Lift - Becoming a Positive Force in Any Situation,
by Ryan W Quinn, Robert E Quinn

We all want to have a positive impact, but often, despite our best intentions we’re tripped up by subtle psychological states we’re not even aware of. It doesn’t have to be that way. In Lift, Ryan and Robert Quinn combine social science and real-world examples to describe four mindsets that will help you become aware of the unconscious ways you’re holding yourself and others back.

They offer tested, practical guidelines and practices for exerting positive influence in any situation. The Quinns go beyond mere tactics—if you take the lessons in Lift to heart you will not simply wield positive influence, you will by your very nature become a positive influence.

• Named Book of the Year by the Huntsman School of Business
• Named Book of the Year by Albemarle County Public Schools

Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance, K. Cameron, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2008. This book introduces the concept of positive leadership, or the ways in which leaders enable positively deviant performance, foster an affirmative orientation in organizations, and engender a focus on virtuousness and eudaemonism. Positive leadership refers to the application of positive principles arising from the newly emerging fields of positive organizational scholarship, positive psychology, and positive change. It helps answer the question: “So what can I do if I want to become a more effective leader?” Applying the principles of positive leadership leads to extraordinary performance. The vast majority of books on leadership currently in print are based on the prescriptions of celebrated leaders recounting their own experiences or on storytellers’ recitations of inspirational examples. This book is different. It provides an explanation of practical strategies that can help leaders apply principles that have recently emerged through an emphasis on the positive in social science research. These strategies are, for the most part, seldom implemented in organizations.

Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive, B.L. Fredrickson, Crown Publishing a division of Random House, New York, 2009. World renowned researcher Dr. Barbara Fredrickson gives you the lab-tested tools necessary to create a healthier, more vibrant, and flourishing life. She discovered that experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio with negative ones leads people to a tipping point beyond which they naturally become more resilient to adversity and effortlessly achieve what they once could only imagine. With Positivity, you’ll learn to see new possibilities, bounce back from setbacks, connect with others, and become the best version of yourself.

Making the Impossible Possible: Leading Extraordinary Performance – The Rocky Flats Story, K. Cameron and M. Lavine, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2006. Example of an organization and a foundation on POS. Cameron and Lavine describe how a single organization experienced a devastating loss – the loss of mission and subsequent languishing performance – and then, despite its problematic circumstances, achieved a level of success well beyond expectations – accomplishing what most knowledgeable people thought was impossible. The story examines the key enablers that account for this extraordinary level of performance. The authors explain the leadership principles that can be helpful to individuals in other organizations who are interested in fostering their own spectacular success.

Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline, K. Cameron, J.E. Dutton, and R.E. Quinn (eds.), Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2003. Its focus is on optimal organizational states – the dynamics in organizations that lead to the development of human strength, foster resiliency in employees, make healing, restoration, and reconciliation possible, and cultivate extraordinary individual and organizational performance. Contributors to 23 chapters describe empirical and theoretical facets of this emerging discipline focusing on individual and management strengths driving exceptional performance.

 Exploring Positive Relationships at Work: Building a Theoretical and Research Foundation, J.E. Dutton (Ed.) and B.R. Ragins (Ed.), Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., 2006. This edited volume brings together a select group of leading organizational scholars for the purpose of developing a foundation-setting book on positive relationships at work. Positive Relationships at Work (PRW) is a rich new interdisciplinary domain of inquiry that focuses on the generative processes, relational mechanisms and outcomes associated with positive relationships between people at work. A multidisciplinary exploration of how relationships at work become a source of growth, vitality, learning, and generative states of human and collective flourishing.

Building the Bridge As You Walk On It:  A Guide for Leading Change, R.E. Quinn, Jossey-Bass, 2004. A new model of leadership – “the fundamental state of leadership” is at the heart of this book. Quinn challenges you to assess yourself and to formulate a strategy for personal growth. By engaging in the eight practices that center on the theme of ever-increasing integrity - reflective action, authentic engagement, appreciative inquiry, grounded vision. adaptive confidence, detached interdependence, responsible freedom, and tough love - anyone can enter the fundamental state of leadership. To become a leader requires engagement in the process of deep change  in oneself, thereby inviting others to do the same. 

