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A blog by Ryan Quinn, Robert Quinn, Shawn Quinn, and Amy Lemley

How Do You Write Your “Opus”? By Doing What You Love to Do

February 20th, 2013

By Robert E. Quinn 

Recently, I rewatched the movie Mr. Holland’s Opus. When I reached the last scene, I started to cry.

Mr. Holland aspires to write a great symphony. Because he needs money, he takes a job as a teacher, devoting his passion for music to the composing he does in his spare time—and in obscurity.

As a teacher, he is initially ineffective. As the film unfolds, he learns to relate to his students, and then to invest in them. At the end of the movie, many of his former students hold an event to celebrate his life. Aware their beloved teacher feels like a failed composer instead of the phenomenal educator they know him to be, one student makes a moving tribute in a single sentence: “We are your symphony, the music of your life.”  

Mr. Holland evolved into a great teacher as he learned to let his passion for the creation of music spill over into the creation of learning. He came to love the creation of the capacity to create. As he turned the joy of music into the joy of learning, he was letting his passion flow into his students. Yet the normal and natural desire for fame and fortune kept him from fully understanding the magnificence of the symphony he was actually writing.

I cried because Mr. Holland’s struggle is my struggle, it is the universal struggle, it is a wonderful struggle in which we learn that we are at our best when what we do we do because we love it.

Posted in High Performance, Innovation and Creativity, Learning, Lift / Fundamental State of Leadership, Mindfulness, The Meaning of Work | No Comments »

Choosing to Love: A Radical Way to Change How You Live

February 19th, 2013

By Robert E. Quinn

An old friend’s father taught her love was a choice.  So, she told me, wherever she is and with whomever she finds herself, she makes the choice to love the people she is with.

I found this striking.  As long as I have known her she has seemed filled with love. She is one of my favorite people.  Yet never had I heard this story or realized that she lives the way she does by proactive choice.  She was making a claim that violates normal assumptions.  Love is not something you occasionally fall into. It is something you can continually create.  In fact, in her way of living, love is a skill to be developed through the process of conscious choice. 

Question: How would your life change if you chose to master the skill of love?

Posted in Creating Opportunities, General, Positive Relationships and Networks | No Comments »

Lead from the Positive by Cultivating a Grade-School Classroom’s “Culture of ‘Can’”

February 11th, 2013

By Amy Lemley

No manager wants to “baby” his or her employees. Who has time? Yet borrowing some ideas from the grade-school classroom can bring positive leadership into play in a way that is meaningful at an adult level—no babying necessary.

A recent post by InformED blogger Julie DeNeen identified 20 tenets schoolteachers can use to create “a culture of ‘can’” for their pupils. Those practices read like a page from the positive leadership playbook:

1. Make It a Safe Place to Fail

2. Encourage Curiosity

3. Give Your Students a Voice

4. Tiered Responsibility—“show me, teach me, let me”

5. Foster Peer Support

6. Use Natural Consequences

7. Confidence Building

8. Model How to Learn

9. Don’t Impose Limitations

10. Use Real-Life Examples of Perseverance

11. Teach Students How To Set Manageable Goals

12. Teach Students How to Overcome Disappointment

13. Reward Attitude, Not Just Aptitude

14. Believe in Their Abilities

15. Accept the “Mess”

16. Offer Reflection after the Project Is Over

17. Give Immediate Feedback

18. Give both Short and Long-Term Assignments

19. Identify Obstacles and Negative Beliefs

20. Let Go of the Idea That a Student’s Success Reflects on You

When we picture a classroom full of children, I think most of us imagine it as a place where these 20 tenets are in play. Boys and girls, young men and young women, engage with each other and with their teachers openly and without fear of ridicule, receive constructive feedback that supports them to try, try again. Their teachers show them how to learn and learn with them. And their self-confidence grows.

In recent weeks, Lift Blog cofounder Bob Quinn wrote a six-part series for educators and managers about teaching positive leadership. Last week, Ryan Quinn looked at two ways issuing “positive tickets” when young people were doing something right had made a quantifiable difference in their behavior.

As I read Julie DeNeen’s article, it occurred to me that, whether we are four or forty, we respond best to a positive leadership framework. It’s only natural. We look to our leaders—parents and teachers when we’re young, supervisors and senior executives when we’re adults—to, in Bob Quinn’s words, “create the space” in which we can succeed. When we enter that space, whether as employees or students and as leaders, our potential expands, and so do our achievements.

Posted in Creating Opportunities, Culture, Energizing the Workplace, General, Innovation and Creativity, Leadership Education and Development, Learning, Positive Parenting | No Comments »

Conditioning Ourselves with the Positive

February 6th, 2013

By Ryan W. Quinn

One of positive leadership’s essential features is creating a culture of positivity.  Last semester, on the final day of class, I had my students read a blog entry from the Harvard Business Review that presented a compelling example of this tenet in action.

