3
Helping People Engage Positively with Imposed Change
Recently I received a call from a human resources director who wanted to offer some support to a leadership team charged with bringing about some change. They thought they wanted a day’s training on “doing” change. As I spoke to them all beforehand it became clear that what most of them wanted and needed was something much more experiential that allowed them to make sense of and engage with their specific change. Everyone agreed that the changes they had been charged to make were “logically” a good idea, and they were pretty convinced that everyone else would agree that “you couldn’t argue with the logic.” Yet they also knew in more or less well articulated ways that this might not be enough to make the changes happen. And somehow, although they could all recite to me, in some detail, the “plan” of the changes needed, they couldn’t get started on making any changes. The day ended up being a slightly odd hybrid of “teaching” as commissioned and experiential sense-making as required.
There were two particular points of interest about this day relevant to this chapter. Late in the afternoon I had created a space to “dream” about how the organization could be once these proposed changes were operative. The two groups tackled this very differently. One discussion was all about inspired service for customers and the group involved were getting excited and passionate about the good they could do in the world and what a great place the organization could be to work. Their flipchart was full of images and inspiring phrases. The other group focused on the practicalities of how the service changes would be delivered and their flipchart was a complex picture of boxes and arrows. Both ways of thinking about the future are of course valuable. The interesting part was when a guy in the second group, rather impressed if taken aback at how the first group had interpreted the exercise, after we had been discussing the two outcomes for a while, said, “So you’re saying that we are doing this back to front. We should have had a vision first, then worked out what changes we needed to make.” This was a “Bingo!” moment. We talked about the difference it made to how they felt, and how able they felt to engage with the challenge of change once they had created the “attractive image of possible futures” for themselves. We were able to discuss how if it was so for them then maybe it was so for others: How could they help other people generate “positive images of the future” that would draw them forward?
This group’s experience up to that point, of the push of an imposed change with no corresponding pull of an attractive future, is not uncommon. In this way the changes get pushed from the top down through the organization as for a task that must be done. Change viewed as a task that must be done becomes hard and often distasteful. And of course the whole “resistance” phenomenon is an integral part of this approach. This group of leaders were struggling to “get going” on this change partly because all they could feel was the disruption and the upset it was going to cause, despite the “logic” of its necessity and appropriateness. Somehow the speech from the top introducing this need for change had managed to introduce the metaphor of a “dishwasher.” The changes would mean that the organization would be more like a dishwasher. Not surprisingly, this metaphor had stuck. It was certainly a new way of thinking about the organization, yet it was neither inspiring nor useful.
In the time we had available we could only begin to create the “pull” factor of a sense of how these imposed changes could be key to creating a future great place to work. It is this belief in future possibility that gives people the energy to engage with the often challenging, and definitely ethically loaded, process of affecting other people’s lives.
The second point I want to mention is that when the group re-measured themselves against the targets for the session all had moved in the right direction, that is, positive progress had been made on items like understanding planned and emergent change approaches; understanding the individual and collective strengths we bring to this change challenge; and identifying the positive core of the organization to bring forward. However, one item had a strong outlier. While most of the group agreed that they had more of a “shared appreciation of the complexities of change” than when they had started the day, the leader’s score was in stark disagreement. He explained he had scored this item highly at the beginning of the day as he had thought it was all simple and straightforward since everyone understood (i.e., could recite) the changes needed and that therefore there was a high shared appreciation of the complexity of the change: that it was straightforward. He was now aware that other people in the group saw it in a much more challenging and complex way than he did and so he saw less agreement.
They finished the day with some concrete plans that suggested they were starting to take ownership of this change rather than just being a conduit for it. They were resolved to engage in conversations with their senior management to negotiate more about how much autonomy they had to do things “their way,” that is, to take some leadership of this change in their area. And they were resolved to start engaging the people who were going to be most directly involved in this change in conversation about “how change could be introduced” as well as about “what needed to happen.”
Introduction
The approach to change outlined above is not unusual. Organizations are awash with interesting beliefs about change and people, including the belief that change is just a matter of planning and that people are naturally resistant to change, to which one is tempted to reply “Up to a point, Lord Copper” (Waugh, 2003 [1938]). In reality we experience change without experiencing “resistance” all our lives: we move from crawling to walking, from riding a bike to driving a car. We change our hairstyles, our house, and our partners. We can’t get through life without making changes and very often we embrace them: getting married, having a baby, getting a promotion. People are not, on the whole, resistant to change. What many people do find difficult, and may resist, is having change imposed upon them, and imposing change can easily become something of a habit in organizations.
