Chapter 10 - Leading Positive Change

Negative Deviance

Behaviors that are below normal standards (Focus: Deficient Approach, paying attention to problems, obstacles, and errors.

Positive Deviance

• Behaviors that are above normal standards (Focus: abundance approach, focusing on excellence, caring, and virtues.

• Key Idea: Leading positive change focuses on unlocking human potential by moving toward positive deviance.

The Important of Positive Change

• Focuses on building strengths, enhancing well-being, and creating a positive environment for growth and improvement.

• Benefits:

  • Increased employee engagement and motivation.

  • Improved productivity and performance.

  • Enhanced creativity and innovation.

  • Stronger organizational culture and resilience.

The 5 Skills of Leading Positive Change

• Five steps:

  • Establishing a climate of positive (Foundation).

  • Creating Readiness for Change (Urgency).

  • Articulating a vision of abundance (Direction).

  • Generating Commitment to the Vision (Engagement).

  • Fostering Sustainability (Endurance).

Skill 1: Establishing a Climate of Positivity

• Goal: Create a workplace environment characterized by virtues.

• Action A: Energy Networks:

  • Positive Energizers: people who strengthen and create vitality in others (Recruit and give place to them).

  • Negative Energizers: people who deplete enthusiasm (minimize their impact).

• Action B: Virtues:

  • Foster a climate of Compassion, Forgiveness, and Gratitude.

Skill 1: Focusing on Strengths

• Identifying what people do well and building on those strengths creates more benefit than fixing weaknesses.

• Tool: Reflected Best-Self Feedback: A technique that helps people identify their areas of competence. strength, and uniqueness by collecting feedback from others.

Skill 2: Creating Readiness for Change

• Goal: Help others understand the importance and urgency of the change.

• Benchmark Best Practices: Compare current performance to the highest standards.

  • Standards to compare against: Comparative, Goal, Improvement, Ideal, Stakeholder Expectations.

• Institute Symbolic Events: signal the end of the old way and the start of the new (e.g., a “burial” of old procedures).

Skill 2: Overcoming Resistance

• Create a New Language: Use different words to describe old realities (change perspective).

  • Example: Changing “Complaints” to “Customer Feedback Opportunities.”

• Overcome Resistance:

  • Identify potential resistors.

  • Encourage participation by others in the planning.

  • Specify WIIFM (“What’s In It For Me?”) for key stakeholders.

Skill 3: Articulating a Vision of Abundance

• A vision that is positively deviant, promises a profound contribution, and represents true excellence (a positive future and lasting legacy).

• Characteristics of a Strong Vision:

  • Optimistic: Promotes values and guides behavior.

  • Interesting: Challenges the status quo and confronts how people think.

  • Balanced: includes both left-brain (rational) and right-brain (creative) elements.

Skill 4: Generating Commitment to the Vision

• Create Recreational Work: apply principles of recreation (what makes games fun) to occupational work:

  • Clear Goals, Self-administered scorekeeping. frequent feedback, personal choice, and competition.

• Ensure Public Commitments: Give people the opportunity to make public pronouncements supporting the vision (leverages social accountability).

• Institutes a Small-Wins Strategy: Creating a sense of momentum and progress by achieving small, immediate successes.

• Key Idea: People become committed when they see progress being made.

Skill 5: Fostering Sustainability

• Goal: Ensure the positive change endures and continues after the initial push.

• Turn Students into Teachers: Give others the opportunity to articulate the vision (deepens their understanding and ownership).

• Build Human Capital: Provides organizational members with developmental opportunities (resources possessed by individuals that can be developed).

• Use Metrics, Measures, and Milestones: These ensure accountability and provide visible indicators of success.

  • Metrics: Specific indicators of success (e.g., error rate).

  • Measures: Methods for assessing success (e.g., survey or count).

  • Milestones: Benchmarks of progress (e.g., 50% reduction by Q3).

Focus on Abundance

Leading change means shifting away from problems (negative deviance) toward excellence and potential (positive deviance).

Build the Foundation

Climate (Positivity, Trust, Strengths) is the prerequisite for Readiness.

Vision Drives Commitment

The vision must be optimistic and challenging to generate true engagement.

Make Work Recreational

Apply principles like Clear Goals and Frequent Feedback to sustain momentum.

Comparing a company’s current performance to the highest standards found in other similar organizations is referred to as:

a. Comparative standards.

b. Ideal standards.

c. Industrial standards.

d. Improvement standards.

a. Comparative standards.

According to the text, the technique that helps people identify their areas of competence, strength, and uniqueness by gathering feedback from others is called:

a. Positive Counseling.

b. Ideal standards benchmarking.

c. Single thinking language.

d. Reflected best-self feedback.

d. Reflected best-self feedback.

A Vision of Abundance must contain both left-brain (rational) and right-brain (creative) elements to ensure it is:

a. Tied exclusively to current performance metrics.

b. Easy to measure.

c. Consistently applied across the organization.

d. Both analytically sound and emotionally compelling.

d. Both analytically sound and emotionally compelling.

According to Chapter 10, behaviors that are considered "above normal" standards and focus on excellence, caring, and virtues are referred to as:

a. Deficient Approach.

b. Positive Deviance.

c. Negative Deviance.

d. Positive Approach.

b. Positive Deviance.

Effective leaders who lead positive change often possess which of the following qualities?

a. Open-mindedness and adaptability

b. Aversion to feedback

c. Active communication style

d. Rigidity and inflexibility

a. Open-mindedness and adaptability

As discussed in Chapter 10, which action is recommended as a way to overcome resistance to change?

a. Limiting the vision to only left-brain (rational) features.

b. Focusing exclusively on comparing current performance to negative deviance.

c. Specifying WIIFM ("What's In It For Me?") for the key stakeholders.

d. Avoiding participation by resistors to maintain momentum.

c. Specifying WIIFM ("What's In It For Me?") for the key stakeholders.

What role does leadership play in fostering positive deviance in organizations?

a. It encourages a culture of innovation and experimentation

b. It promotes conformity and uniformity

c. It promotes communication and transparency

d. It discourages employee involvement in decision-making

a. It encourages a culture of innovation and experimentation

Instituting a Symbolic Event (e.g., a ceremony to retire an old system) is a technique primarily used to achieve which step in leading positive change?

a. Fostering sustainability.

b. Generating commitment to the vision.

c. Mobilizing negative energy networks.

d. Creating readiness for change.

d. Creating readiness for change.

Which change management skill involves recruiting people who strengthen and create vitality in others?

a. Fostering sustainability.

b. Articulating a vision of abundance.

c. Creating readiness for change.

d. Establishing a climate of positivity.

d. Establishing a climate of positivity.

Which of the following is a potential challenge in mobilizing the capabilities of others in achieving positive change?

a. Lack of clear communication

b. High level of autonomy

c. Low employee morale

d. Excessive micromanagement

a. Lack of clear communication