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

Did you know the right amount of positive emotion can lead to more innovation, less absenteeism, and better problem solving?

What are Emotions For?

Early research regarding the purpose of negative emotion has been generally accepted. Negative emotion alerts us to danger and focuses attention on self-preservation and problem solving. However, understanding the survival benefits of positive emotion has been less clear, even dismissed, until recently. Researchers, including Martin Seligman, Barbara Fredrickson, and Christopher Peterson, 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 well-being in the workplace.

Emotions at the Workplace

Positive emotion affects our workforce in 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. 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 suggests that high levels of positive emotion affect the immune system, reducing inflammation and correlating with a strong expression of antiviral and antibody genes. In turn, good health means reduced absenteeism from the workforce.

Positive emotion is also linked to more innovation, better problem solving, and a more connected workforce. According to Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden and Build theory, positive emotion is associated with more holistic thinking and skill enhancement.

I have seen broaden and build in action many times. One particular example sticks out in my mind. I was leading a marketing team of an Internet software company during the dotcom crash in March 2001. The timing of the crash, which struck fear in every tech worker I knew, was unfortunate since we were in the midst of planning an important launch. Not only was there worry about the impact on the launch itself, but people feared for their jobs. This all came at a time when we really needed to be engaged and at our most creative. Instead of members of my team bringing their best games to the table, the energy in the room was low. So, spontaneously I declared it to be the perfect opportunity for us all to go on a team outing. After several races at the local go-cart joint and some laughter and trash talk over a meal, we were all able to come back to the task with our creative juices flowing. I believed the change to be directly tied to the shift in emotion.

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 (see references for more on the ratio***). 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. The key is a high positivity ratio without extremes, with 11:1 being the upper bound of the 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. Taking human emotions into account in workplace operation and reflecting on the implications in policies and programs could indeed improve well-being in the workplace. Interested in suggestions on just how this might be done? This topic will be discussed in the upcoming Part 2 of this article.

***Positivity Ratio: Many studies have shown the positivity ratio for flourishing to be above 3:1, including studies by John Gottman, and Robert Schwartz. Fredrickson has also acknowledged that the nonlinear dynamic model developed by Losada has been questioned, but stands by the Positivity Ratio.

References

Barsade, S. G. (2001, August). The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion In Groups. Working Paper Series on Organizational Behavior. Yale School of Management. New Haven, CT.

Crum, A. (2014). Change your mindset, change your game. TEDX talk.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive. New York: Crown.

Greenberg, M. & Maymin, S. (2013). Profit from the Positive: Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business. McGraw Hill.

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

Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. New York: Free Press.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2013, July 15). Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios. American Psychologist. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0033584

Gottman, J. M. (1994). What Predicts Divorce?: The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes. Hillsdale, NJ, England: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Schwartz, R. M., Reynolds III, C. F., Thase, M. E., Frank, E., Fasiczka, A. L., & Haaga, D. A. (2002). Optimal and normal affect balance in psychotherapy of major depression: Evaluation of the balanced states of mind model. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 30(04), 439-450. Abstract.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Time’s recent article, they called WinCo ‘Walmart’s Worst Nightmare’ – their prices are lower than Walmart’s, yet they have better pay, and benefits.  Way to #workwell, WinCo!

The first myth is that you either have it or you don’t.  If this were true there wouldn’t be any drama schools, no need for weeks of rehearsals before opening night and nor cottage industry for selling classes to actors.  There are tangible techniques that you can use to control your anxiety and increase your influence whether you have a formal presentation or are just running a meeting.  I’ll look at the external aspects of presence, the internal aspects of presence, managing anxiety and accessing flow.

What is your objective?

When you get up in front of a room…what do you want?  Many people who are presenting have one goal – to get off as fast as possible.  But our intention has a big impact on our presence and on our audience.

Masaru Himoto is a scientist who studied the molecular structure of water.  When subjects send distilled water positive thoughts like love, appreciation, happiness, and truth.  As a result the water turned into delicate crystalline shapes.

