5 contemporary concepts for understanding why some groups buzz with expectation
Self-styled vagabond, Sam Brannon, asked a good question last weekend on Linkedin. Are we in a state of learned helplessness?
I’m an inveterate shaper so I am always asking “is what we do important and are we doing the important things?” Because I ask these questions, it is possible I sense learned helplessness more than do others. But, I am also much more interested in the the opposite of learned helplessness.
- I love the crowd singing their local hero to victory.
- I love the buzz of getting a group project done on time.
- I love the feeling of belonging to an institution worth belonging to.
Indeed my love of that community buzz is key to my professional interest in work psychology and university teaching. Sam’s post led me to list 5 contemporary concepts from psychology and management that, I think, are key to creating the spiral of group buzz and efficacy.
1 Collective efficacy
If we believe in each other, we add 5-10% on our effective results. Collective efficacy is a simple yet powerful idea. When the teachers in a school believe in each other, the school outperforms other schools who have equal resources!
Rule one: The CEO needs to believe genuinely in his or her direct reports. That process kicks off their belief in each other and in their direct reports, etc. etc.
P.S Faking doesn’t work. The pre-requisite of leadership is genuine, heart-felt belief in one’s followers.
2 Solidarity
Rejection is enormously destructive. Roy Baumeister, who blogs at Psychology Today, has shown that being rejected by a computer (not even a person) is sufficient to stop us looking in a mirror. Someone who feels rejected is not going to be feeling efficacious!
Rule two: Don’t just walk around! Walk around with a mission to create a sense of belonging.
P. S. Be hyper-alert to the small minute and accidental ways in which we exclude people. They are devastating to moral and self-confidence.
3 Personal Leadership
Social media (like LinkeIn) has awakened our sense of being at the centre of our own network. Everyone is a leader. The personal leader ‘school’ supports the development of individual leadership (see poet David Whyte). I am also interested in organizations that recognise that everyone is a leader.
Rule three: Tell our own ‘stories’ to show how the organization fits in to our personal destinies, and write an organizational story that depends upon our differences and uniqueness.
P.S. A story that depends on us mimicking the boss defines us as irrelevant (a hole below the waterline for the organization!)
4 Positive psychology/positive organizational scholarship.
The work of Martin Seligman and David Cooperrider has shown the power of gratitude and appreciation. Positive whatever-whatever sounds like touchy-feely stuff but it is pretty hard core. Basically, it is an approach where we focus on what works and works well and we discard the rest.
There are good reasons why haven’t focused on what works well as a matter of course. Simply, if we define leadership as one person knowing what is best, and telling the rest of us what to do, then we are always focusing on a gap – on something negative.
Rule four: Scrap all the “gap” technology on which management and HRM was built. Pinpoint what works and do more of it! Then keep the conversation there.
P.S. Its scary to abandon the idea that we know best. But when we get the hang of it, we find out all the good stuff that is happening that we didn’t know about.
5 Globalization
Globablization has changed economics and shifted where and how we can make a profit. We have to work harder now to create value that produces a penny of profit. Working with this constraint produces fantastic results as we see in V.J. Prahalad’s value at the bottom of the pyramid.
The principle used by large companies to rethink their process is this: abandon the idea of trying to sell more and more at a better and better price. Rather, ask what is needed at what price, and work backwards to what we can supply. The ability to ask questions about the world outside the organizations is a key aspect of successful business teams.
Rule 5: Forget about being a leader! Ask how to develop a community who are interested in what we do.
P.S. We do need to honour the community’s needs and trust it to honour ours (complete the circle). When we don’t have this loyalty to each other, a buzz is not possible. We simply don’t have the conditions for a high performing organization. This is not the day!
[CSPPG : cheerful squirrels prepare parties toGether]
Everyday use of these concepts
I use all these ideas in running everyday projects, like university courses. I know students do better when they believe in each other. My job, as I see it, is replacing their initial dependence on me, with, a strong belief in each other, a belief in their project of studying together in this year & in this place, and a deep pride in how they came to be here and how they will move on together.
That is the buzz of expectation that the whole world feels tonight with the US galvanized to get out and vote (or is just to get a free cup of coffee from Starbucks?). That is the buzz we get when our favourite team makes the finals. That is the buzz we get when you couldn’t stop us going to work even if you tried!
Have a winning week!
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