Get in the zone with Flow

One of the leading positive psychology proponents and founding thinker of Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is one of the greatest living psychologists of our age. This short video introduces us to the man and his idea. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjliwSJGDiU 

Wikipedia tells us that "according to Csíkszentmihályi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channelled, but positive, energised, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task although flow is also described as a deep focus on nothing but the activity – not even oneself or ones emotions."

For many, this idea will have sporting analogies. For others, particularly those interested in strengths-focused approaches to individual and team performance and development, the notion and feeling of flow happens when we are using our talents on activities that turn those talents into true strengths. Strengths that are visible to others, felt by us through the ease with which we carry out a function, role or activity time and again with high quality, positive outcomes. 

We are told that we cannot force ourselves to enter a flow state. It is something that just seems to happen. The state can be entered performing any activity and most likely to occur when we are wholeheartedly performing a task or activity for intrinsic purposes. Again, from a strengths perspective, we are more likely to find activities of this nature, i.e. where we wholeheartedly engage, with some understanding of our talents and strengths and how to seek opportunities to optimise the deployment of those talents.

There are several conditions necessary to achieve the flow state:

• There must be clear goals for the activity, thus adding direction and structure to the task
• We must perceive there to be a good balance between the challenge of the task and our own perceived skills (or in Strengths terms, the task and our talents rather than learned skills) 
• We need to have confidence that we are capable of doing the task

It also helps if there is clear and immediate feedback relating to the task. This helps us to negotiate any changing demands and allows us to adjust our performance to maintain the flow state. From an appreciative perspective, the feedback sought and provided is better when it concentrates on what works well, what is progressive and what we can learn to promote doing more of something - essential in a sporting context and arguably not less important in an organisational context - rather than too often seeking evidence of where we are weak or failing.    

Good-finding not problem solving for the coming week

It's tempting with the problem/weakness paradigm being so pervasive, for us to frequently fall into the ease of concentrating on these twin imposters of learning and progress. Resist! I ask you to start this coming week by finding something in your life, in your organisation, in your team, that is working well. Find something that portrays your service as capable, caring, progressive and coping with the challenges and risks of our current economic situation, however small it is. In fact, try and find the smallest positive action that has the greatest impact. Identify the action, outcome, impact, kind word and so on that has a disproportionately positive impact on your client, customer or colleague and then celebrate it, share it, promote it.


Here's a couple of links to get you thinking about how to start a movement, from the smallest beginnings to a large crowd in just a few minutes, and also how an appreciative inquiry into cooperation made such an impact on a large French business. Enjoy!


This link is to a video of how to start a movement. It's fun with some serious learning:


http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html

Here's the link to Bernard Tollec's great little video about Phillips in France using AI:


http://vimeo.com/35208749

And to top it off, this link will provide access to a helpful blog that offers some highly practical thinking around shifting your view from problem-solving to appreciation.


http://www.organizationalinnovationideas.com/problem-solving-really/

Government suffers sixth defeat...and the Social Fund disappears

Overwhelming backing for Tory peer's amendment wrecking charging proposals for Child Support Agency

The Government's troubled Welfare Reform Bill, which has been severely mauled in the Lords, received a sixth set-back this evening over charges for people using the Child Support Agency. The scale of the revolt on this issue dwarfed any other reversal the coalition has suffered in this Parliament. To read the full story, follow the link to the Guardian's excellent Society blog, where up-to-the-minute analysis can be found.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/blog/2012/jan/25/welfare-poverty

By the way, did you know also that the Social Fund it to be abolished as well, with the rump of the funds being transferred to local authorities without a ring-fence? Having been cut by 39% by the Coalition, it has now seen fit to pass off the funds of last resort for the poorest families in the country. Where will they go for emergency loans? Just check-out day-time TV and you'll see the plethora of disgusting companies offering loans with APR's of thousands of per cent - that's where...or just maybe the burgeoning 'Big Society' of soup kitchens, food banks and 'dumpster divers' will have to help pick up the outcomes of this particular piece of socio-economic engineering. 

