Category: POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Is a team member who designs shortcuts lazy or brilliant? This question sparked hot debate in a recent positive leadership workshop in an engineering company. Craig was an experienced manager. He was bemoaning the ‘bad work ethic’ of a long-term employee on his team. Apparently, this team member had devised a range of shortcuts which enabled him to significantly reduce time spent on repetitive tasks.

Craig claimed this meant the employee spent a lot of time ‘lounging around’. Cynthia pointed out that this might not be laziness, it might be an example of savvy work redesign. The group then had an in-depth discussion of what being a ‘hard worker’ in the age of knowledge working means.

This discussion was an ideal starting point for a session on positive deviance. What is fascinating about positively deviant workers is that they solve problems without effort or fanfare. They naturally think differently to their teammates. This means they spontaneously find new ways to do things and subtly shift the dynamics of workplace interaction. Whenever I teach the theory of positive deviance, I see a small proportion of leaders’ eyes light up. Typically, these leaders are themselves positive deviants and naturally see the connection between constructively ‘abnormal’ behaviour and organisational success.

You’ve heard me talking about positive deviance before because it’s one of my favourite topics. These days I specialise in working with positively deviant leaders and HR practitioners. During thousands of hours of coaching and training, I’ve learned there are some important things we need to remember when working with positive deviants in our businesses. By definition, they’re not like the rest of us. This is why they’re so valuable. However, they are often misunderstood or maligned – just like Craig’s employee. Smart trainers and facilitators know how to spot and bring out the best in their positive deviants. So how can you do this?

Here are a few simple techniques which are based on positive psychology training and positive deviance models. Remember that positive deviants often don’t fit in. This means they may tend to work alone or naturally gravitate to roles such as internal consultants in which they can thrive.

Problems don’t look the same to positive deviants. Indeed, because they’re quirky and creative, positive deviants often don’t even see that a problem exists. Instead, they take action and find spontaneously brilliant workarounds or solutions. Highly attuned leaders spot this behaviour and encourage positive deviants to share their new ways of working so teams can accelerate their success.

Solution focused thinking is the positive deviant’s standard way of operating. This means they will become frustrated in meetings which focus on why problems exist, or why those issues can’t be solved. They don’t ask questions like this. They are curious and spontaneous – naturally building solutions where others see barriers. Great leaders tap into this ability.

Of course, trainers and coaches can be positive deviants, too! If this sounds like you, you can find out more about positive psychology training techniques in the Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners. This free resource is brought to you by Eleanor Shakiba and the team at Think Learn Succeed.

About the author: Eleanor Shakiba

Eleanor is a trainer and coach, with a passion for unleashing the power of positive deviance in talented people. She has taught more than 50,000 people how to excel professionally. An expert in the field of Positive Psychology, Eleanor is also qualified in Social Anthropology, Counselling, Coaching, Adult Education and Neuro Linguistic Programming. She specialises in helping HR and L&D practitioners to unleash the power of positive psychology in business. Her major focus in developing three key areas that support positive workplace cultures: positive mindset, proactive communication and purposeful leadership. Eleanor is the author of the Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners. Download your free copy here.

Exceptional people solve problems differently to the rest of us. Often, they don’t even realise that problems exist. They simply find ways to get great results. These people are ‘positive deviants’. By paying attention to their behaviours, you’ll discover effective methods for tackling existing problems. Positive deviance theory provides a framework for doing this. In this article, you’ll discover what positive deviance is and how it can be used to build vibrant workplace cultures.

Jerry and Monique Sternin were the first to apply the concept of positive deviance in the real world. In the 1990s, the Sternins visited Vietnam and worked with Save the Children. In villages where malnourishment was prevalent, they found outliers with healthy children. The families with well-nourished children had access to the same resources as others but produced successful outcomes.

By studying the behaviours of the healthy families, the Sternins developed a nutrition program that the entire community could follow to reproduce the same results. The program produces a 74% reduction in malnutrition among children who participated in the program. It was based on applying five key steps, which positive psychology trainers now use in culture-building and team-building initiatives. Here’s a quick overview of those steps.

Define the problem

The first step is to define the problem. In a corporate setting, this requires input from people at all levels. It is also useful to get your customers involved in defining problems.

Evaluate common practices

After defining the problem, start evaluating the practices that people follow that result in unsatisfactory outcomes. Interview the people who are directly involved in the areas that you want to improve. The ones performing the work are best equipped to explain the procedures that they follow.

Evaluate uncommon practices

As you begin evaluating common practices, you are likely to come across uncommon practices employed by a select few individuals. Look for the uncommon practices that provide the best results.