When water was sent a negative message like hatred and hostility, the water turned into chaotic fragmented structures.  Water makes up 60% of human body and 70% of human brain.  The energy and attention we send to ourselves and others has an enormous affect on our well being and our presence.  You must be attuned to your own true self.  If you are putting on persona or disguise an audience will know.   We know from recent psychology research that emotions are, in fact, contagious.

In the theater an actor with Stanislavsky training will choose an action verb – an infinitive – to be their ‘objective’ for the entire play.  Every action you take falls under that one verb.  The lead role in the movie Stand and Deliver might have an objective – to inspire.  Junah, the Matt Damon role in the dreadful golf movie The Legend of Baggar Vance might have an objective – to find my true swing.  Sandra Bullock’s character in The Blind Side might have an objective – to mentor.  So when you are presenting or leading your next meeting – what is your objective?  To inspire?  To entertain?  To enliven?

Managing Emotions

Much has been written in the psychological literature (from cognitive behavioral therapy to Peter Salovey’s work on EQ) about emotions.  Managing emotions is one of those aspects of external presence you can control.  One study had half of the participants place a pencil in between their teeth (inducing a smile) and the other half placed a pencil in between their eyebrows (inducing a frown).   The results showed that people who were induced with a smile were happier than the control group.  And participants who were induced with a frown were less happy than the control group.  People always ask me if you can ‘fake it til you make it’.  I think this work and Amy Cuddy’s work displays evidence that you can.

Power Poses

Amy Cuddy is a social science researcher from Harvard Business School.  Her famous YouTube on power poses has been viewed over three million times.  In it she discusses how she noticed that certain people in her classes were asking questions and certain students (usually the females and non-white males) were not speaking up.  She  also noticed that they had very different postures in class.  This led her to track the level of testosterone (power/strength hormone) and cortisol (stress hormone) of subjects who were in different poses.  When they were in poses hunched over an iPhone (which is what you might be doing before a job interview, for instance) they had high levels of cortisol, which made them perform more poorly in the interview.  When she had subjects spend just 2 minutes before their interview in one of a few ‘power poses’ (i.e. feet on a desk, hands on hips, arms out wide in a ‘Y’) their cortisol dropped and their testosterone shot up.  They performed much better in their interviews.  She doesn’t recommending striking the pose in the middle of the interview, however.

Keep Breathing

While there are any number of aspects of physical presence I get asked about on a regular basis (i.e. “What do I do with my hands?”) there is one that is the North Star.  If you can get your breathing correct it can cure a multitude of sins.

As you’re reading this, place your left hand on your chest and your right hand on your lower belly.  Take a few deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.  (By the way, this is the most efficient way to breathe.  Nostril breathing warms and filters the air.)  Which hand moves more?  If you said your right, you win!  We ultimately want our diaphragm to move down and push our internal organs out of the way when we inhale.  This flies in the face of all the ‘sucking it in’ we’ll most likely be doing as swimsuit weather is upon us.  In addition if you breathe out for twice as long as you breathe in, it will activate the parasympathetic nervous system and lower your heart rate.  Just what you need when the nerves kick in at the beginning of a presentation or important meeting.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Do you remember that old joke about the person on the streets of New York who asks a local how to get to Carnegie Hall?  And the sardonic New Yorker replies:  “Practice practice practice.”  I would make one edit to that – practice aloud!  I have one client who told me that she always practices her speeches a number of times but was still having issues with anxiety and feeling successful.  It took a while before I discovered that she was practicing – in her head!  So in order to cultivate a positive presence you need to think about your intention, manage your emotions, manage your emotions, strike a power pose and find centered breathing to manage anxiety.  But you also need to practice.  That’s the only way to change a habit.

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.

Halelly Azulay

“Doing more with less” has become a common phrase in the workplace and often has a negative connotation… but it doesn’t have to. Working within constraints nudges people to look for creative solutions, and thus is the focus of Positive Business DC’s February 11 Meetup featuring Halelly Azulay, author of Employee Development on A Shoestring.

