It is not innovation that matters, it is agreement. And we might need innovation to reach agreement.
Here [UPDATE: Broken]
1. Presenting conditions [still negative unfortunately]
2. What we do
3. What we might benefit
UPDATE: Somewhere else I found a good heuristic on writing copy.
It’s time for positive psychology to lay out its wares clearly?
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Image by bowbrick via Flickr
I was trained as a psychologist and I ultimately trained thousands more in the same tradition.
To qualify as a psychologist, in most jurisdictions, we are required to master the art of the “lab report”. I had done A level Physics, so the format wasn’t unfamiliar to me. Indeed, the whole rigmarole was based on 19th century physics which psychologists were copying madly.
I don’t think it is bad thing to learn to write a lab report. I studied Latin too. Disciplined methodical thinking is important and if you learn how to follow one method, you realize that you can learn to follow any method. And it is much much easier for students to write up experiments and surveys than handle qualitative studies which are usually too demanding for the 20% 6 month load that most students have allotted to the task.
That said, we have to unlearn a little too. Psychology leaves us two unfortunate ways of thinking. We are analytical – we break people into parts. And we are trained to believe that what we are studying is separate from us – a thing. Most unfortunate when we are talking about people.
A few years after we qualify, we generally stumble over the insight that we have to retrain ourselves to look at a set of data, not as data, as but as a person with hopes and fears, history and future, and most of all a purpose and morality that is not a reflection of our purpose in the interaction.
Even harder to do, is to understand that we are not separate from the person we are “testing”, “counseling”, or “coaching”. We have our own stories, yes. But why should ours be sacrosanct or privileged and totally unaffected by the person with whom we are working? And, can that ever be? Can it ever be that two people in the same room, or reading a blog post written by another, don’t share some past and importantly some future?
We are affected by our clients. In the realm of social media, marketers are struggling with the same idea. I found this excellent quote:
“To succeed in Web 2.0, your site cannot be an optional layer added to people’s lives. It must be inserted directly into the lives of the consumer.”
If we we are in their lives, how can it be that they are not in ours?
For years, I’ve been looking for a way to lay out a set of goals that are inter-dependent and possibly conflicting. Yesterday, I stumbled a text to mindmap online program.
It’s great. You type in a list of topics and sub-topics and it generates a simple mind map for you. You can have a springy free-from map. Or, you can “fix” it and move the topics and sub-topics to where you want them. And you can download the map as a jpg file.
1. I made the title and central concept “A great 2008”.
2. I added in my various projects, including planning 2009, and grouped them – in the text list. When I was done, I had it generate the mindmap (yeah, no fiddly graphics).
3. Then I fixed my map. I thought I would fix the map to show the progress of the projects bringing projects going well closer to the middle. But I decided rather to reflect their importance or priority.
4. And I can come back to the site whenever I want. It’s free. I am going to do this periodically to review how I am doing.
5. As events unfold, I can take note of what has surged ahead unexpectedly and what is lagging and needs more effort. I can also expand sections if that is what I need at the time.
Unfortunately, we can’t edit the goals except on the text list and we can’t save. So we have to retype each time.
What I really love is that there is no messing around with graphics.
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Image by M@rg via Flickr
I set up a comprehensive Google alert for happiness and I saw two reports today saying that thinking about happiness makes us miserable.
I don’t think these reports meant to be ironical. I think they meant to be critical, in a rigorous way. But frankly unless you are rigorous, then being critical is just proving the point – being negative for the sake of being negative.
I think it is helpful to repeat five points about happiness.
Yes, emotion is highly contagious. It spreads from one person to another like wildfire. We carry it with us from one situation to another.
Negative emotions are more virulent than positive emotions. When something goes wrong, as it will from moment to moment, we do have to make a special effort not to project our dismay to the next situation, which, after all, might not have bothered us had the last five minutes been fun!
Some people are more ’emotionally intelligent’ than others. Of course they are. Why wouldn’t we vary in our capacity to read emotions? Why wouldn’t we vary in our ability to distinguish between what we were feeling about the problem five minutes ago, from what we are feeling about the situation we are confronted with now? Why wouldn’t we vary in our confidence and experience of emotional situations?
Emotional literacy can be learned. Of course it can. We have trained our children from time immemorial to understand and display emotion. It is called good manners, character, backbone and all sorts of other things as well.
I was taught emotional literacy in school as well as at home. After all from 5 to 17. we spend a good part of our time in school. In sixth form, the time previously allowed for denominational instruction was given over exclusively to psychology classes.
What is new is that psychologists (a relatively new profession after all) no longer study negative events exclusively.
Positive psychology regards happiness and virtues, such as gratitude and hope, as normal, and we study them as positive emotional and mental experiences in their own right.
This is the exact opposite of the therapeutic culture which assumes we are finding living a little overwhelming. It is also the exact opposite of a view that we should be “hard”, “uncouth”, “non PC” or any of these varieties! As these two views think they are opposites, let’s move on!
Psychologists are using new models to explore phenomena such as happiness, zest, justice, etc. Psychologists are using ratios and recursive models. For people who still remember their “Methods & Stats” classes, I bet you hardly every used a ratio and I bet you never ever used a recursive model. That’s if you studied psychology. It you studied economics or geography this doesn’t apply to you. I also exclude from this bet people trained at graduate school in the States in the last five years.
