Listening is like driving.  Everyone thinks they are good at it.  But probably less than half of people really are.  That’s why I was interested by the research of Kate Muir.

Research into how emotions change over time has revealed that negative emotions tend to fade to a greater extent over time compared to positive emotions, an effect known as the fading affect bias.

Talking to others is an important way in which this process can be enhanced: frequent social disclosure of past emotional events can help dissipate negative emotions and maintain positive emotions.  The question is, how and why does talking help?

Kate described experimental research which demonstrates that the degree of responsiveness of the listener during social disclosure is pivotal in how the speaker feels afterwards. Further, merely responding to the speaker is not enough.  This research provides preliminary evidence that there are particular types of listener responses which are associated with the speaker feeling less negative about unpleasant events, and more positive about pleasant events.

She listed three factors that were key for good listening.  Here they are and what they mean:

Alignment

• Participants take turns at talk allowing speaker to tell story
• Smooth conversational flow
• Mutual understanding of story meaning

Emotional Support

• Listener takes role as troubles’ recipient
• Display understanding of speaker’s emotional state
• Express sympathetic concern

Encouraging Positive Focus

• Encourage speaker to build on positive aspects of negative events
• Develop positive interpretation of events
• And you need to demonstrate understanding when someone shares negative events:
• Anticipatory response uses same evaluative term as speaker
• Continuer is in the form of expression of sympathy, i.e. emotional support
• Listener tells related story (self-disclosure)
• More sympathy expressed as part of story assessment
• Story agrees with speaker’s assessment demonstrating understanding of meaning
• Acknowledgement of speaker’s negative feelings as valid emotional reaction
• Self disclosure engenders rapport and intimacy

The suggestions for sharing positive events mimics the research by Gable on Active Constructive Responding.  Fascinating…next time you talk to someone, you know what to do.

————–

Speaker Bio: Kate Muir is a Research Fellow in linguistics and social behaviour at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Kate’s current research focuses on the factors that influence linguistic accommodation, including differences in power roles and personality traits, and the social consequences of accommodation.

Kate’s other research interests include the influence of social interaction and individual differences upon subjective and objective aspects of autobiographical memories, including reported emotional intensity and memory narratives. In her spare time Kate teaches on the Psychology undergraduate degree for the Open University.

Kate completed her BSc (Hons) and PhD in Psychology at the University of Leeds in the UK. Her doctoral research concentrated on the roles of social disclosure and listener behaviour in the fading affect bias. This work demonstrated that listener behaviour is an important factor in emotional regulation processes which encourage negative emotions to fade and positive emotions to be retained in autobiographical memory, and has been recently published in the journal Memory. Kate lives near Bristol with her husband and young son.

 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.

Courtesy of Natural Artistry Photography

When we launched Positive Business DC, Donna, Shannon and I wanted to create a resource to help people raise their level of well-being by providing evidence-based research in positive psychology and neuroleadership. And so, we launched the Well-being in The Workplace speaker series. Last week, I featured Natural Artistry in my weekly column for Modern DC Business magazine. As Meetup members Andrew Murdock, Kimba Green, and Cindy Alderton shared their story, I realized that our Meetups are having a much more profound impact than perhaps we realized.

Andrew is the owner of Natural Artistry Photography in Frederick, MD. His style strays from the conventional by focusing in on moments when people connect on a fundamentally human level. The vulnerability he’s able to capture and the stories his photos tell reach out and grab your attention. He took photos of the October event and generously let us post them. (Personally, I think the camera is super-glued to his hand and he’d have withdrawal symptoms if removed.)

Scratching The Creative Itch for A Purpose

Doug Hensch, our guest speaker at the October Meetup, shared the 5-1/2 Secrets of Resilient Entrepreneurs. One of Andrew’s takeaways: The desire to find deeper fulfillment in work. After thinking about what that meant to him personally, he decided to give back to the community. Not being handy with a hammer or power tools, Andrew picked up the camera and offered professional quality images of local events. The idea was to provide an alternative to the photos people took with their Smartphones.

This one, seemingly small thing embedded the people from Natural Artistry into the community in a deeper, more meaningful level and business started to skyrocket. 

