Creating and Sustaining Positive Organizations

By Shawn Quinn

A strengths-based approach to leadership is powerful.  Weaknesses are difficult to ignore and we tend to spend the majority of our time focused on weaknesses and fixing problems, both at home and at work, and with ourselves and our colleagues or family.  But recently I heard a story about someone with a weakness—being a poor presenter—who became more confident and capable when colleagues focused on his strengths.

A senior level partner of large consulting firm had been working over the last year to enhance relationships in a large Fortune 100 company where the firm had done a little work.  As the relationships progressed, they were asked to present a proposal for a significant project.  There was a key person in the firm who was extremely expert in the areas where the client needed help, but this individual was not only a bad presenter, it was actually painful for him to speak in front of people. This is not unusual. We’ve all heard that public speaking is second only to dying as the general public’s number one fear!  In previous similar situations the partner would have invited this individual to attend presentations as a member of the team, but would have kept him in the background with no visible role.

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By Shawn Quinn

I have a colleague who often gets nervous about teaching executives.  She worries she won’t be able to relate her research in a way that will feel valuable and that she will have trouble connecting to the executives in general.  This colleague of mine demands excellence from herself and those around her.  She has felt frustrated and unsure after consistently receiving what she deemed as low scores from executives evaluations of her performance.  I talked with her a few times along with others to try to help her but she had a pretty consistent experience for a number of years.  Something changed during the last program and she ended up with excellent scores from the executive evaluations.

When this colleague entered the room to teach, there was a break and we started catching up on life.  She recently has had to deal with a lot of important issues around an aging parent, how much time to make for personal relationships versus work, what is most important to her not only in work but other activities she wants to participate in and so on.  She described with passion the clarity she had come to around what really matters to her.  As she talked she seemed different to me.  She was completely clear about her life purpose and priorities, she was completely aligned with her values, she was open to feedback and learning as she moved toward her purpose and she was trying to consider what would most positively benefit everyone impacted by the decisions she makes.  She had changed her psychological state which is at the essence of the LIFT concept. Read more »

By Robert E. Quinn

In my previous blog entry my friend described a boss who damaged the emotional network in his organization.  He surmises, “If one person’s negativity can do all that, maybe another person’s positivity can also have equally powerful shockwaves.”

It is a wonderful idea but it raises a question.   In a negative context, can a person choose to be a positive influence, a source of positive shockwaves? And if so, how does he communicate the positivity to his team?

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By Robert E. Quinn

In the previous posts in this blog series I have described moments of conversation and transformation in working with executives; moments that have been game changers in how participants express themselves, and gain deep, personal awareness.  In each case the normal conversations reached a tipping point and turned into authentic conversations.  Trust escalated and other positive feelings emerged.  Minds and hearts opened.  Creative associations and insight multiplied.  Minds became linked and people co-created intelligence and capacity.  Profound learning and deep change became possible.

I embedded the discussions in actual cases because the notion of transformational conversation is difficult to access. Many people in the corporate world are blinded by their own normal assumptions.  They cannot imagine the collective creation of intelligence and capacity.  So they behave in ways that destroy the resources they cannot see. Read more »

By Robert E. Quinn

I am always honored and humbled when I come into contact with a participant from a workshop I led months or years ago that not only remembers the program, but continues to feel the impact from their experience. It happened not long ago when I was working with the 100 top executives from a large company.  In the middle of the session a man walked up to me and asked if I remembered when I spoke at another company ten years ago.  I said that I did.   He told me that he was in that session.  With sincerity, he said the session changed his life and that he wanted me to know that.  It was a tender moment and I thanked him.  But I was just about to go on stage, so the moment was brief and I was thinking ahead to my presentation.

This was a two day event and I was one of the last speakers.  As usual, there were national experts of various kinds.  As usual, they did a polished job of showing numerical charts, pouring out facts, and answering questions.  As usual, there were too many presentations and the schedule was running over.  And, as usual the audience was, after so many presentations, saturated, glassy-eyed and half listening. Read more »

By Robert E. Quinn

After traveling on a flight to Atlanta to work with a group of corporate leaders I arrived at the hotel where the woman at the desk was highly trained and did everything she could to make me feel welcome.  As the check-in process continued and my conversation with the desk agent unfolded, I felt a strong sense of appreciation.  I became aware of this and asked myself why I was so appreciative.

The answer came immediately.  Her treatment was a contrast.  In the last few hours I went through security, through the airport, took the flight, and rode in a limo.  In those hours I felt like an object being processed.  The conversation with this woman was the first interaction in a half day in which I felt like I was actually being valued.

Shortly thereafter I had dinner with the people who were responsible for the event.  While we had not met personally, they seemed to have a high expectation about what I was going to contribute.  And they were even more welcoming.  Throughout that dinner I felt appreciated, and I felt appreciation.  And with this, came a profound insight. 

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By Ryan W. Quinn

Yesterday I reviewed some of our writings on fear and courage and their impact on making our organizations what they could be. Today I would like to provide a quick review of an article that examines the kind of conversations that influence, to a large extent, the kinds of places our organizations become. This paper, entitled “Managing Organizational Change: Meaning and Power-Resistance Relations” published in Organization Science and written by Robyn Thomas, Leisa Sargent, and Cynthia Hardy examines the efforts of one organization to change its culture. In this company, senior managers with a prescribed change program were sent to the organizations working sites to meet with middle managers and present a prescribed change program. The authors analyzed the conversations in one of these sites, and found that within the same conversation, two different types of conversations ensued. One type of conversation led to constructive and collaborative building of the organization together. The other led to resistance, undermining, and discontent. The two types of conversations-within-a-conversation had the following characteristics: Read more »

By Ryan W. Quinn

Over the past couple of days, I have stumbled across the topic of fear enough that it is on my mind. One example can be found in this 60 Minutes interview of Wael Ghonim–the Middle East Google executive who was a leader in Egypt’s revolution last February, where Ghonim said, ”The only barrier to people’s uprise and revolution is the psychological barrier of fear.” Another came from Valerie Strauss’article in the Washington Post online, ”When an adult took the standardized tests forced on kids.” After raising some serious questions about how our system is evaluating children, teachers, and administrators in the school system, she asks, “How many of the approximately 100,000 school principals in the U.S. would join the revolt if their ethical principles trumped their fears of retribution?” Read more »