“I believe that organizations have the potential to be places of healing. Almost all of us come to work with “baggage” – often counterproductive coping mechanisms learned from hard experience in past jobs, in our families, in our personal lives.” I wholeheartedly agree with Chris White, director of the Center for Positive Organizations, University of Michigan, who shared this in the Huffington Post.
Organizations can help people to unlearn unhealthy coping mechanisms and to adopt more trusting, open, creative, compassionate, and positive interaction patterns. I’ve said it before: because we spend so much time at work, with colleagues, clients or leaders that we didn’t select, organizations can serve as learning labs. We’ll have to make it work with the people we work with!
Learning what?
But learning what? Learning to retrieve our personal agency: our personal positive power. I’ve been blogging about this for the past year and it’s at the core of my new book “Developing a Positive Culture where People and Performance thrive”. Publishing date February 21, 2018, and it’s possible to pre-order now.
Learning why?
Learning why? Why would we want to practice our positive power? Because it makes you happy, engaged, and actively creating your life, relationships, and professional achievements. But that’s not all. It makes organizations more innovative, agile, productive and fun.
In many organizations, issues are escalated to the manager to be resolved. But most of the time, you probably know what to do, but you weren’t asked for your opinion or empowered to act on it. As a result, your manager becomes a bottleneck and you switch back to “wait-and-see” mode. Why bother…?
How great would it be to take charge of your own challenges and targets at work? Just like you do outside of work, as an adult? How great would it be to see your team members engage and step up?
People who are open to learning and willing to adopt a positive mindset, are positive agents who contribute to a positive culture at work. Everyone can do so, regardless of your position or role. Everyone contributes to the culture by their daily interactions. There’s no need to suffer and cherish frustration or quiet desperation. It’s time to be (a) present for positive change.
Positive is productive
A great example is Barry-Wehmiller Companies, a $1.5 billion global manufacturer. After they implemented a personal development program for leaders, they became “people-oriented” and started to respect their employees. Next, the staff’s divorce rates went down. Bob Chapman, the CEO, explained: “Companies don’t care about people: capitalism sees people as objects for success. Broken lives are the result. Our goal is to create an organization where everyone matters – a culture where people discover and share their gifts and are recognized. Because when you’re told what to do and never asked anything – you don’t feel good about yourself and you’re not nice to your spouse.” The lower divorce rates turned out to be beneficial for both employees and the company.
Learning how?
Learning how? There are many roads that lead to Rome. The journey that I traveled with my clients, while we learned together, is to start small with things you can do daily to make your work-life more positive: Interaction Interventions! I share them in my book and in my online Positive Culture Academy.
I am excited to offer this to the world! Let’s make our workplaces more fun, rewarding and more productive, more purposeful and contributing to the world.
In the Academy, you’ll work on how you could apply these techniques to your organization or team with your typical co-workers, and your boss. It’s easily accessible online, and we’ll travel with small steps that you can fit into your busy daily work life.
Please check it out and join me! Let’s be Positive Agents who do revolution by evolution: one interaction at a time, one person at a time. Be (a) present for positive organizations!
© Marcella Bremer 2018. All rights reserved.