Positive psychology looks at strengths, motivation and safety — uplift your change practice through looking at “positives”
Draw from positive psychology concepts to understand people’s motivation to change
Appreciative Inquiry: what is working well?
It is easy to focus on deficits in about anything in life. As change professionals, we dwell on shortcomings too. For example, in our future state and irritating aspects of our stakeholder groups! While we focus on deficits, something else is right under our nose. What is it? The positives!
Toby Elwin wrote about Appreciative Inquiry, the role of discovery, intrinsic motivation and the art of the possible ¹. Appreciative Inquiry is a powerful concept from positive psychology ². It begins with a spirit of curiosity about what is working. It continues with an eye for organisational resources and strengths. And it often ends with practical insights about the “client’s” perspective. Apply this idea to your change practice. Appreciative Inquiry might provide you with useful insights for your change planning.
Walk through the current state, presented by people affected by your change. Observe how they engage with the existing way of working. What strengths do you see in these individuals or teams? For example, ingenuity is a strength. Your stakeholder may have adopted creative workarounds in the current state to do their job.
The author once met with a stakeholder who was threatening to refuse a future state solution. The stakeholder showed the author their complex financial system, a self-built one. They explained how the future state did not cater to their business needs. Usually, change professionals manage expectation gaps with stakeholders. These conversations minimise project teams catering to every stakeholder request.
In this case, the gap between expectations and reality was rather significant. The stakeholder had walked into their role a short time before. In short order, they displayed incredible ingenuity in building their system. They had no help from IT or Finance, yet built this fantastic tool while leading a considerable team. The author noted this ingenuity. This stakeholder’s strength lent credibility to more conversations with decision-makers. They were ultimately able to push back on the existing version of the future state. This is a rare situation. Yet observing other’s strengths helps you to understand and work with your organisation’s political undercurrents.
Other teams and individuals show tenacity, as another example of strength. They may cope with an incredible amount of administration and many systems that they need to interact with. They may also show incredible attention to detail. This strength only becomes clear by walking through their current state.
Motivational Interviewing: Rolling with resistance
In psychology, Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a way to uncover change readiness at an individual level ³. Psychologists use MI to assess someone’s readiness to abstain from substances, or to exercise, as two examples. The psychologist does not judge their client. The client may become upset or angry when the psychologist touches on sensitive topics. They might even attack the psychologist. Rather than opposing the client’s views, the psychologist “rolls with resistance”.
This means the psychologist won’t clash with that opposing view. Instead, they are curious about the client’s perspective, and reflect this perspective back to the client. They also work with the client’s passion and feel encouraged by the client’s engagement in the conversation. MI seeks to get the client talking about, and weighing up, the positives and negatives of their views.
So how does MI relate to change management? You can add MI to your change practice. You may find day-in-the-life-of sessions or stakeholder meetings are suitable forums for MI. The intimate nature of MI lends itself to work with individual or small group of people. They may speak to the positives of the existing way of working, as well as the negatives. And this can help change professionals understand what is keeping people motivated to stay where they are. MI can help provide qualitative feedback from affected stakeholders on their readiness to adopt new ways of working.
The number of reasons influencing behaviour are large enough for individuals. When an individual is part of a team, the reasons increase. MI will allow you to delve into detail, so you can tease out individual and team-level motivations. MI sessions need a reasonable amount of time. One principle may help your MI sessions: speak no more than 20% of the time. This includes any other change colleagues or project team members. This 20% should comprise a quick introduction to the intent of the session, and questions to keep your stakeholders talking. Your stakeholders should be speaking throughout 80% of more of the session. Aim to encourage each stakeholder to contribute equally to this 80%. So think through who you should invite to each session. Hold one-on-one MI sessions with stakeholders who dominate conversations. Invite only colleagues with the self-discipline to adhere to the 20% principle in your MI sessions.
You’re eliciting useful information; now what?
Trust is essential; stakeholders expect you to act upon their comments constructively. Do not breach this trust, or it will undermine your progress as a change professional. Stakeholders will be guarded once trust is breached. From that point onwards, learning about people’s thoughts and feelings about the change becomes difficult. If you cannot elicit this information, this can impact the effectiveness of your planning. Your reputation as a change professional is built on trust.
