[acb-hsp] Creating a Positive Work Culture

[peter altschul]

March 4 2012 Wall Street Journal LiveMint

Creating a positive work culture: Positive psychology goes well 
beyond positive thinking-it helps to channel emotions and create 
powerful work relationships

Book Review by Komal Sharma



Q&A bar Sarah Lewis

The state of mind of the people who make up an organization 
decides the well-being of the organization.  Grounded in 
psychology and management research, Sarah Lewis' new book 
Positive Psychology at Work offers insights on creating 
appreciative and positive cultures at work.  Lewis is an 
associated fellow of the British Psychological Society and the 
managing director of Appreciating Change, a business psychology 
change consultancy in the UK, where she works as a facilitator 
and consultant.

Feel-good: Some people are able to energize and inspire others in 
even the briefest of interactions.

In the book, Lewis has addressed matters of performance, 
communication, decision making, and more.  In an email interview, 
Lewis separates the mumbo jumbo of positive thinking from 
scientific and research-based positive psychology.  Edited 
excerpts:

At face value, positive psychology can be taken to mean positive 
thinking.  How are they different?

Positive thinking has a different and separate history to 
positive psychology and it is unfortunate that they are sometimes 
confused.  Positive thinking, at heart, believes that positive 
affirmations, "I am a millionaire", "I am beautiful", "I am 
successful", and so on will cause that state to come to pass.  
Presently this set of beliefs is reflected in the "ask the 
universe" movement.  There is some unarticulated psychology 
present in this form of superstitious thinking but essentially 
positive thinking is highly unscientific; worse, it can be 
dangerous to health and well-being.

The most obvious pernicious effect of this thinking is when those 
unfortunate enough to suffer from fatal diseases are instructed 
to "think their way to health" through only thinking positive 
thoughts.  When this advice leads people to neglect seeking out 
medical advice, it slips from "alternative" to highly unethical, 
in my view.

Positive Psychology at Work: Wiley-Blackwellea246 pages, $39.95 
(around Rs.  1,970).

However, positive thinking does cross over with positive 
psychology in two ways.  One, it understands that body and mind 
are as one and the state of each affects the other.  And 
secondly, that visualization is a powerful mental tool.  Where 
they differ is that positive psychology locates these 
understandings in a set of scientific articulations that can 
account for causality without resorting to a belief in mysterious 
universe waves or in the general benevolence of the universe.

Positive psychology is a science-based approach interested in 
understanding how people and institutions achieve a state of 
flourishing.  Among the things we have learnt as various 
researchers have got to grips with questions such as "What are 
good emotions good for?" is that the factors that contribute to 
success, enjoyment, excellence, vitality, well-being, etc., are 
not the absence of, or the polar opposite of, the factors that 
contribute to poor states.  In other words, we need to do 
different things, behave differently, to be able to flourish in 
our lives rather than just escape languishing in life.

Appreciative Inquiry has come to be recognized as development 
methodology.  What does it mean?

Appreciative Inquiry is an organizational development approach 
developed by David Cooperrider of Case Western Reserve 
University, US.  Based on an understanding of the organization as 
a living human system, it takes a social dynamics approach to 
achieving change, recognizing that both stability and change are 
properties of how we talk and relate to each other on a daily 
basis.  Appreciative Inquiry emphasizes people as emotional, 
imaginative, and relational and works with these features of our 
common humanity.  In this it stands in contrast to most change 
management approaches that perceive the organization to be 
essentially a rational problem to be solved.  Appreciative 
Inquiry shares with positive psychology an interest in the effect 
on people and groups of positivity-feeling good-and of playing to 
strengths.  They share an interest in creating abundance as well 
as reducing deficit.

There seems to be a direct relation between positive psychology 
and performance at work.

A number of features have been identified through positive 
psychology research as positively affecting work performance.  
Feeling good is a key one.  When we experience positive 
emotions-excitement, amusement, awe, passion-our brains are 
flooded with serotonin and dopamine, neurotransmitters.  What 
this means, in effect, is that our brains are able to work 
better, faster, deeper.  We are able to deal with more complexity 
and ambiguity.  We are more creative, we learn faster.  In 
addition, we become more sociable.  Generally these states are 
assets at work.

Understanding and using our strengths is another.  When people 
are using their strengths, they are more energized, they find 
things easier to do: They are engaged.  Experiencing states of 
flow means that people are working at their full capacity.  Using 
positive psychology we can also affect general health and 
well-being and resilience, these are also key to performance in 
challenging environments and times.

It's scientific: Sarah Lewis.

Work mostly entails team process and interaction.  How does one 
enhance his/her ability to create powerful work relationships?
If you can leave everyone who works with you feeling better after 
their interaction with you than before, you are well on the way.  
Research in this area has tracked the energy networks of 
organizations, and also explored high-quality interactions.  It 
is clear that some people have the ability to energize and 
inspire others in even the briefest of interactions.  Use your 
micro-moments to build relationships.  In general, it is good 
advice to be helpful, generous and supportive.  Behaving like 
this is good for you and for the recipient.

We are often told to separate our personal and professional 
lives.  But our emotions tend to reflect in everything we do.  
How does positive psychology help in channelling emotions?

Most of the time, we can operate as if work and home were 
separate spheres, and this is the way both our partners and our 
bosses tend to like it.  But as we all know, events in one sphere 
regularly spill over into the other, particularly in their 
emotional effects.  Positive psychology offers the observation 
that negative emotions comanger, despair, fear, frustration-are 
important as they tell us something is wrong and needs attending 
to.

However, they are a poor fuel for producing anything much other 
than fight, flight, or freeze behaviour.  Learning how to get 
ourselves into a more positive emotional state allows us to 
access a whole load of other behaviours and resources to help us 
work creatively and productively with the situation.  So yes, 
emotions are an important fuel for our energy and motivation, and 
different emotions produce a different kind of fuel.

komal.sharma at livemint.com