Big, Hairy, and Audacious

No, not Andrew… but the goals for Natural Artistry. At our second Meetup in January, Caroline Adams Miller shared insights about how setting unrealistic goal relates to happiness and the über success that comes from setting one’s sights really, really high. Andrew brought their marketing guru, Kimba that night. Now, barely more than two months later, the big hairy goal for 2014—becoming a photo agency—is already happening. Cindy Alderton, an exceptional photographer in her own right, has recently joined the team. Natural Artistry plans to continue bringing photographers that share their zest for “anti-business business photography” and quirky sense of humor into the agency. They’re also about to move into a studio with equipment that will enable Natural Artistry to take any shot one can dream up.

Research shows that people who seek fulfillment at work or set unrealistic goals vastly improve their levels of professional success.

So, what about this year’s goal? It’s still in the works. Andrew wants his photos to be published in a national magazine. He’s turned the studio’s business model upside down. Rather than waiting for orders to come in or offering the same services similar to other photographers or studios, Natural Artistry likes to propose ideas that will help clients grow their businesses. In their words, “It becomes a symbiotic relationship, really a partnership of sorts. We share the same business goals, personal beliefs, and values and build upon them by discovering common goals.”

Fulfillment + Goals = Growing, Vibrant Business

Courtesy of Natural Artistry Photography

Offering a service to the community proved to also be a good business practice because it provided unexpected exposure for Natural Artistry’s work. Andrew found the fulfillment he sought by providing community service. While community service may seem like a counterintuitive way to grow a business, positive returns are not an uncommon phenomenon when you do something constructive—and without strings—for others.

To begin, the studios’s goal was simple: Ensure that everyone in Frederick, MD see the Natural Artistry logo at least once a week, whether the shot was of a friend or familiar place. Shooting photos without charging for them gave the photographers full artistic license.

“Other photographers (and businesses) box themselves in. They look at what other people are doing and think that they need to do the same thing. They might be making money at it, but do they really get fulfillment from doing the same thing others are doing? Copying the work of someone else is not rewarding,” notes Andrew. “The people at Natural Artistry have a restless desire to grow. What we’re doing today is not what we’re going to be doing tomorrow. We’re a moving target, so any other photographer who tries to emulate and copy us is in for a shock.” Their attitude, combined with all of the local exposure, had captured the attention of ad agencies and local publications, positioning a small town photo studio into an agency that has the potential to work with national magazines.

If attending the Positive Business DC Meetup has helped you improve your level of well-being, we’d love to hear your story! Please seek Donna, Shannon, or me out at during the networking session at Canvas on April 24. Registration open soon.

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?

If your employee makes a mistake, do you accept responsibility?

Fascinated by the discussion thread, I scrolled through all of the comments and got a good sense for what people had to say about responsibility, accountability, and throwing subordinates under the bus. While I didn’t do a tally, it struck me that a rather large percentage of the comments had a strong authoritarian flavor, many with advice on the process and education needed to avoid mistakes in the future. I believe the predominantly negative vibe rather accurately represents prevailing attitudes, which stunt healthy cultural development and frankly, our national economy.

I haven’t been able to shake the negative sensation the comments left me feeling all afternoon, so please indulge me as I share the comment I posted to the discussion group.

Your Thoughts, Please

I’d like to know what the Positive Business DC community thinks of responsibility, accountability, and handling mistakes in the workplace. What percentage of companies allow it to be ‘okay’ to make mistakes? Does the size of the mistake and risk involved matter to how ‘okay’ mistakes are? Is it ever acceptable to shift blame because you weren’t the one who actually made the mistake? Please read… and then comment.

One “Right” Answer Syndrome

The tone of the comments [in the HBR group on LinkedIn] tells a great deal about corporate culture and, I believe, give a good indication as to why we struggle to build innovative businesses on a large scale. A few people have noted the benefit of learning from mistakes and having a learning culture. The majority seem to think mistakes are inherently bad and turn to process, protocol, training, etc. Why are we so afraid to make mistakes? The basic flaw in thinking begins early when we are taught to look for one right answer.

Leaders are responsible for performance. That means, when something happens, a leader accepts responsibility and addresses the issues head on, appropriately, and with the person who made the mistake. And, being responsible for performance, it means leaders also have an obligation to develop the people on their teams… which means that these people will make mistakes. Errors should be expected as a matter of course.