While classroom and online training are popular and first-in-mind development methods, they can be costly and complex. In addition to possibly being out of reach for budgetary and cost-to-productivity reasons, classroom and online training may not be the only or the best way to address learning needs even when they are available.

Employee Development on A Shoestring explores other, non-training ways to develop employees on a tight budget. During the Meetup, Azulay will share the pros and cons of various non-training development methods, consider the requirements of three specific employee development ideas, and set a framework that enables attendees to develop a strategy for implementing employee development methods that result in motivated, engaged employees without breaking the bank. Attendees will learn how to:

1. Identify and assess various employee development methods that can be applied outside the classroom and on a tight budget.
2. Analyze three specific examples of non-training employee development methods.
3. Develop a strategy for incorporating new development methods for your employees.

 
The February 11 Meetup will run from 6:30 to 8:30 pm and will be held at the Shirlington Library located at 4200 Campbell Avenue in Arlington, VA. Registration is free. If you have specific questions you would like addressed during the Meetup, you can submit them on the Positive Business DC Meetup site.

In addition to authoring Employee Development on A Shoestring, Azulay is a consultant, facilitator, and speaker with over 20 years of professional experience in the fields of workplace learning and communication in corporate, government, regulatory, nonprofit and academic organizations. She is the president of TalentGrow LLC, a consulting company focused on developing leaders and teams to improve the human side of work. TalentGrow specializes in leadership, communication skills, team building, facilitation, coaching, and emotional intelligence.

We wanted to give you something that would help make your life a little better next year.   Keep these things in mind when you are crafting your New Year’s Resolutions.

1. Give something away.  It makes you happier than buying something for yourself.  College students were given money to either give away or spend on themselves.  Guess which group was happier.  When we buy stuff, we always think it will make us happier, for a longer period of time, than it actually does.  Think – what did you give for the holidays versus what did you get?
2. Give an experience.  If you are going to give something away, research shows that giving someone an experience versus a thing you can hold, makes people happier.  It also makes people happier to be with others (even if you are an introvert).  For example I gave my husband a trip around a racetrack for his birthday one year.  He’s still talking about it.
3. Stop watching the news.  It’s depressing.  There is a ratio of 27:1 negative to positive news.  So no wonder you’re depressed watching it or reading about it.  You’ll find out about the important things eventually.  And with all that free time you could do something that actually makes you happier.
4. Spice Up That Date Night.  Don’t do the thing you always do – dinner and a movie.  Do something new.  Do something active.  Research shows that couples are happier when they do something novel together.
5. Fight Your Confirmation Bias.  What is that, you ask?  It’s your tendency to always confirm your own beliefs and ignore facts that don’t fit your beliefs.  For example, I will get an email and KNOW someone is upset with something.  When I consult my husband he invariably asks, “What did the email actually say?”  And he’s usually right.  Play the ‘devil’s advocate’ when there is a situation in which the facts are a bit fuzzy.
6. Manage Up.  It’s gotta be done so don’t wimp out on that conversation.  But be saavy.  Learn what makes your boss tick before you do.  Is there a way this person likes to communicate?  Phone/email/instant message?  What are this person’s strengths?  And what is the specific thing you are asking for (within reason)?  Then start with asking their perspective.  Because it’s not a conversation until you ask a question.
7. Sleep More.  This is a ‘duh’ research finding.  But Tom Rath encapsulates loads of research in his book Eat Sleep Move that you are warding off depression, processing things you’ve learned, performing better at work and at home with just a few extra Z’s.
8. Move more.  Like the above, we all know we should get more movement in our day, but did you know you can actually fight off cancer by vigorously exercising 30 minutes/day?  Not to mention people who exercise do better on academic tests.  (Read:  You’re smarter than a couch potato.)  Better than a pill, that exercising thing.
9. Plan Your Meetings Ahead of Time.  A lot of your day is spent in meetings.  We get it.  You barely have time to breathe, nonetheless have time to Google the person you are meeting with.  But in order to make your life more productive, you’ll need to plan ahead.  What topics are you going to cover?  How much time will they take?  Who is speaking to them?  Who is taking notes? Facilitating? Keeping time?  (Hint:  These last three should not all be the same person.)
10. Create a “Grati-do” list – I get stressed out just looking at all the of the things that I need to get done.  Even crossing them off doesn’t make me feel better.  I just replace that item with something else.  So in my phone, I’ve created a list that I add to with all the things I’m grateful for.  And looking back on the list when I open it makes me happy all over again.  Oh, yes, I remember when my daughter first said ‘Mama’.  It’s one list that you can add to forever.  And it helps you know what makes you happy, so you can do more of those things (i.e. being in nature, being with family, etc.)
11. Create your “To NOT do” list – I am very good at putting things on my list.  But not very good at taking them off.  And the more I add, the most stressed I get.  As the old adage goes, “Less is more.”  So go through your list and see (as Julie Morgenstern says) what you can ‘Delete, Delay, Delegate, or Diminsh.’  You’ll never be happier underachieving.
12. Vision Your Future.   Imagine yourself 5 years from now and everything is going just as you wanted it to.  Even better, actually, at work and at home.  What does it look like?  Who is with you?  Take 15 minutes to write that down and be as specific as possible.
13. Ask yourself provocative questions.  Before crafting your New Years Resolutions, try asking yourself this:  What is the smallest change you could make to your life next year (work or home) that would have the biggest impact?
14. If there is one thing you do next year to make yourself happier and more productive, it is MEDITATE.  I spoke with meditation expert Sharon Salzberg and she said the latest neuroscience research shows that all you need to change your brain is 30 minutes/week and it doesn’t have to be all at once.  “Short moments, many times.”  And check out her new book called Real Happiness at Work.

