By Robert Quinn
I was recently invited to run a retreat for a business school in another part of the country. I was to make a presentation and organize a series of exercises that would help the people design their future. A year ago one of my colleagues played the same role with this group. During his day he made an extensive presentation of empirical findings from POS. He also presented tools they could use to apply the principles he taught.
As I visited with people it was clear that they were very impressed with the previous presentation. One professor told me he was intellectually “awed” by it.
Yet it was also clear that few of the POS tools or suggestions had actually been applied. It had been a tough economic year and there were also some conflicts going on in the organization. While some good things had happened, few seemed to be connected with the application of POS.
As I considered the tension in the organization and the fact that there was relatively little application from the previous year, I became increasingly apprehensive about what I was supposed to do. I was to go on in 30 minutes. I felt fear and a knot began to form in my stomach.
Positive Emotions
As I sat there I thought of the research by Barbara Fredrickson. Her work demonstrates the importance of positive emotions. Positive emotions:
• Lead to thoughts that are unusual, flexible, integrative and efficient.
•Broaden visual attention, increase bonding, help regulate negative arousal, improve coping with adversity, increase the likelihood of finding positive meaning in negative events and facilitate the development of plans and goals.
•Increase the likelihood that we are able to play, to explore, envision the future, savor experience and integrate new views into the self.
She states that, “Positive emotions transform individuals into more resilient, socially integrated, and capable versions of themselves.” [1]
Organizations
For people in organizations this claim is particularly important. She indicates that positive emotions are contagious and spread through groups and organizations. Positive emotions give rise to sequences of events that create new meaning. Such changes can reduce conflict and give rise to more integrity, trust, vision and creative mutual support. The culture can become more compassionate and creative and can take the group or organization to a more optimal level of functioning.
A Positive Experience
While I was waiting to go on, several people presented important things they had done in the past year. One was a woman named Kathy, who described herself as ‘just a staff person.’ She was responsible for a small department in the business school. In a university such people are often treated as if they are invisible.
At the outset she was tentative. She told of taking my colleague’s recommendations and actually applying them in her department. She, for example, established “Thankful Thursdays” which included time for everyone to share highlights from their gratitude journals. She described how some people were at first cynical and resistant. They expressed their negative feelings by saying things like, “this stuff is corny.”
She described persisting with her people and she described the changes that took place in her unit. As she shared these impressive accounts her demeanor changed. She became confident and full of joy. The people in her department, who were also in the audience, began to spontaneously express themselves, sharing stories of how the department changed and making fun of their own initial cynicism.
Engagement
When I finally took the stage, my opening line was, “Please tell me what you felt when Kathy spoke.”
This surprised the audience and they had to think about it. They gave some positive answers indicating the thoughts they had. I emphasized that I wanted to know about their feelings.
Again there was hesitation. Then a number of hands went up. People became more authentic and told how much they were inspired and lifted by Kathy. I then described my own immediate fears and how the negative emotions had been closing me down. I told them that as I listened to Kathy I also was lifted. Her authenticity and courage stimulated feelings of courage in me. I had a flood of new thoughts including the intuition that I should start with this particular question. I told them I was now standing before them with great confidence. I was sure that they could elevate their lives and elevate the school.
A Paradigm Shift
Then I said, “Over the last year Kathy had the courage to apply what she learned. Today she had the courage to be authentic and it lifted many people in the room including me. Kathy is a staff person. Yet today she led this entire organization. It was not some high level person who led us, it was Kathy. She made us all better. She increased our capability to perform.”
It was a transformational moment. While the statement was counter intuitive, everyone recognized that it was true. They could see the power of the positive. They could see the incomprehensible fact that anyone can change an organization, even “a staff person. In that moment there was a paradigm shift. For the rest of the day they soaked in everything I had to say. They anxiously engaged in the exercises I gave them. In the final exercise they enthusiastically filled a white board with compelling ideas on how the school could become more positive and effective.
Two Paradoxes
Now what is the lesson? In our attempts to spread knowledge of the positive there is a paradox operating. Teaching people to turn away from fear engenders a fear of the turning away process. It teaching the value of positive emotions we may create negative emotions.
There is a way to more effectively help. While Kathy was “just a staff person,” she had great influence because of what she had become, a “more integrated version” of herself. Instead of simply speaking from our heads and sharing data, we can become like Kathy. We can do this by more fully applying what we know. We can increase our own positive emotions. We can open up and better feel what is happening around us. We can become emotionally contagious.
Why should we extend ourselves to do such difficult emotional work? The answer is found in a second paradox. The challenge is to apply this basic message: “Positive emotions transform individuals into more resilient, socially integrated, and capable versions of themselves.” As we apply principles that cause of us to feel more positive, authentic and courageous, we then engage in more positive, authentic and courageous acts. We thus become emotionally contagious in that we inspire more positive, authentic and courageous feelings and action in others. They then do things that inspire us and our relationships become a virtuous cycle. As we live in such a virtuous cycle, we flourish in the paradox of the positive.
[1] Page 169 of Fredrickson, B. L. (2003). Positive emotions and upward spirals in organizational settings (pp. 163-175). In Cameron, K., Dutton, J., & Quinn, R. (Eds.) Positive Organizational Scholarship, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Thanks for this entry! I especially liked the reference to frederickson’s empirical findings, which I intend to share with my recent M.B.A. students in “Spirit of the New Workplace.”