Positive Psychology and Change: Implications for Change Management
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Positive psychology is the science of human flourishing: What makes people successful? What makes them happy? We examine the connection between positive psychology and change management - it's more important than you think.
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Positive Psychology and Change: Implications for Change Management
- 1. Positive Psychology and Change Beth Banks Cohn, PhD March 6, 2013
- 2. Outline Why Positive Psychology? What is Positive Psychology? Positive Psychology and Change • Neuroplasticity • Motivation to Change • Affect • Behavior • Cognition Conclusions ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 2
- 3. Why Positive Psychology • “When you appreciate the positive, the positive appreciates.” Tal Ben Shahar, PhD • Negativity breeds negativity, positivity breeds positivity. • We can learn more from what works than from what doesn’t work. ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 3
- 4. What is Positive Psychology? The Science of Human Flourishing 1998 Dr. Martin Seligman “officially” founded it • Study success and happiness, not just unhappiness or sickness • Asking different questions, not only focusing on the negatives failures The Backstory: Really started in the 1950’s with Humanistic Psychology First force – Behaviorism Second force - Psychoanalysis Third force – Humanistic Psychology “Morphed” into self help movement Positive Psychology ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 4
- 5. Positive Psychology and Change Old paradigm Learning from failure What is not working and why? What are my development areas? New paradigm Learning from success and failure What is working and how can I build on it? What are my strengths and how can I use them more? How are my strengths and development areas related? What can we do to ensure lasting change in individuals and organizations? ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 5
- 6. Neuroplasticity • Our brains continue to change until the day we die. • Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to form new neural connections. • Neural pathways are channels, like rivers. • Can be wide or narrow. • Created through experience • Self-reinforcing • Negative Channels • Positive Channels • Brain Lock ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 6
- 7. Neuroplasticity: Implications for Organizations • Organizations have their own “neural pathways” • Written (procedures) • Unwritten (culture) • Self-Reinforcing – stronger neural pathways become stronger with less effort • Negative Channels • Positive Channels • “Brain Lock” • Key is knowing an organization’s “neural pathways” • Key is persistence when wanting to change a “neural pathway” ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 7
- 8. Motivation to Change • Do I really want to change • Do I have enough motivation to change? • Need emotions to create motion. • Motivation to act = Passion/Perceived effort • Do I see the need to change? • Do I believe change is possible? Implications for organizations: • Organizational motivation • The Motivation to Act formula • Emotions ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 8
- 9. ABC’s of Positive Psychology Affect Behavior Change Cognition ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 9
- 10. Affect Use the emotions that come up during a change – positive or negative Post-traumatic Stress/ Post-traumatic Growth 80% of soldiers experience Post-traumatic Growth Testimony to our inner strength and resilience Peak experience: replaying and imagining the peak experience; fortifies neural pathways; journaling – describing; taking time; taking action ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 10
- 11. Behavior • Real lasting change must have behavior change attached to it. • Study (1993) Ericsson “The study of elite performance…” • Work hard • Work Smart • Work Smarter • Coping: Taking action is more important than succeeding. Taking action creates new neural pathways ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 11
- 12. Cognition • Event Interpretation Emotion Action? Or • Event Emotion Interpretation Action? • The 3 M’s: Magnifying, Minimizing and Making-up. • Where do my “smarts” come in? ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 12
- 13. ABC’s: Implications for Organizations Affect Behavior Change Cognition Sense of Meaningfulness Sense of ComprehensibilitySense of Manageability Coherence ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 13
- 14. Conclusions • Individuals and Organizations have neural pathways that affect their interest and ability in change. • Motivation to act = passion/perceived effort • Lasting change must have all three components – Affect, Behavior and Cognition – in order to be successful. • Building the “case for change” isn’t enough – It must be comprehensible, manageable and meaningful to all employees in order to be successful. • Change the questions, change the focus…to the positive. ©2013 Beth Banks Cohn. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy without permission. 14
Hinweis der Redaktion
- We have plenty of negative things to look at in our world today. Big challenges like global warming and world hunger. Smaller challenges like a slow growing economy and organizations that aren’t meeting forecast. But accompanying all of this is a lot of good. Scientists and world leaders that are trying to make a difference, companies that are changing and growing in spite of what Wall Street says. I don’t know about you but I’d rather learn from them. I’d rather learn from what is working. As former Harvard professor Tal Ben Shahar says, when you appreciate the positive, the positive appreciates. And I believe that to be true. Think about it. In organizations we worry about morale and about people who are vocally negative for a reason, because negativity breeds more negativity. But on the other side, high morale is contagious, as is a positive attitude. We can learn just as much from what works, and if that is the case, then I say let’s do that. Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at our mistakes and learn from them. I think that is imperative. But I also believe that even within the mistake we did some things right and we need to remember to look at that as well. Positive Psychology was born out of a desire to stop focusing only on the negative and the diseases and disorders that are mostly studied within the field of psychology.