Typical Experience of Imposed Change
In my experience a typical organizational change scenario runs as follows. Senior management become aware of the need to make changes in the organization. This perceived need can be promoted by any number of things: new blood in the boardroom; changing market conditions; changing economic conditions; regulatory changes; some internal incident that exposes a major weakness, such as a serious workplace accident, fraud, or poor performance; the introduction of new technologies, whether hardware (i.e., new machines) or software (e.g., new IT system or process); or maybe awareness of a new technology such as lean working. And so it is decided that something in the organization needs to change, and a small group of people start making plans. At some point those who will be most affected, those who work the machines, use the IT programmes, or make up the process workflow, will get to hear about these plans, sometimes through a formal announcement and sometimes not. The immediate reaction isn’t always the ecstatic embracing of the new dawn for which the executives were hoping.
Instead what tends to hit people smack between the eyes when wholesale, large-scale change is announced is the high immediate cost to them: the disruption; the inconvenience; the uncertainty; the loss of value of their hard-won skill in the present system or process; the likely rupturing of valued relationships, whether with clients or with colleagues; the loss of privileges once seen as basic necessities, like their own desk space; the learning curve ahead of them, and so on. Of course, people have many choices about how to respond to or engage with the imposed changes. Some will quickly see the advantages of the new system or process and will be keen to get going; others may become vocal in their disagreement with either the change or the way it is being done; many, however, become rather passive and disempowered (see Box 3.1).
Unintended Consequences of Imposed Change
Feeling that they have no control over all this “change,” people can enter a “waiting” state. Waiting for the powers that be to tell them exactly what the future holds; waiting to be told exactly what they are going to do; waiting for illumination about what the new job looks like; waiting for clarity regarding what the priorities are and so on. Frequently, they believe that “senior management” has this change all planned out, right down to who will sit where. In some organizations, with vast resources, this may be the case (not that I have ever experienced it!), although having all the answers won’t necessarily endear them to those for whom they have so devotedly planned. More often senior management has only the vaguest idea of how this is all going to look in the end, never mind every step along the way. Rather, driven by necessity, advancing with hope, keeping the faith in an uncertain future, and at the mercy of reassuring experts, they endeavour to maintain the illusion of certainty and control.
This approach to change seems frequently to produce a situation where the change-makers are working flat out to make the change happen while those affected, having no say in the process, have little option but to wait. While waiting they become less and less effective as they find it hard to know what to do for the best in the present. They are no longer sure what to be doing now to help create a great future; they know only that what they have been doing is apparently not what will be wanted. Frustration can grow on both sides. It is worth looking at this worst, but not uncommon, experience of organizational change through two particular psychological lenses, emotional and cognitive, as they reveal how we can intervene to re-energize and re-motivate those adversely affected by the organizational changes.
Understanding the Psychological Impact of Imposed Change on People
The effects of imposed change viewed through an emotion lens
An unintended consequence of the change scenario described above is that the working world can become emotionally negatively charged, by which I mean the ratio of difficult, unpleasant, or upsetting feelings, such as confusion, uncertainty, anxiety, worry, or stress, against pleasant feelings, such as satisfaction, achievement, or affirmation, can shift. Once the ratio shifts below 3:1 (i.e., less than three pleasant feelings to every unpleasant feeling) then a downwards spiral of dissatisfaction is likely. This is often an unintended consequence of the announcement of change because, however management frame the announcement, the initial impression for many can be a barrage of bad news. Regardless of how carefully the message is couched, often in jargonistic management-speak, what people immediately hear is disruption and uncertainty, if not threat (e.g., to their job, status, values, sense of professional identity, friendship networks, etc.).
The announcement raises unanswered questions and the level of uncertainty rises. Many people find this unsettling in itself, especially when it involves the question “What is to become of me?” Doubts and uncertainties can plague people: “Will I be able to learn the new system? Will I still have a job?” At the same time the supply of established sources of mood enhancement, the reliable little blips of spirit-raising pleasure, can dwindle. For example, front line managers have their own anxieties to deal with in this change process and may have less time for their staff, so unintentionally reducing the amount of management rewards of time, attention, praise, smiles, and so on. The general mood may become more tense and uncertain, with less laughter and ease at work as the general diffuse anxiety contaminates everyone. People may find themselves in competition with their colleagues for jobs or resources (like desks!). Most importantly though, and often unnoticed, the work can become less rewarding. By this I mean that the things people did that used to win them rewards (approval from others, status, satisfaction in a job well done, etc.) are often displaced in the “new system” and it’s not always immediately clear where the rewards now lie. The opportunity to exercise personal strengths on a daily basis, which is highly motivating for people (Seligman, 2003), may be reduced. Hence the work environment can become reward-poor rather than reward-rich. All of these subtle factors can add together to shift the ratio of positive to negative work experiences in the wrong direction so that the whole experience of being at work develops a more negative emotional tenor (see Box 3.2). Morale begins to fall.
The effect of imposed change viewed through a cognitive lens
One key emotion that keeps us upbeat, resilient, and able to meet life’s challenges is hope. Hope is a future-oriented emotion, essentially a belief that in the future things can be good. Zimbardo’s work on the psychological aspects of time offers an interesting perspective on what can happen to people’s cognitive state when confronted with imposed change, which in turn can affect their emotional state. First, though, we need to understand some key aspects of Zimbardo’s theory.