I can't help thinking that as the still empty rhetoric about tackling executive and bankers' pay drones on in the foreground with the added diversion of stripping knighthoods from errant bankers, looks ever more like a kind of smokescreen to cover the dismantling of the welfare state. This at a time when unemployment is at a 17-year high, the recession is now official, economic growth prospects are at a level that most accountants would call a 'soft rounding' in numbers terms, the vaunted private sector fails to provide anywhere near the number of jobs required to address the loss of 710,000 public sector jobs and so on. The diversion of attention away from these important aspects just leaves such a nasty taste in the mouth.

Change is hard...except when it's not!

The Positive Psychology website has an interesting and potentially practically helpful piece about ways to achieve personal change by identifying the resistors to change, in ourselves and in groups, and melting them away. The model quoted draws implicitly on positive psychology constructs, which in my view gives it an added benefit. 


The article quotes Kegan and Lahey's four-column model of analysis and action to reduce and overcome resistance to change (from their book Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization). The four elements are:

1	Commitment, i.e.  unable to follow through on commitments to new and beneficial behaviours
2	Doing/not doing — mindful observation rather than instant challenge and change, using curiosity and mindfulness to uncover big assumptions at work
3	Hidden competing commitments - begin identifying the hidden competing commitments that are inhibiting achievement of the commitment, using emotions as an information system
4	Big Assumptions - see how those big assumptions support who we are today, and to imagine a different set of assumptions that would allow for a bigger, more complex self that could function in accordance with our new commitment and still be safe.

The article has more about each column of the model to help us use it to achieve reduced resistance. It ends by reminding us that "change is hard when you feel it puts you at risk. Change is exhilarating when it moves you in relative safety toward a more complex and capable self. Detecting your big assumptions and making new ones make the difference."
For more on the model check out this link:


http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/dave-shearon/2010041710682

Courage and authenticity in times of change

Peter Drucker once remarked that “my greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.” It was a self-deprecating quip. But it also contained a grain of truth. He also said, "“I can only ask questions. The answers have to be yours.” So it is now, whether as a facilitator, consultant, or adviser, it's the power of the questions we ask that can illuminate complex change and transformation efforts. 

Once we think about questions, we also need to consider what sort of questions, e.g. are they deficit-based, i.e. what's the problem here, or are they appreciative questions, i.e. what's the best of what we do here that we need to carry forward into the future? Whatever the focus, what we inquire into is fateful, i.e. we will find evidence and examples to answer our questions and illustrate the topic. This doesn't mean we shouldn't inquire into what makes our organisations or individual performance weak, it's more that too often we find our attention drawn all to readily to the worst of what is and not the best, e.g. what isn't working in a change effort rather than what is, what we can influence, shape and co-create. 


Balance, or re-balancing towards the appreciative and strengths-focused, provides leaders and followers with great opportunities to catch people doing things right, capture stories of positive experiences and allow for different conversations, particularly at times of uncertainty.  


It's not easy - no one says it is or has even been - but as managers and leaders we must demand of ourselves higher standards of contribution and involvement, no matter how difficult the circumstances. Not to the exclusion of all reason, but certainly necessitating courage, authenticity and energy. If it isn't us in formal leadership positions who do this, then those who follow will shift their attention to those who do and, in their absence, to those who role-model other, often inappropriate behaviours yet who nonetheless provide some form of rallying point. That way only lies deeper anxiety and uncertainty of success for our change efforts.


To read more about Peter Drucker, the Drucker Institute has just released the January/February 2012 issue of The Window, which features:

·         Great minds asking: How can management regain its legitimacy in society?

·         Peter Drucker prodding executives at a big investment bank to answer the question: “What should our business be?”

·         Thousands of university students in China learning about effectiveness, Drucker style

http://www.druckerinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Jan-Feb-12.pdf