- Positive Psychology is the science of human flourishing. It was started by psychologists in an answer to what psychology has become in the United States – the study of problems and failures and disease. Dr. Martin Seligman is credited by some as founding it in 1998, although it does have roots all the way back to the 1950’s. Dr. Seligman basically said, why are we only studying problems, why aren’t we studying what makes people successful? What makes them flourish? What makes them happy? In order to do that psychologists needed to ask different questions. Not asking what is wrong, but rather, what is right?
- So if Positive Psychology is the study of human flourishing, how do we relate that to individual and organizational change? The first question we need to ask ourselves is, what can we do to ensure lasting change in individuals and organizations? That is an important question because often the question I get is – why do so many change efforts fail? Or why don’t people just change the way we need them to? Asking what we can do to ensure lasting change encourages us to ask other similar questions. It encourages us to focus on what makes change successful, not just what makes change fail? It focuses us on what is working rather than what is not working? It helps us think about the strength of both the individual and the organization, not just where either is deficient. I’m not suggesting that you ignore it because I think it is important to know everything, but asking positive questions leads to focusing on what will make you successful and that is critical for success. You can’t become successful by focusing on what could make you fail. At best in that scenario you won’t fail but you won’t succeed either.Today, as I mentioned in my introduction, I want to focus on some concepts from Positive Psychology and their implications for organizational change. The first such topic is neuroplasticity.
- Neuroplasticity speaks to the brain’s capacity to change. Science and research shows us that our brains continue to change until the day we die. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to form new neural connections. It is through those neural connections that our brain changes and allows us to learn or do new things. It is what allows someone who has suffered a stroke to speak again or relearn to walk. Neuroplasticity allows us to change habits, to learn new languages and to learn new information.Neural pathways are channels in our brain, like rivers. They are created and sustained through our experiences. They can be wide or narrow. Wide if it is a pathway that is used often, narrow if not so much. Like a new stream and the grand canyon. Neural pathways are created through experience. A new neural pathway that is narrow signifies the beginning of a new experience, a wider channel used more often signifies something more mature – something that is a habit, or a way we consider information time and time again. Neural pathways are self-reinforcing. And that is the good and bad news. Good if we want to continue using that neural pathway, bad if we want to change in some way. Some of our neural pathways are negative – like if we are constantly criticizing or finding fault, or if we are always worrying. They may be strong neural pathways but still negative. A positive Neural pathway or channel is where positive habits – looking on the bright side, finding the benefit of situations or making positive choices comes into play. They can also be strong. If we are a “fault finder” and want to become a “benefit finder” we need to find a way to shrink the “fault finder” neural pathway and expand the “benefit finder” neural pathway – to dry up the negative channel and build up the positive one. And just as it isn’t easy to get a deep channeled river to just dry up, or get a small stream to become bigger – so is the challenge of forming and “de-forming” neural pathways.Brain lock is signified as a deep-rooted neural pathway or channel. As individuals often OCD is associated with the concept of brain lock. As organizations it is often what makes us unable to change a process or a way of doing business.