Zimbardo’s work suggests that we can identify six different time-oriented states of mind. These are future-oriented, past-positive-oriented, past-negative-oriented, present-hedonistic-oriented, present-fatalistic-oriented, and future-transcendental-oriented. All of us are capable of adopting all of these time-oriented cognitive states at different times; at the same time we tend to have different profiles of how often we visit each (Zimbardo & Boyd, 2010). Let us examine them in more detail.
To be in a future orientation state is to be highly aware of the implications of today’s actions for tomorrow; for example, “I’m studying hard now so I can earn more money later,” or, “I’m working hard on this project to enhance my CV and to improve my promotion prospects.” A past-positive orientation is to appreciate the best of the past, to enjoy shared memories – what we might call happy reminiscing – while a past-negative orientation leads to rumination on opportunities missed, wrong paths taken – regrets, in other words. A present-hedonistic orientation is expressed in the ability to enjoy the present moment through indulgence, relaxation, or thrill-seeking, for example. While present-fatalistic is characterized by a belief that nothing one does can make a difference so why bother to try. The future-transcendental orientation is predicated on a belief of life after death, allowing a calm acceptance of the inevitability of death and perhaps a different relationship to today’s trials and tribulations (Zimbardo & Boyd, 2010).
All of these time orientations are useful to us at particular times and ideally we develop a balanced temporal perspective that allows us to cherish the past, relish the present, and invest in the future (Boniwell & Zimbardo, 2003). A balanced time perspective is the state, and ongoing process, of being able to switch flexibly between these time frames as most appropriate to the demands of the current behavioural setting (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999). Our ability to experience or enter these different time orientations is influenced by our current context. As Zimbardo notes, “As our ancestors succeeded in eliminating threats, they were free to look further into the future without the fear that they would be killed if they took their eyes off the present” (Zimbardo & Boyd, 2010, p. 36). When change is experienced as a threat to our wellbeing it may well make it harder for us to be future-oriented, just at the point that the organization is demanding this of us.
Instead, the change process can encourage both a past-negative and a past-positive time orientation, neither necessarily in a helpful way. So while one group might cast the past as having been somehow “wrong” in order to justify the change (past-negative), another may be busy creating the “golden age” myth of a time when everything and everyone worked well in the absence of this level of management interference (past-positive). The greater challenge though is the spread of a present-fatalistic mindset. In this state people feel hopeless and express beliefs that immutable outside forces control their lives. Both past-negative and present-fatalistic mindsets are associated with strong feelings of depression, anger, anxiety, and aggression (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999). In addition, present-fatalistic orientation is related to a perceived lack of control, negative affect, and a great degree of emotional distress and hopelessness. None of these are particularly helpful to the challenge of change.
Although Zimbardo’s work in this area has mostly explored these ideas at the level of the individual, I think we can legitimately extrapolate these ideas to groups of people. If we think of the organization as a living system, then we can hypothesize that the organization, or groups within it, can develop particular time orientations. Experience on the ground with groups experiencing imposed change suggests that the development of the present-fatalistic mindset (we have no influence, they don’t listen to us) often expresses itself in a mixture of active anger and passive resignation. This is expressed in organizational terms as a sense of disempowerment.
Accessing Psychological Resources to Increase Efficacy and Resilience
This is not to suggest that imposed change always produces these effects or that everyone reacts the same way. However, faced with a group of people feeling demoralized, disempowered and stuck in an endless present, the challenge becomes to reintroduce a sense of optimism and a future orientation. Working from this emotional and cognitive perspective, there are a number of possible ways to help people stuck in a depressing and demoralizing present become once again their active, engaged, and optimistic selves.
1. Create hopefulness
A key psychological or emotional state that helps motivate people to engage with creating and influencing the world is that of hopefulness: a state of being full of hope. Hope, while self-evidently generally a good thing, is a tricky concept in many ways, being rather ephemeral and difficult to quantify. Yet we refer to it in countless ways and are understood as we do so: “We hope to be there by 7 o’clock,” “I’m feeling quite hopeful about our prospects at the moment,” “I hope we have put all that behind us,” and so on. Hope is key to our ability to engage positively with the future and so is particularly important during imposed change. As we saw earlier, hope can be an early casualty of imposed change.
Hope is good for us as individuals: an individual state of high hope (for the future) is favourably associated with positive outcomes in the areas of athletics, physical health, psychological adjustment, and psychotherapy (Snyder, Rand, & Sigmon, 2005). Meanwhile, organizational research has demonstrated a link between hope and favourable organizational outcomes such as profitability (Adams et al., 2002). Peterson and Luthans’ research found that high hope leaders had more profitable work units, better retention rates, and better subordinate satisfaction than low hope leaders (2003). Other studies indicate a link between hope and job satisfaction, organizational commitment and performance (Luthans, Norman, Avolio, & Avery, 2008). Hope, in my opinion, is the singular most important positive emotion to pull people from apathetic inertia into becoming proactive in their own futures.