It was entitled “Can We Reverse the Stanford Prison Experiment?” In that now-famous 1971 experiment, Philip Zimbardo randomly assigned Stanford undergraduates to be either prison wardens or prisoners and confined them to a basement for one week. Participants not only adopted their roles, but actually became their roles, with the prison wardens ultimately abusing their prisoners to such an extent that Zimbardo had to stop the experiment early.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is now a classic in the lore of social psychology, often cited among the best illustrations of how people’s behavior tends to be driven much more by their circumstances than by individual values and conscious choice. People familiar with it were not shocked by the U.S. military abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2003–04, even if they were disappointed that we still don’t seem to have learned much from 40 years of social psychology research.

Some recent events in the sciences of the positive suggest that, maybe, we have learned a little more than we might have originally thought.

Reversing the Experiment

The HBR piece did not actually focus on the Stanford Prison Experiment, but on what could be characterized as its opposite: A program that generated exceptionally positive results instead of exceptionally negative ones.

In Richmond, Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) addressed a spiraling youth crime rate with a novel idea—giving “positive tickets” to youth they discovered doing a good thing for the community; these tickets entitled them to free entry at the movies or a youth center.

In one year, they gave out three times as many positive tickets as negative ones. During that year, recidivism reduced from 60% to 8%, youth crime reduced by half, and overall crime reduced by 40%. And the cost of positive tickets was just 10% of the cost of processing the previous years’ crimes. Read more »

Posted in Creating Opportunities, Energizing the Workplace, Innovation and Creativity, Positive Parenting, Positive Relationships and Networks | 1 Comment »

Teaching and Leading Positively, Part 6: Emotion, Imagination, and Purpose

January 31st, 2013

This six-part series, “Teaching and Leading Positively,” explores the goals of teaching positive leadership: not merely to serve as an instructor conveying the theories or practices drawn for positive organizational scholarship, but to prompt lasting transformation in the way our students work and live. Serving as this kind of catalyst requires full engagement on our part. We must live from the positive leadership framework, allowing our students to learn by our example, each other’s, and their own.

By Robert E. Quinn

I had a dream. I was driving when the car in front of me stopped unexpectedly. I jammed on my brakes and stopped one inch short of its bumper. The episode filled me with so much adrenaline that I woke up. The event was a figment of my imagination, yet it triggered a physiological response that changed my reality. I moved from the condition of sleep to the condition of wakefulness. Lying there, I marveled at the power of my brain to create images of consequence.

I thought about this as I considered a situation my daughter is in right now. She has been hosting three orphans from Latvia who do not speak English. Suddenly taking on three children at one time proved overwhelming to her and to the rest of us. She seemed to go into a deep, negative hole.

Then one day she walked in the room signing a happy song. We were stunned and asked her what happened.  She said that she and her husband sat down and asked her father’s favorite question, “What result are we trying to create?” The question led to a long discussion and a new perspective on or image of the future. With this new perspective, her fears began to dissolve. Read more »

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Teaching and Leading Positively, Part 5: A New Rule for Designing Meetings

January 27th, 2013

By Robert E. Quinn

This six-part series, “Teaching and Leading Positively,” explores the goals of teaching positive leadership: not merely to serve as an instructor conveying the theories or practices drawn for positive organizational scholarship, but to prompt lasting transformation in the way our students work and live. Serving as this kind of catalyst requires full engagement on our part. We must live from the positive leadership framework, allowing our students to learn by our example, each other’s, and their own.

One reason I write a gratitude journal is to increase my positivity level. Sometimes it works. One morning after writing, for example, I drove to the University of Michigan, where I teach (as most Lift blog readers know). As I stepped out of the car, I was teeming with positivity. This is a big claim. How do I know that my claim is true? I know it is true because there was tangible evidence. First, I was full of joy. The feeling was real. Second, I had a huge smile on my face. The smile was real. Third, I began to change the world. The change in the world was real.

As I walked by strangers who would have ignored me, I greeted them. They looked at me, and they lit up. As I walked from my office to a meeting, this phenomenon continued. I greeted each student with positive emotion, and each responded very differently than I usually observe when I walk down that hallway.

I walked into the meeting, and I consciously greeted each person with joy. People lit up, and I felt great because they felt better. Then something shifted. A half-hour into this typical two-hour information exchange, my positivity was gone. Read more »

Posted in Agility / Adaptation, Creating Opportunities, Energizing the Workplace, Positive Relationships and Networks | No Comments »

Teaching and Leading Positively, Part 4: A Provocative Tool for Discussing Transformation

January 27th, 2013

By Robert E. Quinn

This six-part series, “Teaching and Leading Positively,” explores the goals of teaching positive leadership: not merely to serve as an instructor conveying the theories or practices drawn for positive organizational scholarship, but to prompt lasting transformation in the way our students work and live. Serving as this kind of catalyst requires full engagement on our part. We must live from the positive leadership framework, allowing our students to learn by our example, each other’s, and their own.