- All organizations have neural pathways. They are called processes. They are called culture – the way we do things around here. As with neural pathways in our brains they are self-reinforcing. That may be because they are official and written down or because they are part of the unwritten culture, but still are self-reinforcing. And as with all neural pathways, they become stronger and that strength leads to more strength. That is good news, but also can be bad news when we want to change something that is so embedded in our organizations.In order to do that we must know which pathway we want to change and what we want to change it to. Whether it is a Positive, negative or brain locked channel – all can be changed, it is just a matter of persistence.Now there is more to change than just the neural pathways, so let’s leave this for a moment and go on to the next topic – Motivation to Change
- Ellen Langer, a noted Positive Psychologist conducted a study where she asked her study participants if they wanted to change from being Rigid, Gullible or Grim. She asked each participant separately if they valued consistency, trusting and seriousness. Those who said yes had the most difficulty changing. Because although I might say I don’t want to be so rigid, if I value consistency it will be hard for me to really want to become less rigid – consistency personified. What she found is that if the subconscious doesn’t want to change - so yes I want to be less rigid but underneath it all I value consistency, then it is quite difficult to change. In this case I need to learn to distinguish between the positive and negative parts of the characteristic before I can begin to make any changes. I need to create alternative neural pathways by unbundling rigidity and consistency, in that case.Do I have enough motivation to change? First I need to have some feelings about what I want to change in order to begin changing it. Studies show that when we have no emotions we cannot act. The other part of this is does the passion I feel, or do my feelings divided by the perceived effort equal at least 1? If it does I will have the motivation to act. But if the perceived effort is greater than the passion or emotions I feel and the equation is less than one, I will not act. An interesting study was done by Leventhal (need more than just the last name). The researcher tried to get college students to get their tetanus shot. At first no reaction. Then he increased the passion – he showed pictures of people who didn’t get tetanus and what happened to them. Some were then motivated to go, but most not. Then he reduced the effort they would have to expend – on the flyer he showed the location of the clinic, the hours it was open and even the phone number. And only then did he get a large response. By lowering the perceived effort he achieved his goal of having people be motivated to take action.And the next component of motivation to change – do I see the need to change? Often we explain our own actions through external causes and don’t take full responsibility for our actions. Like when someone says, well he or she didn’t give us any notice of the meeting and then wanted us to make a decision immediately with no prep – that’s why I gave them a hard time and wouldn’t cooperate. If we see that behavior in another we often say – they are being obstinate and are often that way when they don’t think they are going to get their own way. We want to be right and until we recognize and take responsibility for our part in the situation we won’t believe there is a need to change.And lastly, do I believe change is possible? If I don’t it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I do, that also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I have a growth mindset, that we can change and develop then it will be so. This growth mindset can be taught – talking about neuroplasticity can help. But having a growth mindset is critical for making change.So what are the implications for organizations? Organizations ask themselves the same questions and it is more complicated, of course. Do I really want to change? This question is asked not just organizationally but by each individual affected by whatever change is being introduced. It is important to consider the subtleties. For example, if we say we want to become a more nimble organization we need to understand what nimble means to the larger organization, but also how individuals might interpret it. Remember, if my subconscious doesn’t agree it isn’t happening. In organizations often the “subconscious” is each individual involved or affected by the change being considered. As organizations we need to consider how the change is going to affect all the values at play. For example, if we say we want to be more nimble and the way we are going to do that is to hire more temps that we can fire at will – that may fly in the face of valuing employees. That doesn’t mean we won’t do it, it just means we need to talk openly about those temps and how the process really will work for them.Another topic to consider is the Motivation to act = passion/perceived effort. If there is little passion or positive emotion for the change not matter how little the perceived effort you may still struggle. Or if the perceived effort is huge, like in order to make this change I need to go from a computerized, easy to use, makes my life easy system to a manual, cumbersome, adds 5 hours to my day process – then no amount of passion will make up for that. Seeing the need for change in an organization is key. But the case for change is often overlooked, or talked about once and never talked about again. In this case, the need for change must remain front and center at all times.Believing change is possible from an organizational standpoint is pretty complete. Sometimes you get individuals who don’t believe change is possible because of the embeddedness of what you are trying to change. In that case it must be faced head on, called what it is – embedded – and have multiple stages or steps so it isn’t going from a to z in one day.Emotions of any kind are a big part of change. Often we disregard them and focus on the technical aspects of a change – making sure everyone is trained, making sure people know what is expected of them. It is important not to underestimate the power of emotion, in both directions. Building positive emotions will give you momentum to move the change forward, negative emotions will have the opposite affect.Let’s talk a little bit more about emotions and delve into that a bit more. The last part of this presentation will focus on three aspects of change – affect or emotions, behavior and cognition or knowledge.
