholars discussing their research
• •Research Methods Workshops, offering the opportunity to learn advanced research techniques relevant to positive psychological science
• •Applied Practice Workshops, featuring best practices for applying positive psychology in a range of disciplines

Mostly I’m looking forward to connecting with the 50+ graduates of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at UPenn (there is one in London who is a wee bit jealous of the attention we get).

I want to know what they are doing, how they are doing and what exciting things are happening in their lives.  It’s going to be one big reunion.  But I also want to branch out and meet new people.  I tell my participants that when I do my Networking courses.  And I want to learn.  I want to learn new things and ask questions because I’m curious, not because I want to look good or get noticed.  I’m going to be growth mindset this time.  And I’m going to be present.  And I’ll write some more posts about what I learn (and tweeting when I can).

How about you?  What is a situation where you can just BE this week?