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November 17, 2015
By: Robert E. Quinn
There is a very impressive woman I have known for a long time. Professionally she spent her life as a public school teacher. One day we were discussing the work I was doing interviewing highly effective teachers. I mentioned that many of them seemed to be masterful facilitators. They could ask relevant questions, listen deeply to student answers and then weave a meaningful, collective conversation. They seemed different from their peers. Their classrooms were positive organizations where learning accelerated. She immediately responded, “I could never do that facilitator thing.”
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November 3, 2015
By: Jennifer Evans
I was thinking about putting flowers in the lobby of my floor at the business school. It seems like people generally like flowers but I also had a sense that there might be a bigger impact from this small action based in what I understand of Gretchen Spreitzer’s research on Thriving. Also I was curious to extend something that happened when I’d brought lobby flowers to a school at which I was Dean. I noticed that a student was taking a picture of each fresh bunch. She told me that when she saw the flowers she was reminded that she could start fresh each day which made me happy. At that school I was in a position to do such a thing, here I hesitated because I thought I might be asked to stop. Maybe because our building is very designed, glass and modern and this addition would make our floor inconsistent with the others.
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November 1, 2015
Research from Dr. Jooa Julia Lee was featured in this Forbes article on the concept of ‘best-self activation’ and research provided by the Reflected Best Self Exercise. “Overwhelmingly, those who read positive statements about their past actions were more creative in their approach, more successful at problem-solving and less stressed out than their counterparts.”
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October 29, 2015
By: Katherine Johnson
Positive deviance—a seemingly ironic phrase I first heard when I was introduced to Positive Organizational Scholarship less than a year ago. At the 100th session of the Positive Links Speaker Series, Bob Quinn illuminated, to me, what it means to be positively deviant: to act outside of a conventional norm—a deviant behavior—and in a more positive direction. Seems pretty simple.
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October 28, 2015
Laura Kellers Queen and Chuck Smalley from Colloquia Partners and G&W Laboratories, respectively, penned an article in the HR Technology Special of the CIO Review entitled, “Powerful Insights to Improve Organizational Performance.” The article describes how these organizations have implemented use of a tool called the “OrgMapper®” which gives visual data output using social network and organizational […]
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October 28, 2015
By: Wayne Baker
Their key finding? Your parents are the single most significant factor in determining your work orientation. And the closer your bond, the more likely you are to follow their lead—whether or not you work in the same industry.
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October 27, 2015
By: Robert E. Quinn
The conventional mental map is not our only choice. The positive mental map offers the language of possibility. Most people don’t look for or find this map unless they have experienced a crisis of some sort, which breaks down their conventional assumptions and allows them to be more open. When they do this, they begin to evolve into a more complex thinker. Acquiring this positive mental map is a lot like becoming bilingual. It is a journey, not an instant transformation. It involves taking risks, failing your way forward, and having the confidence to keep trying. Learning a new language doesn’t mean forgetting your native language; rather, it adds a greater capacity to communicate and learn.
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October 23, 2015
By: Dave M. Mayer
In the new Fast Company article, “How to cure the Sunday-night blues,” David M. Mayer discusses the anxiety associated with the start of a new work week and how to help alleviate it. “It sounds simple, but it’s tough to get to the root of the issue without understanding what’s bothering you,” explains Mayer.
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October 19, 2015
By: Robert E. Quinn
I have a close associate who took over a troubled company. There was one unit that had a “particularly horrible culture.” The people were “actively disengaged.” The phrase suggests that they were using their talents to proactively undermine the collective good of the company. It is what happens when people lose all faith in their leaders. It a sign of advanced organizational decay and often managers have no idea what to do about it.
My associate read the earlier positive passage titled Change the Music – Change the Dance. He took it to his management group and they discussed it. The ideas in the passages did not reflect their conventional logic. They began to talk about their work in a new way.
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October 12, 2015
By: Jennifer Evans
I have been feeling happier than usual and started to wonder why. As I pondered, I saw images of a number of interactions I’d been enjoying. Thanks to Jane Dutton at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, I have a concept to wrap around such energizing experiences. She calls these energizing moments High […]
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October 6, 2015
When Michigan Ross professors Kim Cameron, Jane Dutton, and Bob Quinn launched the Positive Links Speaker Series in 2002, the goal was to create a platform where their area of research could be accessible to the public in inspiring and practical ways. At the time, the study and practice of positive organizations was unfamiliar territory […]
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October 6, 2015
Bruce N. Pfau, CPO Consortium Member and Vice Chair of Human Resources and Communications at KPMG wrote this article about a “higher purpose initiatives” project that took place within their company. The article states: “On our annual partner survey, 90% reported that the higher purpose initiatives increased people’s pride in KPMG. Scores on our employee […]
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