- All three are necessary for change to occur. We often don’t talk about Affect in business but it is my experience that it is an important component to change success – even if we still never talk about it. Whether we address it directly or not, it is important to take emotions into account when planning for and executing change – at the organizational level as well as on a more personal plane. I’d like to talk briefly about each of the ABC’s but the power of them is really when they intersect and align, so they really can’t exist separately in organizations.
- Often when we think about emotions at work it is in a negative context. On the individual level we might struggle with anger or frustration. We might experience fear even lack of emotion. All of which is cause for concern, or so we are taught. Yet all of these emotions are giving us important clues about ourselves and our situation and if we pay attention to them we might succeed in using them to our advantage. As an organization that is going through change it is often the negative aspects that are talked about – those that oppose the change, those that challenge the change, those that resist the change. But again, each of those reactions to change and the emotions behind them give an organization precious information. I think it is important to pay attention to everything I’ve mentioned but I also think it is important to focus on the positive emotions that occur during a change. Did you know that 80% of individuals who experience some kind of trauma actually experience post traumatic growth, not post traumatic stress? That is a testimony to our inner strength and resilience. But we really most often hear about the 20%. And not to minimize the 20% - their experience is real and they need help. But it is interesting that we focus on that and not on the majority who experience something more positive. It is thought that if we only know one way to react to trauma – PTSD – then we will react that way only. That is something to think about.In looking at PTSD or even PTG we see that it is often a single event that leads to either. And how does it work? Think neuroplasticity – a single experience creates a new channel in the brain. If that channel is a negative pathway then we see PTSD, positive? PTG. The question is, can a single positive experience in our business life have the same outcome? Can it create a channel that will permanently increase our well-being and positive memories? Yes it depends on the experience, but it also depends on what we do with it.One way to make the most of the experience is to replay and imagine it. This fortifies the new neural pathways that have been created because of it. Journaling – which has amazing power – is a way to really get the most out of your experience. By describing it, taking the time to replay it and just the action of writing it down all combine to further enhance the results of such an experience. When I was inside of a company I had several peak experiences but one in particular I think changed me forever. It was a cross company team and we were charged with creating a new way of categorizing IT jobs and then creating a development framework to go along with it. We bonded quite well as a team, really got things done and then sold our ideas to the highest levels of management – across all the North America companies. We received the funding we needed and 20 years later that essence of that program is still in place. It was something that had never been done before. I can tell you about this now because I have relived that experience every quarter since the program ended by getting together with the original team. We have all moved on, some even retired, but we still get together. We don’t always talk about the work we did together, but the simple act of being together brings us all back to that time. It reinforces what we learned as a team and as individuals, it reinforces the positive experience and the growing we all did, and those neural pathways have become deep and wide.Another element to fortifying our peak experiences is to also take the time to do so. In a very interesting study in 2006 two scientists, Wilson and Foster showed that rats who were given time to rest and “hang out” learned the maze faster and didn’t have to go through it as many times to do so. As humans we would do well to emulate that. It is a big part of creativity – which we won’t talk about today – but the incubation period – where you are just hanging out, seemingly working on nothing, is a critical component.We see evidence of affect or emotions in change all the time. Sometimes it is positive – excitement, hope, passion; and sometimes negative – loss, anger, anxiety. We go to a meeting or hear our leaders speak and we are inspired and feel like our future is bright. But we can’t sustain those emotions without behavior – without action – to create a real lasting change.