There are many lists for the new year….take a look at the ones on this list that resonate with you.  Choose one or two.  And commit to them.  Change takes about 21 days.  So try them out and let us know how it goes.

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.

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.

For those of you dictionary lovers here is a recap of what the name means:

• Appreciate: Recognize the quality, significance or magnitude of; To be fully aware of or sensitive to; To raise in value or price
• Inquiry: The process of gathering information for the purpose of learning and changing; A close examination in a quest for truth

I’ve written before about the power of Appreciative Inquiry in the workplace.   When combined with a strengths assessment it can have an impact of creating new directions and engaging all employees. Peter Drucker famously said: “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths…making a system’s weaknesses irrelevant.”   That might be able to work for a division of an organization or for a small one, but changing an entire city?  I wasn’t quite convinced.

Appreciative Inquiry is a long process – three days and four steps.  Most organizations want a half day workshop to ‘fix’ their people.  I’ve written about the first half of the Cincinnati Summit here and the second half here.  If you want to get a good feeling for what a large scale AI summit is like without flying to the middle of the country, there’s your chance.  (Although it’s nice to actually get a chance to try the famous chili, if you get the opportunity.)

But why does AI work?  Perhaps it has something to do with Marcial Losada’s research on high performance teams.  He coded them on three factors of speech:  positive vs. negative; self vs. other and inquiry vs. advocacy.

“I showed unequivocally that a team interaction process is directly linked to performance data. I made sure that my performance data would get the attention of CEOs by using three performance criteria: profitability of the…team, customer satisfaction and 360 company evaluations.”

He found that the highest performing teams had a 6:1 ratio of positive–focused dialogue to negative (AI has questions that are unconditionally positive) and a 2:1 ratio of inquiry vs. advocacy conversation.  In fact, asking questions is the foundation of AI, rather than making statements.

What would it look like if we all asked more open-ended questions rather than making statements?  Could that happen on a city-wide scale?  During the summit I was inspired Cincinnati could actually be reformed as an entirely strengths-based city.  Cincinnati houses the world famous VIA Institute so the connection between the city and strengths is an obvious one.  In the final debrief, I actually grabbed a microphone and was inspired to sing “We are Cincinnati” to the tune of “We Are Family”.  Mercifully, there is no recording of that, although there is an article here.