However, hope isn’t a monolithic concept. Carlsen, Hagen, and Mortensen (2012) identify opening-up hope as a general feeling of optimism or positivity about opportunity or possibility that has opened up due to some change. This is distinct from Snyder, Rand, and Sigmon’s more goal-oriented concept of hope (2005). For example, recently I worked with some parents of children in a children’s hospice. We spent time experiencing and talking about positive emotions and identifying strengths. At the end of the session, one young mother said how much better she felt, how refreshed, how optimistic. Life had been tough over the past two years. Something in our time together had created a sense of possibility that things could get better. This could be seen as the emergence of opening-up hope. There was some talk of finding a way to take up running again, maybe to enter the London Marathon. Maybe in time this would coalesce into an attainment goal of completing the marathon in a certain time. But for now the experience of opening-up hope was sufficient to allow her to imagine a different future from the current endless present.
These theories of hope suggest that to move forward after a sudden or unexpected disruption people need to experience both opening-up hope and attainment hope. These theories of hope suggests that to advance directly by trying to generate goal-attainment hope might be premature; instead people need an opportunity to become more hopeful in general, to become “open” to the idea of hope or better futures before laying down plans. Appreciative Inquiry as a process enables the emergence of both forms of hope. Appreciative Inquiry is explained fully in Chapter 6 and I shall be referring to it extensively throughout the rest of this chapter.
Opening-up hope is a co-created, shared, relational, emotional experience. This experience of generalized, but as yet untargeted, hope can be characterized as the ability to believe that the future will be different in ways not yet specified from the past and somehow freer than the past or the present (Rorty, 2000). Such opening-up hope is a condition of growth. In this way opening-up hope is a necessity for life in general and for change in particular. The positive, relational, and generative focus of Appreciative Inquiry processes helps create this more diffuse yet powerful motivation. It is this opening-up hope that allows groups paralysed by uncertainty to start to step into the unknown. Such hope cannot be commanded by imprecations to, for instance, “Buck up!” It can only be generated or released. It is a motivator and as such is drawn out of people, not pushed into them. It is both an emotion and a vital coping resource. As well as releasing or creating this kind of hope, Appreciative Inquiry also supports the creation of goal-attainment hope through the evolution of dreams into action.
2. Create dreams of positive future states
Dreaming of the future and experiencing hope are inextricably intertwined. So much so that in everyday life we barely notice ourselves either dreaming or hoping. Yet all projections of ourselves into a positive future that has not yet arrived, such as the idle thought of “Later I’ll go for a swim” or “At the weekend I’ll get going on that vegetable patch,” are essentially dreams and imaginings that create both hope for a positive future state and motivation for action in the present that makes that future state more likely. I might be motivated, for example, to crack on with this writing so I have time for that swim, or to buy those seeds today so they are ready for the weekend. There is a powerful dynamic between hope, imagination, and future-oriented action. It is this dynamic that is accessed by the “dreaming” stage of Appreciative Inquiry. In Appreciative Inquiry these visions of attractive future possibility are known as dreams. To contemplate the future with any enthusiasm we need to harbour some positive expectations, or dreams, about it. During imposed change this process needs to be more consciously managed than at other times.
3. Focus on what can be achieved
During change we need to help people focus on solution talk over problem talk. The emphasis in solution-focused conversation is on what we can do, rather than what we can’t do. Appreciative Inquiry as a process is particularly well suited to facilitating such talk. Through the use of appreciative questions, people and groups can be guided to redirect their attention and focus from the things they can’t influence to those they can. With an increasing sense of the possibility of influential future-oriented action comes increasing hope. My experience of working with groups to help them move from a sense of hopelessness to one of hopefulness is that this is an almost tangible process as the seeds of hope become apparent in the group. Glimmers of light appear in the doom-laden conversation, suggesting that, tentatively, people are daring to hope, daring to believe in possibilities of a better future. And daring is the right word. It takes a certain courage to believe in an uncertain possibility. To “get your hopes up” runs the risk of having them dashed. Yet to not take the risk of being hopeful makes it incredibly difficult to find the energy to do things differently. By positively affecting people’s emotional state we make it possible for them to begin to think differently, while thinking differently they begin to feel different. In this way an upward virtuous circle of improving mood and expansive creative thinking can be initiated that helps militate against the adverse effects on motivation and morale often experienced during imposed change.
