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April 16, 2014
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Mention the word “negotiation” and a number of metaphors come to mind — arms-length, check your emotions at the door, win the competition.
U-M Ross Professor Shirli Kopelman, who has researched negotiations for more than a decade, thinks that’s the wrong approach. She illustrates an innovative, positive way to think about negotiations and get better outcomes in her new book, Negotiating Genuinely: Being Yourself in Business (Stanford University Press).
“Negotiations aren’t just a competition. They’re about co-creating value and being cooperative and competitive at the same time,” says Kopelman, professor of management and organizations. “We’re so used to doing business by wearing our work hat and focusing on our role. I’m calling on people to be their full selves and wear all of their hats. This allows you to tap more of your personal resources.”
Her goal is to turn a positive lens on negotiations and transform them from a tug-of-war between opponents to a conversation between people building value. The book shares strategies and techniques, along with exercises to shine a light on how to apply them.
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April 15, 2014
As Jessica Amortegui writes, “Employees contemplate daily whether to re-up with their current employer or entertain the prospect of landing a better gig. Given this, the real question is not how to engage your employees so they don’t leave–there is a good chance they will. The real opportunity is how you treat them they do.”
According to research by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, “people will judge their overall experience by its peak, or most intense point, and by its end. When we file the experience into our memory, we don’t do simple arithmetic to average our moment-to-moment experiences.” With this in mind, Amortegui offers three tips for a better off-boarding strategy.
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April 14, 2014
By: Adam Grant
“Once upon a time, the field of medicine was riddled with danger. Doctors made up cures based on individual experience, inflicting horrors on patients—lobotomy, anyone?
Everything changed with the advent of evidence-based medicine. With randomized, controlled trials and careful longitudinal studies, we learned about effective treatments and risky behaviors. We discovered that smoking causes lung cancer and ibuprofen reduces pain.
Today, the field of management is not far from where doctors were before evidence-based medicine. We have leaders and managers choosing practices based on their own intuition and experience, when it’s much more reliable and valid to make decisions based on many data points and experiences. The good news is that over the past few decades, a new field of evidence-based management has emerged, and we can now use the power of controlled experiments and rigorous long-term studies to abandon ineffective practices and choose better ones.”
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April 14, 2014
ANN ARBOR, Mich.–The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business today announced that Fred Keller, CEO of Cascade Engineering, will serve as the Center for Positive Organizations’ first executive-in-residence. In his two-year appointment, Keller will unify his successful business background with the ongoing research, teaching, and organizational partnerships of the Center.
Keller’s appointment represents a further step by the Center for Positive Organizations in bringing research-based practices to organizational leaders in inspiring and practical ways. In 2010 and 2012, the Center for Positive Organizations was recognized by the Academy of Management for first opening up a new field of scholarly inquiry, and then for its impact on management practices. Keller will mentor students, and serve as a bridge to business leaders aspiring to build positive organizations.
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April 10, 2014
By: Camille Piner
“All too often we have positive thoughts about other people, but not very often do we actually share them with each other. Regardless of the psychological benefits, I believe people deserve to be appreciated when they do wonderful things for others.”
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April 9, 2014
By: Reb Rebele
“Imagine for a moment two children — we can call them Fred and Steve — who are learning to play the piano. Fred and Steve are equally talented young musicians, and when they sit down to practice, they give the same intense focus to the honing of their craft. In fact, the only notable difference between the two boys is that Fred is devoted exclusively to the piano, while Steve likes to bounce back and forth between piano, drums, and singing. Who do you think will be more successful?”
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April 7, 2014
By: Adam Grant
“When I attend a presentation, the first thing that captures my attention isn’t the speaker or the material. It’s the person who introduces the speaker.”
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April 4, 2014
www.fastcompany.com | Jessica Amortegui
Writing for Fast Company, Jessica Amortegui notes the importance of creating a “values-based” culture. However, she also acknowledges “how difficult it is to implement one.”
And yet Zappos “has seemed to crack the cultural code.” Indeed, their positive culture is so effective that people travel from all over the world to come see their practices in action. “Thousands of companies from around the world travel to the Las Vegas headquarters to see how Zapponians ‘live their 10 WOW values,'” writes Amortegui. “Zappos turned their culture into an attraction that warrants a price for admission. In doing so, they send a clear message to all those who seek the proverbial keys to the cultural kingdom: it is not easy to replicate the ‘secret sauce.'”
But how does one at least make an attempt at recreating the recipe?
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April 3, 2014
By: YaLe Lim
I would tell you that the Center for Positive Organizations is more than just a hub for POS. To me, the “Center” takes on a much larger meaning — it is where I’ve met incredible people who believe in the power of positivity in the workplace, and have dedicated their time, energy, and efforts to advocate it. Together, we form a community that help organizations better understand and respect the culture of the workplace, and take steps to make it a better one for all.
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March 28, 2014
By: Christopher Myers
“You work with the Center for Positive Organizations, but you’re doing an experiment where you make everyone fail?” This was a reaction I got one day when describing some of my research on how individuals learn from their failed experiences. It was a reasonable question – failure, on its face, doesn’t appear to be something all that positive. Indeed, failures and other adverse events don’t crop up often in the mental picture many people have of a positive organization; usually people imagine a successful, upbeat workplace with bright walls and happy people. Failure and adversity don’t really fit that vision.
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March 27, 2014
By: Camille Piner
How can we create a culture that both validates and relieves pain? Camille Piner reflects on this question after attending Afton Hassett’s Positive Links Speaker Series session.
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March 24, 2014
By: Adam Grant
“In Western culture, many people define success narrowly as money and power. In her uplifting book Thrive, Arianna Huffington argues that this leaves us sitting on a two-legged stool, which will tip over if we don’t add a third leg. She makes a passionate case, supported by science, for expanding our definition of what it means to succeed. One of her new metrics is giving: a truly rewarding life involves contributing to and caring for others.
I love this message. It’s a powerful call for us to become more generous and compassionate. Unfortunately, when people answer this call, they sacrifice their own success. Burning the midnight oil for other people, they fall behind on their personal responsibilities, and burn out. Reaching down to help people climb up the ladder, they get stepped on—and sometimes squashed.
After studying these dynamics for the past decade, it turns out that there’s hope. In Give and Take, I discovered that although many people give at their own expense, there’s a group of people who are productively generous. How do they do give without compromising their well-being and falling short on traditional measures of success? They reject three common beliefs about giving. As leaders, it’s part of our job to debunk these misconceptions.”
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