- Sometimes we go to a class and leave all fired up. We’ve learned a new way of approaching problem solving, or we’ve gained a new skill in handling conflict. We get back to work, there is a honeymoon phase and then any change we think we made went away. That’s because any real lasting change must have consistent behavior change to go along with it. Whenever I work with a group the last thing I ask at the end of the day is “what will you do differently on Monday morning” or tomorrow? It is a critical question because in order for something to be different we have to act differently.Anders Ericsson studied elite performers in 1993. Musicians actually. And what he found is that elite musicians work hard, but they work smart and then challenge themselves to work even smarter. For example, Ericsson found that elite musicians practiced. There were no shortcuts. They worked at their craft consistently, day in and day out. But they worked smart – they had teachers to coach them and give them feedback all along the way. And they worked smarter because they did not practice too much. They practiced about 4-6 hours a day – no more.Edward Taub, an amazing neuroplasticity researched who works with stroke victims found that after 4 hours a day stroke victims made no more positive gains. That might be in speech or in mobility – it didn’t matter. At some point they reached the point of diminishing returns.Ericsson wrote that elite performers needed to avoid exhaustion to maximize their gains from long-term practice. If you think about that in terms of business it flies in the face of what we see, and even perhaps what we think. We think working 12 hours a day, day in and day out will lead to our being the best. But it isn’t so. We need to work hard but at some point you reach a plateau or even have diminishing returns. We need a coach or someone to give us feedback continually, but often those in a position to do so don’t because of lack of time, or because it isn’t the prescribed time. And we don’t take breaks. We don’t take real days off, we don’t take real vacations. Well I would say many of you don’t. I do because I couldn’t do my work otherwise. I am better at what I do and more productive because I have 48 hours straight off a week on the weekend. When I go on vacation I don’t connect to the office. I take a real break. And what I find is that after my vacation I am more creative, things have had time to incubate, and more productive than ever. I work hard but I work smart and smarter as well.Coping is a term used by Betner and Peterson as they relate it to self-esteem. Their theory is that when we take action – when we cope and put ourselves at risk in some way – we learn. And it is the acting outside of our comfort zone that builds our self-esteem. They found it doesn’t even matter if you fail or succeed, just taking the action is important. It creates the new neural pathways that lead us to greater positivity and success.People who enjoy lasting change have a bias for action. The same can be said for organizations. If an organization makes a change but doesn’t back it up with implementing behavior changes that initial action will not hold. Organizations can become more positive by appreciating the good that is going on inside their doors. And when you appreciate the good, the good appreciates. And one thing I didn’t talk about specifically, but which is also true about behavior change is that it is impossible to change more than one or two things at a time. When I work with coaching clients we do this. Sometimes their list is long but we start with two and don’t add anything until one is now a habit. The same for organizational change – there is a limit to how much change an organization can bear. It isn’t always something organizations want to hear, but it is a universal truth. And it is backed up by changes that don’t achieve their goals or don’t gain the traction they need to succeed.We’ve talked about Affect and the importance of positive emotions, we’ve talked about Behavior and the importance of action. Now we come to Cognition.