4. Create empowering narratives
For groups to create new ideas about themselves and their possibilities in the future something needs to change or shift about their conception of themselves in the present. It is the discovery interviews in the Appreciative Inquiry process that feed new information into the system, allowing new conceptualizations to emerge. During the discovery process people are asked to share stories of themselves, or their organization, or their group at their best in the past. As a group of people share stories of themselves at their best, many of which will be previously unknown to the majority of the group, something begins to shift in the group’s conception of themselves. It is almost a tangible rearrangement of the atoms in the room. Essentially, as person after person reveal hidden strengths, determination, tenacity, moral courage, effectiveness, and other virtues, values, and abilities, people begin to re-evaluate the nature of the group of which they are a member, and the potential of the group to achieve change. Hope, goals, dreams, possibilities, imagination, and creativity are all interlinked and interdependent and can be held together powerfully by narrative.
a) Narrative to create positive mood
We spend a lot of time in organizations, and sadly also often in life, focusing on what people do wrong and complaining about it to others, and precious little in noticing what they do right and celebrating it with others. Appreciative Inquiry discovery interviews invite us, for a relatively short period of time, to turn our attention to discovering the best in our colleagues. In normal organizational life we rarely extend the invitation to others to share those moments when, just for once, they knew they were at their best doing something good. The results can be electrifying. Just as the outsider listening in to the stories as they are shared, I regularly find myself very moved, often indeed close to tears. People can be just so damned impressive! Ordinary-looking folk turn out to be capable of extraordinary things. One is humbled. Good discovery stories have an emotional impact in the moment. Among other effects, they often work to rekindle embers of hope as the amount of resourcefulness in the room becomes apparent – and as it becomes apparent that other people also care about important things.
b) Narrative for resource identification
Beyond this, of course, the group can analyse the stories for resources. They can be analysed for the strengths evident in the stories. They can be analysed for useful ideas. They can be compared to similar yet not quite so impactful experiences to yield the small things that make a difference between OK and great. Appreciative Inquiry also uses narrative for resource identification in the dream phase. In this phase, groups of people create dreams or images of the future. These imagined futures aren’t plucked out of thin air; rather they are created in the context of the discovery about the best of the past. People use their imagination to create images, and accounts, of how the future can be, at its best. Once again people are telling stories, but while in the discovery phase these might be stories of things that have happened in the past, this time they are of things that might happen in the future. These dreams often contain useful resources not yet present in the world. During the design phase, key future resources can be identified as development projects.
c) Narrative to create dense future zones
One thing that stories of future possible states do is create “dense future zones” which are connected with a future time orientation, as mentioned earlier. To have a dense future zone is to be full of ideas, plans, hopes, and aspirations for the future; to have a rich picture of a positive future that pulls you forward. When engaging with this temporal perspective we tend to operate with an eye towards “consequences, contingencies and the probable outcomes of present decisions and actions” (Boniwell & Zimbardo, 2003, p. 169). In addition, we are “dedicated to working for future goals and their attendant rewards” (p. 169). This is essentially how dreaming of the future positively affects the likelihood of it occurring. Dreaming encourages us to act now in ways that are in line with the desired future. Dreaming acts to draw people out of the passivity associated with a present-fatalistic mindset and helps shift behaviour from short-term survival mode to longer-term investment mode.
In addition, having a dense future zone is good for us. The density of the future zone, usually measured by the number of plans, commitments, and anticipated experiences, has been found to be positively correlated with wellbeing (Kahana & Kahana, 1983), while “a positive future orientation is often viewed as the essence of personal optimism” (Boniwell & Zimbardo, 2003, p. 173). Future orientation is related to higher levels of perceived control and positive wellbeing or affect, and to persistence (p. 173), and it allows for a sense of possibility of being agentic, that is, taking responsibility and making choices. A dense future zone can be highly motivating: “When you want to achieve something and believe that you can, you work harder” (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999, p. 137). All of which helps with the motivation and energy needed to make changes. However, for the narratives to be effective at producing change, they also need to be generative.
5. Create generative images
Gervase Bushe notes that achieving positive energy in Appreciative Inquiry interventions is not enough, there also needs to be a generative element (2013). By this he means that something new needs to be created or to emerge during the process. This something new need only be a realization, conceptualization, image, or idea that is new to this particular group, not to the world at large. More important than world-shattering innovation, what is needed is a novel expression or image that captures the new thinking in a nutshell, a cohering symbol. Over uniqueness what’s needed is connection. The “new thing” needs to be something to which the whole group is connected, something that speaks to them all, something that encapsulates the group’s best image of themselves and their hopes for the future. For example, for one group I worked with the emerging image was of a “one stop shop.” This is hardly new, but for them it expressed a multitude of ideas and aspirations in a simple phrase. The conversation jumped forward once they could express all these things in this simple image.