Competing Values Leadership: Creating Value in Organizations, K. Cameron, R.E. Quinn, J. DeGraff, and A. V. Thakor, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006. Creating value in a firm is an enormously complex endeavor. Yet, despite its complexity, value creation is the objective of every enterprise, every worker, and every leader. The Competing Values Framework can help leaders understand more deeply and act more effectively. In the first book to comprehensively present this framework, the authors discuss its core elements and focus attention on rethinking the notion of value. They emphasize specific tools and techniques leaders can use to institute sustainable change. This accessible resource will be of great use to leaders and managers interested in enhancing and creating value in their organizations; organizational scholars interested in the concepts of value creation, organizational effectiveness, and competing values; and to change agents and consultants who use the Competing Values Framework as part of their intervention strategies or who are looking to help improve organizations.

Deep Change:  Discovering the Leader Within, R.E. Quinn, Jossey-Bass,1996. Offers a survival manual for finding our own internal leadership power and learning the most important skill of all to triumph in the face of change: to "know thyself." Exploring the dynamic process of deep change and learning the new ways of thinking and behaving it requires can put an end to the slow death dilemma forever. In defining this process Quinn demonstrates the crucial importance of deep change as the path to self-understanding and the key to revitalization of the individual and the organization. By finding our own moral core and beginning to see ourselves and our organizations in new and more productive ways, he explains, we can transform ourselves from victims to powerful agents of change.

Leading Innovation: How to Jumpstart Your Organization’s Growth Engine, J. DeGraff, S.E. Quinn, McGraw-Hill, 2006. This breakthrough guide focuses on systematically integrating business practices and connecting them to the value propositions they produce. DeGraff and Quinn have created a real-world, how-to playbook of integrated creativity tools and techniques for understanding where innovation comes from and harnessing its power to create a culture where real growth happens on a constant basis. You'll learn the seven key steps that have spurred growth through innovation at many top corporations.

Energize Your Workplace: How to Create and Sustain High-Quality Connections at Work, J.E. Dutton, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2003. Leaders and managers in their everyday behaviors can make an enormous difference in activating and renewing the energy that people bring to their work. Grounded in solid research, this book uses energy as a measurement to describe the power of positive and negative connections in people's experiences at work. Dutton provides three pathways for turning negative connections into positive ones that create and sustain employee resilience and flexibility, facilitate the speed and quality of learning, and build individual commitment and cooperation.

Leading with Values: Positivity, Virtue and High Performance, E. Hess and K. Cameron, Cambridge University Press, 2006. Explores how values-based leaders engage employees in the pursuit of excellence and outstanding performance. Values-based leadership is based upon honesty, respect, trust and dignity, and it regards every employee within a company as a valued human being. This book describes the characteristics of leaders who focus on positivity and virtues to create and sustain highly successful organizations such as Synovus Financial Corporation, HomeBanc Mortgage Company, and the United States Marine Corps. It also addresses leader mistakes and forgiveness, and how difficulties and challenges can be overcome to achieve spectacular results. This inspiring book offers practical advice that can be applied to individual leadership styles and roles.

Achieving Success through Social Capital, W. Baker, Jossey-Bass, Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2000. A guide to social capital. this empowering book, by an expert on networks guides you through the process of evaluating, building, and using your social capital. Among the wealth of practical advice the author delivers, you’ll discover:

• why social capital is so important today
• the strengths and weaknesses of your networks
• the types of networks that yield the best results
• thirty proven practices to build entrepreneurial networks
• how to use social capital ethically and invoke the power of reciprocity
• how to energize your firm by building social capital as a core competence
• how to thrive in the Network Society