Compare practices

Comparing the common and uncommon practices allows you to determine what does and doesn’t work. Use this information to draft new business procedures that incorporate the positive deviant behaviours that you identified.

Develop an initiative

As with any business strategy, you need to continue monitoring the impact of new business procedures. Choose specific metrics to track to monitor progress and evaluate the success of the initiative.

Every organisation has positive deviants. With the help of positive psychology trainers, you can learn how to spot them within your organisation and use their behaviours to improve the output of others. Contact Eleanor Shakiba to explore resilience training techniques for identifying and harnessing positive deviancy.

About the author: Eleanor Shakiba

Eleanor is a trainer and coach, with a passion for unleashing the power of positive deviance in talented people. She has taught more than 50,000 people how to excel professionally. An expert in the field of Positive Psychology, Eleanor is also qualified in Social Anthropology, Counselling, Coaching, Adult Education and Neuro Linguistic Programming. She specialises in helping HR and L&D practitioners to unleash the power of positive psychology in business. Her major focus in developing three key areas that support positive workplace cultures: positive mindset, proactive communication and purposeful leadership. Eleanor is the author of the Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners. Download your free copy here.

Yes. There is a dark side to self-awareness. Facilitators and coaches need to be aware of this when working with highly sensitive clients. For most people, building self-awareness leads to improved social and communication skills. It also promotes deep level learning. However, in individuals with a hypercritical inner dialogue, boosting self-awareness can lead to self-consciousness and imposter syndrome.

How does this happen? More importantly, what can positive psychology trainers do to prevent it? Answering these questions means understanding the process of metacognition and how it links to learning. Humans are unique in their ability to think about thinking. Known as metacognition by psychologists, this capability enables your clients to learn from experience. It also allows them to assess the impact of their own actions on others.

This is why all the best trainers and facilitators tout the value of reflective learning. However, we need to do this with clear boundaries in place. Always remember that for highly sensitive people, experiential learning can switch from constructive to destructive mode all too easily.

The switch happens when a learner talks to themselves inwardly about their actions or experiences. In constructive learning cycles, individuals reflect on real life experiences from a growth mindset perspective. This means they generate a supportive and learning focused inner dialogue. Highly sensitive learners, on the other hand, sometimes take on a highly critical inner voice. Typically, this emphasises personal flaws. It uses shaming, blaming or complaining to critique the learner’s performance. Once the voice becomes dominant, the learner becomes negatively self-aware. Over time, this leads to imposter syndrome.

Savvy facilitators pre-empt this process. For example, in my positive psychology training courses I teach participants to monitor the tone of their inner dialogue. I ask them to do this as they progress through the three stages of reflective learning. As they review real-life experiences, I instruct learners to focus on what they did well. I ask how they applied their strengths.

During the second stage of reflection, I use solution focused questions to guide learners’ positive insight and conceptualisation. Finally, as learners begin planning for the future, I stress the importance of leaving the past behind. I teach them to consciously adopt new approaches to familiar situations. This promotes a cycle of positive future casting and enables people to learn resiliently.

If you’re committed to bringing out the best in your people, remember that reflection works best when it’s positively focused. As a positive psychology facilitator, listen for external language cues which reveal a learner’s processing habits. Gently guide the reflective process so that your learners can get into the habit of supporting themselves internally. Useful tools for doing this are the meta-model from neurolinguistic programming and the growth mindset model from positive psychology training.

Interested in these techniques from positive psychology? Find out more about them in Eleanor Shakiba’s Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners. Download your free copy here.

About the author: Eleanor Shakiba

Eleanor is a trainer and coach, with a passion for unleashing the power of positive deviance in talented people. She has taught more than 50,000 people how to excel professionally. An expert in the field of Positive Psychology, Eleanor is also qualified in Social Anthropology, Counselling, Coaching, Adult Education and Neuro Linguistic Programming. She specialises in helping HR and L&D practitioners to unleash the power of positive psychology in business. Her major focus in developing three key areas that support positive workplace cultures: positive mindset, proactive communication and purposeful leadership. Eleanor is the author of the Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners. Download your free copy here.

Imposter syndrome is a big problem in business. It leads talented people to overwork and burn out. Ironically, the very sensitivity that trainers and HR practitioners want their leaders to possess (self-awareness) seems to drive imposter thinking. The problem is, some people take self-awareness too far. When this happens, they become self-conscious and a downward spiral begins. Understanding the difference between self-awareness and self-consciousness can help prevent this problem occurring in your business. So, how are self-awareness and self-consciousness different?

Legend has it that seven sages of ancient Greece gathered together in Delphi and encapsulated their wisdom in one command: know thyself. But can taking this advice too far turn self awareness into self consciousness? Not if you understand what self-awareness truly is.