6. Redefine success
In times of change what we have to do is build, and help others build, new definitions of success. This can be particularly important during imposed change when people probably haven’t had the opportunity to think about this. We need to help people set new goals and we also need to help them administer rewards differently in line with the new success criteria. I had a conversation with someone about this in a workshop only the other day. The workshop was on leading through uncertainty and change. One participant agreed with the points I was making but was having trouble applying them to her situation, a team that knew it was going to be disbanded. How, she asked, could she maintain morale? This is a perfect example of a situation where success needs to be radically redefined. Adhering to the old definitions of success, which in this case were to do with amount of work done, would clearly lead to an increasing sense of failure as the team diminished through attrition. Instead what was required, I suggested, was that they ask themselves questions such as, “Given this situation, what is the best kind of run down we could have?” “How will we know if our run down has been successful?” and “How can we both continue to work for the good of the organization and attend to our own futures?” Only by asking themselves questions of this nature could she and her team begin to create goals and targets that were relevant and achievable and against which they could experience success. In this way they are using narrative to create dreams and hope.
In more general terms, it is usually important to help groups identify “what success looks like” in the emerging new order. In project-oriented environments this is particularly important. If you wait until the project is completed before declaring success and allowing celebration you may never reach the point of being able to say “job well done.” Project completion dates have a habit of receding over a horizon. And when a project does come to an end, it is rarely a very clean and clear end: it can be more of a straggle of activity slowly fading out rather than a decisive dividing point. For these reasons project-based change activity is particularly susceptible to “success lag.” Groups need to create their own accounts that allow them to experience moments of achievement and success along the way.
By the same token, we need to drag people’s attention away from the blindingly obvious things that are being broken and are not working, to the hidden parts of the system that are working. Sometimes this is a difference between a surface and a depth perception. So, on the surface, teams are being broken up, processes are being dismantled, walls are being removed – all highly visible, disruptive, and sometimes distressing. Yet at the same time there will be important things that aren’t changing or are still working. For example, it may be that, in all the confusion, people are still focused on achieving good customer service or that people still find time to look out for each other. In addition to finding success we can amplify it.
7. Amplify success
We create our own social environment by the way we interact and talk together. Out of the many things that are happening in our environment we can choose which ones to focus on. As I said earlier, Achor (2011) estimates that we are able to attend to one in every 100 “bits” of information that come our way. We filter out the remaining 99% without even noticing. For many of us our default filters are set on noticing problems, errors, mistakes, faults and flaws and so we unintentionally filter out success. It is of course important to notice these things. But if these are all we notice, then our world becomes full of nothing but errors, mistakes, and flaws. During times of change, without conscious effort it is easy to slip into the mindset where everything is wrong (see Box 3.3).
To counteract this we need to consciously seek out things that are right, and beyond that to amplify them. That is, to take the weak signals that exist of things that are working, that are improvements, that are signs of quality, that demonstrate commitment or important values and to boost them through active and deliberate amplification processes. These might be activities such as an entry on the company blog or the creation of a specific “good news” newsletter. Taking opportunities to share things your team are achieving, even if it seems as mundane as continuing to provide a service among all the chaos, is important because under these circumstances “just doing our job” can be a major achievement and worth shouting about. So we should encourage people to take the opportunity during meetings and so on to tell others about the good things their team are still doing. Introducing a “good news round” at the start of every meeting can be an effective way of counteracting a growing story that everything is difficult or uncertain or going wrong.
8. Encourage savouring
Related to this is the idea of savouring. Savouring can be defined as “the capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in one’s life” (Bryant, Erickson, & DeHoek, 2013, p. 857). It describes those moments when we pause briefly to notice that we are having a good experience and to enjoy that moment. It also refers to our abilities to do that. We can savour experiences in the present, and can also recall experiences to savour from the past through reminiscing, or conjure them into the future through pleasurable anticipation; either way, the experience is a here and now pleasure. As the researchers in the field put it, “savouring requires a conscious meta-awareness of one’s positive feelings while one is experiencing them” (p. 857). Savouring facilitates the access of positive emotions; for example, marvelling accesses awe, thanksgiving accesses gratitude, basking accesses pride, and luxuriating accesses physical pleasure. I noticed savouring in other people before I had a name to put to it. I saw it as the ability to take pleasure in small things. For example, my husband turning a penknife over and over in his hand, examining all the blades and pull-out extras, “tweezers!” My father pausing in the Sunday task of mowing the lawn to settle down to enjoy his morning treat of a “flake cake.” It was a bit of a puzzle to me: it’s just a penknife, just a cake. Yet research shows that the occurrence of minor positive events is associated with increases in daily self-esteem and perceived control, and decreases in daily depressive cognitions, above and beyond the effect of negative events (Nezlek & Gable, 2001). All of this is of course relevant to the effects of change on people.
I realize now that I had for many years a tendency to “dampen” rather than amplify possible positive feelings. And of course I was too busy to notice these brief moments of pleasure. More fool me. Taking a moment to savour the good things that occur during the day is a sure-fire way to help keep the world a better place and maintain better mental health (see Box 3.4). The difference between flourishing and non-flourishing people is their positive emotional reactivity to everyday events. Their ability to create a ratio of between 3:1 and 5:1 positive experiences in their daily life sets them apart from the mass of others (Fredrickson, 2015). One way to encourage savouring is through constructive responding.