Teaching people how to transform and how to stimulate transformation is very difficult. The life assumptions of normal people are tied to survival assumptions—not to flourishing.

When I teach I have to entice people to explore things that violate what they want to believe. So I am always hungry for conceptual tools that will help people think about transformation in new ways. This week one of my friends sent me the following passage by Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM:

Historically speaking, in most cultures the role of men has been to create, to make new things, to fix broken things, and to defend us from things which could hurt us. All of these are wonderful and necessary roles for the preservation of the human race.

However, most children saw their mother in a different way. She was not a creator, a fixer, or a defender, but rather a transformer. Read more »

Posted in Leadership Education and Development, Leading Change, Learning | No Comments »

Teaching and Leading Positively, Part 3: Living What We Teach

January 23rd, 2013

By Robert E. Quinn

This six-part series, “Teaching and Leading Positively,” explores the goals of teaching positive leadership: not merely to serve as an instructor conveying the theories or practices drawn for positive organizational scholarship, but to prompt lasting transformation in the way our students work and live. Serving as this kind of catalyst requires full engagement on our part. We must live from the positive leadership framework, allowing our students to learn by our example, each other’s, and their own.

For 10 years, positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship have scientifically explored the value of examining things when they are operating at an extraordinary level. One line of research has shown the power of positive feelings and of virtues such as gratitude.

The two fields have been well received and have grown considerably. Predictably, critics have emerged. One of the first critical books was written by a woman who had cancer. She wrote with some fury. In making her point, she cites the title of what she considers a ridiculous book, “The Gift of Cancer.” She attacks the positive lens as unrealistic and dangerous.

In making her attack, she is pointing out the dangers of optimistic self-deception. But the positive lens is not about unfounded optimism. It is about intelligent optimism. It is about seeing reality clearly and choosing to engage reality from a state of high functionality. Read more »

Posted in General | No Comments »

Teaching and Leading Positively, Part 2: Where Change Can Happen

January 22nd, 2013

By Robert E. Quinn

This six-part series, “Teaching and Leading Positively,” explores the goals of teaching positive leadership: not merely to serve as an instructor conveying the theories or practices drawn for positive organizational scholarship, but to prompt lasting transformation in the way our students work and live. Serving as this kind of catalyst requires full engagement on our part. We must live from the positive leadership framework, allowing our students to learn by our example, each other’s, and their own.

The movie Freedom Writers is about a teacher named Erin Gruwell. She enters an impoverished school and eventually learns how to connect with her students.  She reaches extraordinary levels of performance, and her students change. At one point, she reflects on her teaching and she says, “I finally realized what I’m supposed to be doing, and I love it. When I’m helping these kids make sense of their lives, everything about my life makes sense to me. How often does a person get that?”

Her comment is reminiscent of statements I’ve heard from many top-level public school teachers. Teaching is not their job. It is their calling. When they are teaching, they are helping students make sense of their lives. The impact of doing such work loops back to the teacher, and the teacher finds increased meaning in his or her own life.

As someone learns to teach or lead in a transformational way, the activity becomes self-reinforcing because the teacher or leader is also being transformed. I find this in my own work, and awaken to it with every class session. Read more »

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Teaching and Leading Positively, Part 1: The Digestion of Experience

January 21st, 2013

By Robert E. Quinn

This six-part series, “Teaching and Leading Positively,” explores the goals of teaching positive leadership: not merely to serve as an  instructor conveying the theories or practices drawn for positive organizational scholarship, but to prompt lasting transformation in the way our students work and live. Serving as this kind of catalyst requires full engagement on our part. We must live from the positive leadership framework, allowing our students to learn by our example, each other’s, and their own.

When I teach, my objective is not to transfer information to my students. It is to transform their identities. My history as a teacher tells me that if I can accomplish this objective, they will experience a huge jump in their capacity to influence their own lives and the lives of others. To accomplish my objective, I must have them do something unusual.

My wife was telling one of her friends about my writing frequent journal entries and sharing them. The woman later approached me about it. She asked several questions, including how much time it took to write a typical entry. I told her 15 minutes to an hour.

That is a serious time commitment, she responded. I explained that I see the journal writing as a form of meditation that has become like a positive addiction. She understood the benefit, but wondered whether a modern professional who leaves for work very early, puts in 12 hours, and comes home exhausted could accomplish such a thing?

I acknowledged that it would be hard for someone like that, and the conversation went on to other topics. But my heart stayed there for a time. Of course, I recognized the demands of modern life, yet I felt a deep sense of sadness about how we let the world act upon us. Read more »

Posted in Courage / Empowerment / Initiative, General, High Performance, Leadership Education and Development, Learning | No Comments »

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