If you’re not helping people develop their talents, try new things, and grow, then you have failed as a leader.

Individual performance will not be what it could because you have left a lot of untapped potential on the table. As a result, organizational performance will also be less than it could be because individuals and teams will be artificially constrained by what they [already] know [and do]. You cannot innovate, disrupt markets, or even thrive in saturated markets without the pooled intelligence and interest of an engaged team that relies on complementary talents to move your business forward in a smart way.

What The Research Says…

The neuroscientific research shows that people develop intuition by going through repeated cycles of success and failure. Do something well? Dopamine flows and you feel great! Make a mistake? Uh oh. The flow of dopamine cuts of and you feel bad. Only through these experiences do we develop a ‘gut feeling’ that helps us successfully make decisions in environments where you have only partial information–which is always.

Another interesting tidbit: Although humans like to think they make ‘rational’ decisions, the research shows that 70% of the decisions we make actually come from the emotional brain. When we use the rational brain to override the emotional brain, many times we make the wrong decisions.

A Very Revealing Interview Question

When interviewing, I ask a number of behavioral questions. One of my favorites is, “Tell me about a time when you tried something and failed. What happened?” If the candidate says they never fail, the I know this person does not fit my business philosophy. If s/he tells a whopper of a story (and can follow up with a way s/he resolved it), then I usually give one or two of my own. It leads to great discussion and helps me assess fit like few other questions can.

Finger-pointing—Always A No-no

A final thought: finger-pointing is not acceptable from anyone. Not management. Not employees. Finger-pointing builds a counterproductive culture where trust cannot exist. And that poisons everyone.

Build Trusting Relationships

I have two rules of thumb that have served very well over the past 20 years. 1) You can tell me anything without negative repercussion as long as it is the truth as you know it (and you didn’t break any laws, etc.); 2) If you think you’re going to miss a deadline, tell me as soon as you know.

Keep it simple. Build trusting relationships. And always, always watch your employees’ backs.

Please take your turn to speak up and be heard. Comment below.

The discomfort spurred Shaydac to make a movie about his journey to reconcile core values with personal actions. Ultimately, I AM seeks to answer two fundamental questions:

1. What’s wrong with our world?
2. What can we do about it?

The movie just may have answered one of the burning questions I’ve been pondering for some time now: Why do American business leaders continue to fail to build healthy workplaces? After all, research has long demonstrated that a strengths-based methodology taught by organizations like The Marcus Buckingham Company can create engaging work environments that enable people to dig deep into their potential and find fulfillment on the job.

And yet the vast majority of Americans hate their jobs. Only about 10% of employees achieve a state of deep satisfaction at work. I’ve consistently viewed this phenomena—the seeming inability to kick the authoritarian management style to the curb—as a failure in leadership. Elements within I AM enabled me see that the failure point may, in fact, be more deeply rooted in culture.

Among other things, the movie posits that a culture which values an economic system based on competition for the sake of consumption is inherently flawed. Taken back to its root, then, the way we structure our businesses and encourage people to climb the corporate ladder is also flawed.

Inherently I think we sense this fundamentally false value. Otherwise we would not refer to working in a “dog-eat-dog world.” Or entering the “rat race.” If the majority of our businesses adhered to a healthy model we wouldn’t take such glee in reading Dilbert or watching The Office.

There appears to be no question that we’ve built our economic future on a model that cannot support sustained growth because of its inherent flaws. So it’s time to acknowledge that management as we know it is broken. For now. The good news: We have begun to find ways to formally transition from the old management model to one grounded in the science of positivity and well-being.

While the well-being in the workplace movement is still early stage, there are signs it’s gaining momentum. For example, Positivity and Positive Business DC both launched recently. These, and organizations like them, seek to teach businesses how to create healthy, rewarding environments. (Heightened profitability becomes a byproduct of engaged employees.)

I AM is worth seeing. It covers a range of topics far beyond the scope of this post.

Thank you for Tom Shadyac for challenging people to question basic assumptions about the world around them. Thank you also for taking the time to chat with the audience after Friday night’s viewing. The way you interacted with the audience, especially the kids, inspired us as much as the movie itself.