9. Encourage constructive responding
Constructive responding is a way of capitalizing on good events. It can take on a particular importance during imposed change when people can lose sight of anything good that is happening in their work environment. It is important to note that the benefits of attending to and capitalizing on good events are over and above those of not experiencing negative events. In other words, the two processes that allow us to notice and respond to positive events and negative events are separate, independent processes. Which means we can do both at once. Thus someone in the middle of telling you of their woes is quite capable of switching momentarily to remark on the sunset. In the midst of the difficulties at work we are not denying their reality by focusing on positive things, rather we are consciously shifting to a different emotional space to reap the benefits of so doing, which will probably help us with the challenge of the difficulties. Recent research has discovered that we can greatly amplify the impact of good news or positive events by the way we respond to them. Box 3.5 lists the benefits of sharing good news with others or of capitalizing on the positive events in your life.
These benefits only accrue if two conditions are met: that a positive response to good news is offered, and that it is perceived as such by the receiver. The nature of the relationship also makes a difference: the more connected we are, the more likely we are to experience the other’s good fortune as our own. For example, my partner is an artist and a highlight experience for him is holding an exhibition of his paintings. He is very clear that while it would be lovely to sell some, the real pleasure comes from people’s appreciation of the work. Seeing him having a wonderfully positive experience also makes me feel good, for him and for myself.
Responding constructively to another’s good fortune can work to build intimacy. This may seem a strange concept in the workplace, but given our emphasis on the importance of teams and building trust, maybe not. Recent research on organizations that do well both financially and by all the stakeholders is identifying love as a key ingredient of their success. Such organizations combine an emotive dimension with operational efficacy (Sisodia, Sheth, & Wolfe, 2014). To refer to love in the workplace is quite bold; usually we use different terms for similar things, referring to close working relationships, “tight” teams, or high levels of trust. Understanding the importance and the art of constructive responding can help build all these things.
Research by Gable, Reis, Impett, and Evan found that on the days people shared the occurrence of a positive event with others, they reported significantly higher positive affect and life satisfaction (2004, p. 231). Yet negative affect was not significantly diminished by the sharing of a positive event. The independence of the concept of positive affect from negative affect is quite hard to grasp; perhaps an example will help. The period immediately before my mother’s death was stressful and difficult. Her accelerating deterioration caused me anxiety, stress, sadness, frustration, and a sense of loss, inadequacy, and other appropriate, yet not usually defined as positive, emotions. These didn’t go away just because I also savoured some of the pleasant things in my life, such as watching my garden grow, reading exciting research, sitting in the sun during an unexpectedly excellently sunny June, or spending a lovely hour reading poetry to and with my mother. The experience of one doesn’t preclude the other, and the experience of the other helps with the experience of the one.
The way we respond to the good fortune of others can be classified into four categories: active-constructive, active-destructive, passive-constructive, and passive-destructive. Active constructive means responding actively, enthusiastically, and supportively; for example, “That’s great, tell me more” or “You must be very excited.” It means asking questions that encourage the person to talk and think more about the good news in a good way. It means being genuinely interested and obviously pleased for the other person. Passive-constructive, on the other hand, is quietly understated support. While not actively destructive, the passive-constructive response is likely to be characterized as, “tries not to make a big deal out of it” or as “silently supportive.” The recipient reports that the person they told says little, but that they know that they are happy for them. It’s a dampening down kind of response, an “OK let’s not get too excited here” response. The important finding from the research is that such unvoiced pleasure has no positive effect on the positive mood of the news sharer. This low-key non-destructive response doesn’t build positive affect or boost self-esteem.
Then there is the active-destructive response. Here the recipient finds problems with the good news, reminds the good news sharer that good things have bad aspects as well, and points out the potential downsides of the good event, suggesting for example that “It will mean a long commute,” or asking, “Won’t you feel a bit disloyal?” While finally, a passive-destructive responder just quashes the whole thing: they seem disinterested, to not care very much. They don’t pay the news much attention, and may even abruptly change the topic instead. Of these, only an active-constructive response is positively associated with better relationship quality.
Telling the person who is likely to respond best first and telling lots of people both result in higher positive affect and life satisfaction (Gable et al., 2004, p. 239). It seems that this active constructive response has these positive effects through three processes: it offers a validation of the importance of the event; it confirms the significance of the event; and it demonstrates, reveals, or creates affective investment and caring (Gable & Gosnell, 2011). Interestingly, these boosts to positive affect and life satisfaction are above those created by the news itself. In addition, positive events shared with others are more likely to be recalled (Gable et al., 2004), providing a source for future positive-past reminiscing. I believe these findings about the many beneficial aspects of sharing good news are very important as they offer a very positive alternative approach to building strong relationships to that offered by the also effective “we’re all in this mess together.”
