Monthly Archives: January 2016

A lot of what Shawn Achor talked about in his interview made sense to me.  I think that genes certainly help shape some of the core tendencies in people, however I believe that people can “train” their brain to focus on positive, happy things which can lead to someone being happy more often.

One thing that Achor encouraged the viewers was to keep a daily journal and spend 2 minutes reflecting on meaningful experiences or positive thoughts.  I’ve never really been one to keep a journal, but I did accept a challenge that I read about in an article about 2 years ago.  The author of the article challenged readers to write out 5 things that they were thankful for every day for an entire month.  The first couple of days were very easy, because I am extremely grateful for my family, so I spent time identifying each member of my immediate family and marked down what I was most thankful about with regard to my relationship with them.  As the month continued, I challenged myself further to think outside of people, and identify experiences or events in my past that I was thankful for.  This caused me to really re-live some of these experiences, and led to a deeper feeling of gratitude.  At the end of the month, my last item that I journal’d about was the experience of this challenge in particular.  It was remarkable how truly satisfying and insightful this experience was for me.

Part I  Blog about your personal paradigm: Are you a glass-is-half-full, or -empty believer?

Anyone who knows me would say that I’m a “glass is half full” type of person… and I would agree.  I tend to see things as opportunities and anything that poses itself as a challenge to me, I see as exciting.  I enjoy being the “morale booster” for my team at work, and with that responsibility comes the challenge to translate almost anything into a positive.  This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel defeated in my job from time to time.  Ironically, I experienced a situation just today at work where I reported out on a project to the CEO of my company.  I was delivering information regarding our Global Associate Survey- and part of my presentation was to inform him about the areas that we scored high in, as well as the areas that our associates scored low.  As you can imagine, there were high-fives as we were talking through the high scores, but when we got to the areas that were scored low, it seemed like a tough pill for the CEO and his team to swallow.  The conversation turned towards scrutinizing our process and questioning the methodology that my team used to present the information.  It was all very respectful, but there were definitely some emotions involved.  My team walked away from the meeting feeling a bit deflated because we weren’t able to get agreement on our suggested next steps for the areas to focus on.  Even my boss felt a bit defeated.  My first comment when we huddled together after the meeting was, “…well, at least we know where he stands and can prepare accordingly for the next survey”.     Everyone agreed, and we moved on from there.  I’ve found that taking this approach seems to be more contagious to others around.

Part II- Response to Marcus Buckingham’s YouTube videos regarding the notion of leveraging strengths

Marcus Buckingham mentioned that “…less than 2 out of 10 people (17%) gets to play to our strengths at work.  Although this initially sounded drastically low to me, as I began to think about myself, and the people that I would with on my team, and after assessing which of us I believe could fall into the category of “playing to our strengths”, it falls in line with this low percentage.  I started to explore why this occurs, and what Marcus Buckingham was describing in his video is completely on point.  Here’s how this plays out with my company…

Our Performance and Career Management process occurs throughout the entire year, with certain “events” occurring on an annual timeline.  Performance Appraisals are completed once a year by the associate (self assessments) and their managers, and they include ratings on how the associate demonstrated competencies, performance goals, and “developmental activities” throughout the past performance year.  Then, new goals and developmental activities are established for the following year.  The process of creating Developmental Activities first encourages managers to identify competencies that the associate struggles with (i.e. communication, financial aptitude).  Then, an on-the -job activity that will force the associate to develop this competency is identified.  For example, my lowest competency has always been financial aptitude. A developmental activity that has been included on my review for the past few years is to manage the T&E budget for my department.  I absolutely DREAD this work, it completely de-energizes me, and by the way…I’m not that great at it.  It’s a constant reminder for me every year that I am not very good in this area.  My strongest competencies are “communication”, “coaching and development”, etc.  Following the thought process that Buckingham was discussing in the videos, if my company really wanted to get a bigger “bang for their buck”, they should encourage me to identify developmental activities around my strongest competencies.  They will see better results, and I will be a lot more engaged.  It just makes sense to me.

Teams that include members that have the opportunity to play to their strengths at work typically outperform teams that don’t.”- Marcus Buckingham

Does anything about AI resonate for you? What questions occur to you as you begin your exploration of AI? What challenges you may think could occur in an AI? Which situations are NOT suited for AI us

Very early on in David Cooperrider’s video, he mentioned one thing that resonated with me, “…strengths do more than perform…they transform…”.  I think that this illustrates some of the examples of Appreciative Inquiry that I’ve witnessed in my career.  Some of the most well-executed organizational changes that I’ve been a part of have started by leveraging the strengths and successes that had been experienced in the past.  One question that I’d like to explore more is, what happens when a team is in its early stages and is unable to draw on successes that they have shared as a team?  How does Appreciative Inquiry exist in these situations?  I believe that this could be a challenge for an OD consultant who is relying on AI to support a change effort.

Another thing that stuck out to me is the discussion about how important it is for Appreciative Inquiry to be relied upon in times of “white knuckle change”.  I recall back in 2008 / 2009 when our organization was going through a challenging time due to the state of the economy.  There were decisions that were made that negatively impacted our associate’s career growth, salary, and in some cases, their employment.  Many of the key business decisions that were made during this time could be described as “white knuckle changes”.  I recall the environment being very anxious, stressful, and negative.  A question that occurs to me now as I listened to Cooperrider’s words is how to facilitate AI when there is a strong and widely shared attitude of negativity and anxiety.  If those attitudes are so strong, does it become almost impossible for discussions about strengths (from AI) to succeed?

I’m looking forward to exploring these questions further this semester!

Peter Drucker- what is the essence of leadership?  The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in a way that makes a system’s weaknesses irrelevant”

I spent some time perusing the Appreciate Inquiry Commons and there was a ton of great information there.  One valuable portion of this site was the “Practice Tools-  Proposals that work”.  This is an area where AI Professionals can submit their own best practices for others to use.  There was everything from were templates of letters that AI professionals could use to invite people to participate in an AI Study to examples of Client Proposal Estimation of costs.  Why re-invent the wheel?  I think this is a really valuable tool.

Secondly, I took personal interest in the calendar of conferences and events.  I’m often asked about developmental opportunities that I would benefit from at work.  I may want to take advantage of some of the conferences that are mentioned on this site.