Finally, thank you to Brad Russell for founding the Washington West Film Festival. You had a terrific turnout for an event just now entering its second year. (It’s important to note that all of this year’s proceeds will go to Hurricane relief.) We can’t wait to see what you cook up for next year!

© 2012. All rights reserved.

Doug Hensch, M.Ed

Thursday, Doug Hensch will kick off Positive Business DC’s “Well-being in The Workplace” speaker series when he reveals The 5-1/2 Secrets of Entrepreneurs. As noted in Monday’s post, Low Startup Ratio Causes Economic Stall and Job Deficit, entrepreneurship drives our economic engine—and we are unfortunately in a slump.

According to research by the Gallup Organization, the U.S. needs 2 million new businesses launched each year to create enough jobs to keep the economy healthy. We’re currently running at 20% of the required figure. Gallup proposes we offset the deficit by ensuring that the next generation has the tools and training needed to be successful entrepreneurs. While mentoring the Internet generation may be an effective long-term strategy, we also need to focus on what we can do now to improve the domestic business climate.

DC Places Last on Happiness Scale

Living and working in the Metro DC area insulates us from the effects of a poor national economy. Or does it? The folks at Delivering Happiness (@DHMovement) have determined that Washington, DC exhibits the lowest level of happiness in the country. More than a decade of rigorous scientific research proves that happy employees are more engaged, productive, and creative in the workplace and thus produce better returns for their companies. We need to take action and inject energy into our local communities.

That’s where Positive Business DC comes in. Shannon Polly, MAPP, President of Accentuate Consulting, Donna Hemmert, an Internet executive and serial entrepreneur with whom I’ve had the privilege of working with since the ’90s, and I co-founded the organization to give local business leaders a resource for learning how the science of happiness can help companies improve the bottom line. Each of us approaches the subject from a different angle.

Shannon (@ShannonPolly) is one of only approximately 300 people in world who has received a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Martin Seligman. She is also the co-author of Does Happiness Really Drive Results? Shannon is passionate about the science that underlies positive psychology as a discipline and how to apply the science in a way that enhances well-being in the workplace.

Donna (@dhemmert) has been fascinated by positivity and its effect on teams, leadership, and companies since she began her career. A natural leader, Donna has honed her abilities and repeatedly created enabling cultures that encourage her teams to consistently produce ‘star quality’ results. Having been on a number of Donna’s teams, I can tell you from personal experience that she’s one of the best in the industry.

And anyone who reads Modern DC Business on a regular basis knows that I (@mmoran76) have a burning interest in the intersection of leadership, culture, entrepreneurship, innovation, and neuroscience. I’ve blended research by the Gallup Organization, Marcus Buckingham, Daniel Golemen, Jim Collins, Steve Blank (to name a few) to transform underperforming teams and companies—some with very toxic cultures—into positive, strengths-based organizations.

Doug Hensch And The ‘Strengths Zone’

We are excited to have Doug Hensch (@DougHensch) lead off the “Well-being in The Workplace” speaker series. Doug brings a wealth of experience and passion to help his clients lead extraordinary businesses and lives. He uses a pragmatic, three-pronged approach: Set meaningful goals; identify strengths; and work regularly in the ‘strengths zone.’

Doug co-founded an investor-backed happiness website that had over 100,000 registered users and was featured on CNN, in the Boston Globe and the L.A. Times. His new website, myhappier.com, helps people increase their well-being and resilience.

The Positive Business DC Charter

People spend more time at work than any other aspect of their lives. We believe it’s time to take a page from science and history to increase well-being in the workforce. Workplace well-being leads to more than just a happy team. Other benefits include increased productivity, lowered attrition, and even increased profitability. Our charter to is inform and inspire DC to take a page from Positive Psychology and lessons learned in business to increase well-being in the workplace.

Positive Business DC plans to conduct its speaker series across the Metro DC area. If you are interested in hosting a future event, please DM @PositiveBizDC. The October 25th Meetup will be held at Teqcorner (1616 Anderson Road, McLean, VA) and includes refreshments.

Join The Well-being Movement

Please follow us on Twitter: @PositiveBizDC and Facebook. And please don’t forget to register to see what the excitement is all about! Space is limited.