- Cognitive therapists will tell you that when you have an event, you interpret that event – you have a thought about it and then you have a feeling. Their premise is we can change our feelings by changing our thinking or interpretations. I’m not convinced of this wholeheartedly, but I do believe that the way we interpret events leads us to conclusions that may or may not help us in the moment. For example, I’m in a meeting making a presentation of an idea and my boss cuts me off and tells me the idea has no merit. I interpret that to mean I have no merit and instead of engaging and getting further clarification I shut up and shut down for the rest of the meeting. Not quite effective for me in the long run. Instead I could have interpreted his or her remark with curiosity. “Why do you think that” I could have asked, “what has no merit”? Or I could have used a positive question – “what do you like about this idea?” Either way, I would have stayed engaged – all by changing my interpretation.We can think of interpretation as a neural pathway. How we interpret something fits into a neural pathway. If we want to change the way we interpret – or not make it so automatic and seemingly unconscious – we need to create new neural pathways – at least one – filled with questions that I ask persistently. I call it getting curious. “That is so interesting that you think that way, tell me more about why you said that”. “Let me clarify – you say my idea has no merit – do you mean the entire idea or just the aspect I was speaking about at this moment?”As individuals and sometimes as organizations we are guilty of the three M’s – Magnifying, Minimizing and Making-Up. Magnifying is when we overgeneralize or engage in all or nothing thinking. Minimizing is when we underplay something, engage in tunnel vision and dismiss the positive – or in some cases the negative about the situation or idea. Making up is about fabrication. We personalize something or blame someone or use faulty emotional reasoning – I feel inadequate therefore I am inadequate. As organizations pursuing change this can be most destructive. An organization that sticks to overgeneralizing the change instead of getting into specifics will lose its constituents. For example, this is a great change for everyone – it is so positive for our organization and will lead to great growth and opportunity for everyone. BTW, that is rarely true. And it is fine to say that this is a great change moving the organization in a growth direction, but organizations must also get into the specifics – and admit, that the change will not affect every employee in the same way. That goes for minimizing as well. A company that says – well this change will only affect a small group of people probably doesn’t understand their organization. Or the people that work in it. A company that minimizes or dismisses the positive of something or the negative will also lose ground. I once worked for an organization that minimized the negative impact on all employees of the way they treated departing employees during a change. They have never fully recovered – and I know they can’t figure out why. All 3 M’s have implications both for individuals and for organizations because all three have the potential to impact the success of long term and lasting change.But we’re talking about cognition, so where do my “smarts” come in? I know so much as an individual and my knowing combined with all of my colleagues creates our organizational “smarts”. That individual and organizational knowing plays an integral part in an organization’s success – yet only when it is used to move the organization forward. I may know a lot but might not use that “knowing” to contribute in a positive way. As an individual or an organization we may be tired from too much change already to use what we know creatively and consciously. Smarts is important – but how we use it as part of an organizational change makes it the Cognitive part of the ABC’s of positive psychology.
- There is no lasting change either in an individual or in an organization unless you marry all three – Affect, Behavior and Cognition – together. One way to do this which I mentioned before is through journaling – where you ask what happened, what you did, what others did, what I felt then, what I feel now, what I thought then, what I think now. Studies show that increases positive effects and decreases negative effects.Journaling at an organizational level though is not realistic. An interesting idea, but still not realistic. However, there is something that combines all three – ABC’s that can be used at the organizational level. It is called a sense of coherence by Aaron Antonovsky, a sociologist, whose basic premise is: yes, life is tough but some people are more resilient – what makes that so. His studies have shown three characteristics – a sense of comprehensibility – I can understand what is going on, a sense of manageability – I can deal with what is going on; and a sense of meaningfulness – this happened for a reason.At the organizational level I believe this is the key to real and lasting change. For each individual in the organization, the change you are about to introduce must pass the sense of coherence test – is it comprehensible – and why is that so, is it manageable – and how will that happen and is it meaningful – how so to me as an individual as well as the organization. If organizations and project teams ask themselves these questions and answer them they will have the formula for successful and lasting organizational change. Of course, that’s not all they have to do but it will certainly make my job easier – because when I come in those are the questions I ask and which the people I am working with must answer in order for the work to begin.
- Even though I talked about many different elements of positive psychology here today and their relationship to successful change, those elements really do exist together and must exist together in your organizational eco-system.The neuroplasticity of your organization and the individuals that work inside of it is critical. Individual and organizational interest and perseverance to create new neural pathways and discontinue using those no longer relevant is essential for any change to take hold.And the motivation to act by individuals and groups will only be as good as the passion they have for the change divided by the perceived effort to get to the goal.Lasting change must include thinking and planning for emotions, behavior change and cognitive action.And building the case for change isn’t enough. It needs to be comprehensible down to the lowest level of your organization, manageable by all and meaningful to all if you want to have a fighting chance to succeed.And underlying all is positive psychology – the science of human and I will add organizational flourishing. Changing the questions will change the answers, changing the focus will change the outcome. It may seem radical, it may seem too subtle to make a difference. But science shows, studies show, that individuals and organizations fare better when we exploit the science of human and organizational flourishing, when we focus on the positive while not ignoring the negative, and when we provide a sense of coherence that speaks to each and every individual for lasting and successful change.