An example of what these different responses look and sound like might help. Imagine you came into the team meeting reporting that you had just landed a big order. An active-constructive response might be: “That’s fantastic, how did you do that? How are you feeling about it, excited? I’m really proud of you.” A passive-constructive response might be: “Well I knew you would.” An active-destructive response might be: “How big? How are we going to service that? Did you speak to production? That’s going to put a real pressure on our cash flow.” While a passive-destructive response might be: “Really, I see XYZ just landed an order twice that size. I wonder why we didn’t get that one. Hey Johnson, you used to work at XYZ. What do you know about …”
While these may seem obvious and distinct, an important point to note is that the defining factor is how the news sharer perceives the response. So, depending on the people involved, the context, or the history, what sounds like genuine enthusiasm to the uninvolved bystander may be heard as sarcasm by the receiver, reminding us once again that achieving good effects isn’t a tick-box process of saying the right things, it is built on a longer-term process of creating an atmosphere of trust and authenticity. All of these tactics, amplifying, savouring, and constructive responding, help to create positivity, even in difficult situations. This in turn helps to create resilience, another work attribute at a premium during change.
10. Promote resilience
Resilience is often referred to as “the bounce back factor,” reflecting its importance in allowing us to recover quickly from life’s slings and arrows. More formally we can say, “Resilience generally refers to positive adaptation in the context of risk or adversity” (Cutuli & Masten, 2013, p. 837). Resilience is key in enabling people to recover quickly from unexpected events, of which imposed change may be one, and to spring back into life. The more resilient we are the better we can cope with shocks or surprises.
The property of resilience in people has been much studied and is seen as having three key components: the ability to function well during times of significant adversity (stress resistance); the ability to return to a previous level of good functioning following a traumatic or severely disturbing experience (bouncing back); and the ability to achieve new levels of positive or normal adaptation when severely adverse conditions improve (normalization) (Cutuli & Masten, 2013). All three of these abilities are useful on a personal and organizational level to help people deal with the more traumatic impacts of change programmes when they can, as it were, be knocked off balance.
Resilience, the ability to bounce back from setbacks, emerges from dynamic processes over time. In other words, it is a product of our previous history. Developmental psychology has been interested in resilience as a personality trait, exploring what it is, how we recognize it, and how we develop it. Most research has been on individuals, particularly children, and has been focused on the effect of adverse life events. In particular, people have been interested in the relationship between life events and the likelihood of developing poor mental health, or experiencing developmental delay. More recently, resilience has been recognized as patterns of behaviour of individuals or groups that affect their capacity for resilience. We might think of this as a system understanding of resilience. We can consider the organization as a system and so extend the research to our purposes.
Resilience is seen as a product of both promotive and protective factors. In developmental psychology healthy brain development and good parenting are seen as promotive factors that predict many good outcomes regardless of risk exposure. In organizational terms we can think of this as general good organizational practice: safe working environments, role clarity, career paths, work satisfaction, and so on. We can also include the presence of the factors demonstrated by Kim Cameron (2008a) to promote a flourishing workplace: positive deviance, affirmation, and virtuous practice. These things all help to promote a happy, healthy workforce.
Protective factors, meanwhile, are those that moderate risk, showing special effect when adversity is high (Cutuli & Masten, 2013, p. 841). They have no function until they are activated by the threat and then they serve a protective role. Examples given in the literature are things like child protection services or counselling. In the workplace this suggests that while general good practice will help promote resilience, in times of particular organizational stress or adversity we may need to do some extra things to activate protective resilience. When we note that the most frequently reported factors that promote resilience (from studies around the world) are the attributes of individuals, their relationships, and the context (and indeed research on organizational resilience has underlined the critical role of relationships in fostering resilience at the collective level (Gittell, Cameron, & Lim, 2006)), then we can see where we need to focus our efforts to create protective factors that promote resilience during change.
Social relationships help buffer people from the effects of traumatic events and also help prevent workplace burnout, yet organizational change often damages social relationships. The various co-creative methodologies promoted in this book, and Appreciative Inquiry in particular, all work to strengthen social relationships. They are resilience-building approaches to change that operationalize the challenge of accessing assets and protective factors, as well as identifying risk factors when embarking on disruptive change. As such they fit with a shift within resilience research towards a strengths-based approach (Cutuli & Masten, 2013). For organizations, taking a strengths-based approach means focusing on creating promotive resilience factors such as a flourishing, resilient work culture during the good times; and on adding in protective factors when things get difficult.
Conclusion
This chapter has considered the common situation of imposed change in organizations. It has suggested that positive psychology offers both an understanding of the adverse effects of imposed change, and positive action that can be taken to promote active and healthy engagement with it. It has also introduced Appreciative Inquiry as a methodology particularly well suited to ameliorating the adverse effects of change. In later chapters Appreciative Inquiry and other co-creative methodologies that offer an altogether different approach to change are explained in detail.