So I ask you, dear reader, do you think it’s possible to create an entirely strengths-based city?  What would that look like?  We’d love to hear your thoughts.

This webinar series will present practical techniques to incorporate positive psychology into your practice and apply it to help your clients flourish. Unlike other webinars, this series will be accompanied by a detailed workbook of exercises you can use with your clients. The interactive webinars will be taught by two leaders in the applied positive psychology field, Louisa Jewell, MAPP and Shannon Polly, MAPP. Louisa is the founder and president of the Canadian Positive Psychology Association. Shannon is one of the founders of Positive Business DC and Accentuate Consulting. Both those new to positive psychology and experts will gain fresh insights and practical techniques.

You will learn how to help your clients:

✔Increase psychological resilience
✔Reduce stress and anxiety
✔Increase positive energy
✔Achieve healthier thought processes
✔Improve psychological wellbeing and happiness

Choose to take the introductory webinar on March 5, 2013 and/or the full series in April 2013.

• Certificate of Completion will be issued for those completing the Webinar Series.
• Sign up multiple staff and save! Contact us for more on our great Team Rates.
• Continuing Education Credits available

Take the Introductory Course!
Intro Webinar: Introduction to Positive
Psychology and the PERMA Well-Being Model
Cost: $35/per person
Tuesday, March 5, 2013        Time: 12 noon – 1:00 pm ET

• Or Take our 4-Week Course! 
• Webinar Series: 4 webinars in total, 60 minutes each, once a week
• •  Week 1: Leveraging Positive Emotions in the Counselling/Coaching Session
  • Week 2: Fixed vs. Growth Mindset
  • Week 3: Curiosity and FLOW
  • Week 4: Five Steps to Building Resilience

• April 2, 9, 16, 23, 2013      Time: 12 noon – 1:00 pm ET

Cost: $199/per person for per person for the entire series of 4 webinars
*All prices in Canadian dollars

To register or learn further details, click here. Or email Shannon Polly here.

Caroline Adams Miller is the expert on the intersection of goals and positive psychology and her book, Creating Your Best Life, is the only book in the field to be completely based in research.

Caroline spoke recently at Positive Business DC’s Well-being in the Workplace series.  She reminded us to focus on the three P’s: Preparation, Perseverance and Passion when setting and achieving goals.  We also learned that most people (80%) do not set high enough goals.  Recent research shows that people who set higher goals are happier than those who don’t.  People who set lower goals so that they can achieve them then compare their achievements to what they could have achieved.

Regret.  It isn’t pretty.  Isn’t there an old adage about how we don’t regret what we did do, we regret what we didn’t do?

It’s always great to hear a good speaker encapsulate some of these ideas.  Here is a great link to Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement address that Caroline mentioned.   My favorite quote:  “Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

In recent research, it was discovered that the biggest wishes of the dying were:

1. I wish I hadn’t lived my life for others expectations
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
3. I wish I was able to express my feelings
4. I wish I had spent more time with friends
5. I wish I had let myself be happier

The research from positive psychology would say that #4 is particularly important.  It is impossible to get to the highest levels of happiness without close relationships.

I have some quibble with #5 and its wording.  “Letting” oneself be happier makes it sound like if we just gave ourselves permission, bliss would come to us.  It’s much more difficult than this.  We all have a negativity bias and it takes work to counter act that – to find the positive moments in your day.  Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity and the new book, Love 2.0 says that increasing your well-being (happiness) is like ‘moving a river’.  It can be done.  It just takes work.  Daily.

Which one of these regrets most resonate with you?  Which ones could you remove from your ‘regret’ list if you set a goal that directly pertained to it?

So think about your New Year’s Resolutions.  And ask yourself this powerful question:  Is there any reason you can’t achieve this goal?