Trust rests on doing what you say you are going to do. If you promise to follow up answers from a stakeholder engagement, training session, or conversation, then make good on that promise. Over time, people notice whether you are trustworthy.
Trust is built on providing a safe space for your stakeholders. They may confide in you. They might vent to you or show a degree of vulnerability when they seek your support. Some may have learning difficulties, requiring tactful adaptation to their preferred way of learning. Others are suffering from change fatigue. Some have issues at home which make dealing with workplace change difficult.
Safety: in stakeholder groups — and your team
This safety applies to your relationship with your stakeholders, and also with your project team. Does your project team appreciate each person’s unique strengths, and seek to find a synergy between everyone’s strengths? Is there a positive energy, playful banter and a “get-it-done” spirit in your team? Does your project team criticise each other’s ideas, or build upon them?
Does your team take your idea, and say “Yes…and..”, or “Yes, but…”?
Positive psychology and organisational psychology contributed to the idea of psychological safety. Let’s say you are presenting an idea to your team. A fundamental distinction to make between a healthy and not-so-healthy team is this: When you present your idea do they say “yes, and…” then build upon the idea? Or is there either silence, or a “yes, but…” followed a rebuttal to that idea? And that’s not to say that your idea that you propose is all that great. But do your team see the benefit of your contribution? Is everyone’s contribution valued fairly equally? The idea of psychological safety came about through the Aristotle project where there was a study of Google employees ⁴. Psychological safety was cited as the primary reason for team effectiveness, over intelligence, conscientiousness and other dimensions of performance.
Well-functioning teams appear to be built on psychological safety or trust ⁵. There are other factors. Appreciating everyone’s strengths helps unify people with different viewpoints. So does any team you observe have a degree of psychological safety?
When you are working with stakeholders, observe individuals within a team. How safe do individuals feel about speaking up and venturing their opinion? Do they nervously glance at their manager or co-workers before speaking? Do they surreptitiously venture an opinion and gauge whether their manager is going to support them or not? Or do individuals in the team tease each other in a playful way?
And do we have a wide and comprehensive understanding of people’s strengths? This is where the positive psychology field can help us.
Strengths and virtues
Positive Psychology also has us think about the idea of virtues. Martin Seligman and his colleagues created a survey — the Values In Action (VIA) survey⁶. This survey can help you identify your leading strengths as a change professional. The results identify your leading strengths, say for example your top five. Your top five may help you identify why you enjoy certain activities in your change practice.
The image in this section displays each of the twenty-four strengths (or ‘virtues’). This summary can help you learn these strengths, for use in your change practice. When you work with your stakeholders, what are their strengths? How can you use each of your stakeholder’s strengths to help your organisation adjust to new ways of working?
Recap
Strengths, virtues, and appreciation for what is working is a unique lens. It is the flip-side of a problem-solving, deficit-locating, root-cause finding mentality often taken by business professionals. Appreciating strengths and virtues — at an individual and a team level — can be a powerful lever for constructive change. Knowing yourself as a change professional is as important. So what are your strengths? How are you applying your strengths to your change practice?
Are you looking at what is working for your stakeholders, their strengths, their psychological safety in viewing or voicing divergent opinions? What is their level of motivation to change?
Your call to action
What are your strengths? How are you applying this to your change practice? Are you taking this strengths-finding, resource-identifying, trust-building positive psychology lens to your work with stakeholders?
Our book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out our online course on Change Management.
Reference List
1. Elwin T. Change management introduction to Appreciative Inquiry. https://tobyelwin.com/change-management-appreciative-inquiry/. Published 2020. Accessed October 31, 2020.
2. Ahmed Shah H, Yasir M, Glenn Miller M. Analyzing Appreciative Inquiry as a model of Change to build Relational Capital. Bus Econ Rev. 2020;12(1):1–24. doi:10.22547/BER/12.1.1
3. BMJ. Motivational interviewing in brief consultations: role-play focussing on engaging. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTRRNWrwRCo. Published 2014. Accessed May 20, 2020.
4. What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. NY Yimes. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html. Published 2016. Accessed November 15, 2020.
5. May DR, Gilson RL, Harter LM. The psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work. J Occup Organ Psychol. 2004;77(1):11–37. doi:10.1348/096317904322915892
6. VIA Character Strengths Survey & Character Profile Reports. VIA Institute. https://www.viacharacter.org/. Accessed November 14, 2020.