We are happy when life is more positive than negative. Ideally, we want to hit a ratio around 5:1. At 11:1, or around there, we are delirious or “over the moon”. At 3:1, we are beginning to struggle. We are going to start to find life threatening. Life gets tough and hard and we develop tunnel vision. We focus on our problems and loose the capacity for joy, warmth, celebration, etc.
We are happy when our behavior shows requisite diversity – when we smile at what is charming, when we laugh at what is funny, when we grieve for what is lost, when we celebrate what is won.
Good manners isn’t suppressing these emotions. Good manners is expressing these emotions in a way that includes people around us. I don’t cry at a funeral to make others sad. I cry with others to share our grief.
Happiness isn’t silly optimism in the face of difficulties. Nor is it collapsing in a quivering heap. Happiness is responding to challenge and threat meaningfully. It is living – joyously when joy is warranted – courageously when courage is called for.
Hope this is of some use to somebody!
PS Happy people live longer – a lot longer. And they are nice to be around!
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Listen (no pun intended – 70 minutes).
Notes:
Eric Schmidt is the CEO of Google. Gary Hamel is a Professor of Management at Harvard. Schmidt’s main message is that leaders of innovative organizations like Google must listen, listen, listen. A good listen!
3 CommentsNow who said that? Colin Powell, I believe, speaking to HR managers in the UK.
My friend Steve Roesler at AllThingsWorkplace posted today on workplace culture, and how hard it is to change behavior. This is a central topic in social and organizational psychology. Can we change an attitude without changing behavior? Can we change behavior without changing culture? What sustains culture?
Earlier today I read a similar article in TimesOnLine on whether politicians can change British drinking culture by decree.
David Aaronvitch used a neat phrase:
“Fashion, popular culture, whatever you call it, found a way round authority, because it didn’t depend upon authority, or even upon establishment approval.”
This is the same phenomenon that Steve is talking about: informal culture and power. Should we despair as the TimesOnLine suggests? Brits are drunks – live with it and laugh at politicians nannying us again? Can cultures be modified?
How do we change patterns?
I think we often put the cart before the horse.
Change effects tend to be spiral, or recursive. In other words, the change creates the change. And a forward change can cause a backward effect, necessary for the forward change.
So why the cart before the horse? We want the cart to be moving along with the horse following.
To get change, we have to join in. We have to be there in other words. We have put ourselves out there and be changed in the process. We have to believe that cart is worth pulling. We have to notice when it starts to roll back and judge whether to roll with it or dig our heels in. We have to believe in it enough to feel the harness rubbing . . .
It is the linkage that is critical.
In organizations, it is the willingness to be a player: to really put our money on the table. Willingness to win and to lose with everyone else.
We don’t want to be talked at. We want to talk with people who are also vulnerable in that their pride, future, pleasure, is also at stake. We want to talk seriously with people about why we are doing this, whatever this is, and authentically discuss what is at stake for everyone.
Can we link our our futures to that cart?
This is the competency that HR Managers struggle with.
This is the competency that I hope social media managers will learn early ~ to be a player.
Image from Diamond by Steve Jurvetson @ FlickrI am a psychologist with a strong background in HR consulting (the stuff you don’t see – pay, job, organizational design, etc.). I am a Zimbabwean. I was living in the Asia Pacific, and now I live in the UK. I teach in universities and have a lot to do with Gen Y. And I am seriously into social media – you know, blogs like this, Facebook, etc.
All of this came up in my blog this month. To a newbie, it must seem as if I am jumping from one topic to another.
The big event in Harare this May was waiting for the Presidential results to be announced. While Zimbabweans were waiting-and-waiting, and while the most horrible violence escalated, artists went ahead and held their annual Harare International Festival of Arts, with a catchy title, the Art of Determination. Pithy puns, in the midst of despair, and art that is timeless.
At the other extreme, quite by chance, this May I stumbled on the phrase and cartoon character, Mr Kiasu. Through Mr Kiasu, I met Singaporean social media evangelist, Daryl Tay, who alerted us to a great presentation on social media for beginners. Kiasu is also an symbol of determination – but of the dog in the manger sort – I don’t want it, but you can’t have it. A safer place to be, perhaps, than in Harare right now, but actually, less healthy psychologically than the Art of Determination.
And that is the diamond in the center of this all – that strong sense of survival and expression that underlies everything we do.
De Beers has announced that it is moving its diamond sorting house from London to Gaborone in Botswana (you saw No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, didn’t you?).
Makorokoto, Amahlope! I salute you. The significance of an industry always associated with London moving to Africa is huge indeed. We are proud!
I have many people to thank as well for a great month.
To newcomers to my blog, Daryl Tay social media evangelist in Singapore, Jackie Cameron Gen Y coach in Scotland, Dan Thornton community marketing manager in Cambridgeshire, Paul Imre social media guru in High Wycombe, Peter Koning social media guru on Facebook: welcome and thank you for making this a productive month for me.
Scott McArthur of HR 2.0, hope we will finally meet! MediaCampLondon on July 5 is a date?
Steve Roesler, OD consultant Stateside and conservation master extraordinaire, thank you for linking to my article “Who moved my mouse?“. You sent me a lot of traffic!
And a very big thank you to Chris Hambly of Audana and the Social Media Mafia for a most productive and enjoyable meet up at Bucks08 and for all the on-line interaction afterwards.
If you are interested in modern management and haven’t checked out Steve Jurvetson’s Flicker blog, I recommend it highly. And, if you like rockets, check him out on TED too!