Self-awareness is your ability to have a sense of your ‘self’ being separate to others. It is one of a few unique abilities that make you human. Cats aren’t self-aware, for example. If a cat sees itself in a mirror, it hisses and spits. Why? It thinks the reflection is another cat. You, however, see ‘yourself’ in a mirror. You learned to recognise yourself from a very young age. This was the age at which developed a sense of self-awareness.

Psychologists have defined two broad categories of self-awareness – internal and external. Internal self-awareness refers to how you view your thoughts, feelings, behaviours, strengths and weaknesses. External self-awareness is how you believe that others view these traits and characteristics. People who adopt a critical sense of external self-awareness are more likely to become self-conscious. They assume others are judging them negatively.

Sadly, many talented people are secretly self-conscious. This leads to perfectionism, excessive work hours and an inability to ‘let things go’. Leaders and L&D practitioners should watch out for these signs. By intervening early, you can prevent self-consciousness developing into imposter syndrome. There are many positive psychology training and coaching techniques that can help you do this. Additionally, you can use resilience training to prevent burnout destroying your best talent. There are three key skills to teach your people: self-reflection, mindfulness and self-compassion.

Self-reflection

Self-conscious people ruminate. Confident people reflect. This is a key distinction to keep in mind when delivering leadership or emotional intelligence training. Remember to explain the difference. Then give your people simple tools for reflecting on their experiences. Show them how to stop focusing on things that go wrong and instead ask ‘what have I learned from this?’.

Mindful attention

Mindfulness is also a useful tool for building self-awareness. Teach your people how to recognise thoughts as they arise, without dwelling on them. This helps eliminate self-consciousness and foster healthy self-awareness.

Self-compassion

Self-compassion is an important concept to teach people anyone who suffers from imposter syndrome. It involves means being sensitive to your own suffering and accepting all aspects of yourself. Having self-compassion means being able to relate to yourself in a way that’s forgiving, accepting and loving when situations might be less than optimal. Resilience trainers or HR experts who want to learn more about self-compassion should explore the work of Dr. Kristin Neff. Leaders who want to apply positive psychology in their own lives can also benefit from gaining a better understanding of Dr Neff’s work.

To unlock the power of self-awareness, start working with positive psychology trainers and coaches. Resilience training can help cultivate greater self-awareness, which empowers individuals to become more mindful, resourceful and compassionate. Contact Eleanor Shakiba today to find the secret to boosting self-awareness among your people.

About the author: Eleanor Shakiba

Eleanor is a specialist in positive psychology training. Her core strength is creativity, which she expresses in the training room through storytelling and visual design. She has dedicated her career to helping experienced professionals break through glass ceilings by developing their confidence, communication skills and leadership mastery. Eleanor is qualified in a range of fields including Social Anthropology, Positive Psychology, Counselling, Coaching, Adult Education and Neuro Linguistic Programming. She is also the author of the Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners. This is a free resource for trainers and facilitators.

I’ve often argued that self-agency is the most important attribute a leader can possess. This opinion is grounded in positive psychology research. It has shown that self-agency can be a more significant driver of success than self-esteem.

For this reason, many of the leadership modules I include in my Learn with Eleanor Shakiba online programs contain content on building self-agency. Recently, in one of my courses, someone asked me a fascinating question. “Can you have too much self-agency?” The answer to this question is a resounding ‘yes’.

After all, self-agency is your belief that your actions can reap positive results. A great leader has high self-agency and fosters self-agency in others. However, anyone who’s worked for a ‘control freak’ leader knows that some people fail to do this. The result is a leadership style which can come across as autocratic, distant, or unwilling to collaborate. For this reason, positive psychology trainers should send balanced messages around the role of drive and confidence in leadership contexts.

So how can we boost leaders’ self-agency to appropriate levels? Essentially, this involves developing capability in three key areas.

• Positive mindset
• Powerful communication
• Purposeful action

Combining these three elements in leadership training ensures that leaders learn to balance self-directed action with collaborative dialogue. This turns them into dynamic change-agents, who are capable of taking teams with them on the journey to success.

If you’d like to find out more about using positive psychology principles in your leadership programs, download Eleanor Shakiba’s free e-book, Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners.

About the author: Eleanor Shakiba

Eleanor specialises in positive psychology and NLP. She works with HR and L&D teams create vibrant organisational cultures, by delivering training that makes a difference. Eleanor’s qualifications include degrees and diplomas in Social Anthropology, Positive Psychology, Counselling, Coaching, Adult Education and Neuro Linguistic Programming. Her passion is fostering the success of ‘positive deviants’ in the workplace. Download a copy of Eleanor’s free ebook Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners.